Kamalanomics

Michael Boskin says that there are three sources of insights into Harris’s economic thinking, “her positions when running for president in 2020, the Biden-Harris economic policies, and the economic program she rolled out Friday.”

 
Starting with the new policies she announced in a speech last Friday, Boskin explains that Harris wants to give first-time home buyers a $25,000 government check, favors subsidies to developers on low-income housing, and supports price controls on groceries." (Kamalanomics, Hoover Institute)

I wouldn't call those "insights," or "thinking." Give the general home buying public $25,000 to buy a house and all housing prices go up $25,000. That's 5th grade math. Only the free market works--even Communist China learned that when their economy was flailing. Definitely cat-lady economic theory.

Which glass is yours?

What will Trump's economic policy be?

 "Slow growth is anti-poor and anti-minority. Here’s a simple way to analyze economic policy: Ask how the policy changes the probability of a young person finding a job. If the policy increases their chances, it’s good policy. If it decreases the probability, it’s bad policy." Bill Watkins, California Lutheran University

The Rust Belt blames Obama, and rightly so

"Donald Trump hasn’t wasted time moving to revive America’s economic growth, with an emphasis on manufacturing. Critics may say the recent Carrier deal, which will save 800 American jobs, is small potatoes, but Mr. Trump’s pledge to reduce regulation is decidedly not. A new analysis confirms that the average industry’s regulatory risk has increased nearly 80% from 2010—and that this burden particularly hurts manufacturing and heavy industry. . . as regulatory risks grew and capital expenditures shrank, major corporations also cut jobs by more than 1.1 million. Among the biggest losers were heavy manufacturing, airlines, railroads, information technology and consumer products—America’s industrial core." The Rust Belt is Right to blame Obama, Wall Street Journal, Dec. 18, 2016

Immigrants want a conservative America

Why do people cross our borders risking life and limb, leaving families behind, and even participating in smuggling activities? Really, are we so great they just can't wait to get to Toledo or Peoria? No, it's because they want what conservatives offer, not the government heavy-handed control and bias of the liberals which they just escaped. They want a life without police control; without high crime; they want a chance to create a business; they want religious freedom; they want to voice their concerns without going to jail or having their taxes investigated; they want a good education for their children free of propaganda and historical revisionism. Liberals try to destroy what immigrants are trying to achieve and insist immigrants must vote for them. It's conservatism--free markets, smaller government, freedoms guaranteed by the Bill of Rights--that brings them here--someone should tell them. Maybe you?

Jobless rate holds steady at 6.3%

After reading the butterfly kisses account of the “recovering economy” in the Washington Post (all jobs lost during the recession are back, and oh yes, labor participation rate is the lowest since 1978) I scanned through the comments.  Noticed this realistic one—can’t tell if the writer is left, right or middle, but s/he has obviously lost the rose colored glasses the government economists have been passing out for 5 years.

I think most of us are smart enough not to swallow the government data on job growth, rising home prices, or the brainless comment that "“we’re in the clear for the second quarter,” or any other data they throw at us. We're not as gullible as they think we are...we live in the REAL world, not from their fantasy realm in some ivory tower where they look down their noses at the working classes and fudge the numbers to make their assessments look good. How do they sleep at night?

Wonk blog, Washington Post

Here’s what an Obama recovery with added taxes, regulations, bank bail outs and crazy “cash for clunkers” looks like: 2.5years longer than any other recovery since WWII.

The speech at Knox College

I have rarely heard or seen such a tepid audience.  Even hand picked they’ve heard it all before.

More instability for the economy

“U.S. debt-escalation leads to poverty and is theft from citizens. 76% of people living paycheck to paycheck (CNN Money). This is tragic, immoral, unbiblical, and wrong. So why is Obama/Soros/Reid/Pelosi so determined to beget an influx of foreign labor, adding more debt and instability to our country?”  Christians for a Sustainable Economy

A summary of expectations for the next four years

This summary is from Rachel, at Thoughts of a Conservative Mom, and the revelations about Petraeus and the election cover up and the bombing of Israel hadn’t even made the head lines yet (November 7).

A flood of regulations that Obama kept on hold and the media hid until after the election will start going into effect, strangling struggling businesses.

Taxmageddon – a record $494 billion tax hike – will go into effect on January 1st, 2013, plunging us into even deeper recession.

The Left will start going after the internet, citizen journalism, social media and talk radio – any competition to the Left-wing propagandist media.

Obama and the Democrat-controlled senate will begin ceding our national sovereignty to the United Nations, one treaty at a time. Parental rights, gun rights, and internet freedom are especially under threat.

Obamacare will go into full effect, bankrupting private providers and putting America on the road to single-payer, as was intended.

Planned Parenthood will expand on the taxpayer dime, preparing to perform thousands of abortions via socialized medicine.

A direct assault on religious liberty as Obama’s HHS forces religious business owners to pay for abortions, and tries to force the Catholic church – the largest competitor to the Welfare State – out of the health care industry and other charities altogether.

With the Republicans still controlling congress, Obama will simply go around them and rule by executive diktat. Republicans will have to grow the spine needed to hold him in check.

With Democrats still in control of the senate, no budgets will be passed. All of Obama’s judges and appointments will be confirmed. And if they aren’t, he’ll go ahead and appoint them anyway.

Obama will likely appoint at least two more activist judges to lifetime appointments in the Supreme Court. The senate will confirm them.

Obama will continue to block drilling and natural gas development, driving up gas prices and making us dangerously dependent on the volatile Middle East while he dumps billions more into “green” energy subsidies.

Obama’s EPA will destroy the coal industry, causing electricity rates to skyrocket, as he imposes thousands more “green” regulations on what’s left of our manufacturing and other industries.

Illegal aliens will be granted amnesty, voting rights and welfare benefits.

Our border will remain unprotected as drug cartels and terrorists invade with impunity.

Obama will continue to funnel money to the Muslim Brotherhood and weapons to terrorists.

Israel will be forced to attack Iran to prevent it from going nuclear. Obama will not support them. The Muslim world will not be afraid of action from the United States, and will feel free to join forces to destroy Israel.

Christian persecution across the globe will intensify, as the Obama administration looks the other way.

Obama’s spending spree will continue, likely bringing our national debt to a suicidal $22 Trillion before 2016.

More people will be forced into dependency on food stamps and other government programs as the Cloward-Piven strategy accelerates.

The Fed will continue to print more money out of thin air, creating hyperinflation.

We will continue on the road towards Greece. We must be prepared to feed and defend our loved ones, and care for the needy if and when the welfare state collapses.

It’s always the economy, Stupid, II

For me it's abortion, I admit I'm a single issue voter, and Obama is the most anti-life at both ends president we’ve ever elected. But for most Americans, who don’t even seem that concerned about our safety and security also heading for the toilet, it's the economy. And on that Obama has been flat out awful--going after healthcare instead of the economy when Democrats had 2 of the 3 branches of government. While people lost jobs, homes and hope. Never waste a crisis, and he's had plenty to play with--like right now in the Middle East. And he will keep his promise to destroy coal, part of Ohio's economy. And what do Ohioans do? Act stupid and support him.

Under Obama’s watch, black unemployment has gone from bad to worse. It was 12 percent when Obama took office, and now it’s 14 percent. Average black unemployment in Ohio last year was 17.2 percent, compared to 7.6 percent for whites and 8.8 percent for Hispanics and Latinos, according to the most recent annualized figures available from the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services. But employed, middle class black Ohioans, secure in public service positions with tenure or unions, will vote him another 4 years.

"As the U.S. unemployment rate hit 9.5% in June 2009 and a shocked public was looking for a response, the new president introduced the Affordable Care Act. Whatever else one may say about ObamaCare, it has nothing directly to do with U.S. employment. For the next nine months, as unemployment ran between 9.5% and 10%, Congress at Mr. Obama's insistence worked on his health-care legislation. When Mr. Obama signed the bill into law in March 2010, the unemployment rate was 9.8%. If an opponent wanted to describe this in partisan terms, he might say that the president legislated an entitlement dream while the economy burned." Daniel Henninger, It's always the economy, Stupid. Sept. 27, WSJ

http://www.daytondailynews.com/news/news/national-govt-politics/black-joblessness-redefining-presidential-race/nR8N8/

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443328404578020413697528982.html

Paul Ryan on the current president

Let me say a word about the man Mitt Romney will replace. No one disputes President Obama inherited a difficult situation. And, in his first 2 years, with his party in complete control of Washington, he passed nearly every item on his agenda. But that didn’t make things better.
In fact, we find ourselves in a nation facing debt, doubt and despair.
...

This is the worst economic recovery in 70 years.
Unemployment has been above 8 percent for more than three years, the longest run since the Great Depression. Families are hurting.
We have the largest deficits and the biggest federal government since WW II.
Nearly 1 out of 6 Americans are in poverty--the worst rate in a generation. Moms and dads are struggling to make ends meet.
Household incomes have dropped by more than $4,000 over the past four years.
Whatever the explanations, whatever the excuses, this is a record of failure.

Obama’s over his head; voters are over their depth

Another dismal job growth and unemployment report with the highest tax increase in history looming. Obama’s response? More of the same.  If Romney let’s this slip by him, maybe we’ve got what we deserve.

“On Friday, the same architects who designed this economy built to stall were calling for one more rescue by the Fed. And gold jumped more than $60 an ounce, suggesting that markets believe that Chairman Ben Bernanke will oblige with some version of QE III. But the lesson of the last four years is that easier money can provide at most a temporary reprieve from otherwise rotten policies. Markets rally for a time, but then they fade when the money-fix is withdrawn.

Far more constructive would be a bipartisan attempt to remove the tax cliff that the economy is rolling toward in January 2013. One of the biggest fears among investors and businesses is that tax rates on capital gains, dividends and personal income are all scheduled to go way up at the same time.

This is an entirely artificial crisis created by the mantra of "temporary, targeted" tax cuts, combined with Mr. Obama's campaign strategy to run against high-income earners with his Buffett rule and attacks on bankers and Bain Capital. If Mr. Obama wants a better chance at re-election, and especially with troubles in Europe and China, he'll call off the class war and call for no change in taxes for at least another two years until there is a larger tax reform. He'd find he'd get little resistance from Republicans.

As for Mitt Romney, the latest slowdown in jobs and growth gives him an enormous opening to offer the American people a better way. Criticizing the results of the last four years and saying that Mr. Obama is in over his head are not enough. “

An economy built to stall

It’s not about jobs—that’s why the economy hasn’t recovered

It’s about something called “fairness.”  But no one knows what that is.  Is it 35%?  But Warren Buffett actually pays 50%.  Would that be fair?  And if 50% is fair, why not 75%.  Why not really kill all job growth? Wouldn’t that be fair?

It’s about fairness,” Secretary [of Labor] Solis said while explaining President Obama’s re-election platform.“It’s about fairness in the workplace; it’s about fairness in education; and it’s about fairness in terms of what services are provided by government. And if we can’t have say-so in that, then this isn’t the dream that all of us have aspired to be a part of.”

Uncertainty holds back economic recovery

Politicians, policy experts and business leaders gathered in September to try to make sense of the economy and what the government is doing about it. I noticed this panel and the burden our non-elected appointees and czars are imposing on the economy. Small businesses, particularly, can't keep up with the rules, or even hire the staff to wade through them to be in compliance, so why hire or expand, even if you have the money or credit? We were discussing the business climate with a retired friend last night who has passed his firm on to his sons (who divided it), and they no longer have permanent workers, everything is contracted. The complexity of running a small business is overwhelming them. This is why stiffer regulations are supported by some very large firms--puts the competition out of business.

"The next panel “The Uncertain Environment and what it Means for American Business” was led by Bob Norton, chief income tax officer for Vertex Inc. Panelists included David A. Heywood, vice president, tax and general counsel, Lockheed Martin Corp.; Hal S. Jones, senior vice president and CFO, The Washington Post Co.; Michael Kenny, CFO, Panduit Corp.; and Cathy Santoro, vice president, finance and assistant treasurer, Wal-Mart Stores Inc.

Norton listed areas that are replete with uncertainty on many fronts. Among them: global economy, geo-political sea changes, technology revolution, security (cyber and other) and regulation. He also provided statistics to reinforce reasons why businesses are facing uncertainty. For example, federal agencies issued 3,573 final rules in 2010, while Congress enacted 217 bills into law. The result of this, he added, is that ”significant law-making power is being delegated more and more to unelected bureaucrats;” the number of pages in the Federal Register last year topped 81,405; and the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act requires 11 new federal agencies tasked with creating 235 rulemaking provisions – 100 rules by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission alone.

Jones said that two-thirds of The Washington Post Co.’s revenue comes from education and training, and that this year more than 400 pages of new regulations have been issued related to education. Dealing with so many new rules has caused the company to hold back on hiring, marketing, planning or expanding. The company is willing to comply with the rules, he said, but not knowing what they are is causing the business to stay on hold.

Kenny expressed concern about tax reform and stated he favors business tax reform – not corporate tax reform. (With more than 90 percent of U.S. businesses operating as pass-through private companies, thus taxed at the individual rate, just doing corporate tax reform won’t help these private companies.) He also noted concern for companies that are not large enough to stay abreast of the constant flurry of new rules and laws, not a issue for his company, but a real challenge for untold others."

FEI

Blogging break for Christmas

I'm never busy (by other people's standards) but I do get distracted by the computer's presence, so I'm taking a break. In addition, I'm gob-smacked by what's going on in Washington right now. I'm not a birther, but I'm beginning to believe our President is an alien, not from Africa but from outer space. A being no one, not the left and certainly not the right, knows how to deal with. This tax bill is by far the worst piece of legislation since Obamacare, and Republicans even with the help of the Tea Party, just can't stop this steamroller of debt and deception. And either his critics on the left are too dumb to catch on, or they are in on it for the media's benefit and are laughing at the Tea Party which has been defeated before the battle even started in Congress. In either case, I just don't even want to blog about it, so better I just enjoy the time of real peace, which is Jesus, not party, not politics, and not nation.

What exactly is "top priority" for President Obama? Not the economy, stupid

It certainly isn't the oil spill is it? He'll do what he always does. Create a commission and build a gallows for the CEOs. Then pounce on more green in the sky plans.

If you google "Barack Obama top priority" you'll get 444,000 matches, many duplicates, many off topic. But most will show he'll put on a happy (or defiant) face for whomever is the audience. A true politician--that behavior knows no party, kingdom or philosophy. When he was campaigning he was all over the priority map, just like today, but ECONOMY certain was a biggie--and it has worsened since he became the candidate to beat in July 2008 because he switched priorities as soon as he took office. Dates refer to the reporting, not the speech--and I've selected just a few--but it was pretty obvious, unemployment / jobs / economy certainly took a back seat to taking over segments of the economy, discouraging investment, and raising taxes during the recession.

Economy, June 10, 2008

Liberalize abortion laws, October 17, 2008

Improve image abroad, November 6, 2008

Economy, November 7, 2008

India, (date not posted, but appears to be 2008)

Health care reform, June 3, 2009

Haiti, January 14, 2010

Clean energy jobs, January 27, 2010

Jobs, January 29, 2010

Health care, January 28, 2010

Unemployment, April 2, 2010

Jobs, April 27, 2010

Oil spill, April 28, 2010

Obama's not tired, he says, just getting started

Glenn Beck says he’s tired of socialism and the corruption in Washington; Obama says he’s not. Tired, that is. Someone at the White House is listening to Beck and mimicking him.

“When I’m busy, and Nancy’s busy, with a mop cleaning up somebody else’s mess, we don’t want somebody sitting back saying, ‘you’re not holding the mop the right way’ … ‘you’re not mopping fast enough’ … ‘that’s a socialist mop.’”

“Grab a mop. We need help.”

Obama, at the Westin St. Francis Hotel here after visiting New Orleans earlier in the day, addressed a small group of donors at an intimate dinner for 160, and then moved several floors downstairs to a larger ballroom, where he addressed a sold-out crowd of about 900 attendees. The singer Tracy Chapman warmed up the ballroom crowd with her 1988 hit, “Talkin’ ‘Bout a Revolution.”

Guests at the dinner contributed $34,000 per couple, and tickets for the main event ranged between $500 and $1,000. The DNC expects to have raised about $3 million in total.

. . . “I hope that all of you guys understand that we’re just getting started.”

“Some of our opponents think that they can wear us down,” he said. “I’m not tired. I’m refreshed. We are not going to stop.” Politico

The WSJ Washington Wire didn’t mention the “socialist mop” statement, maybe because they know that’s the only one he’s got?

Remember, folks, he said he intended to fundamentally change the United States of America. He said he was going to redistribute wealth. He was going to raise energy costs with cap and trade. He was going to take over the health care system. He told us. Think back a year ago, two years ago. Was your life so awful before he began the run for the White House? Are you better off now with all this "change?"

Failure all around, but great words

Health care. The Obama fiasco. Why, to fix what's wrong, did he want to take over what was working?

"The whole Obama era to date has been wasted in a historic, amateurish botch of the health-care issue. This began as a crusade for social justice — to cover the uninsured, whose numbers were suitably exaggerated, as most of them are people changing jobs from one health-insuring employer to another, or foreigners resident in this country, legally or otherwise, or the indigent, who are eligible for Medicaid." Conrad Black, a fan of FDR which I am not, continues here.

This writer uses magnificent phrases and words that I can't resist parsing:

• the president moved crisply
  
• hackneyed bunk
  
• political capital is evaporating
  
• create an appetite
  
• festooned every bill with pendulous payoffs [my favorite]
  
• a monstrosity of patronage and logrolling
  
• 2/3 of the stimulus is for dispersal closer to elections
  
• unemployment is knocking at the door of 10 percent
  
• [cap and trade] was based on the unproved Al Gore science-fiction vision of the environment
  
• politically hazardous reconciliation process
  
• [proposed tax increases] subject of an indecent amount of dissembling
  
• end America’s long reign as the world’s wealthiest per capita large country
  
• locked arms to over-empower the failed regulators
  
• sat mute as suet puddings [my second favorite]
  
• criminalization of policy differences
  
• neutered by the trial lawyers
  
• suborned by the dead hand of organized labor
  
• legislators are bound hand and foot to different special interests
  
• fable about huge numbers of people building windmills
  
• the world’s love for weak or at least misguidedly diffident American leaders
  
• the world’s most odious and hostile regimes, including those of Putin, Ahmadinejad, Chávez, and the Myanmar colonels
  
• Afghanistan has become a waffle
  
• [Biden] wants to fight the cave-dwelling terrorists of Waziristan from off-shore
  
• the political scientists of Hollywood
  
• [Peggy Noonan] briefly pixilated by Obamamania
  
• more of the same, only worse

"This president has achieved less in his first nine months than any incoming president since Warren Harding. It is not too late, but it looks now like the people will vote again for change, with increasing desperation, next year and in 2012. If the country does not get leadership equal to the scale of its problems, as it did in 1860 and 1932, the decline of America will move from a slope to a fall. This emperor still has no clothes, and it is not racism to notice it."

The Utopian vision, Arcadia, is associated with bountiful natural splendor, harmony, and is often inhabited by shepherds. The concept also figures in Renaissance mythology.

An Arcadian Fantasy--Earthy Day

From, Conclusions: Robert Carter, "Knock, Knock: Where is the Evidence for Dangerous Human-Caused Global Warming?" ECONOMIC ANALYSIS & POLICY, VOL. 38 NO. 2, SEPTEMBER 2008.

"To focus on the chimera of human-caused greenhouse warming while ignoring the real threats posed by the natural variability of the climate system itself is self-delusion on a grand scale.

• That human-caused climate change will prove dangerous is under strong dispute amongst equally well qualified scientific groups. The null hypothesis, which is yet to be contradicted, is that observed changes in climate or climate-related phenomena are natural unless and until it can be shown otherwise. The science of climate change is far from settled. Meanwhile, there is no compelling evidence that human-caused climate change poses a strong future danger.

• No measurable environmental benefits have resulted from actions taken under the Kyoto Protocol, nor can they be predicted to result from carbon dioxide emission restrictions more generally. On the other hand, the social and economic disbenefits of governments deploying such instruments are now reported daily in the media. The available scientific data, and proved relationships, do not justify the belief that carbon dioxide emission controls can be used as a means of ‘managing’ or ‘stopping’ future climate change.

• Bowen (2005) has well written:
‘Science is based upon empiricism – the objective observation of natural phenomena, and the attempt to encompass them in classifications, models and theories of everexpanding scope. This enormously important principle of the Enlightenment still needs affirming. The principle is under threat, from those of every religious and political persuasion and from those of none, who seek to impose their world view upon scientific enquiry. Science is not more important than morality. But without empiricism, there can be no science’.

The projections (which are not predictions) of computer modellers that are now almost the sole basis for IPCC climate alarmism must be assessed against the best available empirical evidence.

• Climate variation has always occurred and always will. Citizens are right to be concerned about the possibly damaging effects of both the warmings and coolings which lie ahead. As with most potential natural disasters, however, the appropriate action is to have in place reactive response plans to manage the change when it occurs. Dangerous climate extremes will not be prevented by reducing human carbon dioxide emissions, but – as they occur – should be adapted to using similar response strategies to those applied to other dangerous natural events such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunami and sea-level change.

• Attempting to ‘stop climate change’, or, in the present state of our knowledge and technology, even to modify it, is an arcadian fantasy. The Australian government should defer its Emissions Trading Scheme bill until the completion of a thorough and independent judicial review into alleged humancaused global warming – as assessed against the reality of dangerous natural climate change.

• Lastly, because we are far from understanding all the climatic feedback loops concerned, cutting carbon dioxide emissions is as likely to ‘harm’ as to ‘help’ future climate as judged against a human viewpoint.

Therefore, application of the principles of ‘do no harm’ and ‘precaution’ implies that the correct climate policy is one of monitoring climate change as it happens, adapting to any deleterious trends that emerge, and compensating those who are disadvantaged through no fault of their own."

The cost for hope and change--women and minorities hit hardest

“President Bush ran budget deficits averaging $300 billion annually. After harshly criticizing Bush's budget deficits, President Obama pro­posed a budget that would run deficits averaging $600 billion even after the economy recovers and the troops return home from Iraq. [Where, oh where, are all the weepers and moaners who decried the cost of the war for 6 years? nb]

The President's tax policy is the only sharp break in economic policy. President Bush reduced taxes by approximately $2 trillion; President Obama has proposed raising taxes by $1.4 trillion. In doing so, President Obama has rejected the most successful Bush fiscal policy. In the 18 months following the 2003 tax rate cuts, economic growth rates doubled, the stock market surged 32 percent, and the economy created 1.8 million jobs, followed by 5.2 million more jobs in the next 27 months. Not until the housing bubble burst several years later did the economy finally lose steam. Pro-growth lawmakers should embrace tax relief policies that have proven successful, while rejecting the runaway spending that has been business as usual in Washington. . . President Obama's pledge to halve the budget deficit by 2013 is hardly ambitious. The budget deficit will quadruple in 2009 to $1.75 trillion, and cutting that level in half would still leave deficits twice as high as under President Bush.” The Obama Budget