Student loan forgiveness - initial thoughts

 1.) I have to believe a court case over this will happen sooner rather than later. Biden has not offered even a  flimsy attempt at justifying a purely executive-branch move. Congress was completely sidelined.

2.) It encourages a shrugging-off-responsibility mindset throughout our society. Now that the precedent has been set, how long is it before progressive policy types start opining that car loans and home loans need forgiving? It erodes the principle at the heart of the free market: that an economic transaction occurs when two parties, a buyer and seller, agree on the value of the good or service to bee exchanged, and each understands the obligations he or she is undertaking.

3.) Why is college so expensive? Look at the rate of growth of administrative staff over the last 40 years compared to that of faculty. 

4.) Expect that trend to continue. Insitutions of higher learning, or whatever it is they're dispensing these days, have been given a green light.

The spending-and-redistribution aspect of Biden's address to Congress

 This morning, I devoted a post to one narrow aspect of Biden's speech last night, namely his doubling-down on the claim that the country he presides over is systemically racist. In the first paragraph, I said I'd visit the subject that was the centerpiece of his remarks, unveiling the American Families Plan, so here you go.

For starters, let's look at what redistribution is: Taking Citizen A's money, using the coercive power of government, to address the specific situation of Citizen B. That's what every last feature of this plan is. 

Consider the education initiatives in it:

The proposal would provide $200 billion for a universal pre-kindergarten program for children ages 3 and 4 along with $109 billion to provide two free years of community college. Both would be done via partnerships with states, which would have to pick up some of the bill (50 percent for the pre-K plan, 25 percent for the community college plan). The White House projects that the expanded pre-K program would save families an average of $13,000 per year.

Two "free" years of community college. Um, no. I would pay for it and I have no intention of enrolling in a community college. 

And spare me the rhetoric about America needing a work force prepared to meet the challenges of the twenty-first century. I have no use for macro-level reasons to redistribute Americans' money. Decisions to go to community college - or a four-year liberal-arts college, or a prestigious university, or a trade school - are made by individual human beings who are making choices about how to plan their lives. If a leg up is needed regarding tuition, that's something to be handled on the local level, or through scholarships, or funds set up by particular institutions to helps their students, or - just a thought - by working one's way through the institution. Money doled out by the most centralized level of government creates the widest possible chasm between the student and the source of his or her ability to attend class and buy textbooks.

And this is supposed to be a "families" plan. So what's with the universal pre-K? Seems like a step in the wrong direction, taking children out of their homes at an ever-earlier age so that the state can get its hands on their noggins and ensure that it, not the children' parents, are the main influence on the kids' development and worldview formation.

The child-care provision is likewise a move away from any strengthening of families. I guess it's too much to ask of a Democrat president and a Democrat House to look at a major shift in policy orientation that provides the conditions for a parent to be home during a child's formative years, and any suggestion of such a shift is sure to bring retorts along the lines of "Get real, would you? Both parents have had to work in this country for decades now." The question to pose at that juncture is, "Would a drastically lower tax rate help with that?"

Oh, and we're going to take money from citizens for whom child care is not a concern to pay child care workers higher wages - and provide free lunches!

Paid family leave is a piece of this plan. Again, I would like to suggest that workers taking time off from jobs is a matter to be decided between employers and employees in a given organization. As the nature of the workforce has changed, a lot of businesses have instituted more flexible policies in this regard. Granted, there are some who haven't, but to make that the government's business is to distort the workings of the free market. If it's good business to be more flexible about time off for sick family members, the birth of a child, and such, those being flexible will thrive and enjoy the gravitation of talent to them. 

The plan also calls for increased subsidies of premiums for insurance policies obtained via the "Affordable" Care Act. Again, this creates a yet-wider distance between a patient and the provider of a given health care service by making not one, but two third entities - the insurance company and the taxpayers ponying up for these subsidies - party to that relationship.

Biden envisions "the rich" and those who realize capital gains on investments paying for this. A few things about that: It stokes class envy, there are not enough rich people to cover the cost, and it dampens investment, which in turn dampens innovation and advancement. 

And bear in mind it's the third "plan" he's introduced so far this year, with each of them costing several trillions of dollars. 

And the other two are suppose to be about COVID relief and infrastructure, respectively, but in each case it's a fig leaf for random acts of government intrusion.

The American Rescue Plan is overwhelmingly about things other than helping people affected by the virus:

 . . . even the liberal-leaning fact-checking website PolitiFact is pointing out that almost all of the bill’s spending is unrelated to the health effects of COVID-19. 

“Total spending directly on COVID-19’s health impacts ranges from $100 billion to $160 billion,” fact-checker Jon Greenberg writes. “At the high end, direct COVID-19 spending represents about 8.5% of the bill’s $1.9 trillion cost.”

Of the bill’s nearly $2 trillion in spending, PolitiFact reports that just $14 to $20 billion goes to vaccine distribution and vaccine-related efforts. This is a tiny fraction, a mere 1-2 percent. Overall, the spending that actually goes to health-related matters pales in comparison to the hundreds of billions doled out for partisan priorities. 

For example, at least $350 billion goes to bailing out state and local governments—despite most not actually experiencing predicted COVID-19 tax revenue shortfalls. That means Biden’s bill spends more than twice as much lining the pockets of bankrupt blue states than it does actually addressing public health. 

Legislators also included a completely unrelated $86 billion bailout for union pension plans. And the bill pours $128 billion into public education. Despite what advocates claim, it’s not actually money to “reopen schools.” A whopping 95 percent of the money will be spent after 2021.

These are just a few of the big-ticket spending items that are unrelated to COVID-19. But slipped into the bill’s 600+ pages are literally countless smaller allocations of millions in taxpayer money. Many of these carve-outsare for waste like billions for racial justice programs for farmers or politician’s pet projects like $1.5 million for a bridge in New York that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer wants built.  

Similarly, the administration has a quite, shall we say, expansive definition of infrastructure:

According to a White House Fact Sheet about the plan, $621 billion will be spent on items that are somewhat related to infrastructure, but only $115 billion out of the $2.3 trillion is specifically for roads and bridges. So what is the other $2 trillion-plus being spent on?

The AJP includes $213 billion to retrofit more than two million homes and commercial buildings; $174 billion in the electric vehicle market, including building 500,000 new charging stations; $100 billion to address “racial equity” in the job market; $100 billion to build high-speed broadband internet; $48 billion for an American workforce development program; $45 billion in the Environmental Protection Agency’s “Drinking Water State Revolving Fund”; $40 billion in a “new Dislocated Workers Program”; $25 billion for a “dedicated fund to support ambitious projects that have tangible benefits to the regional or national economy”; $10 billion for a civil climate corps; and $5 billion to support “evidence-based community violence prevention programs.”

Recall what LITD noted this morning, namely, that the combined cost of these three plans is nearly twice the gross domestic product of Germany. 

The task before us - that is, before anyone who cares about human freedom and agency, about families, and about the hair-raisingly astronomical debt this country is saddled with - is to persuade our fellow citizens to think past the supposed appeal of these plans. A tall order, to be sure, but to be silent is to let the ruin gain momentum. 

 

 

"These guys are losing money selling cars. They're making money selling credits."

 If you've been reading LITD for any length of time, you know that it's pretty purist in its defense of free-market economics. If a person or organization comes up with a product or service, it ought to thrive or wither based on its ability to hold its own in the marketplace. It ought to attract enough consumers who see value in the confluence of price point and appeal that it doesn't need a leg up from government.

Now, consider one Elon Musk, a very rich guy. He's mainly made his splash so far in life selling electric cars. 

But do they meet the above criterion for being economically viable?

Um, no. They continue to roll off the assembly line and the dealership lot because the company is involved in government funny business in the form of something called "regulatory credits":

Tesla posted its first full year of net income in 2020 -- but not because of sales to its customers.

Eleven states require automakers sell a certain percentage of zero-emissions vehicles by 2025. If they can't, the automakers have to buy regulatory credits from another automaker that meets those requirements -- such as Tesla, which exclusively sells electric cars.

It's a lucrative business for Tesla -- bringing in $3.3 billion over the course of the last five years, nearly half of that in 2020 alone. The $1.6 billion in regulatory credits it received last year far outweighed Tesla's net income of $721 million -- meaning Tesla would have otherwise posted a net loss in 2020.

"These guys are losing money selling cars. They're making money selling credits. And the credits are going away," said Gordon Johnson of GLJ Research and one of the biggest bears on Tesla(TSLA) shares.

Tesla top executives concede the company can't count on that source of cash continuing.

"This is always an area that's extremely difficult for us to forecast," said Tesla's Chief Financial Officer Zachary Kirkhorn. "In the long term, regulatory credit sales will not be a material part of the business, and we don't plan the business around that. It's possible that for a handful of additional quarters, it remains strong. It's also possible that it's not."

You know what I think is the most glaringly key word in the above excerpt? "Require."

What the hell is government doing requiring any manufacturer of any product to make that product according to some requirement that comes from outside the company doing the manufacturing?

Well, comes the rejoinder from the busybodies who want us to resign ourselves to a permanent state role in what is made, how it's made, and how it's sold, the global climate is in dire trouble and we have to wean ourselves off fossil fuels as soon as possible.

And if you come back by citing the ample data showing that the global climate is in no such trouble, they trot out their own pointy-heads who say it is, and everybody goes down the rabbit hole for who knows how long.

But acting on the flawed presumption that it is so leads to shenanigans like this. 

And the general public shrugs and assumes it has to be this way. 

 

In terms of economic policy, 2020 is shaping up to be the battle of the protectionists

On our Barney & Clyde podcast, Clyde Myers and I frequently do a segment we call "Maybe Someday We'll Try A Free Market." We like the slightly wistful tone of the title, and the hint of cynicism, the suggestion that it's a when-donkeys-fly grade of speculation.

Which is not to say that hope is entirely extinguished in our liberty-cherishing hearts. We press on with making the case for it, even in times like these, when, as Kevin Williamson points out, the only viable alternatives for post-Americans to choose from regarding federal policy are erratic protectionism and leftist protectionism:

A promise of economic nationalism, an expensive infrastructure bill that’s really a make-work program, prejudice against foreigners, denunciations of Wall Street — Joe Biden is running the 2016 Trump campaign against Donald Trump in 2020.

Joe Biden gave a big economic speech in Pennsylvania yesterday, and his economic agenda has three parts: 1) a $400 billion federal spending spree with some additional “Buy American” rules attached to it; 2) a somewhat more modest ($300 billion) raft of subsidies for politically connected industries (electric vehicles, telecoms) that we are going to pretend is a research-and-development program; 3) a very large tax increase (by some estimates, the largest proposed in modern times) to pay for No. 1 and No. 2. You will recognize this as approximately the same bulls—t that Donald Trump was peddling in 2016 and Barack Obama was peddling in 2008 and 2012. It is the same crap that has at various times been peddled by figures such as George Wallace, Ross Perot, and Pat Buchanan, and by relatively minor figures such as Ted Strickland.  It is nonsense, but it never goes out of fashion.

It would be interesting to know what kinds of discussions among Biden's advisors led to putting such throbbing insularity forward at this time. Maybe they concluded that glitches in mask and ventilator availability at the onset of the pandemic had post-America sufficiently spooked to be clamoring for supply chains to be pulled within the confines of our continental shores.

In any event, there's now going to be a period of each campaign going to great lengths to distinguish its flavor of protectionism from the other. And there are distinctions. The Trump flavor focuses on tariffs and upending existing trade agreements. The Biden flavor focuses on taxes and subsidies.

Still, they have in common the assumption that human ingenuity could never improve human lives as well as government.

Joseph Schumpeter, call your office.

The economic life of our species is distinct from the governments we have gathered ourselves under. Organizations engaged in making and selling products - by which I pretty much mean those structured as corporations - have needs for particular materials, processes and people that change over time and at any given moment are most profitably employed under certain circumstances. That's how consumers enjoy an array of choices they can make based on the nexus of price, quality and situational benefit that suits each of them as individuals.

The salient point here is that the supply end of the equation takes its cue from what the demand end says that it wants. Billions of sovereign individuals send signals to those who have chosen a life of making and selling things by means of what they do and do not choose to spend their money on.

Industrial policy - which is what Trump, Biden and all the others Williamson mentions are actually calling for - deprives those billions of sovereign individuals of their choice of what signals to send. The decision about what will be made and sold is made in a top-down fashion.

It's couched in the rhetoric of compassion and patriotism. Advocates of industrial policy know that they can stir hearts by appeals to the idea that a product being made in America - from extraction of the basic materials to intermediate refining thereof to crafting of the finished thing - is inherently noble, because it puts Americans to work and fosters pride in some kind of intrinsically American craftsmanship.

But it really makes a sport out of what should be just basic human interaction. It makes teams out of nations, and deprives individual buyers of goods and services who are looking for enhancements of their lives in the maximum value that a good or service ought to have.

Alas, in an emotionally whipped-up time such as ours, this is not an easy sell. People readily lend an ear to arguments that they are somehow being shafted by some vaguely defined other and that they need a champion - in the form of government - to right such a wrong.

In such a climate, about all I'd venture to implore my fellow citizens to do is not get preoccupied in the minutiae of the supposedly important differences between Trump-style protectionism and Biden's brand. It's a shiny object that will do nothing to make you more free.

Hey, everybody, here's a novel idea: how about we try the free market?

Two pieces came across my radar this morning that got me thinking about how far removed we are from a society in which sovereign individuals come to agreements with other sovereign individuals as to the value of particular goods and services.

The first has to do with a direct result of the Very Stable Genius's ignorance on the subject of free-market economics. He makes that clear with the pronouncement that farmers "can't be too upset, because I gave them $12 billion last year and $16 billion this year."

Um, no you didn't.

This is another display of his mindset, in which his role as the focal point of a cult of personality is conflated with that of his role as the chief of the executive branch - much like the business of lumping his private attorney, Rudy Giuliani, in with the Attorney General of the United States, Robert Barr, when dealing with Ukraine.

The VSG may have had the idea to use Market Facilitation Program funds already budgeted at the US Treasury, but it's not like he cut a check.

And what he's done is put farmers in a position of dependence on federal largesse.

And, as Taylor Millard demonstrates at Hot Air , Trump's ignorance is on display in a Health & Human Services scheme to create an "international price index" for pharmaceuticals - and is countered by Democrat Congressional proposal that is equally bereft of economic freedom - and common sense.

First this "index" idea:

“U.S. consumers and taxpayers generally pay more for brand drugs than do consumers and taxpayers in other OECD countries, which often have reimbursements set by their central government,” The administration wrote in their American Patients First plan while suggesting the burden of new drug development incentives needed to be spread equally between the U.S. and other nations. “In effect, other countries are not paying an appropriate share of the necessary research and development to bring innovative drugs to the market and are instead freeriding of U.S. consumers and taxpayers.”

Their ‘solution’ is to create an international price index looking at what other countries are charging for drugs and attempting to negotiate with pharmaceuticals on how to rein in the price.

HHS summarized the idea as Medicare setting drug prices based on whatever discounts American pharmaceutical companies give nations like France, Canada, or Germany. “With the model fully implemented, total payment for these drugs will drop by 30 percent,” HHS wrote last October noting there would be extra taxes involved in it. “The Target Price is 126 percent of the average price other countries pay for the drug. The model incorporates a new, larger add-on fee for hospitals and doctors that is independent of prices.”

Yay. New taxes. 

The obvious problem is the fact doctors and hospitals will simply raise prices to make up the difference in lost money. It’s the easiest way to pass prices along to consumers.

This is an excellent example of how Trumpist nationalism is definitely not conservatism. The idea of some kind of other countries being obligated to undertake an "appropriate share of the necessary research  . . . to bring . . . drugs to the market" runs counter to the understanding that private organizations are the entities that do the researching and developing - in a free market, anyway.

And everybody in the supply chain will adjust prices for their contributions as this "international index" affects them.

Now, the Dem approach:

Democrats, not to be outdone, have their own ideas on how to enact price controls. New Jersey Congressman Frank Pallone Jr. introduced the Lower Drug Costs Now Act of 2019 which puts Great Britain, France, Australia, Germany, Canada, and Japan on the price index list. Prices could be renegotiated each year:

In negotiating the maximum fair price of a selected drug, with respect to an initial price applicability year for the selected drug, and, as applicable, in renegotiating the maximum fair price for such drug, with respect to a subsequent year during the price applicability period for such drug, in the case that the manufacturer of the selected drug offers under the negotiation or renegotiation, as applicable, a price for such drug that is not more than the target price described in subparagraph (B) for such drug for the respective year, the Secretary shall agree under such negotiation or renegotiation, respectively, to such offered price as the maximum fair price.

There are plenty of problems with both proposals, especially with how they affect not only the public market but the private market.

“Both proposals give the government unprecedented price-setting authority in both the public and private markets,” FreedomWorks Regulatory Policy Manager Daniel Savickas to me in an email last week. “It threatens the ability for drug manufacturers to develop new drugs and market them in a timely manner, and we risk drug shortages beyond those already seen across the globe. These proposals are also tacit concessions that socialist economies have preferable drug pricing models, which (if that premise is accepted) puts our nation on the glide path to single-payer healthcare.”

The U.S. does have a drug price index as part of Medicare Part B. Americans for Tax Reform founder Grover Norquist noted in The Hill last December the U.S. bases its prices for certain drugs on the average sales cost for Americans. Why foreign countries need to be brought into the mix is anyone’s guess. 

And the rest of Millard's piece alludes to an important point in all this: crafting public policy based on subjective terms such as "high" and "fair" is a usurpation of the right of each sovereign individual to decides what constitutes either of those descriptions for himself or herself.

Cherish your humanity, fellow post-Americans. Let's not become the cattle-masses. Claim your freedom. Think deeply about your freedom. Talk to your kids about freedom.

Never mind what the government says about "fairness."

Budget deal thoughts

The dog-bites-man story would have been if Trump and congressional Republicans had actually demonstrated some spine and insisted on an abrupt shift in course.

You know, like looking squarely at the obvious reason we have a $23 trillion debt and insisting that the hemorrhaging stops here.

Instead, Trump tweets about a "real compromise" that preserved what he wanted out of it for "our great Military and Vets!"

It's not a great victory for anybody, because his particular win and those perceived to be so by Pelosi and Schumer are "funded" by a hollowed-out federal Treasury. Sure, at this moment, one can find a sum of money in it, but a near-future in which there is none except for interest payments while Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid recipients insist on benefits that can no longer be provided - and Constitutionally specified government functions such as seeing to the nation's security are left to wither - breathes down the nation's neck.

And your tax dollars still pay for your fellow citizens to have holes popped in their skulls and their brains vacuumed out.

And the market price of a bushel of a given farm crop remains hopelessly distorted due to government's presence in what ought to be an agreement solely between buyer and seller.

Budget caps, hailed at their introduction as such a stellar idea, quickly fell to government's insatiable appetite:

The 2011 budget caps, remember, were part of the Republicans’ deal with President Obama, which they secured in exchange for letting some of President Bush’s tax cuts expire. To give the caps teeth, the deal included a sequester provision that imposed automatic, across-the-board spending cuts if Congress couldn’t figure out how to live within its means.

For a time, those spending caps actually worked.

Overall, federal outlays declined for three years straight after that agreement, when you adjust for inflation. As a share of GDP, spending shrank from 23.4% down to 20.2%. Lo and behold, the world didn’t come to an end.

Since then, however, Congress lost interest in spending restraint, and the floodgates reopened. Despite the technical existence of spending caps, outlays have shot up 19% in real terms since 2014. Spending is up nearly 9% in just the past two years alone. As a share of GDP, federal expenditures have crept back up to 21.3%.

And lefties have nothing to offer in this conversation. That is to say, their instinctual response is to call the 2017 tax cut irresponsible.

It is never irresponsible to let people keep what is theirs.  

Along with that supremely important moral point, it's important to reiterate the fact that government could take every last penny of the assets of everyone above millionaire status and it wouldn't stave off what we're facing.  It could take all the assets of everyone in the US and the prospect would still loom.

No, this is about the basic folly of enlisting American government to perform functions for which it was not designed. The two great givens of the human condition - sickness and old age - should be addressed by individuals and private associations of individuals. Over the course of the last century, an entirely different view of what government is for took root.

This says much about our collective lack of maturity. Real disaster becomes more probable every day, but the short-term gratification of "wins" for one's tribe are so powerful as to make even those who used to give lip service to a serious worldview quite willingly chose to be oblivious.

It is so very late in the day.

Barney and Clyde - episode 5

Here's the link.

Welcome back to the bar! Pour yourself something bracing, pull up a chair and join our discussion about

1 - The real reason for high health care costs,

2 - Tax Cuts: How they've boosted the economy, but will they outpace inflation and interest on debt?

3 - Resurrection of dead shopping malls: Is it fair for people all over the country to have their money stolen to support a dying, minor entity in Columbus Indiana of all places?

4 - Iran & Venezuela: Should the US be involved?

 And More! It's a doozy of an episode!

Wednesday roundup

Gonna be interesting to see the sales figures on this line of products upon launch. Wokeness on steroids:

The glamorous world of Barbie just became a whole lot more welcoming for children with disabilities, after Mattel announced the launch of new disabled dolls, one of which has a prosthetic leg, while the other is in a wheelchair.  

Set to debut in the fall, the new diverse Barbie dolls will join the ever-expanding 'Fashionistas' collection - a range that includes characters of different shapes, sizes, and races. 

'Over the years, the #Barbie #Fashionistas line has evolved to be more reflective of the world girls see around them,' a post on Barbie's official Instagram account explained. 

Kristen Gillibrand disguises her contempt for economic freedom (organizations getting to set their own policies) with that tried-and-true Democrat positive spin: caaaaaaaring. In this case, as is often the case, doncha know, it's caaaaaaaring about the American family.

Just as our national debt surpasses $22 trillion for the first time in history, presidential hopeful Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., wants to rehash her worst idea: the FAMILY Act. 

Our least-principled senator has made the media rounds putting a shiny veneer on the FAMILY Act, dressing it up as a feminist dream. But given the ramifications it would have on women's progress in the workplace, it'd be anything but. 

Gillibrand's bill would guarantee 12 weeks of paid leave at a rate of at least 66 percent of earnings for new parents, as well as some coverage for other family caregiving. Unlike the Ivanka Trump plan backed by the White House and some Republicans, which claims to be deficit neutral by allowing adults to pull from "their" Social Security prematurely — remember folks, it's a lockbox and not a Ponzi scheme! — Gillibrand funds her paid leave with a payroll tax.

To force employers to fund their workers' paid leave, encouraging gender discrimination to avoid costly risks, is one thing. To force you, me, and every other average Joe on the street to do it is another thing entirely. Worst of all, it will stymie decades of progress made by women in the workplace. 

As it turns out, if you don't hand free cash to reward women for giving birth, they tend to work more over the course of their entire lifetimes. That's good for the nation's GDP, but it's even better for the individual progress of women. 

Now, with regard to one aspect of Tiana Loew's (author of the Washington Examiner piece linked and excerpted above) argument ("individual progress of women"), I wonder what her take would be on Dennis Prager's latest column, "Not 'All Americans' Are Proud That We Have More Women in the Workforce Than Ever Before.'" This is yet another example of a phenomenon within conservatism that must be reckoned with: young conservative women who see career equity as unqualified progress. National Review's Alexandra DeSanctis took Prager to task last year for a similar column.

Now, here's where it could get real silly and tribalistic. I could say one side or the other in this debate is absolutely right and the other side absolutely full of hooey. But Prager's questions must be addressed: are post-American women happier than they were sixty years ago? Are post-American families stronger than American families were?


Gavin Newsom is forced to face reality. Well, sort of. He still wants to see this boondoggle connect those economic powerhouses Bakersfield and Merced:

During Gov. Gavin Newsom's first State of the State speech Tuesday, he surprised listeners by announcing he would put the quest for high-speed rail connecting San Francisco and Los Angeles championed by his predecessor far on the back burner.

Instead, Newsom offered a consolation prize: high-speed rail between Bakersfield and Merced.

"Let's level about the high-speed rail," Newsom said. "Let's be real, the current project as planned would cost too much and, respectfully, take too long. Right now, there simply isn't a path to get from Sacramento to San Diego, let alone from San Francisco to L.A. I wish there were."

Because he'd rather spend the federal subsidy than return the money to the administration run by someone he, like any 2019 Dem, must unreservedly hate:

"Abandoning the high-speed rail entirely means we will have wasted billions and billions of dollars with nothing but broken promises... and lawsuits to show for it," Newsom added, explaining he wouldn't want to send the $3.5 billion in federal money the project has been granted back to the Trump administration.

Yeah, that would be terrible to return that money that me, out here in Indiana, kicked in for this idiotic west-coast scheme.

NRO editorial that says that while the border-barrier compromise is way less than what wall enthusiasts want, they'll have to take it, because Pubs squandered their opportunity for something more substantial when they had the White House and both chambers of Congress.

I would not normally provide a link to something this foul, but occasionally we need to look squarely at the enemy. This was written by a PhD candidate in history at Columbia.

More wokeness in the business world. Memo to the above-discussed Mattel: It works out badly:

Panera Bread has shuttered the last of its ideologically driven "pay what you want" restaurants. The socialist-tinged ventures were called "Panera Cares" and the higher-ups have finally figured out that "caring" is not synonymous with "viable business model." On February 15, the final Panera Cares, located in Boston, will close.

The website Eater gives Panera Cares' history and provides the company's motivation behind the now-defunct mission:

The chain opened its first donation-based community cafe in St. Louis, Missouri, in 2010. Under the model championed by the company’s founder Ron Shaich, the restaurant operated like a typical Panera, but offered meals at a suggested donation price, with the goal of raising awareness about food insecurity. “In many ways, this whole experiment is ultimately a test of humanity,” Shaich said in a TEDx talk later that year. “Would people pay for it? Would people come in and value it?” It appears the answer is a resounding no.

Food insecurity? While having a pretty good idea of what the term means, I still looked it up. According to Feeding Texas, "Food insecurity offers an accepted method for measuring food deprivation."

You know who's probably suffering from food insecurity? The employees of Panera Cares who are no longer employed and no longer receive paychecks. You can't buy food if you don't have a job, and providing jobs is only assured if companies are focused on making money. If Panera had cared more about making money than promoting a constantly refuted ideology, its employees would still be receiving paychecks. Frighteningly, though, a growing segment of the populace seems to be allergic to common-sense economic principles.

That's what happens when you decided to ignore the LITD First Law of Economics: The money has to come from somewhere.

 

Sunday roundup

Mexico's new president hits the ground running as the firebrand leftist he's shown himself to be throughout his career.

The Paris riots have metastasized beyond disgruntlement about fuel tax hikes. This is a wakeup call for the French people that they have something very fundamental about the present state of their nation's character that they need to squarely look at.

Jonah Goldberg's G-File for this week is a must-read. The whole thing is worth your while, both for the contour of the argument he builds, as well as the fact that it's one of the best examples of the particular style with which he composes these G-Files that he's offered in some time. I'l just tease with a couple of examples:

I’m on nobody’s side [regarding the Mueller investigation]. I don’t have a dog in this fight. To mix metaphors like a special blender for metaphors, I’m going to play the ball, not the man — or men. What I mean by that is that if the truth or facts or evidence is on Trump’s side, I’ll defend that. If it’s not on his side, I won’t be either.

That’s not going to be true for a lot of people who, for one reason or another, have invested way too much in Donald Trump and in the idea that he deserves their loyalty. That ain’t me.

I’ve spent the last couple years perhaps a bit too vexed by some of those people. I’ve finally figured out a way to make peace, in my own mind, with at least some of their behavior.

In print and in podcast, I’ve been talking a lot about how the two parties are shells of what they once were and how outside groups and institutions have filled the voids left behind by their shrinkage. The parties used to choose candidates and issues. Parties educated voters. Over the last 50 years, that function has essentially been outsourced to interest groups, media outlets, think tanks, etc. As a result, the dividers between different lanes shrunk or vanished. Writers and intellectuals on the left and the right became de facto political consultants and party activists. Many political consultants acted like public intellectuals or pundits. Intellectuals became entertainers and entertainers pretended to be intellectuals. Politicians quit their jobs to be TV talking heads, and TV talking heads run for office.

And

 There’s a reason why the Kavanaugh spectacle was the only time the broader American Right has unified during Trump’s presidency; it was because Donald Trump wasn’t the issue, even if he at times tried to make it about him. It was the one-time moment when all of the hats could converge or overlap each other.

There are those on the right who very much want the coming donnybrook to be like that again. It’s possible it will. It’s possible the Democrats will overreach or that Mueller will live down to the slanders grifters on the right have concocted about him. But I doubt it will happen. This will be about Trump. And while impeachment may not be warranted, he will not look good in this fight, because his true nature — and the nature of the creatures he surrounds himself with — will once again be exposed.

I’m not going to the mattresses in any of this, because I see no reason to give the president — or many of his most rabid opponents — the benefit of the doubt, never mind loyalty. The only major player here who deserves the benefit of the doubt right now is Robert Mueller. Because while we may learn that he made mistakes or overstepped, as of now, the one thing I know he cares about is the facts. About his slander-spewing right-wing critics — and to some extent his left-wing sanctifiers — I know no such thing.

Carl Cannon's Real Clear Politics piece entitled "Intersectionality and Today's Twitter Trotskyites" is likewise best read in its entirety, but this is a representative of its essence:

Unfamiliar with the terms “misgendering” or “deadnaming”? Don’t feel bad; they’re of recent vintage. Misgendering means referring to a man who’s transitioning (or who has transitioned) to a woman as a male – and vice versa. Deadnaming is even more Orwellian. It means you can’t refer to a famous U.S. Army traitor by the name under which he was court-martialed. Or mention the full name of the television star who captured Americans’ hearts by winning a 1976 Olympic gold medal in the decathlon.

Yes, the logic of intersectionality is a mystery. A Jewish woman is banned from Twitter for saying that gays have little freedom under Sharia law. But a notorious Jew-baiting black nationalist gets a pass for a “joke” comparing Jews to termites.

Looks like biofuel mandates live to see another day, thanks to a Republican Congress afraid to say no to King Corn and an economically illiterate president.

Tuesday roundup

Jay Nordlinger at NRO has a wonderful piece on a fine public servant: Betsy DeVos:

Betsy DeVos is the unlikeliest villain you ever met. She is warm, polite, earnest, and generous. A wealthy woman, she has devoted her life to getting poor children a better shot at life. She is the education secretary, as you know. And during her confirmation process, Bruce Kovner sent me a note.

Kovner, like DeVos, is a philanthropist and education reformer. He wrote, “Betsy is one of the most selfless souls I know, totally devoted to helping disadvantaged kids. Works so hard at it, it should be inspiring. It’s disheartening to see her opponents enjoying their chance to maul her. But Betsy can take it.”

She could do almost anything in life, including put her feet up at the beach. (Any beach.) Yet she is in the political and policy trenches, fighting for school choice and other reform, not for the sake of rich kids but for the worst off. For her pains, she has been called a “white supremacist,” a “rape apologist” (yes), and virtually every other name in the book.

Above, I wrote, “She is the education secretary, as you know.” I felt justified in saying “as you know” because DeVos’s name recognition is extraordinarily high — something like 80 percent. Can you name the previous secretaries of education, under Obama, Bush, Clinton, and Bush? It’s not easy, even for those in the “business.” Almost certainly, DeVos is famous because she is vilified — and yet she can use this to her advantage, as people pay attention to her.  

He takes quite a deep dive into her life and the formation of her views on education. Good stuff.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has a problem with Amazon bringing 25,000 jobs to the New York area because Amazon is a corporation. 

You'd think she'd be pleased that NY state government taxpayers are subsidizing the move to the tune of $48,000 per job.

Hamas launched 200 rockets from Gaza into Israel in one day (yesterday).

The face of Satan:

An ad in support of Planned Parenthood featuring a live baby girl with the caption "she deserves to be a choice" is eliciting horror across the internet.

The 40-second ad, which is about three years old but gained attention over the weekend, hails from the Agenda Project Action Fund, a left-wing advocacy organization, after Nigerian pro-life activist Obianuju Ekeocha posted the video on her Twitter feed Friday. She received several notable retweets, including Texas Governor Greg Abbott and actress Patricia Heaton, both of whom were disgusted and incredulous.

With lullaby music playing in the background, footage of a cooing baby girl wearing a white cap is interspersed with the message: "She deserves to be ... loved, She deserves to be ... wanted, She deserves to be ... a choice."

The ad concludes with the hashtag #StandwithPP.

The Chinese Communist Party is expanding its control of the Chinese government with increasing momentum. 

The real-world political and cultural implications of our lopsided redistribution picture

Check this out:

More than half of Americans receive more money in various types of government transfer payments (Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, Social Security) than they pay in federal taxes.

According to a report released this year by the Congressional Budget Office, only the top two income quintiles in the United States pay more in taxes than they receive in government transfers.

 Not surprisingly, the lowest income quintiles receive far more in transfers than they pay in taxes:

In the lowest quintile, households pay only $400 in taxes (as of 2014, the most recent data available) while receiving more than $16,000 in various types of tax-funded transfer payments.

The end result is households in the bottom three quintiles have higher incomes after taxes and transfers than they do before taxes and transfers:

The second-to-top quintile is slightly worse off after taxes and transfers, and the highest quintile is sizably worse off. In other words, the top two income quintiles are subsidizing the bottom three, and the advantage, proportionally speaking, gets larger as income goes down.
The Politics of a Majority on the Dole

The political implications of this are considerable. As Ludwig von Mises once noted, once we get to the point that a majority of the voting population receives more in benefits than it pays in taxes, then voters will demand more and more wealth be transferred to them through government programs. It will then become politically necessary to extract larger and larger amounts of wealth from a minority in order to subsidize the majority.

Market economics will become less and less popular because the voters will have realized they can — in the words of James Bovard — "vote for a living" instead of work for a living.

And the mindset that "the government" is providing the goodies and can continue to do so because it has magic powers becomes more entrenched.

And character traits like initiative and ingenuity dwindle, and post-Americans become more and more like cattle.

Grabbing subsidization as an attempted quick fix for protectionism

First, take in the full pettiness, boorishness and economic ignorance of this tweet from the Very Stable Genius:

Tariffs are the greatest! Either a country which has treated the United States unfairly on Trade negotiates a fair deal, or it gets hit with Tariffs. It’s as simple as that - and everybody’s talking! Remember, we are the “piggy bank” that’s being robbed. All will be Great!

Now, consider what the pointy-heads feel it's necessary to do with your tax dollars in order to deal with the fallout from this kind of "thinking":

The White House is expected to announce a plan to provide $12 billion in government aid to farmers harmed by the administration’s multi-front trade war, the Washington Post first reported Tuesday morning.

Under the plan, which could be announced as soon as Tuesday, farmers whose products have been hit with retaliatory tariffs as a result of President Trump’s tariffs on other countries will be provided access to three distinct forms of aid: direct assistance, a food-purchase program and a trade-promotion program.

The announcement is expected to come as President Trump continues to escalate his protectionist rhetoric on U.S. trade with China.

The administration has already implemented tariffs on $34 billion in Chinese exports and Beijing has retaliated in kind, down to the dollar. In recent weeks, Trump has repeatedly threatened to implement tariffs on the entirety of China’s more than $5 billion export market, placing Beijing at a distinct disadvantage, given that it only has roughly $120 billion in U.S. exports available to hit with tariffs.

Soybean farmers have been hit particularly hard by the trade war as prices have plummeted. The president has repeatedly vowed to help soften the blow as Midwestern farmers, a key part of his base, have increasingly turned against his protectionism.

The aid proposal, which relies in part on a depression-era Department of Agriculture program designed to bail out farmers, is the product of a three-month research effort intended to help the administration see its trade war through by warding off domestic opposition in the farming community.

The depression-era program, known as the Commodity Credit Corporation, is empowered to borrow $30 billion from the Treasury Department absent Congressional approval.

So, the hand of Leviathan is brought in to shore up the pricing hose-up that was caused by our current boneheaded trade policy.

Here's a novel idea:

How about if we just let theses farmers sell their products at whatever their true market value is? 

Again I ask, what do Larry Kudlow and Stephen Moore have to say about this in their private discussions?

This gets us pretty far afield from free-market behavior.

In a very real sense, this country is being held hostage to the VSG's personality quirks. In two vital realms - security and trade - it leads to a day-by-day crapshoot.

UPDATE: Just came across this press release from Farmers for Free Trade:

Farmers for Free Trade, the bipartisan coalition working to oppose trade policies that hurt American farmers today released the following statement from Executive Director Brian Kuehl. 

"Farmers across America depend on open markets and stable contracts for their livelihood.  The best relief for the president’s trade war would be ending the trade war. Farmers need contracts, not compensation, so they can create stability and plan for the future. This proposed action would only be a short-term attempt at masking the long-term damage caused by tariffs.." 

“Farmers can and do weather many storms, but this economic cyclone of tariffs is creating long-term, irreversible damage to the heartland. The $20 billion trade surplus in agriculture is due to decades of effort by American farmers who’ve opened new markets and developed world class supply chains.  Unfortunately, a one-time check won’t replace the deterioration of long-term contracts and relationships. Nor will it address the many sectors of agriculture impacted – from producers, to grain bin operators, to shippers. Farmers need stable markets to plan for the future.  As such, we urge the Administration to take immediate action to stop the trade war and get back to opening new markets." 

Amen.

The continuing - and increasing - unaffordability of the "Affordable" Care Act

Sally C. Pipes of the Pacific Research Institute notes in an Investors Business Daily op-ed the hair-raisingly alarming rates of increase in health-insurance premiums of various types in various states, as well as Dem attempts to blame the reforms to the ACA in a free-market direction that have been implemented over the past years (halting cost-sharing reduction subsidies, repealing the individual mandate penalty, proposing to undo the limitations on short-term plans).

Doesn't wash:

ObamaCare premiums were rising well before Republicans took over Washington. Average individual market premiums increased 99% from 2013, the year before the exchanges opened, to 2017, when President Obama left office. And last fall, before these changes were implemented, insurers hiked 2018 individual plan premiums by an average of 34%.

They've repeatedly raised premiums because ObamaCare's burdensome regulations cause insurers to lose money year after year.

For example, the law's community rating mandate prevents insurers from charging older enrollees more than three times what they charge younger ones — even though the average 64-year old is nearly five times more expensive to insure than the average 21-year old.

ObamaCare's guaranteed issue mandate prohibits insurers from denying coverage based on health status. That's even true if customers have costly chronic conditions that will cause insurers to hemorrhage money.

Mandates Everywhere

And the essential health benefits mandate requires all plans to cover 10 broad categories of medical care — including pediatric dental services, maternity care, and substance abuse treatment. All enrollees must pay for these benefits, even if they don't want them.

Without any real ability to control costs, insurers are forced to raise premiums across the board. The Department of Health and Human Services commissioned a study in 2017 to analyze the effect that ObamaCare's regulations had on insurance premiums. It found that these mandates were the "chief driver of premium increases."

Specifically, the study analyzed premium hikes in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Tennessee from 2013 to 2017. Researchers found that ObamaCare's mandates — including the community rating and guaranteed issue rules — were responsible for up to 76% of the increases during that period.

As with anything and everything else in this world, the only sensible way forward is toward a totally free market.

The current health care / insurance juncture and the larger question of why we have government

You'll recall yesterday's post inviting you to compare and contrast Avik Roy's favorable take on the Senate health-care bill and the thumbs-down it got from the editors at NRO.

Roy, whether he's fully aware of it or not, is making a point Charles Krauthammer has been making some time, a point echoed by Jazz Shaw today at Hot Air (which I'll link to and excerpt from momentarily). I say "whether he's fully aware of it or not" because I don't detect any tone of resignation in his summation of why he's big on the Senate bill:

Full repeal was never going to be possible in a Senate where Republicans did not control 60 votes. And furthermore, we have learned that moderate Republicans in both the House and the Senate have no appetite to fully deregulate Obamacare at the federal level.

Jazz Shaw at Hot Air puts it this way:

So is the fight to repeal Obamacare pretty much over? Let me take a saw to the limb I’m currently sitting on and say… yes. But really, the fight was over shortly after the original Affordable Care Act was passed. There’s an old maxim in American politics which tells us that any entitlement program or other initiative which gives away goodies to the public, once in place, is pretty much there forever. There have been a few rare exceptions, but for the most part this is a tradition which is written in stone.

We’ve got Senators from the more conservative side saying that this new bill isn’t going to do anything to reduce costs and premiums. Of course it won’t, because the government is entirely incapable of doing that through mandates and executive orders. Even if we ignore the fact that our bloated bureaucracy composed of career politicians was never exactly suited to manage something the size and complexity of the nation’s health insurance system, any effort to institute top-down socialization of something as inherently capitalist in nature as the health insurance industry was doomed to blow up in your face.

But that’s not even the core fault in our stars here. You see, even if the GOP manages to remove Obamacare, all they’ll be able to do is take out the parts which most conservatives hate (such as the mandates). Taking out the goodies is not only harder, but likely impossible. Obamacare was structured brilliantly in that the things everyone was going to like (mandatory coverage for preexisting conditions, parents keeping their kids on their plans longer) kicked in fast. It took years for the really ugly features to fully come on line (higher penalties for not having insurance, additional mandates driving up premiums). That means that people were already used to the candy being handed out before the flaws in the system ensured that it would begin to implode.

So who wants to be the one to take away those goodies now? Nobody. And this leaves the GOP in the position of trying to make it look like they can still play Santa and hand out all the sugar without the slug of bitter medicine to follow. In order to “fix” this system and make it solvent we would have to deliver bad news which is the political equivalent of blowing out the pilot light in your oven and sticking your head in.

“But wait,” I can hear some of you saying. “If this doesn’t work, can’t we just go back to plan B and let Obamacare implode on it’s own?” Not really. Whoever is in charge will take the blame no matter whether they supported it originally or not. We now basically have a new entitlement theory in which more than 60% of American voters think that affordable health insurance (not Health Care, which is a critical distinction the media generally tries to ignore) is a human right and it’s the government’s job to make sure they get it. But the cost of health insurance isn’t dictated by the government… not for long, anyway. It’s dictated by the cost of actual health care and Washington still hasn’t the beginning of a clue as to how to bring that down.

So what’s the only solution left to keep delivering bread and circuses to the masses? Probably a completely top-down, socialist single payer program, which will rapidly bankrupt the entire system. (California is already finding that out the hard way.) You can expect to eventually see some Republicans going along with that line of thinking too, believe it or not. It’s that or the aforementioned head-in-the-oven scenario.

Now, there's some resignation for you. As I say, Krauthammer has been asserting this for some time.  He, like Shaw, says that the "A"CA, even though it polls dismally, has been in place long enough that the mindset positing that health care and / or health insurance is some kind of right has permeated society and is not going to go away.

I hate resignation.

I will not stand for it when the truth is obscured thereby - and especially when that obscuration leads to bankruptcy. If I wanted to live in Venezuela-like conditions, that's where I'd move.

So I was glad to see David French at NRO take on the leftist smears on the Senate bill with this reasoning:

Here’s the Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson with an odd attack on Republican health care plans:

The “health-care bill” that Republicans are trying to pass in the Senate, like the one approved by the GOP majority in the House, isn’t really about health care at all. It’s the first step in a massive redistribution of wealth from struggling wage-earners to the rich — a theft of historic proportions.

Not to be too pedantic about this, but the government isn’t “redistributing” wealth when it lets a citizen keep more of his money, and it isn’t “stealing” from the poor when it cuts benefits they didn’t actually own. Welfare programs like Medicaid represent a forcible transfer wealth. Welfare is the redistribution. And if there’s any actual argument for “theft,” it’s the theft of money from the private citizen by the government.

But that would be hyperbole. In civilized societies, people understand that a certain degree of taxation is necessary for a nation to function. Safety nets are compassionate and prudent. But it is dangerous and wrong to get confused about who owns what. I own the money I earn. America’s less fortunate citizens don’t own Medicaid. It’s a privilege, not a right — a privilege that is subject to the same budgetary and fiscal concerns inherent in any other government program, including national defense. 

Entitlement culture plagues this nation, and it plagues America’s poorest communities. So let’s speak accurately about ownership and redistribution. Medicaid is a program, not property, and it’s not theft to attempt to moderate its enormous financial cost. 

Or let me put it in my own words. There is no right to health care. It is impossible by definition. How did people in the year 1300 exercise their "right" to a triple bypass? My point being that caring for health is a human activity borne of human volition. The only reason it exists is because someone wants to do it. One cannot have a right to the activity of one's fellow human beings. Down that slippery slope lies the s-word. 

At the very least, the likes of Roy and Krauthammer could preface their observation that, hey, the populace has bought into this and it's just where we're inevitably headed with the assertion that we'll be plunging headlong into policy based on utter falsehood.

Damn it, when does somebody besides four Senators say what is plain? We can't even begin to counteract the it's-a-right notion if everybody is worried about votes, viewership and readership.

And I really bristle when the notion is put forth that getting government the hell out of health care, and the insurance coverage thereof, is somehow a mere conservative wish list, something conservatives may get part of but will probably have to live with the compromise attendant to the art of the possible.

No.

We are talking about an individual's freedom to keep what is his or hers.

It's the current battle line in the twilight struggle over the proper scope and function of government.

Government should not be in the business of providing services. James Madison made that quite clear.

Refuse to be resigned to a service-providing government as a done deal. Refuse to acquiesce to that notion prevailing. There is nothing radical about the pre-Progressive-era understanding of what government was for.

And someone, somewhere, invite Roy and Krauthammer to a picnic, a car race, a jam session - anything, anywhere outside the damn Beltway.