Scapegoats for Inequality

Inequality clearly exists and is even pronounced compared to other periods. AOC, Bernie Sanders, Robert Reich and others from the left have challenged the legitimacy of the very existence of billionaires, though I wonder if this includes Taylor Swift, Oprah, Steven Spielberg, and Tiger Woods.

The assumption that the existence of billionaires is the cause of the problems of the poor and middle class is zero sum thinking. The high price of gasoline, beef, housing, medical care, and higher ed is not the fault of the rich; it is caused by the very government they herald as the solution to the problem. Further these problems are more pronounced in the blue states that have had one party control for decades.

Billionaires are not conspiring to drive up the costs. Billionaires and the very wealthy are not a monolithic group; there are liberals and conservatives among them. While the wealthy are able to influence government policy, they also have the ability to champion positive changes to it. Fighting this influence is one of government policy more than a commentary on the morality of wealth.

Nor are the answers radical changes to the constitutional structure. The problem is not the electoral college, the structure of the Supreme Court, or the need to add Puerto Rico and DC as new states. The answer is policy to relieve the problems of the working and middle class.

There are changes that have merit and should be considered, but the government has little credibility and trust. Many of the wealthy are willing to pay more taxes but have little faith it will be spent to address the problems. The inability to bridge partisan divisions and enact meaningful reform has instead fueled class warfare, political pandering, and the search for convenient scapegoats.

Politics and Policy

From Bobby Jindal and Alex Costellanos at The WSJ, There’s More to Politics than Policy:

Liberals have long contended that conservatives use emotional appeals to manipulate working-class voters into voting against their own economic interests. These appeals, supposedly grounded in patriotic, faith-based or racist rhetoric, are held to fool voters into supporting Republicans who do the bidding of the rich. How else can Democrats explain the millions of multiethnic, working-class voters who refuse to vote for their candidates and won’t support tax increases on the wealthy, redistribution programs and entitlement expansion?

This patronizing attitude both ignores the downsides of liberal policies and dismisses emotions and faith as inferior alternatives to reason. In the Western world, we worship in the church of reason. We remain the progeny of the Enlightenment. Emotions persist, however, because they help us handle the choices too complex and important for reason alone.

We don’t make the big decisions in our lives with a calculator: whom we love, whom we marry, the children we bring into the world, the groups to which we are loyal, the causes for which we fight and die. We make those commitments not only with our heads, but also with our hearts. A young soldier will jump on a grenade and extinguish his own life to save his buddies. It isn’t a rational act. It is a noble act of the spirit and heart, the kind of sacrifice that is essential to the success of the larger society.

HKO

I lament the subversion of ideas and policy to the passions of the electorate, but it is hard to escape that reality. The more distant we get from our founding principles, both chronologically and intellectually, the more divisive we become. When you do not know what you believe everything becomes an argument. Without the unity of commonly held ideas we descend into the combat zone of identity politics.

As long as we focus on issues rather than the means of resolving our differences we will be at each other’s throat. A common or general will is an illusion and is used more to crush opposition than to unite a people. A respect for our mediating institutions. the values and the means to adjudicate our differences, is critical.

Economic Growth and Inequality

One of the most profound quotes of Milton Friedman (a competitive arena) is “A society that puts equality before freedom will get neither. A society that puts freedom before equality will get a high degree of both.” A corollary in today’s Wall Street Journal would be that “a society that puts equality before economic growth will get less of both. A society that puts economic growth before equality will get a larger measure of both.” You can substitute social justice for equality.

Sir John James Cowperthwaite, the Financial Secretary of Hong Kong from 1961 to 1971, attributed the financial success of Hong Kong to the priority of economic growth over social spending, although he also insisted on financial discipline few other countries emulated.

If financial growth is a priority you wish to harness all resources. Women and minorities are valuable as producers and consumers in the economic ecosystems. Middle East nations ignore half of the their human resources and are perpetually stagnant in spite of their oil resources.

From today’s WSJ, The Economy’s Inequality Dividend:

The comparative data are striking, and mostly ignored by the press. During the first 11 quarters of the Trump Presidency, wages for the bottom 10% of earners over age 25 rose an average 5.9% annually compared to 2.4% during Barack Obama’s second term, according to the latest demographic data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Wages for the middle two quartiles increased 3.2% compared to 2.2% and 2.7% between 2012 and 2016. Wage gains for the top 10% have held steady at about 3%.

Less educated workers have also seen the strongest gains. Wages have risen at a 6.1% annual clip for workers over 25 without a high school degree and 3.9% for those with some college—both about three times faster than during the second Obama term. Wage gains have also accelerated though to a lesser degree—to 3.2% from 2.2%—for college grads.

Irony alert: Socialism-loving young people are getting the biggest pay raises. Wages have increased on average 5.8% annually for teens, 4.4% for 20 to 24-year-olds and 4.8% for 25 to 34-year-olds during the Trump Presidency. Maybe as their incomes rise, more millennials will question the tale of woe and revolution that Bernie Sanders is selling them.

As for inequality, the Gini coefficient that measures the income gap has been declining among folks who earn a paycheck. Rising wages have lifted millions of Americans out of poverty and off the government dole. The poverty rate for blacks (20.8%) and Hispanics (17.6%) is the lowest on record.

Forty million fewer people last year lived in households receiving government assistance than in 2016, and the food-stamp rolls have shrunk by 9.5 million over the past three years. Reduced government dependence is a social good far beyond the lower costs to taxpayers. More important are the benefits in self-sufficiency and the contributions to the community that flow from that.

Democrats on the campaign trail say the middle class is vanishing, but the opposite is true as more Americans escape poverty and others join the ranks of the affluent. Between 2016 and 2018 the number of taxpayers earning less than $25,000 declined 5% while increasing 8% for those making between $100,000 to $200,000 and 13.9% for those making more than $200,000, according to IRS data.

Pete Buttigieg claimed during the December debate that wages aren’t keeping up with the cost-of-living. Perhaps he’s spent too much time raising money in California’s Bay Area. In most other areas of the country, wage gains are outpacing the living costs including housing. Average weekly earnings in South Bend, Ind., have grown 9.9% over the last year as employers have increased both hours and pay.

These are the happy wages of a growing economy, and a labor market that has tightened in the long expansion that received a second wind from the Trump-Paul Ryan pro-growth policies of 2017-2018. By stressing growth, they have done more to reduce inequality than did the Obama-Nancy Pelosi policies that stressed inequality at the expense of growth.

Further illumination that we are less racial and that economic growth is benefiting the Black citizens substantially is covered in Joel Kotkin’s Against Tribal America:

Progressives assume that policies designed to help certain racial groups automatically benefit them, yet racial identity and economic empowerment are not the same thing. As Tavis Smiley has commented, black America got “caught up in the symbolism of the Obama presidency” but saw its economic fortunes decline under his administration. Indeed, it turns out that, for the most part, progressive politics do not especially help minorities. Due in part to economic and housing polices, notes researcher Daniel Hertz, some of the politically bluest cities— Milwaukee, New York, and Chicago—are also the most segregated. These places may boast socially aware political cultures, but minorities, particularly African Americans, are moving out.

Evaluating factors like income differentials, homeownership, business ownership, migration, and educational achievement, a study by the Center for Opportunity Urbanism (where I’m executive director) found that, ironically, 13 of the 15 best regions for African-Americans are today located in the old Confederacy, while the other two—Washington and Baltimore—were in border states. The worst performers were Democratic strongholds like Boston, Milwaukee, San Francisco, Minneapolis, and Los Angeles. Blue-state policies—including environmental regulations and higher taxes—also drive out blue-collar businesses that tend to hire minorities and raise housing and other costs. The biggest gap between minority and white homeownership rates—a critical component of the persistent divergence in wealth by race—can be found in left-leaning states like Rhode Island, New York, Massachusetts, and Connecticut.

HKO

The passion for equality and social justice often obscures the best way to achieve it. This is the epitome of virtue signaling; policies and results matter more than intent,

The Stark Silence of the Politically Correct

An excellent article from American Thinker, When They Come for the Jews, They Won’t Ask Questions by Caren Besner

Slowly, surely, irrevocably, methodically, step by step, the constraints are removed from the unacceptable — adjusting the population to the various forms of anti-Semitism, from rhetoric to parade floats to refusing to seriously address the issue, defending the perpetrators such as Nation of Islam minister Louis Farrakhan, who called Jews “termites” to leftist media silence.  Anti-Semitism is becoming mainstream.  Jews are fleeing the ever increasing attacks in France, once home to the world’s third largest Jewish population.  Prime Minister Theresa May laments that Jews may have no future in Great Britain as the Labor Party’s overtly anti-Semitic Jeremy Corbyn seeks increased power.  American Jews seem oblivious to the tsunami of anti-Semitism engulfing Europe and poised to take America with the same intensity.

There are leftist Jewish and non-Jewish groups who would disagree with these statistics.  They choose to lump all Republican conservatives and anyone who disagrees with them into the category of right-wing hate-monger extremists.  They ignore the real threat today that comes from an unholy red-green alliance — the Marxist left and Islam.

Using identity politics, victimhood, social justice, racism, anti-Zionism, and anti-Semitism, the radical left seeks power and control.  The new doctrine of “intersectionality” allows leftists to affiliate with other groups they perceive as “oppressed.”  This is why you see anti-Israel and anti-Semitic signs displayed by just about every radical-left group at demonstrations throughout the country.  Therefore, Ferguson, Missouri activists’ placards read, “From Ferguson to Gaza, the struggle continues.”  The vast majority of American Jews who accepted these policies are unable or unwilling to comprehend that their Progressive, liberal, neo-Marxist ideology now seeks to destroy the Jewish state and the Jewish people.

American Jewry is at a crossroads.  The vast majority of American Jews will continue to cling to their familiar ancestral belief system; it’s all they know.  To change now would be to deny everything their family members and they, themselves, have lived for.  But before they bury their heads in the sand once again, they should at least hear these simple truths.  When our enemies came for us during the Holocaust, they did not ask if we were Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, or secular Jews.  Neither were they interested in any past service we rendered for the state.  We were Jews.  That was all that mattered.  If history repeats itself, when our enemies come for us once again, they will not ask if we are Israelis or Zionists.  They will not care if we marched in Selma, Alabama; protested against apartheid in South Africa; supported equal rights for women; advocated for the LBGTQ community; and campaigned for Hillary or Bernie.  It will matter that we are Jews.

HKO

The failure to address this problem will only cause it to proliferate. Witness the Democrats boycotting AIPAC- a first. I saw Obama and Pelosi speak there. The left wishes to put their heads in the sand and contend this is a minority in their midst. They have not yet learned that passionate minorities rule politics.

Democrats who are offended by every politically incorrect trigger word, who riot like petty fascists rather than allow an alternate view to be expressed, are remarkable silent on the oldest hatred in their midst, supported by the silence of the 25 Jewish kapos in their midst- more afraid of losing their political power than their conscience.

Their Last Worst Act

The Blue Wave is barely a ripple.

The visceral reaction to Nancy Pelosi was a big fact in their loss of the House in 2010. Only two years before all the media relegated the Republicans to the dustbin of history.

Nancy Pelosi remains as viscerally objectionable today as she was in 2010. Only today she is joined by Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Ortessa-Cortez, Cory ‘Spartacus’ Booker, Maxine Waters, Bernie Sanders, and now Diane Feinstein. I used to consider Ms. Feinstein a class above the rest of this crowd but she humiliated herself in the Kavanaugh debacle. We are remembered by our last worst act.

I understand Trump also elicits a deep visceral reaction from the left. And they will use that to energize their base. But compared to the Democrat’s recent performance the Republicans look tame. Susan Collins was calm and rationale in her excellent speech to support Kavanaugh. Lindsay Graham came close to a Joseph Welch moment at the Joe McCarthy shit show. Ben Sasse and Nicki Haley are stellar examples of intelligent and rational leadership. The contrast between the Republican Congressional leaders and the Democrats could not be starker.

The screaming and hollering in the Senate and the attacking of Republican leaders in public with their families is appalling to most Americans. It may energize their most lunatic fringe, but it will drive the independents and the undecided in the opposite direction.

In other words, the Democrats have more going against them now than they did in 2010. Trump’s support has grown. Marginal supporters are now strong supporters. Marginal supporters still fear the lunacy of the left more than the shortcomings of Trump.

The GOP is likely to expand their control of the Senate by at least three seats, probably more. The House map favors the Democrats, and most polls predict otherwise, but I predict that they will fail to take the House. This will prove to be more humiliating than losing to Donald Trump. There is no one left to blame but themselves, and they will be busy throwing each other under the bus.

Democrats are acting like lunatics and do not deserve to be trusted with power.

Who Is Really Hostile to Free Speech?

From Kevin Williamson at National Review, ‘Uninhibited,’ You Say?

In the first instance there is the case of Citizens United, a nonprofit advocacy group that was prohibited, in plain contravention of the First Amendment, from showing a film called Hillary: The Movie. The Supreme Court has affirmed that this was a violation of Citizens United’s rights under the First Amendment, and the response of the Democratic party — again, with the blessing of the New York Times — was to attempt to gut the First Amendment, which every Democrat in the United States Senate voted to do under the leadership of Harry Reid. In the second and third cases are the Democratic officials at the state and federal level who have been and are abusing their investigatory and regulatory powers to retaliate against organizations that are critical of certain global-warming and gun-control initiatives. Democratic activists have gone so far as to argue that Charles and David Koch should be imprisoned for their political activities, and that “climate denial” should be a criminal matter. None of that is consistent with our traditional understanding of the First Amendment and of free expression more generally.

If, on the other hand, what we want is a culture of free speech with liberal norms guiding our attitude toward journalism, advocacy, and political debate, then our friends on the left have some thinking to do. The National Rifle Association is an advocacy organization; it does very little other than fight for gun rights and raise money to fund that fight. It is not, contrary to the myth, an outsized political donor: It is No. 497 (out of 16,585) on the list of political donors at OpenSecrets.org. And yet the soi-disant champions of free speech have stood idly by — or cheered — as Democratic officials in New York use their positions to lean on financial-services companies in an effort to shut down the NRA institutionally by denying it ordinary banking and insurance services. That is banana-republic stuff. And yet it is happening, and the fair-weather friends of the First Amendment are by their behavior perfectly contented with that.

Writing in the Boston Globe on August 13, Professor Dani Rodrik of Harvard’s Kennedy School proposed blacklisting any American who served in the Trump administration. The irony-immune professor argues that this is necessary because of the administration’s contempt for “liberal democratic norms.” Blacklisting academics and public figures for their political affiliations is not really quite in keeping with liberal democratic norms either, obviously. He writes: “Like other organizations” — (except bakeries) — “universities have the right to determine their practices in accordance with their values.” Would that this liberal principle were applied liberally! But if your black-hats/white-hats model of the political universe means that, e.g., the secretary of state (who is also a former congressman and CIA director with a law degree from Harvard) cannot be offered a fellowship in a diplomatic-studies program, or that Larry Kudlow must be prohibited from giving a keynote address at a business-school function, then your model is not only dopey and counterproductive, it is also deeply illiberal. Those contemplating such designs would do well to speak a little less loudly about the vindictiveness of the president.

HKO

The left has exhibited far more hostility to free speech than Trump has ever remotely considered.