Category: free trade & free markets

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Accountability free trade & free markets general freedom media and media people national politics & policies responsibility too much government

Working for Whom?

Rand Paul, John McCain, Vladimir Putin, balanced budget, spending cap

Two articles on Sen. Rand Paul appeared in my Reason feed the other day. Up top.

So it was hard not to look.

They were “John McCain: It ‘Wasn’t Incorrect’ to Say Rand Paul Was ‘Working for Vladimir Putin’” and “Rand Paul’s Plan to Balance the Budget by 2023 Will Get a Senate Vote This Week.”

The latter story is the bigger one, of course. In it, Eric Boehm asked, “Do Republicans have the guts to impose strict spending caps?”

His answer was “probably not.” Good guess.

“Passing the Kentucky Republican’s so-called ‘Penny Plan’ would be a dramatic reversal for Congress,” Boehm wrote, “which earlier this year approved enormous spending hikes that busted Obama-era spending caps and threaten to put the country on pace for a $1 trillion annual deficits. . . . Paul tells Politico that it will be a ‘litmus test for Republicans who claim to be conservative, but are only too happy to grow the federal government and increase our debt.’”

I am afraid the litmus paper has turned . . . red. As in red ink. As in accumulating debt till we drop.

Yesterday Paul’s plan was voted down, 21-76.

In the other Reason piece, Matt Welch noted that Arizona’s senior senator stands by his calumny, last year, against Kentucky’s junior senator. Paul had delayed “ratification of Montenegro’s entry into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).” McCain, a gung-ho NATO expansion proponent, accused Paul of “working for Vladimir Putin.”

If Putin really seethes with ill will towards America, wouldn’t he want to see the country burdened with debt?

So, on this vote, those 76 senators who didn’t “stand with Rand” are undoubtedly working for Putin.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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Photo of Rand Paul by Gage Skidmore | Photo of John McCain from Wikimedia Commons

 

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Accountability folly free trade & free markets ideological culture local leaders moral hazard nannyism property rights too much government

Amazon’s Jeff Bezos Is …

Jeff Bezos, Amazon, Seattle, taxes, homeless tax, business

A half a year ago, when trying to make sense of the much-publicized search for Amazon’s “HQ2” — a second headquarters city, away from Seattle — I concentrated on the subsidies that cities and metro areas were apparently throwing at Amazon.

It all seemed desperate, indecent.

But there was a story behind the story. Amazon has every reason to be looking for an escape route from the Evergreen State’s biggest city.

The city’s leadership is nuts.

“Seattle City Council members have finally released draft legislation,” the Seattle Times’ Daniel Beekman wrote last month, “for a new tax on large employers that would raise $75 million next year to address homelessness.”

The council blames the big companies for enticing workers into the city, thereby driving up rental costs and housing prices.

The tax would be on employee hours, would go into effect next year, and “in 2021, it would be replaced by a 0.7 percent payroll tax on the same category of companies,” explains the Seattle Times.

Now, if you tax something you discourage that something. That’s why progressives like sin taxes on sodas and fast foods. To discourage consumption.

So when progressives seek to tax big producers, they are apparently trying to tax away the housing crunch by driving away big business.

Amazon reacted. It put a halt to an expansion project.

“Jeff Bezos is a bully,” said Kshama Sawant, the confessed socialist, speaking for the council. “I think we are in broad agreement on that.”

If that is her attitude, and that of the council — and the consensus of the city’s denizens — then what Amazon’s Jeff Bezos really is?

A “good businessman.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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Photo by JD Lasica

 

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crime and punishment free trade & free markets general freedom media and media people moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies property rights too much government U.S. Constitution

The Studio System: The Sequel

Studio System, antitrust, Netflix, Hulu, Amazon

Evermore virtue signaling, everless virtue — that pretty much encapsulates Oscars’ night. The industry that brought us Harvey Weinstein and the occasion for #MeToo made the 90th Academy Awards two months ago unwatchable for most of us.

Now, as the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences loses touch with audiences around the country, Netflix appears to have decided to horn its way into the Oscars. “Netflix will reportedly begin purchasing movie theatres,” informs The Independent, “to help it get ahead in the race for Academy Awards.

The streaming giant has aimed to land an Oscar nod since the release of its first original feature in 2015, Beasts of No Nation. 

I have not seen that film, but I have made time for some entertainment (and a few documentaries) on Netflix. After Stranger Things and Wormwood, I think I can safely repeat a point I’ve made before: this is the new Golden Age of Television.

But Netflix wants more prestige than the TV industry’s “Emmys.”

Whether the company succeeds with the Oscars, notice: Netflix is becoming a major studio — complete with “vertical integration.” Just what the Supreme Court tried to kill in 1948 when it ruled against the studio system’s “monopoly” status.

That decision, plus the rise of broadcast television, dealt a death blow to the studios — and arguably movie quality.

Maybe a new studio system (also courtesy of Amazon Prime, Apple, and other players) will make for a renaissance.

For feature-length films.

If we can just keep government out of it.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability free trade & free markets general freedom local leaders moral hazard Regulating Protest responsibility

Less Bullying, S’il Vous Plaît

union, labor, France, brick, busting, scab, President Emmanuel Macron,

I oppose unions. Or, to speak more precisely, I oppose those tactics too often used by unions intended to render societies hostage to their demands — as we’re seeing in France.

For the last few months, a series of strikes has been conducted by various unionized workers in protest of reforms proposed by President Emmanuel Macron. Rail workers are a major focus of the fracas.

Ultimately SNCF, France’s state-owned railway company, should be privatized. But reducing too-generous pay and benefits, including automatic annual pay raises, is a step in the right direction. The Macron administration hopes to begin opening up the state railways to competition by 2023. The unions and their allies are willing to cripple the French economy to prevent any reforms.

It’s fine for employees to voluntarily get together to ask for better working conditions, or even to go on strike to protest terms of employment they regard as unfair. It’s fine, that is, if they also understand that employers have an equal right to replace them if willing and able to do so.

Workers should only peacefully petition employers. Nobody has an inalienable right to a particular job or to a particular wage higher than they can voluntarily negotiate.

According to the BBC, “Just over 11% of the French workforce is unionised,” one of the lowest levels in the EU. May the decline there and everywhere accelerate until unions cease bullying the entire French society, or any society.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability crime and punishment folly free trade & free markets general freedom media and media people moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies property rights Regulating Protest too much government U.S. Constitution

That Something You Do

Congress, Facebook, hearings, control, regulations, Mark Zuckerberg, censorship, censor, regulate

Congress grilled Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, last week, and as usual ended up roasting itself.

“Zuckerberg has already experienced the worst punishment of all,” quipped comedian Trevor Noah on The Daily Show. “He had to spend four hours explaining Facebook to senior citizens.”

Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, retiring after his 42nd consecutive year in Washington, asked, “How do you sustain a business model in which users don’t pay for your service?”

“Senator,” Zuckerberg incredulously replied, “we run ads.”

Inc. magazine reported the obvious: “several of our elected leaders asked questions that were highly uninformed, or in some cases just plain weird.”

Uninformed. Weird. That’s them, alright.*

Still, the Washington establishment seems to seriously think these same congressmen ought to be re-writing privacy rules.

“Elected officials know the public wants them to do something to protect their privacy,” announced Chuck Todd, host of NBC’s Meet the Press. “The question now turns to what is that something?”

“Americans are largely together on this issue,” Todd said, citing a recent poll where a similar “66 percent of Democrats and 68 percent of Republicans say they want more control over the information companies have about them.”

But Democrats and Republicans are together on something else: Only 21 percent of Democrats and a tiny 14 percent of Republicans “trust the federal government” to act on the issue.

The senators, though obviously “confused about basic topics,” Emily Stewart wrote at Vox,  “seem to agree they want to fix something about Facebook. They just have no idea what.”

Please Congress: DON’T “do something.” Don’t do that thing you do.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Reason TV has a very funny video on the Zuckerberg hearing.

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Accountability free trade & free markets local leaders porkbarrel politics tax policy too much government

Selling Us Out

Maryland legislature, pork, Amazon, tax break, Jeff Bezos, Senator Roger Manno

Last week, Maryland’s Legislature enacted an $8.5 billion package of tax breaks and infrastructure improvements to lure Amazon into building its second corporate headquarters in Montgomery County, Maryland, bordering Washington, D.C.

State Senator Roger Manno, the only legislator from the county to vote against the subsidy, dubbed it “a $5 billion tax break for the richest man in the world. . . .”*

Today, the Montgomery County Council will consider a further proposal to streamline its zoning process, cutting in half the time the county takes to review a proposed development.

“We are trying to make sure our processes are consistent with everybody else,” County Executive Ike Leggett explained, adding that the county now “sometimes takes 100 to 120 days, while many other jurisdictions are much less than that.”

Did Leggett say “consistent with everybody else”? Well, the new zoning rules won’t apply to every business, just those planning to hire 25,000 workers. Or more.

“It’s neutral to the employer,” County Council President Hans Riemer slyly suggested. “It’s a proposal that would allow any really large employer to come in and build under certain terms.”

But only Amazon would be large enough.

“Really what it does is it creates predictability, reliability,” offered Riemer. But wouldn’t every other business also benefit from “predictability” and “reliability”?

“I think the Amazon proposal made the county realize . . . that it needed to look at some of its practices and where it has been criticized,” noted Bob Buchanan, chairman of the Montgomery County Economic Development Corporation. “We were more process versus results.”

And the county intends to remain that way . . . for “every” current business.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* He was referring, of course, to Amazon founder and owner of the Washington Post, Jeff Bezos.

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Accountability free trade & free markets general freedom national politics & policies privacy subsidy too much government

The Post Office Scam

USPS, Post Office, monopoly, competition, Amazon, discounts

The President of the United States says that the U.S. Postal Service is scamming us by offering shipping discounts to Amazon, the mail-order giant. “Post Office scam must stop.”

President Trump is hovering in the vicinity of the right idea. But what about government-required discounts for shippers? Are these scams too?

Congress has long required lower postal rates “for religious, educational, charitable, political and other non-profit organizations. . . .”  Robert Shapiro estimates that such mandates cost the agency over a billion dollars a year. The government forces USPS to do a great many things that lose money — things that companies functioning in a free market cannot profitably do.

And American taxpayers must perennially fork over billions to sustain its lumbering operations.

It is true that, in markets, buyers of large quantities of a good or service routinely pay less per unit than buyers of small quantities; such discounts can enhance the seller’s bottom line. The fact that USPS offers discounts to a mega-shipper like Amazon does not in itself show that charging more per parcel would generate more revenue.

The question is, then, which transactions would flourish if the agency were just another market player instead of a government-protected, government-hobbled, government-subsidized bureaucracy?

Like any government-run “business,” the Post Office is itself a “scam.” This scam must stop. Phase out USPS as a government agency and let any company deliver first-class mail to our mailboxes on any honest terms that might attract customers.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment free trade & free markets general freedom moral hazard national politics & policies too much government U.S. Constitution

High on Hemp?

hemp, marijuana, legalization, prohibition, THC, CBD, Mitch McConnell

Hemp is not marijuana.

And yet it is.

Earlier this week, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced he will introduce legislation to legalize industrial hemp.

He is not concerning himself with marijuana, which is what we call the plant Cannabis sativa when cultivated for its Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) content, the principal chemical in the plant that makes it ideal for “recreational” uses. Industrial hemp is Cannabis sativa, too, just with minuscule THC.

Hemp products are actually legal to buy and sell in the United States.

Sort of.

But growing it is murky, considering that ingestible hemp is a Schedule 1 drug no matter how little THC it has — despite the fact that Congress has allowed states to regulate the growth of low-THC hemp for “industrial” purposes.  

A complicating factor is that industrial hemp contains an oil, Cannabidiol (CBD), which is neither an ecstatic nor a hallucinogenic drug, but is widely believed to have many therapeutic powers. And is widely sold all over the country, wherever states have allowed for medical marijuana.

Nevertheless the DEA objects to it as much as to THC, saying that all ingestible forms of hemp are illegal.

Because of all this murkiness, McConnell’s bill might seem to be welcome step towards clarity.

Trouble is, since industrial hemp is indistinguishable from cannabis with THC — to look at; to smell; to touch — officials hoping to crack down on marijuana-as-a-psychoactive-drug would be much hampered were industrial hemp commonly and legally grown.

What a mess. The only real solution is to de-list all forms of Cannabis sativa from the War on Drug’s Schedule of Drugs It Unconstitutionally Proscribes.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability folly free trade & free markets general freedom government transparency local leaders moral hazard nannyism porkbarrel politics responsibility too much government

Bailing on Mass Transit

mass transit, metro, cars. low income, recession

Around the country, our major metropolitan transit systems have hit the skids. “Between 2016 and 2017, ridership fell in each of the seven largest transit markets,” the Washington Post informs.

You might guess that the reason for declines in ridership might have something to do with bad planning and poor service. Washington, D.C.’s Metro system, with which I am all-too familiar, is a horror . . . run by people I wouldn’t trust to sweep your driveway much less mine, and certainly not to manage how I get between those (or any other) two locations.

But the Post quotes an urban planning scholar who attributes the decline (in part) “to increased car ownership, particularly among low-income and immigrant populations, who were in a better position to afford cars following the Great Recession.”

This puts planners in a pickle since, he explains, if “low-income people are doing better, getting the ability to move around like everyone else, it’s hard to say that what we should do is get them to remove themselves from their cars and back on trains and buses.”

Shockingly sensible — especially coming from a planning specialist. “Transit systems should deliver quality service to low-income people,” he insists. “But low-income people do not owe us a transit system.”

Well, maybe that’s the problem, this notion that governments “owe” this service to “low-income people.”

After all, web-based services like Uber and Lyft have shown how market innovations provide the best ways to move millions.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability free trade & free markets general freedom government transparency moral hazard national politics & policies porkbarrel politics too much government

Georgia on My Dime

pig, pigliets, crony capitalism, Delta, NRA

After the recent school shooting in Parkland, Florida, followed by pressure from gun control advocates, Delta Airlines announced it would end its corporate relationship with the National Rifle Association, whereby NRA members were given discounts on travel.*

Meanwhile, Georgia legislators were in the process of passing legislation to give Delta a state sales tax break on their fuel purchases. That special legislative deal was worth a whopping $40 million to the Atlanta-based company.

Yet, when Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle heard about Delta dissing the NRA, he tweeted, “I will kill any tax legislation that benefits @Delta unless the company changes its position and fully reinstates its relationship with @NRA.”

The Lt. Gov. added, “Corporations cannot attack conservatives and expect us not to fight back.”

Everyone is familiar with the story. Those who favor gun rights were angry with Delta Airlines and ecstatic with the pushback from Georgia legislators. Those favoring new legislation to restrict gun ownership were thrilled by Delta’s break with the NRA and livid with those legislators.

But while cheering and jeering one side or the other, too many folks missed the 800-lb problem in the room. A letter writer to the Washington Post illuminated it: “The government can’t punish people or businesses for their political views. They can be punished only by the free market, in the form of lost business.”

True enough in the free market.

But when crony capitalism replaces free markets, the government certainly will punish or reward people and businesses — with millions and billions of our tax dollars — on purely political grounds.

Georgia government just did it to Delta Airlines.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* To be precise, reports claim a grand total of 13 NRA members availed themselves to the special rates once offered by Delta.

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