Month: January 2023

The “Only Blue Lives Matter” crowd believes that real Americans have an obligation to give state and local law enforcement personnel their unconditional support, regardless of what unfortunate atrocities they may commit in any given location, because they are the only line of defense between us and an urban minority population that is essentially made up of savages. The “Defund the Police” group, on the other hand, thinks the police are an occupying army that does more harm than good, and should be eliminated. If the number of crime victims goes up dramatically as a result, that is just acceptable collateral damage.

Both of these positions are ridiculous. What we need is effective law enforcement with community support, not an occupying or a demoralized army. More official brutality (racist or otherwise) is not the answer to crime; neither is indifference to victims.

The Ukrainians need tanks to go on the offensive, so it is hardly surprising they are asking for them. I felt last year that the request should be granted, as it is unlikely that the tanks would be used for operations within Russia’s borders. NATO has finally taken my decidedly non-professional advice. Ukraine fans shouldn’t get their hopes too high, however; tanks are most effective when massed, and it isn’t clear that they will be getting enough to make much of a difference.

The Ukrainians also want advanced fighters. I didn’t, and don’t, support this request. There is little evidence that the Russian Air Force controls the skies, fighters are very expensive, extensive training for pilots would be required, and we don’t exactly want the Russians shooting our planes down and reverse engineering them. The costs outweigh the benefits in this instance.

Richard Nixon might have lacked anything we would call charisma, but he was our first successful culture warrior. His positions on school integration, drug use, and anti-war demonstrations sound a lot like predecessors of DeSantis’ war on wokeness. They worked, too; DeSantis, whose gruff, standoffish personality somewhat resembles his, is undoubtedly hoping for a similar result.

There are two major differences between the two, however. First of all, Nixon had vast experience dealing with other, more compelling issues; the culture war thing was just an opportunistic add-on to an already full resume. By contrast, we have little idea of where DeSantis stands on the genuinely important issues of the day. Nixon also made some token efforts to unite the country, because he knew it was part of the job. DeSantis won’t do that; he will just feed red meat to reactionaries and oppress everyone else.

Whatever else you might say about Trump’s response to the virus, the vaccine was created on his watch, so he is entitled to some credit for it. As a result, you would think he would be attacking DeSantis for questioning the value of “his” vaccine. Instead, he is essentially calling DeSantis too responsible for locking down his state during the early stages of the pandemic. What’s going on here?

It’s simple: Trump sees swagger as such an integral part of his appeal that he would rather be strong, irresponsible, and ineffective than prudent and successful. That’s why he wouldn’t wear a mask even if it put both his health and his re-election in jeopardy.

Without Twitter or the unconditional support of Fox News, Donald Trump is a paper tiger. Nevertheless, as of today, he has no official opposition in the race for the GOP nomination. DeSantis has an excuse for this, as he clearly wants to polish his anti-wokeness resume during the legislative session before he announces, but most of the rest of the potential contenders don’t. What conclusions should we draw from this?

First, that Trump’s opponents are still afraid of him. Second, that a paper tiger might as well be a real one if you don’t have the courage to confront him. Finally, do you really want to send someone who is afraid of a hostile tweet to take on Xi and Putin?

We all know that Donald Trump is completely transactional. He demands loyalty, but gives none. He believes in power, not ideals. He only cares about himself.

So what do you make of Trump’s fury at the pro-life absolutists? This otherwise intensely idealistic group made a profoundly corrupt deal with the man on golf cart in order to get a compliant Supreme Court. Now that they have what they want from the Court, their message to Trump seems to be, what have you done for me lately? There are other, more attractive fish in the sea.

Their lack of loyalty proves that they are as transactional as he is, which only serves him right. Turnabout is fair play.

Republicans traditionally draw a clear distinction between tax cuts (good, because they provide incentives for investment, and taxation is theft, anyway) and spending (wealth redistribution is bad and strengthens the hammock of dependency). As a result, their efforts to cut the deficit always focus on spending. Does that make sense?

No, because the deficit doesn’t know if it is growing due to spending increases or revenue shortfalls. Furthermore, many of the programs enacted during the first two Biden years were actually framed as tax cuts. The stimulus, for example, was a tax cut. So are most of the green energy provisions of the IRA.

The fact is that the GOP doesn’t really care about this bogus distinction; what it wants is tax cuts on capital, not targeted tax cuts designed for purposes dear to the left. It will fight to increase taxes on people and programs it dislikes.

A black man has been murdered by out-of-control cops in Memphis, and the usual culture war narratives are already spewing forth. From the woke left, we hear this is more proof that America is irredeemably racist, and that the police are oppressors who should be defunded; from the authoritarian right, we are told that the guy is responsible for his own death, and that the real villains are the people who demonstrated afterwards. Never mind the fact that the cops who did the killing were black, and that the tapes apparently show absolutely no sign of violent resistance; those facts inconveniently get in the way of a good story.

Let me ask you this: would this murder have taken place if the victim had been white, and if it had, would it be a national story? We don’t know. We just don’t. We don’t even know if George Floyd would have died if he had been white. We just know that the policemen responsible for these actions acted outrageously and viciously for reasons only truly known to them.

The standard narratives don’t help. This is a single event of extreme brutality. It doesn’t stand for all of America, and it probably doesn’t even stand for the whole of the Memphis PD. It doesn’t prove that the system is racist, and it doesn’t prove that the system isn’t racist. If we want the answer to that question, we will need a lot more than one data point.

Proudhon famously said “Property is theft.” (Well, he said it in French.) He had something of a case for this statement in 1840, because the predominant form of wealth was land, and the rich couldn’t very well claim to have created it; if you were a land baron, chances are that some family member in the distant past used force or guile to steal it from its previous owner. Today, of course, land is not the primary kind of wealth, and we recognize that ideas, management expertise, and capital help to create value, as well. In today’s world, therefore, Proudhon is clearly wrong.

The GOP turns Proudhon on his head; it believes taxes are theft. To the average Republican, capitalists are job-creating superyachts, and the rest of us are just dinghies drafting in their wake. Every investor is Henry Ford or Steve Jobs; he should be celebrated and taxed as lightly as possible. That, of course, ignores the fact that a large percentage of capital is inherited, and the rest of it would be useless without courts, infrastructure, law enforcement, and an educated labor force, none of which was created by the self-proclaimed “makers”. Someone has to pay to build, operate, and maintain all this stuff. It might as well be the rich, who benefit disproportionately from it; after all, they have more to lose from feeble government than you and I do.

The bottom line is that the labor theory of value is incomplete, but so is the idea that capital is solely responsible for economic growth. Both have legitimate claims; neither has a monopoly on justice. The task of government is to strike a balance that provides adequate incentives for entrepreneurs and a reasonable degree of protection for everyone else.

MBS is the power behind a semi-feudal hereditary monarchy; Xi is the head of a bureaucratic state driven by a 19th and 20th century ideology. They don’t seem very similar at first glance.

But they are both autocrats, and they have something else in common: they can’t stand dissenters. And so, while MBS ultimately permitted women to drive, he imprisoned women who fought for the very same right; similarly, Xi changed his covid policies in response to public demonstrations, but he is going after anyone who went out on the street to demand those very same changes.

Are you surprised? That’s what autocrats do. As a matter of self-preservation, they may take public opinion into account, but conceptually, they don’t view it as relevant.

I laid out four possible scenarios for the debt ceiling crisis last month. I did not include a fifth scenario in which some payments are made under a prioritization scheme. We were told during the Obama years that this was practically impossible, and I’m sure Biden will say the same thing, but circumstances might have changed. If so, what happens next?

Priority would undoubtedly be given to bond payments and to entitlement programs. Everyone else–federal employees, recipients of government spending programs, and contractors–would be left out in the cold. It would be similar to a government shutdown, but worse, because the line of victims would be much longer.

Confidence in the federal government would fall. Bond and stock prices would drop significantly. Making payments on the federal securities that are universally viewed as safe harbor investments would, however, prevent a worldwide financial crisis.

It would be a victory for Republicans who want to dismantle the government at virtually any cost, but it wouldn’t last. Within a week or two, mounting pressure from angry investors, public employees, national security hawks, and taxpayers denied essential federal services would result in a deal. The GOP will deservedly get the blame for the chaos in the interim, with the Democrats gleefully pointing out that the bond payments were largely made to foreigners, including the Chinese.

Is this really worth it, Kevin?

Last week’s issue of The Economist went to great lengths to argue that international trade is not a zero-sum game. True, but trade intersects with geopolitics, which is. A more powerful China inevitably means trouble for the United States.

From a geopolitical standpoint, is China rising or falling? It depends on whether one focuses on hard or soft power, as follows:

1. China’s hard power has never been greater, and it is increasing. China has the financial wherewithal to buy off many Third World countries and to influence the decision-making process of important American allies. In addition, China’s military is becoming more stronger, more professional, and more dangerous.
2. As to soft power, China’s complex language has always been a serious handicap, and an official ideology that effectively sets China well above all other countries has little to offer the rest of the world. The government has made things worse with its clumsy and opaque response to the virus and with its obnoxious “wolf warrior” diplomacy. As a result, China’s only reliable ally at this point is Russia, which is nothing to crow about.

Frankly, Xi is looking more like Kaiser Wilhelm II every day. The German Empire threw its unqualified support to a decaying fellow empire (Austria-Hungary) that looks a bit like today’s version of Russia. As with the Triple Entente, the bonds tying America to its allies in Europe and Asia, as well as unaligned countries with a concurrent interest in limiting China’s territorial claims (e.g., India) are getting stronger with time, thus threatening China with encirclement. Xi could stop this unfavorable trend by playing a bit less to his domestic nationalist gallery and returning to the more pacific tone of his predecessors. Whether he will or not remains to be seen.

C: There is a very real possibility that Ron DeSantis will be the Republican nominee in 2024. How do you feel about that?

M: At least he’s not Trump, but I don’t completely trust him.

S: He’s not Trump, and I don’t trust him.

C: There are obviously points of similarity and difference in your responses. Mark, tell me what you mean.

M: First, let me tell you what I think of Trump.

C: Please do.

M: Trump cut my taxes and business regulations, so, at least on the economy, there was a lot to like there. He’s a totally orthodox Republican on those issues. I’m grateful for that, and I haven’t forgotten.

C: I suspect there is a “but” coming next.

M: But the man is way too fixated on his own grievances and on stoking the divisions in this country. He’s corrupt and narcissistic. He doesn’t care about the American people; he only cares about himself. He loves dictators and ignores the Constitution. He tried to overthrow the government. A tax cut doesn’t justify all of that.

S: Whatever you say, you pathetic RINO.

C: What about DeSantis?

M: I’m mostly OK with what he says about wokeness, but that’s a really small part of the job, and he makes it sound like the biggest part of the job. He doesn’t sound that friendly to business. The Disney thing scares me. If you say something bad about him, he might want to take over your business. And then there’s his ridiculous position on vaccines. Why would I support someone like that?

C: Have you written him off?

M: No, but he has a lot to prove to me.

C: Would it help you to know that he supported big tax and spending cuts in Congress?

M: Yes, but that might have been pure opportunism. As I said, he has a lot to prove to me. He’ll get his chance during the debates.

C: Sebastian, I take it you don’t agree?

S: Hell, no!

C: Why not?

S: The thing about Trump that RINOs like him don’t understand is that the man is on my side. He makes that clear every day. He does battle with the establishment every day. I know he won’t sell me out.

C: Do you really know that? The man has a history of screwing over everyone who supports him. He demands loyalty, but gives none.

S: Every time Trump does something the left and the establishment think is corrupt or outrageous or racist or narcissistic, he’s really telling me he wants to burn it down. That’s what I want.

C: Why?

S: Because I don’t get the respect I deserve–the respect I used to get from this country as a hard-working, self-sufficient, law-abiding taxpayer. If there’s no other way to get it, I say burn it down.

M: And make me a poor man?

S: If necessary, yes. Your money means nothing to me.

C: And DeSantis?

S: First of all, he owes his job to Trump, so he should be willing to wait his turn. If there’s one thing I hate, it’s disloyalty. Second, there’s nothing about his background that suggests that he wants to burn it down. My guess is that he would sell out to the establishment the minute he gets the nomination in order to get elected. Third, his focus on wokeness is OK, but it doesn’t really address my concerns. I don’t really care about trans people–I don’t even know any. What I care about is controlling the border and protecting white Christians. Trump has a clear record on that; DeSantis doesn’t.

C: So you may disagree with Mark on many things, but you agree on one thing–you don’t trust DeSantis until he proves it to you.

S: Exactly. And he has a long way to go.

C: OK. I’ll see you both in a few months, when the field is finally set.

Bret Stephens is a CL. He thinks economic growth is tied inextricably to a small state. As a result, he thinks high levels of Chinese growth are logically impossible, and he has been predicting the decline of China for years. He is now taking China’s covid problems and population issues as evidence that he was right all along. Was he?

In this post, I will examine the rising or declining issue as it pertains to the Chinese economy. Tomorrow, the topic will be geopolitics.

China’s impressive growth rate over the past three decades was the result of several factors, including:

1. A large, underemployed rural workforce that was willing to move to the cities and sacrifice current comforts for the hope of a better future;
2. A relatively predictable and business-friendly government;
3. Protectionist measures, including forced technology transfers, that were accepted by companies lured by the enormous Chinese market;
4. Technological changes that made globalization more attractive to large corporations. and
5. Huge investments in infrastructure.

Very little of this blueprint was original; you could say the same things about the UK and the US in the19th century, to say nothing of Japan, South Korea, and numerous other countries more recently. Two things make China stand out, however: its sheer size; and the fact that it had been a communist country. To make capitalism work in a nation that had demonized it for decades was a truly remarkable accomplishment.

The factors listed above can no longer be the catalyst for the rise of China. The demographic dividend has been spent. Xi has made it clear that he prefers stability and a state-driven economy to dynamism, creative destruction, and the creation of private power centers. The rest of the world now views China as an adversary and a potential predator, not just as a source of cheap goods. There are no technological changes on the horizon that make moving your plant to China more attractive, particularly after the government’s response to the virus. Finally, there are only so many miles of highways and subway lines you can build without creating waste.

China does have the advantages of size, an enterprising people, and lots of money to invest. As a result, an actual decline is unlikely. What you are more likely to see is a degree of stagnation over the next decade or so. Stephens isn’t exactly wrong, but he isn’t exactly right, either.

As I’ve noted many times before, Ron DeSantis has not been a budget cutter as governor of Florida. According to Jamelle Bouie, however, DeSantis was, in fact, a budget hardliner as a member of the House, at which time, among other things, he supported cuts to Social Security and Medicare.

Whoops! The elderly are a huge part of the reactionary base. Wars on wokeness and cuts to “welfare” are certainly welcome to them, but reductions in Social Security and Medicare? Not so much.

Chances are, the Hungarian Candidate’s enthusiasm for entitlement cuts back in the Tea Party’s heyday were just as opportunistic as his war on wokeness is today. Nevertheless, Trump and his other adversaries are going to make him wear this, bigly.