Category: Uncategorized

In his latest attempt to pull policy out of a prominent part of his anatomy, Trump is now proposing to make overtime pay tax-free. Is that a good idea?

Of course not! There is no logical justification for treating overtime income differently from other income; the new rule, if approved, would simply encourage workers and employers to collaborate to manipulate the system; it would blow yet another hole in the budget; and it would create a disincentive for employers to hire more workers to meet their needs.

The good news here is that the latest random pander is just another pathetic effort by Trump to prove to workers that he cares about them. He doesn’t. This promise, like the one on tips, has all of the value of a diploma from Trump University; it will disappear into the mists as soon as he takes office. The pledges about tax cuts for the wealthy, on the other hand, can be believed.

If you’re as morbidly fascinated by the New Right as I am, you will enjoy an article in today’s Politico about J.D. Vance and elitism. The gist of the article is that Vance, following several prominent New Right thinkers with common complaints about contemporary America but very different concepts of the just society, views his elite credentials as a feature, not a bug, of his ideology. The idea is that a new elite with proper right-wing ideas will connect with the masses through populism, win elections, and then use their skills to take over the administrative state and remake America. Populism is thus the mechanism by which the counter-elite can gain power and subsequently impose views that have little support among Americans today on the entire country.

A small intellectual elite building relationships with the masses, gaining power, and then using it to remake society even over the short-term wishes of the public–this sounds a lot like Bolshevism, no?

The election is still a coin flip. We will probably go to bed that November night without knowing the winner. But at some point, most likely a few days later, the identity of our next president will become clear. Assume, for purposes of argument, that it is Harris. What will Trump do then?

In some respects, the situation will not be as dire as it was in 2020. Trump does not have control over the military or the DOJ this time, so a coup is much less likely. He won’t have any influence over what the Vice President does, and most of his potential legal theories about the invalidity of mail voting will be foreclosed this time around due to previous judicial decisions, the end of the pandemic, and new state legislation. The Capitol will be heavily guarded in January 2025, so mob action in Washington won’t work, either. In short, Trump will have far fewer options than he did in 2020 and 2021.

He will, of course, be screaming about fraud. The battle will be fought on two fronts. First of all, he will file baseless lawsuits claiming fraud, more as a public relations message than as a serious attempt to overturn the election results. The more significant action will take place at elections offices and around the legislatures in swing states. You can expect state and local MAGA officials to do their best to prevent certification in the ordinary course of business, and GOP legislatures, prompted by right-wing mobs, to try to overturn the popular will. That’s when things will get really sticky.

Oh, and I’m guessing some local governments and even some deep red state governments will openly refuse to accept anyone except Trump as our next president. Don’t be surprised if there is some violence as a result, as federal troops may have to intervene to restore order.

The Economist insists on giving the Fed the credit for the fall in inflation. Is that accurate?

Objectively, no. Increasing interest rates did nothing to resolve supply chain problems arising from the pandemic, which were the principal cause of higher inflation. Housing costs, if anything, were increased as a result of the fall in supply caused by “golden handcuffs.” Gas and food prices are unresponsive to changes in interest rates. Higher rates increased the deficit and, therefore, public spending. Greedflation became less of a problem when consumers started using their power to fight back. And so on.

But that is not the entire story; there is a subjective component to inflation, as well. Future expectations of inflation are driven by the beliefs of the public. Even some left-leaning economists argued that higher rates were required. The Fed took rapid action and talked tough. As a result, the public came to believe, rightly or wrongly, that the Fed was doing what was necessary to fight inflation. In the end, belief became reality; expectations were kept under control, and the war was won.

The answer to the question, then, is partly yes and partly no.

Harris was clearly nervous at the beginning of the debate. When faced with difficult questions, she too often reverted to talking points rather than providing the American people with credible answers. But after about the first ten minutes, she was a steamroller. She reduced Trump to a scowling, angry old man who couldn’t stop ranting about the kids on his lawn. It was great.

Harris proved to any reasonable undecided voter that she was strong and reasonable enough to be president. She made it clear, with considerable help from Trump, that she was more fit–or at least less unfit–to run the country. She accomplished all of her objectives. I couldn’t have asked for much more.

Look for lots of commercials featuring Trump’s ridiculous responses in the near future.

As I’ve noted many times, Trump wants to bring back the economy of the 1950s–one dominated by burly men working in manufacturing, mining, and construction jobs. It is highly unlikely that his scheme of tariffs and deportations will be enough to accomplish his objective. But does he plan to bring back the entirety of the reactionary economy, or just selected pieces of it?

The 1950s were notable for a low level of inequality as a result of extremely high marginal income tax rates and powerful unions. Trump’s vision of America encompasses none of these. It is part Reactionary, part PBP, and completely incoherent.

So tomorrow’s the epic debate.

I guess I’ll be staying up late.

Will Trump act deranged?

Will his answers be strange?

If they are, then his chances aren’t great.

Trump, as usual, will be on the attack throughout the debate. His objectives will be: first, to show that Harris is weak, and can be dominated; second, to tie her to Biden’s record; and third, to portray her as a woke liberal. Harris, on the other hand, will be trying to show the world she is a cool, unflinching, rational decisionmaker. She will talk as much as possible about Trump’s tariffs and Project 2025 and attempt to bait him into self-destructive behavior. Her repeated entreaties to ABC to keep the microphones on is part of that strategy.

As of today, the election is a coin flip. Barring some sort of international crisis that completely flips the picture, the debate will be the last chance for the candidates to add more certainty to the process. As they often say on reality shows, the stakes have never been higher.

If Justice Merchan had advised us that he needed more time to work through the complexities of the immunity issue, or that a delay in the sentencing was part of the ordinary course of business, I would have accepted it. But he didn’t. Instead, he made a decision based on politics that denied Americans information they could have used in the voting booth. That was a mistake.

Merchan is also sending a message that the outcome of the sentencing process may well be different if Trump loses. Much as I would like the man to spend time in jail, that would be a mistake, too. To the maximum extent possible, the criminal law and the political process should be completely separated here.

Harris has run an effective campaign under difficult circumstances. If she loses narrowly, I don’t think the left will put the responsibility on her shoulders; it is more likely they will blame Biden (for being a bad salesman), the MSM (for overstating our economic problems) and the voters (for being gullible enough to support Trump). As a result, Harris will remain the head of the realo faction of the party, albeit with competition from several blue state governors.

Having said that, Trump’s extreme policies are likely to push the party as a whole to the left. Sanders and Warren will be too old to run in 2028, so we will almost certainly see a new generation of fundi candidates calling for fundamental changes to the system, starting with the judiciary and the filibuster. The obvious choice, since she will be old enough to run for president in 2028, will be AOC.

The GOP has become nothing more than a vehicle for the erratic and opportunistic policy prejudices of Donald Trump. It stands for, in the immortal words of Ben Sasse, “the weird worship of one dude.” But what if Trump loses again? Will the GOP remain a kind of cult of the orange man, or will it develop a coherent program that fits within the parameters of liberal democracy?

That decision will be made by the base, which means the Haley wing of the party won’t be running the show any time soon. Trump will have some say in that decision even in the unlikely event that he winds up in jail. The real issue, however, revolves around the future of MAGA once it is forced to mutate into a more consistent ideology in the absence of its preferred leader. What does Trumpism mean when it is no longer tied to the whims and personality of Trump?

MAGA could completely embrace the communitarian vision of the Godly Society, which does not have Trump’s complete support. If so, J.D. Vance will be the next party leader. If not, it could move more towards a mixture of selective libertarianism for reactionaries and genuine economic populism or turn more towards using the power of the state to eradicate wokeness. DeSantis is the obvious choice if the party goes with the latter option.

I’m just speculating here, but I think the base is more libertarian than communitarian in its attitudes. The Godly Society in its entirety–a fundamentally Catholic idea in a land of Protestants and agnostics– is going to be a hard sell for Vance, and fighting wokeness turned out to be a losing issue for DeSantis. I suspect the next Republican leader will be none of the above.

George H.W. Bush didn’t swagger. He didn’t have the “vision thing,” as he put it. He didn’t cut taxes. He presided over a recession. He seemed out of touch with the concerns of average Americans. He wasn’t a natural cultural warrior. No wonder he lost his bid for re-election in 1992.

But history has been kinder to him than the voters. He wasn’t responsible for the collapse of communism in the USSR and Eastern Europe, but he easily could have screwed it up, and he didn’t. He also managed to create the coalition that threw Saddam out of Kuwait, and unlike his son, he knew when to stop. In foreign policy, at least, he was a big winner.

I think Biden will be treated by history in much the same way. Both he and Bush were decent, mostly successful, transitional presidents who were doomed in their individual ways by circumstances beyond their control and by their inability to inspire the American public.

While economists generally oppose trade restrictions, because they reduce efficiency and limit growth, they typically accept the following as legitimate reasons for them:

1. NATIONAL SECURITY: You can’t expect nations to sell weapons, raw materials, and technology with military uses to countries which present an economic and military threat to them. Becoming dependent on technology from those countries is a bad idea, too.
2. LEVERAGE: Tariffs have been used historically as a lever to open markets elsewhere, not as measures that are desirable in and of themselves.
3. PROTECTION OF INFANT INDUSTRIES WITH GREAT POTENTIAL AGAINST UNFAIR, SOMETIMES SUBSIDIZED COMPETITION: This one speaks for itself.
4. The Biden-Harris trade restrictions meet #1 and #3. The proposed Trump universal tariffs don’t meet any of them; they are intended either to revive dying industries from a bygone age or to create a slush fund of taxpayer money for Trump to use to turn his friends into wards of the state. That’s why they are so objectionable.

Some right-leaning commentators who are otherwise unsympathetic to Trump are starting to argue that he nonetheless does not present a real threat to American liberal democracy. Here are their rationales:

1. Sure, Trump can sound like a dictator at times, but he doesn’t have an interest in being one. The record of his first term proves it.
2. OK, maybe he does want to be a dictator, but he just doesn’t have the ability to pull it off. He will always be a man on golf cart, not horseback.
3. OK, maybe he does want to be a dictator, and now has the ability to make himself one. The guardrails will hold. The courts will restrain him, and the military won’t follow illegal orders.

My responses to these are as follows:

1. What the record really shows is that Trump repeatedly tried to behave as an authoritarian in his first term but was thwarted by what he calls the “deep state.” That kind of resistance is unlikely the second time around. Part of his agenda is to make sure it doesn’t.
2. Trump will never make a perfect authoritarian, given the limits of his personality, but not all dictators are hard workers or successful bureaucrats. Stalin was, but Hitler wasn’t. If Trump hires the right people to enable his worst impulses, and he probably will, his second term will be much worse than his first.
3. Trump and Vance have already made it clear that they don’t intend to obey court orders that, in their view, thwart the will of the American people. Trump will also be in a position to appoint loyalists to top military jobs. Can we count on them to obey the Constitution instead of Trump? Is that a risk you really want to run?

The bottom line here is that I don’t know that Trump will try to make himself a dictator, but I know he is capable of trying, and that neither impeachment nor the criminal law will deter him, given the events of the last few years. Leaving aside the many stupid ideas he has about policy, that is enough reason for supporters of liberal democracy to vote against him.

I’ve got those dirty, lowdown, low birth rate blues.

You have to be aware of it; it’s all over the news.

I’ve been a human gaffe machine; for that, there’s no excuse.

If I don’t clean up my act, I’m sure we’re going to lose.

____________________

I’m a man who speaks the truth–the voice of the New Right.

I try to save America; to bring us to the light.

It’s been a real struggle here, but I’m up for the fight.

If I don’t succeed this time, we may well say good night.

__________

I’ve got the blues.

The cat lady blues.

We’ve got to bring the birth rate up

But our women just refuse.

I know to all you atheists

This may sound a bit odd.

But I just want to save this land–

To bring us back to God.