It amused me this week, to read of the list of professions which have proved historically to always provide a living of sorts to those who practice them; fine carpentry, construction carpentry, metalworking, innkeeping and I don’t know what-all. Seamstressing was not among them, which is a pity … but since it his historically been an almost exclusively female-practiced profession/hobby/amusement, perhaps it’s one of those things that we can really blame the patriarchal establishment for. Women could make a living, even if relatively a barely marginal one from sewing, although if you glommed onto a high-visible and high-value client who patronized you extravagantly, a certain degree of prosperity would be assured … but I think mostly that it was one of those things that women were expected to do anyway as part of keeping and maintaining a house, which brought the wages down for those exercising the skill professionally. Eh … never mind.
Economics & Finance
The Logic of Insatiable Centralization
People and businesses have been leaving New York City, and the state of California, at a considerable rate. Some of these people/businesses are *resources* from the standpoint of government and its leaders: they are tax money on the hoof. Cuomo, de Blasio, and Newsome would surely like to have a way of keeping them there. Would these leaders, if they were allowed, favor a legal prohibition on exits, or at least a prohibitive tax penalty for such exit? This is the logic of the Berlin Wall, or of the Reich Flight Tax, the Reichsfluchtsteuer. Such things may seem impossible in America, but the Dems have pushed for a lot of things that would have previously been considered impossible in America.
Comes now Janet Yellen of the Biden administration, with a proposal for a global minimum tax on businesses, thereby nailing the feet of companies to the floor and keeping them from going elsewhere to avoid excessive exactions. Just as Blue-city mayors would rather not have to worry about offering a tax system that is fair and economically-rational, the same is true of the Blue Biden administration.
As a writer at Ricochet has pointed out:
(Yellen’s proposal) is a terrible idea, for a very simple reason: “harmonizing” between governments eliminates competition between them. And it locks in the kind of bloated incompetence that is a feature of even the best governments out there.
We want companies to be able to shop for their preferred home, just as we want Americans to be able to move to low-tax states. Similarly, if a poor country is trying to attract tenants (companies), why should they not be able to offer advantageous tax rates or less bureaucratic overburden?
It would not just be a matter of keeping companies from moving–the proposal would also tend to reduce or eliminate pressure to keep taxes low and minimize government waste.
Basically, this global minimum tax would represent the collusion of the political and bureaucratic classes against everybody else.
And against diversityany diversity of political and economic philosophies.
“Progressives” don’t like fine-tuning incentives; they like issuing prohibitions and giving orders.
Worthwhile Reading
Vitaliy Katsenelson writes worthwhile content for those interested in investing, art, classical music, and philosophical thoughts about life in general. See his recent post about coveting and envy.
Doggedness, canine and human.
A piece about skateboarding and flying, with thoughts from St-Exupery.
Speaking about flying, TxRed the Cat Rotator writes about some of her aerobatic experiences.
“Learn to Code”…Still a Dem Thing
In early 2020, Joe Biden advised coal miners facing unemployment to learn to code, saying:
Anybody who can go down 3,000 feet in a mine can sure as hell learn to program as well… Anybody who can throw coal into a furnace can learn how to program, for God’s sake!
I critiqued this ridiculousness in my post Shovel That Code. (Does Biden think that coal miners stoke furnaces?…That stoking furnaces is a big factor in today’s job market?)
Comes now Obama associate Rahm Emmanuel, with precisely the same advice to unemployed retail workers.
There’s going to be people, like at J.C. Penney and other retail [outlets]. Those jobs are not coming back. Give them the tools, six months, you’re going to become a computer coder. We’ll pay for it, and you’ll get millions of people to sign up for that.
There is not an infinite demand in the US for entry-level programmers. Much offshoring of programming work is taking place…see my post about telemigration…and automation of programming work, which has been happening since the introduction of assemblers and compilers in the mid-1950s, is ongoing.
In my post about Biden’s learn to code comment, I said:
Can you imagine what these people would do to the economy if they ever achieved the degree of power that they so avidly seek?
We may find out, although hopefully the Senate will provide some degree of sanity check.
Why I Like Ike
Why I Like Ike. The Greatest of the Greatest Generation followed by the Worst of the Worst.
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Dwight D. Eisenhower served during the Great War, lived through the Great Depression, and led the Allies to Victory in WW II. But perhaps Ike’s greatest contribution was his leadership as President of the United States, ensuring the peace and building America’s infrastructure while imposing additional sacrifices on his generation to eliminate the WWII debt burden, the failure to do so after the Great War being the primary cause of the next. His hard won legacy of freedom and democracy has been completely squandered over the last half century by fiscally irresponsible Baby Boom politicians.
The Clinton Administration cut the deficit every year, averaging only .8% of GDP, the lowest since the Eisenhower Administration, leaving the budget in what was predicted by many at the time to be a permanent surplus. But the deficit during the Obama/Biden Administration averaged 5.9% of GDP, the largest since WW II, increasing the outstanding debt accumulated over the centuries by 70% and now exceeds 100%, the level at the end of WW II. The CBO projects that under existing law, including repeal of the 2017 tax cuts in 2025, that will double again to 200% of GDP over the next generation as the $200 trillion in unfunded liabilities continue coming due. State and local governments face similar unfunded liabilities that they are prevented from borrowing to fulfill, so subsequent federal bailouts as currently demanded will add to these federal totals. This CBO forecast implies declining middle class/middle age after-tax incomes even as debt and deficits balloon.