Month: December 2017

There was a time when intelligence was viewed as a single concept, but that idea appears to be out of vogue, and for very good reasons.  To use myself as an example, I’m pretty good at identifying and solving abstract problems, but put a hammer in my hand, and I’m hopeless.  Different people have different abilities. That’s just the way it is.

Is “character” a monolith?  For much the same reason, I don’t think so.  If sexual fidelity equated to reliability in politics, many of the world’s greatest politicians would have been miserable failures.  And then, on the other hand, you have Charles I, who was faithful to his wife, but who never otherwise kept a promise in his life, and paid for it with his head . . .

5.  It will reduce the amount of money available for badly-needed public investments.

4.  It will drive up interest rates and the cost of health insurance on the individual market.

3.  It weaponizes the tax code in a manner that is unprecedented and invites retaliation in kind, thereby worsening the blue/red divide.

2.  It exacerbates inequality.

And, the #1 reason is . . .

1. Its impact on growth will be negligible, based on recent experience (Bush tax cuts; Kansas), logic (existing corporate cash mountains; low interest rates), and informal surveys of CEOs (the Cohn tape, among others).

However much you may deplore it, Murkowski’s vote on the tax cut bill made perfect sense.  Her price was drilling in ANWR, and she got it.  Case closed.

It’s harder to understand Susan Collins’ vote, because she didn’t get any such quid pro quo.  She’s not stupid, so she has to know that the bill will, among other things, increase taxes for some of her constituents, severely damage the individual health insurance market, drive up interest rates, and exacerbate inequality.  Why would she do it?

There are only two plausible answers:  donor and peer pressure.  Neither reflects well on her.  But, at least, she can always say she won one for the Trumpster. That should go over well when she runs for re-election.

In light of the events of the last few weeks, I offer the following graphic:

Jerk               Immoral         Illegal

Representative      No.                Probably.          Yes

Job Nexus.               No.                 No.                     Yes

Here is what the terms mean:

”Jerk” refers to offensive behavior that does not involve violence or an abuse of power.

”Immoral” means conduct involving an abuse of power that is not illegal.

”Illegal” speaks for itself.

”Representative” means you cannot abide the idea of such a person acting as your agent in  public.

”Job nexus” means the offensive conduct is clearly tied to the qualifications for the job.  For example, one wouldn’t hire a known liar as a bookkeeper.

As you can see, I don’t view jerkish behavior as being a job disqualification, although it might be if the behavior persists and the job is very public.  Illegal  behavior is always a disqualification even if there is no nexus to the job itself.  Immoral behavior is the closest call.  It depends on how egregious the facts are.

 

The Senate tax bill is such a travesty, one barely knows where to begin.  A good place to start is the unprecedented use of the tax code to punish the blue states and the universities.  There is no reasonable economic case for that;  the motivation is purely political.

The Democrats will have every reason to reciprocate when they regain power. What would a blue tax bill look like?  In all likelihood, it would pay for new social programs with stiff taxes on fossil fuels generated in red states.

Take that, Texas and West Virginia.  Oh, and by the way, Texas, don’t come asking blue states to subsidize your bad land use practices when the next hurricane hits.

As you can imagine, this is a very short list:

1.  It is clear that neither Clinton nor Bush foresaw that China would become the world’s workshop when they were negotiating the terms of China’s admission to the WTO.  The agreement should have provided more protection for American exports and intellectual property.
2.  The Trump Administration is right to join with the EU in arguing that China is not a “market economy.”  Large Chinese firms doing business with the US and Europe are essentially arms of the government, not independent actors.  That’s the meaning of the “Chinese dream;”   China as a whole prospers, and the benefits are distributed by the government as it sees fit.

That’s it.  Just because China is a mercantilist state doesn’t mean that we should behave in the same manner.  Our businesses, unlike theirs, are independent agents, and we cannot protect them in the same way.  The appropriate response to Chinese state capitalism is to use the rules that are in place to our advantage, not to tear them up and rely solely on our brute market power to get what we want.  The latter approach has already failed;  the public just doesn’t know it yet.

Steve Bannon, as we know, has no use for international entities and agreements. In his view, everything revolves around the power and values of individual nation-states.  In particular, he wants the US and European countries to collaborate in crusades against Islam and China, but on the basis of common Judeo-Christian values and interests, not through the UN or any kind of binding agreement.

Bannon’s brand of nationalism, of course, helped to bring about the two world wars.  It is much more likely that neighboring countries in a nationalist frenzy will fight each other than cooperate in a battle against a remote group of outsiders. Leaving that aside, however, consider the example of Northern Ireland after Brexit:  the British, Northern Irish, and Irish governments all deplore the idea of a hard border, but without the involvement of the EU, there doesn’t seem to be any viable way to avoid one.  All of the parties in Ireland will suffer needlessly as a result.

Sometimes, international entities and agreements are indispensable, even if Bannon doesn’t understand that.

It hasn’t received the appropriate amount of publicity, but the fact is that Trump’s trade agenda is already a failure.  I say that because his theory was that the US had so much market power, it could dispense with multilateral agreements and impose more favorable bilateral agreements on its partners.  The administration has made no–zero–progress on that front.  Instead, our partners are making trade deals among themselves, and leaving us out in the cold.

It is clear that the parties to the US-less TPP still want us to join, as we should, when Trump is gone. Will the Democrats rise to the occasion, or will they make the mistake of trying to out-Trump the man himself on trade in an effort to win back the 70,000 votes in the Rust Belt that cost them the election?  My hope is that Trump will make protectionism so unpopular, free trade will be back in 2020.  Whether that will actually occur or not, I do not know.