Categories
free trade & free markets ideological culture national politics & policies political economy

Trump-Approved Profits

Donald Trump, oil, prices, inflation, redistribution, socialism

Occasionally, President Trump takes an anti-capitalist rhetorical turn. He apparently supposes his unleashing of an Inner Mamdani will help him through a political rough patch. 

Or perhaps he is just momentarily confused.

The president recently asserted that oil companies are making too much money right now and “ought to give back” some of it to the public. This, although “I’m a big free enterprise guy.”

But oil companies don’t owe buyers anything more than the oil they supply. Nor, when prices are low, do buyers owe oil companies or gas stations more money than what they pay.

In markets, a sudden big drop in supply of a good — like oil, shipments of which might be blocked by wars in the Middle East — tends to lead to higher prices.

Companies unable to ship or sell the good lose money. If demand remains the same or increases, prices for the part of the supply still available go up. Which means more profits and more money to expand production and distribution.

Consumers of oil should want its producers to be as successful as possible. That’s just reason, common sense. High profits encourage and fund more digging, refining, and distribution, and attract more competition — ultimately increasing supply to reduce prices. 

Whenever supply of an urgently needed good takes a hit, producers should be as free as possible to deal with the problem and to enjoy the rewards of dealing with it successfully. Any big free enterprise guy should be able to understand this. 

You too, Mr. President.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Illustration created with Nano Banana

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
Thought

Pareto

Usually, so far as improvement in the people’s economic conditions is concerned, humanitarians simply play the role of the busybody.

Vilfredo Pareto, Manual of Political Economy (1971, Ann S. Schwier, trans. from the French edition of 1927), p. 301.
Categories
Today

Jamaican Independence

On August 6, 1962, Jamaica became independent of Great Britain, a little less than two years and three months before Kamala Harris, the most famous Jamaican-American, was born.

Categories
property rights tax policy thoughtNew

Two Horrors Don’t Make It Right

Zohran Mamdani, socialism, communism, New York City

The mayor of New York City, commie Mamdani, is trying to raise more money to pay for his socialism.

One scheme is to punish owners of a second home by imposing a so-called “pied-à-terre tax,” a tax on the second residence of wealthy New Yorkers above and beyond regular property taxes.

Now, the assumption that anybody with a second home, or an expensive second home in an expensive property market, must be rolling in liquid funds is faulty. The notion that if you have more wealth than somebody else it should be taken from you? Also faulty.

The new tax bill is going to many New Yorkers with only one home. And the website set up (speaking loosely) to permit challenges of the designation of one’s home as a pied-à-terre is proving nightmarish to navigate.

One recipient of an extra-tax bill, for $43,000, is Karen Young, who has lived in her brownstone with her husband for thirty years. Two minutes of research would have prevented the mistake, she observes. “Is this a witch hunt?”

New assaults on our rights often have two parts. One part is really horrific. The other part is even more horrific in some other way. The greedy government may eventually withdraw or correct the even more horrific form of the assault; at which point everybody is relieved . . . except anyone noticing that the first form, also horrific, and serving as precedent, is still ongoing.

Was that the game plan here?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Illustration created with Nano Banana

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
Thought

F. Hopkinson Smith

I believe that there is something fine, some spark of good, in the lowest human being, and I want to bring out that sort of thing.

Francis Hopkinson Smith, discussing his goal in fiction writing in a New York Times interview, January 29, 1905. Smith, in addition to writing novels such as Col. Carter of Cartersville (1891) and Peter: A Novel of Which He Is Not the Hero (1908), designed the base of the Statue of Liberty, among other public projects.
Categories
Today

A Cornerstone for a Statue

On August 5, 1884, Bedloe’s Island in New York Harbor received the foundation stone for the Statue of Liberty.

One hundred years later, New York’s Masons put up a commemorative plaque that read, in part:

At this site on August 5, 1884, the cornerstone of the pedestal of the Statue of “Liberty Enlightening the World” was laid with ceremony by William A. Brodie, Grand Master of Masons in the State of New York. Grand lodge members, representatives of the United States and French governments, Army and Navy officers, members of foreign legations, and distinguished citizens were present. This plaque is dedicated by the Masons of New York in commemoration of the 100th anniversary of that historic event.

The island was renamed Liberty Island, in 1956.

Categories
Internet controversy media and media people

Zero-Evidence Zeroes

Dana Bash, RFK Jr. , Covid

“A new poll finds 40% of respondents believe in a baseless conspiracy theory that the coronavirus was created in a lab in China,” @NPR tweeted on Friday. 

“There is zero evidence for this,” declared the radio network. “Scientists say the virus was transmitted to humans from another species.”

Some scientists say this. Others — along with several U.S. intel agencies — do not. 

What does not exist? A consensus on a zoonotic origin. What we knew early on and what we learned from the Fauci diary last week demonstrates that the wet market was not the origination point, and that Fauci had to convince consulting scientists to go against the Lab Leak hypothesis.

Sad that NPR would still be cherry-picking scientists — and flat-out fibbing — to buttress the political narrative it favors.

But unsurprising.

CNN is no better. On Sunday, the egregious Dana Bash interviewed Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., in an utterly disgraceful way, repeatedly contradicting him with vague claims of “study after study after study” while unable to cite any specific published research. 

When RFK pointed out that the U.S. had the highest death rate from COVID, Bash claimed, “That’s not accurate because” — awkwardly long pause — “public health experts say that there is a combination of factors that went into that.”

Went into what? Oh, yes, the U.S. having the highest death rate from COVID . . . just like RFK said.

Too many journalists see themselves as defenders of some Official Story. Dana Bash is a perfect example, doing the job of factless fact-checker, Overton Window Shrinker, and censuring censor.

These days, when you hear someone say that there exists “zero evidence” for something — or imply unanimity among experts — we know they possess zero credibility.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Illustration created with Nano Banana

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
Thought

Bob Murphy

Economics deals with society’s fundamental problems; it concerns everyone and belongs to all. It is the main and proper study of every citizen.

Robert P. Murphy, Ph.D., Choice: Cooperation, Enterprise, and Human Action (2015).
Categories
Today

A Great Peace

On August 4, 1701, the Great Peace of Montreal was signed. The dispute was between the French and their native allies, on the one side, and the Iroquois Confederacy on the other. Well over a thousand representatives of forty nations from the Great Lakes to the Maritimes and from southern Illinois to James Bay gathered to meet the French at Montreal. Month-long ceremonies concluded with the signing of the treaty, putting an end to the Iroquois Wars.

Categories
crime and punishment ideological culture partisanship

The Violence Is Inclusive

worried democrat, radicals, leftists, progressivism, socialism, communism

“I don’t feel safe going,” Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel recently shared about her decision to skip the Michigan Democratic Party state convention later this month. 

“I don’t want to get chased around. I don’t want to get harassed. I don’t want to get yelled and screamed at.”

It’s a gathering of her own political party! 

“This cannot continue, and the fact of the matter is, we have to be able to be a society where we can have intelligent discourse and debate about ideas without people being threatened,” the attorney general implored, “and certainly without people carrying out those threats.”

When people don’t feel safe, that indicates a failure of our criminal justice system. The attorney general is each state’s highest law enforcement official. So, what does it say when a state AG feels threatened? Afraid to venture out in public?

“Nessel’s declaration,” explains The Times of Israel, “comes in the final days of the primary between Rep. Haley Stevens, a pro-Israel stalwart, and Abdul El-Sayed, a democratic socialist who is deeply critical of Israel.”

Still, even bitter policy disagreements do not have to metastasize into hate-filled harassment . . . threats of violence . . . or worse.

“Former Senate candidate Mallory McMorrow has also acknowledged antisemitism within the Democratic Party,” the Daily Wire reports, “recounting an incident at the Democratic National Convention in which, she said, an attendee shouted an antisemitic slur at her Jewish husband while he was walking with their five-year-old daughter.”

Michigan’s hotly contested U.S. Senate Primary will end tomorrow. The fear of political violence will not.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Illustration created with Nano Banana

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts