Eli Lake on Jordan Neely; John Lloyd on France and decivilization; Rob Henderson on the Dark Triad traits in a victimhood culture; Lyn Alden on inflation
If we are honest with ourselves we all know that entitlement reform isn't going to happen. We are going to continue down this path until a train wreck.
Rather than wasting political capital on the futile, people should recognize that the only real decision before us is how what remains of our wealth is going to be deployed while it's still here. I will make the case for directing it towards the item with the greatest moral and economic purpose, children. Specifically, cash transfers to parents for having children. When things collapse its the next generation that has to pick up the mess, best there be enough of them.
Pass bigger child tax credits. Make children add to the standard deduction. Have dependents lower % tax rates. Offer increased incentives for married vs single households.
Offer federal matching funds for any state that implements no strings school choice.
Eliminate the cap on SS & Medicare taxes (this is going to happen at some point anyway), but make the tax rate decline if you have more kids (this makes a lot of sense given the nature of the benefit).
If you can't pay for it, do it anyway. The other side will come along and spend what you don't spend. If an opportunity to cut bad spending or eliminate tax loopholes you don't like (SALT) comes up go right ahead, but recognize that entitlements are the only game in town and entitlements aren't getting cut.
Taxes have been around the same % of the economy forever, it's practically an economic law. You can redistribute the burden some from friends to enemies, but it isn't changing overall up or down.
The nice thing about spending on getting people to have children is it's really the only long term solution to the entitlement problem. It's also a national security issue (who has higher TFR will determine whether we or China dominate, and luckily they aren't very good at making kids).
I agree with Alden. To me, this is one of the great under appreciated realities of central bank activities. And that is that when push comes to shove, central bankers and their political comrads almost always resort to printing more money. Although this sounds counterintuitive to readers of this blog, that is what usually happens. I wouldn't have believed this, had I not been persuaded by Ray Dalio's extensive research on historical banking/currency crises. If you haven't already read his stuff, I'd encourage you to do so. Dalio also describes this effect in many of his interviews, which one can find on Youtube.
She's right that current inflation is NOT like " In the 1970s, most of the money supply growth was from bank lending (related to demographics primarily)." Instead, recently "most of the money supply growth was from fiscal deficits" [Arnold seems to often make this 70s analogy mistake]
She has 2 great 100-yr charts from 1920-2020 showing a) oil-gold relative prices, & b) oil-USD [I wish she had a third c) gold-USD].
She notes the difficulty of treating inflation as fixable by interest rates alone by reference to the Taylor rule (of increasing rates as inflation increases): "the Taylor rule says that the Fed should have gotten up to nearly 12% interest rates (and now back down to “only” 8%) in this cycle. " (plus I like her uses of parentheses.) She's excellent about deflating the bubbles of an easy fix.
"When people say they want low inflation, what they really mean is that they want **disinflationary growth**. They want inflation fixed by more supply, not due to suppressed demand. If we get inflation under control by having a recession, and then stimulate our way out of that recession and have
another round of above-target inflation because of it, then that’s not really fixing the problem. "
Sad, but realistic conclusion, is that it's the fiscal deficits that must be reduced. "The government would likely have to restructure the public debt and the existing mix of taxation and spending, encourage more industrial and energy production to come online, and then leave it to the Fed to harden the currency after that point. That combination might give a decent foundation for a period of longer-term disinflationary growth, but is extremely difficult to do and is basically a non-starter politically."
The required political decisions are non-starters, politically. No explicit mention of Biden Dem excess gov't spending, nor the stealing of elections thru gov't supported censorship of the truth.
Lloyd is correct, but the driving force is the invasion of the third world into the first one. The countries of Europe and North America are being overrun with migrants.
If Jordan Neely were a visitor inside upscale New York cafes, restaurants, or even City Hall, he would have been dealt with by the legal system long, long ago.
"... the general public would prioritize someone like Neely as a greater threat than several of the people who have been given long sentences in the J6 protest."
Maybe. That probably depends on whether we are talking about J6 who broke down the doors and beat on police or the ones who walked in and took selfies with police. Were there any in a gray area between those extremes?
"so if they are printing money to help the government put more money into circulation than it removes, ..."
Everything I find on Google suggests the Fed is removing money. Maybe more important, everything says the money supply is shrinking.
"... then changes in interest rates are going to be a distant second in terms of any impact they may have."
Distant, or just second? If they print money, can the money supply still decrease because interest rates are higher?
If we are honest with ourselves we all know that entitlement reform isn't going to happen. We are going to continue down this path until a train wreck.
Rather than wasting political capital on the futile, people should recognize that the only real decision before us is how what remains of our wealth is going to be deployed while it's still here. I will make the case for directing it towards the item with the greatest moral and economic purpose, children. Specifically, cash transfers to parents for having children. When things collapse its the next generation that has to pick up the mess, best there be enough of them.
Pass bigger child tax credits. Make children add to the standard deduction. Have dependents lower % tax rates. Offer increased incentives for married vs single households.
Offer federal matching funds for any state that implements no strings school choice.
Eliminate the cap on SS & Medicare taxes (this is going to happen at some point anyway), but make the tax rate decline if you have more kids (this makes a lot of sense given the nature of the benefit).
If you can't pay for it, do it anyway. The other side will come along and spend what you don't spend. If an opportunity to cut bad spending or eliminate tax loopholes you don't like (SALT) comes up go right ahead, but recognize that entitlements are the only game in town and entitlements aren't getting cut.
Taxes have been around the same % of the economy forever, it's practically an economic law. You can redistribute the burden some from friends to enemies, but it isn't changing overall up or down.
The nice thing about spending on getting people to have children is it's really the only long term solution to the entitlement problem. It's also a national security issue (who has higher TFR will determine whether we or China dominate, and luckily they aren't very good at making kids).
I agree with Alden. To me, this is one of the great under appreciated realities of central bank activities. And that is that when push comes to shove, central bankers and their political comrads almost always resort to printing more money. Although this sounds counterintuitive to readers of this blog, that is what usually happens. I wouldn't have believed this, had I not been persuaded by Ray Dalio's extensive research on historical banking/currency crises. If you haven't already read his stuff, I'd encourage you to do so. Dalio also describes this effect in many of his interviews, which one can find on Youtube.
GREAT article where Alden is so correct and clear about inflation causes: 1) money supply growth & 2) production changes. https://www.lynalden.com/inflation-vs-interest-rates/
She's right that current inflation is NOT like " In the 1970s, most of the money supply growth was from bank lending (related to demographics primarily)." Instead, recently "most of the money supply growth was from fiscal deficits" [Arnold seems to often make this 70s analogy mistake]
She has 2 great 100-yr charts from 1920-2020 showing a) oil-gold relative prices, & b) oil-USD [I wish she had a third c) gold-USD].
She notes the difficulty of treating inflation as fixable by interest rates alone by reference to the Taylor rule (of increasing rates as inflation increases): "the Taylor rule says that the Fed should have gotten up to nearly 12% interest rates (and now back down to “only” 8%) in this cycle. " (plus I like her uses of parentheses.) She's excellent about deflating the bubbles of an easy fix.
"When people say they want low inflation, what they really mean is that they want **disinflationary growth**. They want inflation fixed by more supply, not due to suppressed demand. If we get inflation under control by having a recession, and then stimulate our way out of that recession and have
another round of above-target inflation because of it, then that’s not really fixing the problem. "
Sad, but realistic conclusion, is that it's the fiscal deficits that must be reduced. "The government would likely have to restructure the public debt and the existing mix of taxation and spending, encourage more industrial and energy production to come online, and then leave it to the Fed to harden the currency after that point. That combination might give a decent foundation for a period of longer-term disinflationary growth, but is extremely difficult to do and is basically a non-starter politically."
The required political decisions are non-starters, politically. No explicit mention of Biden Dem excess gov't spending, nor the stealing of elections thru gov't supported censorship of the truth.
It would be cool to get an update to this.
https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/the-new-commanding-heights
Lloyd is correct, but the driving force is the invasion of the third world into the first one. The countries of Europe and North America are being overrun with migrants.
If Jordan Neely were a visitor inside upscale New York cafes, restaurants, or even City Hall, he would have been dealt with by the legal system long, long ago.
"... the general public would prioritize someone like Neely as a greater threat than several of the people who have been given long sentences in the J6 protest."
Maybe. That probably depends on whether we are talking about J6 who broke down the doors and beat on police or the ones who walked in and took selfies with police. Were there any in a gray area between those extremes?
"so if they are printing money to help the government put more money into circulation than it removes, ..."
Everything I find on Google suggests the Fed is removing money. Maybe more important, everything says the money supply is shrinking.
"... then changes in interest rates are going to be a distant second in terms of any impact they may have."
Distant, or just second? If they print money, can the money supply still decrease because interest rates are higher?