“We free-market types like to talk about competition—and competition is important—but capitalism is profoundly cooperative: This marvelously productive worldwide economy is something we all do together. “
Read More“That’s the real conservative sensibility at work: If progressivism is about making incremental improvements in the direction of utopia, conservatism is about avoiding catastrophe. And if democracy is a hedge against Caesarism, constitutionalism is a hedge against democracy—against the horrifying things that the people will do when you give them political power without checks and accountability.”
Read More“But history doesn’t wait for anybody to vote on it. That affects everything, including the economy.”
Read More“Thus, total individual tax receipts ballooned by 70% from 1924 to 1928; and, throughout the 1920s, the share of income taxes paid by earners of over $100,000 a year doubled. Meanwhile, Coolidge held spending constant, allowing him to eliminate nearly a quarter of the national debt and leave it fully 29% smaller than it was when Harding took office.”
Read MoreSmall firewalls that contained corrections were being dismantled, leading to larger, far more damaging crashes. Part of this was the result of greater connections from travel and communications, but a great part is the result of central powers believing they can control macro markets when they cannot. There is just too much dispersed and unarticulated knowledge for anyone or any administrative bureaucracy to accomplish this.
Read More“Likewise, we now know a lot of the Democrat congressmen on television were lying about information. They were fed falsehoods from the deep state and regurgitated them without basis on television. The entirety of the bureaucracy not just picked a partisan side but then weaponized their powers to undermine a President.”
Read MoreIn an effort to make housing more affordable federal regulators have done the opposite, but this cost is hidden by the lack of innovation which has locked the market for housing. To paraphrase Glenn Reynolds, by subsidizing the markers of success they have raised the cost in ways even they do not understand. If you cannot afford a house one would be better served to rent than to add debt you cannot handle. Somebody pays.
Read MoreIf the deficits are not monetized then they are added to the debt. While this does not add to the current inflation pressures, at what point and how will this affect our monetary balance? Inflation historically has been a seductive solution to excess debt.
Read More“But no computer has yet been devised which will produce accurate results from a diet of opinion and emotion.”
Read More“Regardless, measured against the intended point of the New Deal—getting us out of the Great Depression—the New Deal was a failure. Indeed, many people—I’m one of them—would argue that the New Deal prolonged the Great Depression. But while the New Deal was a policy failure, it was a huge political success.”
Read More“During my 12 years in government I often saw career bureaucrats push their preferred policy passions irrespective of agencies’ rules, federal regulations or the law.”
Read MoreWhile the period of industrial expansion did create both economic and political dislocations, the benefits were often overlooked in our history. The restraint on concentrations of political power in our constitution applied largely to economic power in an agrarian economy but this diverged in the industrial era. The great dilemma of the progressives was how to address the concentrations of economic power without losing the restraints on the concentration of political power.
Read More“In 1936, after FDR helped raise the top income-tax bracket to 79 percent, the revenue collected from income taxes dropped to $674 million, as rich investors withdrew their capital from taxable investments. The excise taxes, which hit the middle- and lower-income groups with full force, were over $1.5 billion. These new excise taxes, much more than income taxes, were helping fund the New Deal programs.”
Read MoreThis is the biggest lie perpetuated from the left; that our vast social spending can be funded by only taxing the wealthiest 1%. The math just does not work. As Thatcher so famously noted, “You eventually run out of other people’s money.”
Read More“Good intentions are fine, but good intentions and a $27 trillion economy will get you a lot farther than good intentions alone.”
Read MoreIf we do not do something about our national finances, then we will reach a point at which the debt ceiling is no longer a matter of congressional action but a matter of what the credit markets are willing to bear.”
Read MoreWhen the parties are this closely divided, small, sometimes extreme elements can exercise far more power than their numbers would justify. The solution is either to win with larger margins to relegate extreme minorities to the sidelines or to secure strong party leadership that can control errant minorities. The latter, at the moment, is like putting the toothpaste back in the tube. We apparently are one of the few countries where the political parties exercise no control over who runs under the party label.
Read MoreFirewalls serve to restrain complex and tightly coupled systems; small recessions are preferable to systemic failures. The political wish to avoid recessions by neutering small corrections only paves the way for greater failures.
Read More“Science cannot tell us how to value things,” Ms. Thompson says. “The idea of ‘following the science’ is meaningless.”
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DEI and Anti-Semitism
DEI is just an institutionalized form of political correctness. It is intolerant and anti- intellectual and when these two vices combine we know what is to follow.
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