Category: Economy

More stimulus payments?

From a Fox Business article on President Biden’s proposed $1.9T “stimulus” package, which includes direct payments to individuals:

It would also include households with mixed immigration statuses after the first $1,200 payment that Congress approved in the March CARES Act left out the spouses of undocumented immigrants who did not have Social Security numbers.

Fully 81% of U.S. households qualify for stimulus payments based on a household income cutoff of $150K, yet far fewer households have had their income actually impacted by the pandemic. Yes, the unemployment rate is above normal, but not drastically so at 6.7%. Why then are we giving so many people direct stimulus payments, let alone illegal aliens? If we are making direct payments, shouldn’t they only go to those households whose income has actually been affected? Can someone explain what benefit we receive by sending people money they haven’t earned, haven’t lost, and in the end will have to repay with interest?

I mean, this is nuts. Really.

Undoing Trump, Paris-style

As president Biden rushes to to un-do the work of President Trump, I take issue with one action in particular: rejoining the Paris climate accord. You don’t have to be a climate science denier to be against the Paris accord as originally agreed; you just have to be awake.

Note that I have no problem with America working towards a greener, cleaner and self-sustained energy infrastructure. Nor do I deny that this is something we – along with the rest of the world – must do to preserve our way of life. But it must be done fairly, uniformly and simultaneously to prevent unintended consequences.

My primary concern with the Paris climate accord is that it is a voluntary commitment allowing different countries to have different goals for their global warming emissions reduction. The U.S. has committed to an aggressive goal; other countries have not (guess who…). The result could be that American products are priced out of the international (or even domestic) markets due to increased compliance costs associated with America’s bold emissions reduction goals. If this happens we’ll lose our manufacturing base; we’ll end up buying our products from other countries that might not have the same emission standards or Paris accord commitment, resulting in even more emissions than if we had continued production here without any additional reductions. It’s a double-whammy: lose our industry AND increase total global emissions. Not a good combination.

Instead we must insist on trading partners who agree to meet the same Paris accord commitment as we do or pay a tariff commensurate with the difference in manufacturing costs associated with emissions compliance. This will require productivity-based emissions goals – in other words, comparable products should have comparable emissions no matter where produced. Complicated – yes, but the alternative is to wipe out our own industrial base while increasing worldwide emissions.

Dump the Paris accord, President Biden, until it treats all polluters equally.

Let’s sink a recovering ship

Interesting. Seems the economy isn’t as bad off as the next administration wants us to believe. Could it be that their fear-mongering was simply campaign propaganda designed to get them elected? Or a self-fulfilling prophecy?

One measure of unemployment suggests Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus plan could do more harm than good, says a top Wall Street strategist

“Government money” and dependency

The government has no money. They get their money from you in the form of taxes. Even money the government collects in taxes from businesses is eventually paid by you via higher prices or lower wages. The government has no savings for a “rainy day” either, and instead currently has a deficit of over $27 trillion dollars (that’s $27,000,000,000,000). This amounts to almost $84,000 owed by every single man, woman and child in the United States. Let that sink in a bit: the average family of five is nearly $420K underwater from the start.

Joe Biden and congressional Democrats, who recently eliminated a House rule requirement that new spending programs must be deficit neutral (translation: they can borrow as much as they want – in your name – to buy your vote), now want to add almost $2 trillion dollars to our deficit – and that’s only the beginning. This first “relief” package (although I don’t feel very relieved) amounts to almost another $6000 borrowed against each and every citizen of the United States. But you’re only going to get $1600 of it.

The rest of the $6000? You mean the remaining $4400 per person that the government is borrowing in your name? Oh, that’s earmarked for important things… yes, important things…. Like the financial bailout of Democrat strongholds whose social policies have resulted in economic disaster, for instance. Oh, and money to keep public union members like firefighters, police, and school teacher paid (yes, even when teachers refuse to work because of COVID and instead go on vacation). Not a government union worker? For you we’re going to increase the minimum wage to $15/hour. But don’t worry; we’re also increasing unemployment benefits for when we’ve priced ourselves out of the labor market and all our jobs go to China.

I know to many of you this all sounds great (f##king morons!). Only we can’t borrow ourselves into prosperity; it simply won’t work. And I know what you’re thinking: it’s OK to for the government to borrow massive amounts of money because each of us believes that we can stick our rich neighbor with the bill. But what about your less well-to-do neighbors; aren’t they thinking the same thing about you? Don’t worry, though; no one expects anyone to repay this money. In fact, the politicians want to borrow even more on your behalf. It’s really all about control – control through government dependence.

Politicians will obtained this control initially by bribing you with “government money”, but later you’ll surrender control willingly when the economy dips and you find yourself in need of their social welfare programs. Once we are fully dependent on the government for our daily alms, then the politicians who have control over these programs will have full control over our lives, our opinions, our voices – and our votes. We will be ruled by a political oligarchy running a command economy, members of a society where basic necessities and jobs will require membership in the ruling party and strict compliance with their doctrine. Say, this is beginning to sound eerily familiar…

Think not? Think again. All that is needed to implement what I have outlined above is control – and there are few better means of control than dependency. But they won’t stop there – they are also working on control of the media so that we are all able to regurgitate the politically correct propaganda of the day. “One of us… one of us…”! Those who don’t agree will be unceremoniously cancelled. Permanently.

If you haven’t already, I’d recommend you read both George Orwell’s dystopian novel “1984”, and also his socialist allegory “Animal Farm”. While you’re at it, I’d also recommend Ayn Rand’s classic tale of liberalism run amuck, “Atlas Shrugged”. I think, in the end, you’ll find each of these books to be quite prophetic.

The U.S. National Debt Clock

According to the U.S. National Debt Clock, our national debt is now nearing $27,500,000,000 – equal to approximately $83,000/person or $220,000 per taxpayer. This is a staggering amount of debt. The question is: why?

It’s because everyone is expecting someone else to foot the bill. But it’s not a game of musical chairs; your political leaders have simply sold you a bill of good. They’ve placated your demands for “free” government services and benefits by opening credit accounts in your name, and eventually the bill will come due. And when that happens, we’ll all be standing around in a room with no chairs.

Stop the absurdity!

Congress has been busy handing out our money – to us. Only we’re too stupid to realize that it’s our own money, or that it will have to be repaid (or worse, we think that someone else will be forced to foot the bill for us – aka, the “rich”):

Congress passes stopgap bill to avoid government shutdown; coronavirus relief deal reached

A couple of choice tidbits from the above-referenced article:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said in a joint statement their goal is to “crush the virus and put money in the pockets of the American people.”

Only I don’t see anywhere in the Constitution where it is the function of Congress to put money into our pockets – particularly money they have to borrow from us.

…the deal is expected to include $600 checks to most Americans…

Why?? If people are working like normal, what the hell is the government doing paying them a bonus? Don’t people realize that this is THEIR OWN MONEY being doled out to them by the government? Don’t they realize that the government has borrowed this money, money that they will eventually be required to repay? I wonder how many people would take these checks if they were presented as a loan rather than a bonus? Because in reality that’s what these payments are – a loan, plain and simple. And one day that loan will come due.

According to congressional leaders, the agreement would establish temporary $300 per week supplemental jobless benefits…

Extending unemployment benefits is a reasonable action to take, so long as the money used to pay these benefits is recouped through unemployment insurance premiums when the crisis ends. But increasing the amount of unemployment payments by $300 – which amounts to an additional $7.50/hour NOT to work – is absurd. The unemployment insurance system should pay only the benefits it would normally award, but extended the period for benefits as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. That is a reasonable response to the pandemic – not bonuses for being unemployed.

Stop the absurdity before it’s too late; there is no such thing as free money. We’ll eventually pay for all this spending with lost jobs (from overtaxing businesses) and/or lost wages (from lost employers and overtaxed workers).

Good riddance, California

This is why the liberals want to enact their policies at a national level. High taxes, special fees, mandatory employee “rights” and other anti-business tactics on the state level can be avoided by simply moving. This is good since it requires states to compete for employers, just as employers compete for workers and customers. It assures that state governments operate efficiently and do not place undo financial or regulatory burdens on free-market enterprises. But when such liberal policies are enacted at a national level there is no need for the government to act in an efficient or restrained manner (until all our jobs move to China. Oh, wait…).

Oracle moving from California to Texas, joins Tesla, Hewlett Packard 

The exodus continues.

I’m not surprised (UPDATED)

China has rebounded quickly from the coronavirus, using a totalitarian grip on its population to control the spread of the virus and return their economy to full operation. As a result, China is in the position to seize market share from foreign competitors who are still reeling from the effects of the coronavirus – or so says this news article:

How China stands to profit from the coronavirus pandemic

So, to clarify: the country responsible for the coronavirus, either through their poorly-controlled “wet markets” or a mismanaged research laboratory, is as a result advancing rapidly on their goal of replacing the U.S. as the seat of worldwide commerce. Surprised? Not me.

But here’s the scary part: since the coronavirus has worked so well in destroying other economies while boosting China’s, what’s the likelihood that China will weaponize other moderate-risk diseases to aid their quest for world domination? After all, it seems like the perfect weapon. No one is penalizing China for the “accidental” release of the coronavirus – even though it is now alleged that the Chinese government downplayed its severity while ramping up their own medical defenses.  Some have noted instead that many countries have turned to China for medical and financial support, further boosting China’s economy and global interests. Sounds like the coronavirus pandemic is all good for China; think they’ve noticed?

So what can we do? Well, if your neighbor accidentally (or intentionally) burned down your house, what would you do? You’d hire a reputable firm to rebuild your home and sue the shorts off of your neighbor. We could take the same tact with China, applying a tariff on China-sourced products to penalize them and recoup our losses. Unfortunately, this would likely be met with similar tariffs on our own goods selling in China, negating any impact. Fortunately, in our country (and many others) the true power remains with the people.

Instead of government action, I propose that we as a people take direct action. We should do this by refusing to purchase Chinese-produced goods until such time that their government acts responsibly and shows that it can be a trusted trading partner. In addition, China must take action to prevent such outbreaks in the future and make fair and timely notification when an outbreak does occurs.

This is not a racist attack on the people of China, but instead it is a punishment levied against the communist dictatorship that runs their country. I admit that this will have a collateral negative impact on the people of China, but it is up to them (the people of China) to change their government. If they fail or refuse, then they will have to suffer for the actions and failures of their leaders.

Neither a borrower nor a lender be…

Landlords and private mortgage holders are expected to suffer losses as a result of the legal protections offered to homeowners and tenants during COVID-19, but the government is billing refinance mortgages (via a fee of 0.5%) to cover their own losses.

Adverse Market Refinance Fee Implementation now December 1

One online story related the new fee to “insurance” meant to cover high-risk loans. But why should low-risk borrowers pay for the risk associated with high-risk loans? Are you expected to pay for the driving habits of your neighbor when insuring your own car? If low-risk individuals are forced to subsidize high-risk behavior, what incentive is there to be low-risk?

Prediction: Since the fee is charged to the originating banks, and since the banks may recoup the fee via higher interest rates, I predict that this fee will result in a disproportionate increase in interest rate among high-risk borrowers. It’s not the result the regulators wanted, but the genie rarely cooperates when it comes to unintended consequences (link to genie cartoon).