Category Archives: Business

The Perils of Presidential ‘Yellow Peril’ Fever

BAB's A List, Business, Capitalism, China, Democrats, Republicans, Trade

The quote is from the current column, “The Perils of Presidential ‘Yellow Peril’ Fever,” now on WND:

“In the course of the second presidential debate, Mitt Romney was asked to differentiate himself from the justifiably despised George Bush. The Republican presidential contender, who has surrounded himself with neoconservative heavy hitters—and has called Dick Cheney a ‘person of wisdom and judgment’—listed a number of inconsequential distinctions.

Left off was a distinction that reflects favorably on Bush. Like Mr. Obama, George W. Bush did not ‘label China a currency manipulator,’ something Romney has promised to do on his first day in office. This dubious distinction, if anything, belongs to ‘the Clinton administration,’ also the only administration to ever so do.

Labeling China a currency manipulator, to quote Mr. Romney, ‘would allow me as president to be able to put in place, if necessary, tariffs where I believe that they are taking unfair advantage of our manufacturers.’

The same executive-branch omnipotence allowed Barack Obama to go all-out on matters menstrual. Judging by the questions culled by moderator Candy Crawly, America’s female lobby wants a sugar daddy in the White House. Such sentiments, with their attendant wish lists, are easily gratified, given the plenary powers of the presidency.

Yes, feelings are Barack Obama’s forte; facts not so much. The president, poor man, is up a stream without a paddle. Obama is working with all he’s got. It’s hard to blame him for his inability to explain the inexplicable.

And it is this. On the topic of the imagined perils of the ‘Yellow Peril,’ here’s what escaped Obama, who was as eager to impress voters with his me-too Sinophobia …

… Ultimately … Both the president and the incumbent flout freedom and flirt with fascism when they threaten to come between Americans and their cheap, Chinese, consumer goods. …”

The complete column, now on WND, is “The Perils of Presidential ‘Yellow Peril’ Fever.” Read it.

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Microsoft Surface: ‘A Truly Productive Tablet’

Business, Capitalism, Human Accomplishment, Politics, Private Property, Technology

Today is an important day for America’s rotating kleptocracy and the comitatus—that is “the sprawling apparatus … that encompasses not only the emperor’s household and its personnel … but also the ministries of government, the lawyers, the diplomats, the adjutants, the messengers, the interpreters, the intellectuals.” The Democratic incumbent and the Republican candidate for president prepare for another round in the debate circuit, to see which one of them will inherit the earth.

It is no wonder that productivity and creativity are lost in the din over parasitical politics.

Today, the Microsoft Surface tablet went to market. To call this magical thing a “tablet” would be to undersell it. If it fails to win wide general appeal it’ll be because there is nothing quite like it, and because it is “a truly productive tablet.” Yes, The Surface provides the features that keep the average individual’s brainwaves from flatlining. But it does so much more. For example, “It runs as a full computer,” and sports a physical keyboard.

The no-nonsense Windows chief Steven Sinofsky is “almost unwilling to truly define the Surface as a tablet: ‘I’ve used a lot of tablets and this is not a tablet, but this is the best tablet I’ve ever used. And I’ve used a lot of laptops and notebooks, but this is not a laptop or notebook, but it’s the best laptop or notebook I’ve ever used.'”

Sinofsky has also ventured that The Surface “provides the best WiFi reception of any tablet today.”

The Surface’s dual Wi-Fi (“wireless networking technology that uses radio waves to provide wireless high-speed Internet and network connections”) antennae are the part my genius and his team nailed.

Congratulations.

Protectionist USA

Business, China, Foreign Policy, Free Markets, Labor, Paleolibertarianism, Private Property, Trade

If you’re in the market for “cheap rooftop solar panels,” you might have to reconsider. The Commerce Department has slapped “tariffs ranging from about 34 to nearly 47 percent on most solar panels imported from” China.

Tariffs, quotas, anti-dumping penalties, or any other trade barrier, force the American consumer to subsidize less efficient local industries, making him the poorer for it. Hundreds of industries—“the burgeoning business of installing cheap rooftop solar panels,” for example—are destined to shrink or go under in order to keep local, politically efficient industries in the lap of luxury.

This is not in the interest of the American consumer and it violates his freedom of contract and association.

The meddlers in Commerce had “determined that Chinese companies were benefiting from unfair government subsidies and were selling their products in the United States below the cost of production, a practice known as dumping.”

Dumping is good for American consumers. Antidumping penalties are typically imposed by the West on poorer nations to stop them from selling their wares bellow market prices. Such protectionist policies are detrimental to less- developed and Third-World countries, which gain advantage through the use of one of the only resources they have, their labor.

The US flouts freedom when it meddles in the affairs of the Chinese and the US consumer. The latter loves cheap Chinese products.

Global Tax Troglodyte

Business, Economy, Hillary Clinton, Human Accomplishment, Propaganda, Taxation

“There are rich people everywhere, and yet they do not contribute to the growth of their own countries” was the obscene comment made by Hillary Clinton, at the Clinton Global Initiative, on Monday.

Worse than her global crusade against under-siege, “market-dominant minorities” worldwide is Clinton’s crushing ignorance. As Economist George Reisman put it, “a Highly Productive and Provident One Percent Provides the Standard of Living of a Largely Ignorant and Ungrateful Ninety-Nine Percent.”

Contrary to such beliefs, in the modern world in which we actually live, the wealth of the capitalists is simply not in the form of consumers’ goods to any great extent. Not only is it overwhelmingly in the form of means of production but those means of production are employed in the production of goods and services that are sold in the market. Totally unlike the conditions of self-sufficient farm families, the physical beneficiaries of the capitalists’ means of production are all the members of the general consuming public who buy the capitalists’ products.
…the wealth of the so-called one percent is the foundation of the standard of living of the so-called ninety-nine percent … the “greed” of those who seek to become part of the one percent, or to enlarge their position within it, is what serves progressively to improve the standard of living of the ninety-nine percent.

To comprehend what Reisman wrote you’d have to, first, have a mind. And second, be in possession of moral fiber such that you were not jealous of those who have what it takes.

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