Mr. Benson over at Prairie Pundit has a great analysis of the Colombia-Venezuela-Ecuador situation. He cites an intriguing article and offers a wonderful wrap-up analysis.
UPDATE: The Prairie Pundit has now been added to “Blogs We Read.”
I (personally, not Conservative Donnybrook, as I am only a cog in the wheel) have previously endorsed the Fair Tax. Unfortunately, in attempting to keep things simple, the examples I used were inaccurate. Therefore, I shall try again, but keep in mind that this will necessarily be more complicated than the previous attempt.
Let me begin by reintroducing the players. We have Bob. Bob is the sort of guy who always wants to be first on his block to get the latest toy. And then we have Margaret. Margaret has no such compulsion and buys used goods all the time. Bob and Margaret both earn $74,000 a year in wages. They each rent a nice apartment in the same complex in Las Vegas (Clark County sales tax = 7.25%). Bob and Margaret are both healthy, stingy (they make no charitable contributions), and neither runs a business - in short, they do not have any deductions other than the standard deduction. They are both single. (We are trying to keep this as simple as possible, while still maintaining some semblance of realism.) And, just for the ease of doing the math, let us suppose they each get paid annually (one pay check per year). Let us follow them down to the car lot where they will each be purchasing a car. Of course, in order to really do this right, we have to follow them down to the car lot twice. Once prior to any changes in the tax system, and once again after the Fair Tax is adopted. Continue Reading »
We are approaching the point of no return for democracy in America. That point occurs when a majority of the citizens no longer pay for governmental services and rely upon a minority of citizens to provide for their delivery. Today, the bottom 50% of wage earners pay 3% of the federal income taxes in 2005. We are two steps away from that point of no return I mentioned.
First, if that number should ever reach the point where the bottom 50% of wage earners (a voting majority of the country) were to reach 0% of the taxes, we would no longer have the votes to roll back the ever increasing burden on the top wage earners. Indeed, we may already have reached that point. Second, if those who are the bottom half of wage earners ever realize that they are not paying taxes, but rather are recipients of the public largesse, they will be lost as a source of reform. I think at present many of those who in reality receive more than they pay still believe that they are paying taxes and rankle at that notion. This is the only reason I still have hope. Alexis de Tocqueville noted in Democracy in America (highly paraphrased): “Once the majority of Americans realize that they can vote themselves all sorts of goodies and get their neighbors to pay for it, all bets are off. But, generally, I think the Americans are on to something.” Or words to that effect. Continue Reading »
President Bush signed a free-trade agreement with Peru. Might this be a step towards my suggested policy? Is ol’ Georgie stealing my thunder? Probably not, but this was a great excuse to revive my “Americas the Beautiful” piece!
What do the Middle East, South East Asia, Eastern Europe, and Eastern Africa all have in common? They lay in the Eastern Hemisphere and have garnered the attention of the United States; economically, politically and militarily. What do Caribbean nations, Latin American nations, and South America have in common aside from being the neighbors of the United States? They are found in the Western Hemisphere and suffer from a (near) complete lack of attention by their northerly wealthy counterpart (no, NOT Canada). I suppose maybe it’s a case of not knowing what we’ve got until it’s gone. I offer the following supposition: The United States ought to spend more money, time and resources in the Western Hemisphere.
Bloomberg.com: Currencie: Srkozy apparently recognizes the risk to French exporters to America that a weak dollar poses to French industry. As the dollar sinks, exports to the United States become more expensive and domestic goods become more inexpensive to American consumers. Sarkozy is trumpeting, then, a Franco-centric economic policy in saying that a dollar which continues to sink may trigger a trade war. What he means is that France may be forced to raise tariffs against American goods to protect the home market.
This blogger agrees with Sarkozy. One should always watch out for the home market, protect it from unfair competition. The simple fact that the dollar has sunk versus the Euro has triggered Sarkozy’s nationalism and fears that France will be less able to sell their products in the American market - the greatest market on earth. Why don’t we get it?
John Derbyshire over at the Corner wrote this this morning.
The question presents itself: What changed in the 1960s that so adversely affected those scrambling to escape poverty? I might suggest that the “unilateral disarmament” that the United States engaged in at the Kennedy Round of GATT negotiations marked the beginning of the end for the then-emerging American middle class.
After blinking in our negotiations at the Kennedy Round, U.S. Commerce Secretary, Alexander Trowbridge said:
The Kennedy Round represents a very large step toward the thing we’ve heard so much about in the postwar years: the truly one-world market. . . .The American domestic market - the greatest and most lucrative market in the world - is no longer the private preserve of the American businessman.
And, Mr. Trowbridge was happy about it!
Derb puts his finger on the causes, “Globalization, rising inequality and unskilled immigration.”
According to a report released by the State Department of the United States, Afghanistan grew $3.1 billion in opium producing poppies during fiscal year 2007. Much of this staggering sum (around 80%) is said to have benefited the Taliban while local farmers received roughly 20% ($620 million). During the same time frame the United States spent over $600 million on eradication and alternative growing programs.
With an increase in poppy production year after year since 2001, it seems painfully obvious that the Bush administration’s anti-narcotics crop eradication policy in Afghanistan is a huge failure. Poppies are the number one crop in Afghanistan, a country near the top of the world’s list of poor nations. Opium producing poppies from Afghanistan, according to the State Department, account for almost 95% of the heroin currently on the world market. Continue Reading »
I have been meaning to write something on this topic for a couple days now. PJB has beaten me to it. So, I shall simply link to his post.
I suppose the one benefit from a sinking dollar is that it becomes cheaper and cheaper for overseas companies to pay American workers to do the work that Europeans and Japanese won’t do. We will progressively become for Europe and Japan what Mexico and China has become for us. The difference being that Latin America and China are still Latin America and China to the Europeans and Japanese too, so the dollar will have to sink quite a way before we are on a par with Mexican workers.
But, if you work in Detroit (and can somehow manage to remain employed for the next decade or so), just hang tight. The work will come back to you.
The whole idea behind free trade is that an equilibrium point will eventually be reached where any nation which is engaged in free trade with another will ultimately have similar wages. For instance, as we move our manufacturing down to Mexico, the Mexican worker will slowly begin to be able to demand more wages, while American workers will lose wages until wages are equivalent. Only at that point will it no longer be advantageous for companies to employ Mexican workers in order to produce goods for the U.S. market.
Indeed, as PJB said, “the chickens of free trade have come home to roost.” And, it’s not just the value of the dollar that has suffered.
I ran across this article in the New York Times this morning. According to this report, China is yanking the export licenses of 750 toy manufacturers in response to a growing problem with safety issues. In the past few weeks, it seems that there is a new toy recall due to health hazards stemming from lax regulation of the Chinese manufacturing industry.
This comes in the wake of a number of toy recalls in recent months. According to this report in the New York Times, in the past year Chinese products have been recalled 467 times, accounting for 6o percent of all product recalls in the United States. Examples include Thomas & Friends railroad toys coated in lead paint, a fake eyeball toy filled with kerosene, toy drums and a toy bear that were coated in lead paint, and an infant wrist rattle which presented a choking hazard. Chinese imports account for 70-80 percent of all toy sales in the United States. Continue Reading »
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