Columnist.
On ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos, Matthew Dowd identified four factions that make up the Republican Party: the Tea Party, libertarians, social conservatives and establishment Republicans. Note that three of these groups are identified almost exclusively by how they think. Arguably the fourth is as well. The Republican Party definitely attracts people who take ideas seriously. What about the Democratic Party? It's tempting to say that Democrats are liberal. But did you know that the base of the party — those that are the most reliable supporters of Democratic candidates — are not particularly liberal at all?
Jeb Bush is a fan. Ditto for Rand Paul and Marco Rubio. Hillary Clinton isn't so sure. Martin O'Malley says it exposes the need to update our labor laws. Everyone is talking about Uber these days.
Conducting remote control warfare with the use of drones, far away from any combat zone is a practice that didn't start under Barack Obama. But he has carried it out to an extent that goes far beyond anything ever seen before.
First there was Pablo Escobar, the once notorious head of the Medellin drug cartel in Colombia. I have it on good authority from a high placed source that he was killed by a member of the US Special Forces. The US government doesn't admit to this, but it does acknowledge the role of US forces in locating Escobar and in destroying the Medellin cartel. Where did they get the authority to do that? The Constitution gives the Congress the authority to declare war, but Congress has never declared war on Colombia. Come to think of it, neither has any US president.
Now that the Supreme Court has declined to gut President Obama's health reform, it's time for Republicans in Congress to re-think how they have been responding to the law. They should begin by asking three questions: 1. What are the worst features of ObamaCare? 2. How are these features harming ordinary American families? 3. How can we get rid of them? As I explain in a new book, A Better Choice: Healthcare Solutions for America and in a recent article in Health Affairs, there are major problems that aren't going away unless Congress acts. Here are two of them.
Pope Francis weighed in on global warming the other day after convening a conference of climate scientists from around the world. His recent encyclical on the subject, "Laudato Si," was awful in describing what we know about climate science, dreadful in discussing possible solutions and completely wrong in understanding the role that economics must play. Let's begin by distinguishing between "is" and "ought." Scientists try to understand what is. And there is broad agreement about what we know and don't know. (I'll briefly summarize that below.) But there is not broad agreement about what we should do about it or whether we should do anything at all. And even if there were, there is no reason why the rest of us should pay any particular attention to it.
Hillary Clinton is still refusing to say whether she thinks President Obama should have the same fast track authority her husband and other presidents have had to negotiate trade agreements. She is refusing to say how she would have voted the other day when Democrats in the House of Representatives abandoned their own president en masse after he pleaded with them to give him authority to negotiate with Pacific nations. Her latest comments on the subject are at best described as waffling. This is after she earlier described the Trans-Pacific Partnership as setting a "gold standard in trade agreements" and after chiding her fellow Democrats to "get off the fence on trade." It is after she endorsed the trade agreement President Obama is proposing on 45 public occasions. (All 45 are listed by John Tapper at CNN Politics.) It is despite David Brooks' observation that almost all serious economists are convinced of the economic benefits of free trade for the country as a whole.
Rick Perry's entry into the presidential race draws natural attention to the Texas economy. While Perry was governor, Texas created more than three of every ten new jobs in the entire country. And even though a decline in energy prices has slowed things a bit, over the last four years Texas was the third among the 50 states in job creation. Perry and others credit low taxes and sensible regulation for Texas' economic success. The Wall Street Journal editorial board agrees. Last week they wrote: >The Tax Foundation ranks Texas's business climate tenth best, and the state's growth spurt vindicates the Perry formula of low taxes and a light regulatory touch. Between 2000 and 2010, Texas gained a net 781,542 domestic migrants — second only to Florida — while California lost 1.9 million, according to the Manhattan Institute. Last year Texas boasted the three fastest-growing counties with populations above 250,000 (Fort Bend, Montgomery and Williamson).
What tax rate should rich people pay? A working paper by Fabian Kindermann from the University of Bonn and Dirk Krueger from the University of Pennsylvania advocates taxing the highest 1 percent of earners at a marginal tax rate that is "somewhere between 85 and 90 percent." As reported by Ben Walsh at the Huffington Post: >Krueger described the phenomenon like this: "How much less hard would LeBron James play basketball if he were taxed at a much higher rate? The answer is not much. "James knows he only has five years," or so of peak earning potential, Krueger said, and so he will work to make as much as he can during that time. When asked about the study in a Huffington Post online video, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman agreed with the conclusion wholeheartedly:
A week ago Friday was an unusual day for the editorial page of The New York Times. An unsigned editorial in the paper lashed out at the president for his public statements about reengaging in Iraq. A Paul Krugman column attacked the administration's defense of the new trade agreement. Both pieces said the administration was being … (how shall we say it?) … *dishonest*. Granted, this was nothing like the language Krugman and the Times typically use to describe Republicans. A few days earlier, Krugman accused Jeb Bush of "cowardice and vileness" with respect to his statements about Iraq. In a column on Jeb's brother and the original invasion of Iraq, Krugman wrote "We were lied into war." "It was worse than a mistake," he added, "it was a crime." Still, Krugman and the Times are normally the most visible and reliable apologists for the Obama administration.
Studies show there are three things you can do that will almost guarantee you will never live in poverty: (1) finish high school, (2) get a full time job and (3) get married, but wait until you are 21 and don't have children until you are married. Do these three things and it's very unlikely you will be poor. If you are, you won't be poor for very long. So how does public policy affect these choices? Inner city schools dominated by powerful teacher unions are not meeting the needs of poor minority students. The welfare state (185 federal/state means test programs) is designed from top to bottom to encourage single motherhood and penalize marriage. And virtually every public policy you can think of is making it more expensive to hire workers. It is this last set of policies that I find most perplexing. In times past, the Democratic Party was the party of full employment. It wasn't that long ago that The New York Times endorsed a zero minimum wage. Prominent Democrats once endorsed the idea of enterprise zones — places where there would be fewer regulations and lower taxes, so that job producing businesses would flourish. And although it originated in a Republican administration, Democrats have traditionally supported the Earned Income Tax Credit — under which low-income workers get a bigger tax "refund," the more they work and the more they earn.
Did Bill Gates, the world's richest man, cause the breakdown of civil order in Baltimore? How about JK Rowling, author of the Harry Potter novels and the world's richest woman? Is she the cause of all the mayhem? Last time I looked, Gates was producing products that bring joy to the life of kids who live everywhere. And he is giving away almost all his wealth to help the poorest people in the world. And Rowling? All she does is write books that youngsters like to read and help make movies people of all ages flock to see. What I know about the riots in Baltimore is mainly what I have seen on my TV screen. But I don't recall any signs that read "Down with Gates" or "We Hate Rowling." That doesn't stop New York Times writer Paul Krugman, who is up to the task of turning almost any tragedy into an opportunity to peddle snake oil. When he is not covering up his abysmal record economic prediction, Krugman's columns tend to have three themes: (1) people are poor because they can't find jobs, (2) nonetheless we should do everything we can to close off job opportunities, by encouraging labor union monopolies, raising the minimum wage and voting against any political candidate who has the courage to oppose the teacher unions and try to improve the schools and (3) then blame the tragedy that unfolds on the "top tenth of the top 1 percent."
At last count there were about three dozen potential candidates for president on the Republican side. Although Hillary Clinton is the expected Democratic nominee, should she falter, there are probably about a half dozen people ready to take her place. Without knowing who the candidates will be and without knowing who will win the election, can we say today with some confidence what difference a Republican or a Democratic victory would mean in 2016? Paul Krugman asked this question the other day in The New York Times.
Rand Paul's entry into the presidential race raises an interesting question: Just how many people consider themselves "libertarian" and what is the potential voting strength of this segment of the population? Paul Krugman weighed in early with the brash claim that "there basically aren't any libertarians." But as David Henderson reminds us, once again Krugman's opinions are nowhere near factual reality. Gallup, which has been polling on the issue for quite some time, finds that 38 percent of the public identifies as "conservative" and 24 percent as "liberal" in the latest poll.
By one estimate, 14 million people are newly insured because of the Affordable Care Act. In addition millions of others have more generous insurance, promising new benefits. So you might expect that doctors' offices would be flooded with a host of new patients seeking more care than they had before. It's not happening. To avoid the effects of the 2008 financial crisis, the recession, and the slow recovery, John Graham compared the latest estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) with their survey from a decade ago. The result: "The proportion of people of all ages with a 'usual place to go for medical care' was 87.8 percent last year, the same as it was in 2002-2003. Further, 5.7 percent reported that they failed to obtain needed medical care due to cost last year, the same as it was in 2003-2004."
Lee Kuan Yew, the first prime minister of Singapore, died last week at age 91. Almost every obituary has remarked on the radical transition his leadership heralded. As John Fund wrote at National Review: >"By embracing free trade, capital formation, vigorous meritocratic education, low taxes, and a reliable judicial system, Lee raised the per capita income of his country from $500 a year to some $52,000 a year today. That's 50 percent higher than that of Britain, the colonial power that ruled Singapore for 150 years. Its average annual growth rate has averaged 7 percent since the 1970s." Part of the reason for Singapore's remarkable climb up the international income ladder is bread and butter capitalism. The Frasier institute's Freedom of the World report lists Singapore as the second freest economy in the world -- right behind Hong Kong. As Frasier scholars have demonstrated year after year, economic growth and free markets go hand and hand.
In terms of skills and education, Israel probably has the highest level of human capital per person in the whole world. Yet it's per capita output is mediocre – in the middle of the developed country pack. Why is that? Because Israel has been slow to adopt capitalism. How do I know that? Because Bibi Netanyahu told me that in an interview in Dallas, several years before he because prime minister. Once he became Israel's leader, he was been able to do something about it. In recent years Israel has become a center for entrepreneurship, innovation and capitalist spirit. But it wasn't always that way. Modern Israel began as a quasi-socialist society with a centrally controlled economy and a Histadrut labor federation. The Histadrut became a mainstay of the Labor Zionist movement and it wasn't merely a trade union. It owned a number of businesses and, for a time, was the largest employer in the country. Until Israel began moving away from a socialism, the Histadrut, along with the government, owned most of the economy.
President Obama's concern about "middle class economics" is justified. But as I pointed out in a previous post, his prescriptions would do almost nothing to solve the problems. According to a private sector estimate, the benefit for families in the middle from all of the Obama proposals would be a paltry $12 a year. According to the Treasury Department, the benefit would be closer to $150. Either way, it's small potatoes. If you don't understand the problem – or won't acknowledge it even if you do understand it – you are unlikely to find a solution that works. Here is what is going on. All middle class families understand that for their children to do well in life they need to be in good schools. But the opportunity to attend a good public school these days is rationed through the housing market. And those opportunities are far removed from what life was like for the parents of today's parents.
Here's a shocker. Rahm Emanuel may not be re-elected as mayor of Chicago. The reason? Emanuel has been siding with poor, minority children who want a better chance in life against Chicago teachers unions who view the public schools as a jobs program rather than a place to educate children. Guess which of these two groups is not allowed to vote? When he was running for office, John Edwards reflected the way that many Democrats would probably like to think of themselves. Edwards talked about two Americas – which he characterized as the haves and the have nots. He promised to raise taxes on the richest two percent and spend the money on … well …. If you weren't listening very carefully you might have assumed he was going to spend it on the poor.
