Columnist.
Almost everything I read about Donald Trump these days is negative. Writers on the right have been almost as critical as writers on the left. Is there nothing that can be said about Trump that is positive? I think there is. Since his nomination by the Republican Party, Donald Trump has made a number of serious policy speeches. In each case he is saying things that no other Republican presidential candidate has said. What he is saying is worth listening to. On foreign policy, he has basically noted that our entire approach, from NATO to military bases, is based on 1950s Cold War thinking. That must change. He is the first modern leader of consequence to say this.
There are three things you need to know about modern American politics: (1) the black vote is hugely important to the Democratic Party, but (2) less than half of black voters actually agree with the Democratic Party's view of government, and among those who do agree a great many are routinely mistreated by the very politicians they vote for; therefore (3) the only practical way to ensure that the vast majority of black voters reliably and enthusiastically turn out for the Democrats is to avoid debating real issues and focus instead on racial politics.
Is it Hillary Clinton? Bernie Sanders? Democrats in general? Or is it the supply side policies of the GOP? Economists have been studying economic wellbeing and its determinants since the days of Adam Smith and we know quite a lot about it. So let's jump to the bottom line. Aside from the rule of law and free markets, the most important determinant of the average wage is economic growth. And the most important ingredient in economic growth is capital accumulation. More capital, more growth.
Hillary Clinton is proposing a child care income tax credit — mainly to pay for daycare for working moms. There already is a credit in the tax code. Clinton would expand that subsidy by tenfold or more, leading to a massive, new entitlement. It would remove any incentive parents have to find more economical ways of meeting their children's needs and it would subject working women to high marginal tax rates — penalizing them harshly for working more and earning more.
Paul Krugman may understand the Democratic Party better than most Democrats do. The New York Times editorial writer describes Democrats as a "coalition of social groups, from teachers' unions to Planned Parenthood, seeking specific benefits from government action." More often than not, what these groups want from government is at someone else's expense. That isn't just a characteristic of the party. *That's what the Democratic Party is.*
I grew up in Waco, Texas. When I was a child, the city was completely segregated — the schools, the churches, the lunch counters, etc. Public buildings not only had separate restrooms for blacks and whites, they even had separate drinking fountains.
I wish the Founding Fathers had added one more amendment to the Bill of Rights. It should have read: *Congress shall pass no law restricting the right to work.* For the first 100 years or so, the amendment would have been unnecessary. Local governments put lots of restrictions on what workers could do. (More on that below.) But the federal government largely kept a distance from the labor market until the 20th century's Great Depression. Since then it's been Katie bar the door.
Have you ever stopped to think how different this election year has been because of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders? They have both changed the public policy debate in ways that have made our political discourse different than it would have been.
On Monday, Puerto Rico missed a payment on $422 million worth of bonds. If the United States doesn't come to the rescue, this will be only the first of many defaults to come. In all, the island has $72 billion in debt and an additional $46 billion in unfunded pension liabilities — totaling more than the country's annual GDP. As debt mounts, potential taxpayers are fleeing: 84,000 Puerto Ricans moved to the United States just last year alone.
Yesterday's papers came with a slew of depressing headlines. "Earning Skid is Worse Since Crisis," said the front page of The Wall Street Journal. "Hiring Rises: Output Lags. It's a Mystery," said the front page of The New York Times. "White House struggles to explain weak economy…" said the Drudge Report, followed by "First President Not To See Single Year 3% growth…" "Warning signs are surfacing: Temp job numbers can indicate a recession is around the corner," said Bloomberg news.
Here is something I bet you haven't thought about. We naturally assume that that public policy advocates actually want to achieve the things they advocate. But there are a lot of people both on the right and the left — but especially on the left — for whom that probably isn't true.
Bernie Sanders is beside himself. How can Hillary Clinton take $15 million in contributions from Wall Street and at the same time claim to represent working families? How can she take millions in contributions from the oil and gas industry and claim to be for the environment? How can she take $675,000 in speaking fees from Goldman Sachs and claim that she will be tough on the big banks? One thing is clear. Bernie Sanders doesn't understand the Democratic Party. That's not surprising. He doesn't even call himself a Democrat.
There is a single thought that unites the political parties of the left all over the world (from welfare state liberals to socialists and communists) and it is this: incentives don't matter. And since prices are the mechanism that coordinates incentives and clears markets, it follows that prices don't matter either. What other explanation can there be for something senseless that is about to happen in California: A $15 minimum wage, soon to be mandated for almost every employee in the state?
Sometimes you wonder if the editorial writers for The Gray Lady ever read the rest of their newspaper. A front page story in last week's New York Times described Donald Trump's Tampa office as a "melting pot" of racial and ethnic diversity. The campaign workers include a young woman who recently arrived from Peru; an immigrant from the Philippines; a 70-year-old Lakota Indian; a teenage son of Russian immigrants; a Mexican-American.
"The biggest winners from free trade are in the bottom half of the income distribution."
Since the time of Adam Smith, economists have understood that free trade is good for countries as a whole. Of course, trade creates winners and losers. The most common opinion expressed on TV talk shows and in the current presidential campaign is that the winners are on Wall Street and the losers are ordinary people.
Just when you may have thought that nothing could be more childish that the kindergarten taunts the Republican candidates are hurling at each other, the liberal chattering class has shown that it is up to the task. Writing in The New York Times Brent Staples tells us that Donald Trump "has functioned for years as a rallying point for … extremists and racists who are apoplectic about the fact that the country elected a black man president."
In the early days of the American republic, newspapers were actually started by political parties, leading political figures and even presidents — to get their point of view across. Alexander Hamilton, for example, helped establish The Gazette of the United States, "a paper of pure Toryism," according to Thomas Jefferson, "disseminating the doctrines of monarchy, aristocracy, and the exclusion of the people." To offset this influence, Jefferson and Madison helped establish the National Gazette, an outspoken critic of the administrations of Adams, Hamilton, and Washington, and an ardent advocate of the French Revolution.
When is the last time you were in Denmark? Or Norway? Or Sweden? If you have had the pleasure of visiting these lovely places you may have noticed something really odd. Nobody there talks the way Bernie Sanders talks. Sanders frequently points to northern European countries, especially Denmark, as examples of how he would like to remake the United States economy — by which he mainly means higher taxes and more social services.
More than 400 years ago, the British adopted the Poor Law system, under which local communities were made responsible for the relief of poverty. For the next four centuries the Poor Laws were amended again and again, as the following argument went to and fro: Was the system providing necessary relief or was it in various ways interfering with the natural workings of the labor market by subsidizing idleness and encouraging indolence.
