Showing posts with label free market. Show all posts
Showing posts with label free market. Show all posts

Saturday, June 15

Clearing the Tabs June 15, 2024

Here are some things I've read so far this month or will be reading soon. A lot of people are staying at home looking for things to read, so I've broken this month into two parts again, expect a post on June 30. Also, just because I post something here does not mean I agree with it, it simply means it made me think and I think my readers might enjoy it.

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June 7
Millions Move Away from Density in Just Three Years

June 8
Libertarians can stay relevant by defending the middle class
They can drop the dogmatic theory and stand up for free-market pragmatism instead

June 10
Climate Science is About to Make a Huge Mistake

April 2024 Transit Ridership 74.6% of 2019

June 11
How California became a warning to the world
A new dominant class of oligarchs and woke bureaucrats has bled the Golden State dry.

June 12
The Green Road to Tyranny
Climate-change obsessives insist that we must roll back living standards in order to save the planet.


Wednesday, July 15

Clearing the Tabs 7-15-2020

Some things I've read so far this month or will be reading soon. It appears the month will be a long one, and a lot of people are staying at home looking for things to read, so I've broken this month into two parts again, expect a post on July 31 as well.

July 1
The future still lies in coal, oil, and nuclear

Triumph of the Oligarchs

July 4
What We Celebrate on the Fourth of July: Calvin Coolidge on the Declaration of Independence

July 5
Urban Blues
The fashionable radicalism now popular in progressive cities will ultimately fail and, in the process, hurt working people and minorities the most

July 6
How to expose and counter China's increasing aggression

July 7
Quest for Revolutionary Community

Behind the Rise of Postmodern Conservatism
The 1619 Project, a deeply flawed document

July 15
The Hong Kong Banana Republic
China cancels elections after a landslide pro-democracy victory.

Why We Can Be “Cautiously Optimistic” About the Economy

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If you are traveling, consider using Airbnb, use this link and save. Airbnb hosts are often classified as small businesses, and they end up putting their earnings back into the local economy. Most hosts are incredibly personable and friendly, and during Covid-19 they have dedicated themselves to extra cleanliness, as many of them live in these same host facilities. Give it a try.

Wednesday, July 18

Barack Obama Still Getting Economics All Wrong

Barack Obama was off to a good start, in the sense that the answer was right in front of him. He "advocated for an "inclusive" market-based system." He's in luck, capitalism has been around for centuries. Nothing in the world has lifted more people out of poverty and cleaned our air and led to real human flourishing the way free-market capitalism has.

But then, Obama went further, "One, he said, that breaks up monopolies, encourages competition and maintains "some form" of progressive taxation." Oh no. Just when I had hope for him, he is still a redistributionist.

Friday, April 20

Reagan's Vital Lesson On Reducing Gas Prices Worked

From today's Investor's Business Daily:

Energy: It wasn't anything mysterious that allowed Ronald Reagan to bring gasoline prices down so far, so fast. It was something we could use a commitment to in the executive branch today: economic freedom.

Skyrocketing gas and heating oil prices were the most infuriating development associated with what was mistakenly called the "energy crisis" during the 1970s. Mighty America, it seemed, had lost grasp of world events and the global economy.


It was understandable that presidential leadership in the world would slip badly during Watergate and Vietnam, but when a new Democratic president untainted by war or massive scandal was placed in the driver's seat in the latter half of the decade, what could explain his failure to rein in the price of oil?

Oil, which was about $20 a barrel in constant dollars at the beginning of the decade, exceeded $100 by 1980. The man the American people had elected to be leader of the free world put his incompetence in a nutshell in his May 24, 1979, diary entry:

"I had a depressing breakfast with economic advisers, who don't know what to do about inflation or energy."

That didn't stop Jimmy Carter from embracing a windfall-profits tax on Big Oil. But if he and those he appointed didn't know what to do, liberal Democrats in Congress certainly knew what wasn't going to work. Reagan's decontrolling the market for oil was lambasted and lampooned on the Senate and House floors.

As Steven Hayward puts it in the second volume of his epic history "The Age of Reagan": "In the annals of public policy prognostication it is difficult to find such a wide assembly of wrongheadedness."

Sen. Howard Metzenbaum of Ohio promised in early 1981, "we will see $1.50 gas this spring, and maybe before. And it is just a matter of time until the oil companies and their associates, the OPEC nations, will be driving gasoline pump prices up to $2 a gallon."

Sen. Dale Bumpers of Arkansas claimed, "without rationing, gasoline will soon go to $3 a gallon." Sen. George Mitchell of Maine, later the Senate's Democratic majority leader, warned that "every citizen and every family will find their living standards reduced by this decision."

Instead, when Reagan removed price controls on oil via an executive order issued shortly after his inauguration, the price fell almost immediately and kept dropping so that by the first year of his second term average gas prices were below 90 cents a gallon.

Thanks to Reagan showing the way, it would be many years before rising gas prices would become a problem for Americans, with many gas stations still selling regular for well under 90 cents even in the late 1990s. Somehow the nation's greedy oil companies were found to be uninterested in gouging consumers when they would have little noticed.

As Brian Domitrovic, economic historian at Sam Houston State University noted recently in Forbes, when Reagan's energy, monetary and tax cut policies were in full swing in early 1983, "the whole energy crisis was on the cusp of vanishing from the scene."

Domitrovic points out that somehow all the petroleum "'supply' crises also disappeared for good. This was so even though the world's major economy was embarking on one of its most remarkable modern runs of multidecade growth."

Inflation, somehow, wasn't accompanying the Reagan boom, as economists of the left believed it must.

Thursday, September 29

Stimulus 2.0

This column originally appeared at US Daily Review.

As I mentioned here on US Daily Review last week in my column titled "Avoiding The "S" Word", Stimulus II, the son of the first stimulus disaster was indeed presented Monday by the current President. The so-called American Jobs Act is more of the same. This is not surprising from a failed President, and a man who had never created a job or balanced a budget prior to or during his reign as President, unless it was with taxpayer dollars.

What the current President has done is created a plan that would take money from the people, and from the "big, bad evil" corporations, and put it toward government jobs. The current President has chosen to increase taxes on business and close so-called loopholes, rather that freeing up much needed capital so that American businesses can build bigger and hire more. I understand the President not wanting to go with the latter plan, that would not create enough votes for his re-election campaign. A plan where he creates government jobs and takes money from the business community, well that helps with his anti-capitalist base.

View this chart and see for yourself:



In Tuesday's Wall Street Journal, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor had this to say about the current President's plan, "Anything that is akin to a stimulus bill is not going to be acceptable," he said. "Over half of the total dollar amount is so called stimulus spending. We have been there, done that. The country cannot afford more spending like a stimulus bill."

As I have suggested before, if the current President were serious about job creation, the first two things he would do to address the high unemployment rate would be to reduce job-killing regulations and cut job-killing tax rates. Instead, the current President opts for more job-killing regulations, more job-killing tax increases and more government spending.

When the current President gave his campaign speech during a joint session of congress last week, he kept repeating, "pass this bill right away". This was an obvious attempt to show leadership from a President who has not been able to do so in any other way after 32 leaderless months in office. His bill that he wanted passed right away, is more of the same, as Majority Leader Cantor said, it is more of the same, it is more of what has already failed.

The Wall Street Journal also pointed out today, "The White House says the tax changes would take effect in 2013 and estimates they would raise $467 billion in additional revenue over 10 years."  So if you are one of the many unemployed Americans, don't worry, Obama's so-called jobs plan will be put into effect in just 15 short months, be sure to go to the current President's website and signup for emails on progress of that "plan".

It was amazing to watch and think during the Republican presidential debate last night, that any one of the people on that stage, will do more for America and job creation as President-Elect in November and December of 2012, than the current President has actually done while in office. We just have to hope that the Hopers and Changers who find themselves unemployed this go-round will be on the side of capitalism and free markets, and not on the side of government funded, government mandated attempts at job creation.

Hopefully Stimulus II is DOA.  It is worth noting that the bill itself is not designed to gain passage. It serves two purposes: It is something the current President can say he presented to congress; and hen congress does not pass the bill as is, the current President has a campaign weapon.