Tag: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

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ideological culture political economy too much government

Socialism Doesn’t Work, But…

socialism, force, incentive, Occassio-Cortez

“Socialism” — we all want to be sociable, right?

Last week’s anti-​socialist moment was not limited to the president’s promise that America would never go socialist, as I noted this weekend there was also Panera Bread’s abandonment of its quasi-​charitable Panera Cares (“pay-​what-​you-​want”) fast food chain.

Isn’t that a bit of a strange connection? Socialism is not charity. It’s bad because it is force through and through, not because it seeks to help people. 

Well, note that while Panera’s notion was the same as many socialists’, to help the poor. Panera’s method was to cajole, or “nudge,” the better-​off to pay enough more to cover the costs of paying less. 

Kinda like ObamaCare, but without the force.

And without the force, it failed.

What Panera management discovered is that not only is it very hard to get the message across, it is almost impossible to set up coherent incentives to successfully alter consumer behavior. 

Getting incentives right is something that plagues all sorts of socialistic experiments, voluntary or coercive, within a capitalist society. 

Take Finland’s recent experiment with a Universal Basic Income (UBI). 

The idea of that nation’s centrist party was to take care of the unemployed beneficiaries’ basic needs so they could get back to work.

Well, those who received the basic income were happy enough receiving the moolah. Sure. But “there was no evidence from the first year of the experiment,” a report in Huffington Post admits, “that the scheme incentivized work.” Despite that, socialists in England are pushing for the UBI.

Socialism doesn’t work, and socialists would rather not work — except to advance socialism.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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socialism, force, incentive, Occassio-Cortez

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Re-​Packaging Nonsense as Wisdom

green new deal, AOC, money, folly

When committed to folly, clever people make it look wise.

An article last week in Forbes, “The Green New Deal: How We Will Pay For It Isn’t ‘A Thing’ — And Inflation Isn’t Either,” by Robert Hockett, says that “how could we pay for it?” challenges have already been answered best by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. 

She demands to know why only “useful ideas,” like hers, get challenged that way. “Where were the ‘pay-​fors’ for Bush’s $5 trillion wars and tax cuts, or for last year’s $2 trillion tax giveaway to billionaires?”

Where? Here!

And anywhere there’s common sense.

Hockney has his own retort, though, retrieving from the peanut gallery of economics an idiocy called “Modern Monetary Theory” (MMT). 

“Congress will authorize necessary spending, and Treasury will spend,” he writes. Government funds are “never ‘raised’ first” because “federal spending is what brings that money into existence.” 

Look, the United States has indeed come to rely upon debt financing. But it wasn’t always the rule. More importantly, the widespread and long-​term effects are where post-​gold standard monetary creation gets tricky. 

So are MMT advocates. Tricky, that is. What they hide are the dispersed costs, many of which we pay in higher prices.

Their main “contribution” — as stated in the National Review, of all places, yesterday — is that “When a government issues its own currency, as our federal government does, it is in a financial situation different from those of most institutions or households.”

Not really. When a household writes checks it knows will bounce, it does pretty much the same thing.

When governments rely upon debt money, someone is still getting ripped off. With government, though, it isn’t the businesses holding bad checks, it is all of us.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

N.B. This episode of Common Sense has been corrected from the email version: the author of the Forbes article is not the painter David Hockney.

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green new deal, AOC, money, folly

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Worse Than Her Faux Pas

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

“If we work our butts off to make sure that we take back all three chambers of Congress,” stumbled U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-​Cortez (D.-N.Y.), “uh, rather, all three chambers of government: the presidency, the Senate, and the House.…”

The Daily Wire, where I encountered this particular snippet of inanity, could be caught gloating between her lines. And it is funny (amidst the fear) when politicians prove themselves ignorant, clueless, unprepared. Politicians rarely come across as masters of their subject.

But we who are subjected to their lack of mastery should worry about their substantive flubs more than their trivial technical errors.

As the newly elected solon herself had the wit to notice.

“Maybe instead of Republicans drooling over every minute of footage of me in slow-​mo, waiting to chop up word slips that I correct in real-​tomd [sic],” she went on, “they actually step up enough to make the argument they want to make: that they don’t believe people deserve a right to healthcare.”

I am not a Republican, but I’m here to help. The only rights we “deserve” are those we can have without enslaving and exploiting others. My right to freedom requires only your duty to leave me alone, not systematically taking from others or running their lives. But a right to “healthcare”? The corresponding duties are vague and ominous, potentially limitless.

And thus oppressive. 

A government big enough to give Ocasio-​Cortez everything she wants is too big to leave any freedom for the rest of us.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

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PayGo Piffle

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, #PayGo, austerity, spending

Republicans are especially good at deficit spending. Give them control of the presidency and both houses of Congress, and watch the money flow! It happened under George W. Bush, and now under President Donald Trump.

But note: the Democrats have gained control of the House of Representatives. We might see some restraint on government growth, if for no better reason than “divided government,” in which the two major parties can more effectively do damage to each other’s spending.

Nancy Pelosi, again Speaker of the House, has a monkey wrench to throw into Republican spending plans, not excluding that much-​promised, little acted-​upon Trump promise, “The Wall.” 

It is called “PayGo,” or, in the Twittersphere, #PayGo.

Not something new (Democrats have used it before), the House rule aims to limit any new expenditures to equal cuts in old spending.

Effective? Well, in capping the deficit at a trillion dollars annually … until they vote for exceptions to the rule. 

And effective enough to annoy Republicans!

And now, to rile up progressives, too.

Alexandria Ocasio-​Cortez (D‑N.Y.) has made a big deal about her opposition. She has opposed Pelosi’s attempt to re-​establish the rule. 

Heedless of any danger that could result from further adding to the now-$22 trillion national debt, progressives scorn the idea of fiscal responsibility as “austerian,” claiming the whole idea was somehow disproven by “economic history,” in the Tweeted words of Rep. Ro Khanna (D‑Calif.).

The “real” beneficiaries would be the corporations, progs say, and that PayGo would work against the “progressive agenda” of increasing government programs without limit.

Typical political piffle.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, #PayGo, austerity, spending

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No-​Study Politics

The 200-​plus “youth activists” who stormed House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s offices (see yesterday’s Common Sense) were protesting Pelosi’s leadership on climate issues. Soon-​to-​be Representative Ocasio-​Cortez (D‑NY) was there to encourage Pelosi to listen to them.

“We need a Green New Deal,” Ocasio-​Cortez informed her natural constituency, journalists, “and we need to get to 100 percent renewables because our lives depend on it.”

An impossible task, of course. Which means activists would always possess a reason to protest — forever and ever without end.

Still, Ocasio-​Cortez and her friends seem earnest. The Representative-​Elect insists “we have 10 years left and I — not just as an elected member, but as a 29-​year-​old woman — am thinking not just about what we are going to accomplish in the next two years but the America that we’re going to live in in the next 30 years.”

A little skepticism is in order. Prophecies to the effect that we have only “ten or 12 years left” after which “global warming will be irreversible” are made repeatedly … every ten years or so. Rinse. 

“I think in 2018, when fires, floods, storms are getting worse,” another Pelosi protester reiterated, “and when the U.N. climate report says we have 12 years to radically transform our entire economy at a scale that’s unprecedented in human history, I think studying climate change is absolutely the wrong thing to do.”

What pearls of wisdom to conclude the coverage. Of course “studying climate change is absolutely the wrong thing to do” to “fix” climate change! Who needs information?

To fight climate change … or  “radically transform our entire economy.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture meme national politics & policies Popular too much government

More of the More

trap, socialism, democratic socialism

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s triumphant entry into Washington, DC, as a United States Representative-​Elect, is quickly proving a cautionary tale for Democrats. She’s an enthusiastic socialist. Or “progressive,” to use the preferred euphemism. And thus Democrats see her as a fresh breeze to air out the stodgy, musty chambers of …

Nancy Pelosi’s office. 

Ocasio-​Cortez showed up in the House office building last week, along with other protestors “flooding,” as Politico put it, the Minority Leader’s work area. 

But what she is proving to be is not a breath of fresh air. And she is not merely “more of the same” in leftist agitation. 

She may be “more of the more.”

Progressives cannot seem to formulate an upper limit to their ideology. Dr. Jordan Peterson, trying to be “precise,” warns that this is the main problem of the left today: a lack of any sense of “going too far.” 

If government growth is always good, then … all the way to the socialism of Stalin, Mao and the Castros? The result of “always more” is “most.”

Real socialism is the  trap. “Democratic socialism” is the bait.

Their usual rebuttal? “We just want to be more like Scandinavian countries.” But these countries have less regulation on markets than America does currently. We should believe the “Scandinavian Limit” precisely when progressives earnestly push to repeal some regulations. 

Ideology aside, this may be mainly … politics. Ocasio-​Cortez proclaimed herself “looking forward” to “working together” with former and likely new Speaker Pelosi, and left the protest before the police began making arrests.

A statesperson in the making.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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