If Columbus had an advisory committee he would probably still be at the dock.
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Author: Redactor
The two major presidential candidates, incumbent Obama and challenger Romney, must spend their final weeks of the campaign appealing to
- Members of their respective parties disappointed enough to stay home on election day — or vote the dreaded “Third Party” ticket;
- Independent voters apt to find something distasteful about both candidates;
- The apathetic and the uninformed.
How to appeal to all three groups simultaneously? Well, go for the old standby: fear and hatred of foreigners.
This year, it’s the Chinese.
Romney started the China-bashing by calling our Chinese trading partners “cheaters.” Apparently he is much vexed about how the Chinese don’t respect established intellectual property rights, “stealing” our technology, “everything from computers to fighter jets.” Of course, this mainly happens after “we” set up manufacturing plants for that technology there. He charged that President Obama has not deigned to “stand up to China.”
Earlier, he had accused China of manipulating its money in its favor. He seems to have dropped that, perhaps out of embarrassment — our own Fed’s monetary manipulations, after all, dwarf China’s.
The Obama campaign responded by avoiding the intellectual property issue just as Romney now avoids the monetary one, calling Romney himself a “cheater.” You see, in his Bain Capital days, Romney invested in firms that relocated jobs to “low wage countries like China.” Romney, we are told, has “never stood up to China.”
By which is meant: Romney engaged in globalism and opposed protectionism.
Is Mr. Obama really suggesting that prosperity will come if we shrink from global competition and enact barriers to international trade in goods and services?
The biggest problem the U.S. economy faces isn’t Beijing; it’s Washington.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Townhall: United We Term-Limit
Over at Townhall, a defense of term limits. Read the column (in which I reference a conference I attended yesterday, see image at right), and come back here. If you don’t find the links, below, satisfying, search the archives of This Is Common Sense (this very site) and you’ll find quite a lot about term limits.
- U.S. Term Limits v. Thornton is the Supreme Court case that badly decided federal limits, and limited the term-limits movement, by denying to the states the power to regulate the terms of their own representatives.
- The ballot initiative is explained, also, at Ballotpedia.
- Term limits remain overwhelmingly popular, as shown by a recent poll of Illinois voters.
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James M. Buchanan
If not an economist, what am I? An outdated freak whose functional role in the general scheme of things has passed into history? Perhaps I should accept such an assessment, retire gracefully, and, with alcoholic breath, hoe my cabbages. Perhaps I could do so if the modern technicians had indeed produced “better” economic mousetraps. Instead of evidence of progress, however, I see a continuing erosion of the intellectual (and social) capital that was accumulated by “political economy” in its finest hours.
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George Mason
There is a Passion natural to the Mind of man, especially a free Man, which renders him impatient of Restraint.
If you agree to a “free speech wall,” you can’t complain about the speech that offends you, can you? Well, if you run a college, I guess you can:
Note that it wasn’t the use of the vulgar “f-bomb” that upset the professors. It was the use of one against the current U.S. president.
The tale of how Chicago’s teachers union beat the Chicago School District, and got their way, is inspiring . . . if you belong to a union, if you don’t care about costs, if you don’t want to improve the quality of education.
And if you define “inspirational” as inspiring copycats.
That’s happened already, and may break out big time. Illinois’s Evergreen Park District (#124) is now on strike. Lake Forest High School District (#115) teachers recently concluded a strike, with a tentative agreement allegedly being finalized as I type. At least two other district teachers’ unions have declared strikes, and contract negotiations have stalled elsewhere. Add to that, AFSCME bigwigs wrote their 40,000 members that “direct action at the work site” might be necessary. I’m hoping that’s a work stoppage, and not sabotage. (“Direct action” sounds ominous, doesn’t it?)
Paul Kersey, writing on the Illinois Policy Institute website, opines that it “would be unfortunate if union officials chose to shut down key government services at a time when so many Illinoisans are struggling economically, but unfortunately it seems that the results of the Chicago Teachers Union strike may have encouraged many of them to do just that.”
Unions arose in the 19th century as a way to deal with poor working conditions, and, over time, the idea of a closed shop took hold with the specific program of excluding competitive workers. That made it easier to negotiate for higher wages, etc.
While private sector unions fought “evil businessmen” — that’s what I read in school — public employee unions fight . . . taxpayers. I always wonder how taxpayers feel, being dragooned into the role of “evil” skinflint.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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James M. Buchanan
The power to “tax” is simply the power to “take.”
We do not face just one problem, but our many problems tend to come down to one thing: trying to do too much through government.
Last weekend, at Townhall, I noted that the most wildly popular economic policy doctrine of the last hundred years, Keynesianism, has not — its proponents say — been properly given a chance during the two biggest financial contractions of our time, the Great Depression and the recent mortgage-backed securities implosion. In both cases, more money was needed for proper “stimulus.”
Ironic, perhaps, since Keynesianism has been used as an excuse to run deficits and increase debt for scores of years.
Yes, even a doctrine designed to play into the hands of politicians gets abused by politicians.
The lesson: Excuses to grow government are not revolutionary insights, they’re traps.
Yesterday I talked about how the “Laffer Curve” point where raising the tax rate actually reduces revenue is lower for capital gains than for general income. But one consequence of a revenue-maximizing capital gains rate is that there would then be rich investors who wind up paying a smaller percentage of their incomes in taxes than do common laborers.
Tax fairness is an issue that should not be ceded to those caught in the clichés of the age. Think of tax fairness, instead, as a rationale for a limit. Not as an excuse to raise tax rates punitively, hatefully, foolishly (like the current president wants).
Bring all tax rates down to the level of the tax with the lowest revenue-maximizing rate. Don’t raise capital gains taxes, lower the income tax.
Taxes would then be fair. And government would have to be reduced to accommodate the fairness, and thus more limited.
Less of a trap.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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James M. Buchanan
For the ordinary citizen, the power to tax is the most familiar manifestation of the government’s power to coerce. This power to tax involves the power to impose, on individuals and private institutions more generally, charges that can be met only by a transfer to government of economic resources, or financial claims to such resources—charges that carry with them effective powers of enforcement under the very definition of the taxing power. To be sure, governments may use tax revenues for financing public goods or transfers that citizens-taxpayers desire. But we must distinguish sharply here between a rationalization for the government’s possession of the power to tax and an understanding of that power in and of itself. The power to tax, per se, does not carry with it any obligation to use the tax revenue raised in any particular way. The power to tax does not logically imply the nature of spending.