Category Archives: The State

UPDATED (6/6/018): Guaranteed Taxpayer-Financed Income For EVERY Americans: If Degenerate Dems Take Over, Economy Will Tank

Debt, Democrats, Economy, Free Markets, Government, Labor, The State

When Democrats are not plotting on giving houses to the homeless, paying drug addicts to shoot up, and inviting the world to immigrate to the US—they’re scheming on the ultimate decadent, immoral and unworkable government plan: “guaranteeing every American a taxpayer-financed job”:

Senator Bernie Sanders recently promised to introduce a bill guaranteeing every American a taxpayer-financed job, should they want it. His colleague, Senator Cory Booker, has already written a bill which would test such a policy in 15 places with high joblessness. Senators Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren and Kirsten Gillibrand, three other potential presidential contenders, are co-sponsors. Ms Gillibrand will reportedly soon pen her own plan, too.

In addition to the cost of the program, the giveaway will expand the government payroll by 50 percent. Presumably to administer.

“In April 2018, about 127.34m people were employed on a full-time basis” in the US. (The Statistics Portal)

The Economist’s says America has 148m workers.

Of this, “Government at all levels employs 22.3m Americans.”

This, of course, is not free-market capitalism.

MORE: “Make work can’t work: A jobs guarantee is a flawed idea.”

UPDATE (6/6/018):

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1 Reason The State Department Turned On #RexTillerson: He Tried Trimming Budgets & Getting Rid Of Deadwood

Business, Economy, Federal Reserve Bank, Free Markets, Government, Political Economy, Taxation, The State

The Economist notes that Rex Tillerson was a poor secretary of state—but not for the reasons I would advance.

One reason for their opinion is that, “Disastrously for morale, he declined to defend his own department when the White House proposed cutting its budget by 25% or more … Mr Tillerson squandered goodwill with a corporate restructuring that felt to many staff like an invitation to resign. At one point, outside consultants sent round a questionnaire asking: “To optimally support the future mission of the Department, what one or two things should your work unit totally stop doing or providing?” (“Trump Unbound: In foreign affairs, America just moved closer to one-man rule,” March 17, 2018.)

TILLESRSON TRIED TO CUT GOVERNMENT! Defending your employees, The Economist here equates with increasing or maintaining the budget for the department, it diplomats, envoys and other career and or deadwood staff.

State institutions are self-reinforcing and not amenable to reform; they grow through failure.

So while it would be nice if state institutions were able to reform, because of the structure of incentives, the state cannot be corrected. The incentive structure underlying state institutions is antithetical to reform.

To correct processes that may be killing people—affirmative action, when the subject of special privileges isn’t qualified—you have to cut budgets in the billions. This likely will never happen, in state institutions, because they don’t abide by the profit motive. So to express belief in this is to express belief in the possibility of the state fixing itself.

The libertarian grasps that the state grows through inefficiency. The more it bungles—the greater its budget will be. Economically, the state’s incentives are inverted.  A private company, on the other hand, grows through economic and performative efficiencies; by singles the customer. The state is the opposite. As a monopoly, it need please nobody. For example, the education system is a giant failure.  Will it be scrapped? Of course not. The system will reward itself with MORE, not less, funds to fix the problem.

This is a structural fact of the state.

Why can the state grow and prosper through inefficiency? Because it has access to the funds of an indentured third party, taxpayers, and has the promiscuous use of the printing press.

A private institution can come back from the abyss, because, economically, it will go bust if it doesn’t start pleasing customers. However, if, like the Florida bridge collapse, a private enterprise is working in tandem with the state, then taxpayers bail it out.

Profit is privatized, loss is socialized.

Most people no longer read or understand the economics of the state. Ten years ago, I had readers who had at least read Hazlitt’s Economics in One Lesson.

 

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American ‘Experts’ Call You Crazy If You Mention Our ‘Deep State.’ But Russia, Says US ‘Expert,’ Certainly Has One.

Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Neoconservatism, Political Economy, Propaganda, Russia, The State

To be accepted into polite company, we Americans are instructed to denounce the very concept of a Deep State (the unelected, extra-constitutional, entrenched, state apparatus).

Oddly, I first heard this eloquent, apt term  from Bill Moyers, considered an august force on the Left.

But now, leftists in the era of Trump, joined by neocons and cuckservatives insist that the concept is all the product of Deplorable minds gripped by conspiracy.

Except when it comes to Russia. The American state apparatus they consider virtuous, but Russia certainly has a Deep State.

The Russian Deep State one American “expert” calls: “the natural state.”

Yes, the same kind of American experts who denounce Deep State when applied to the US government, have a term for the Russian Deep State: “the natural state.”

Douglass North, an American political economist, alludes to what sounds like Deep State reality, only it pertains to Russia.

[Putin] presides over the sort of power structure that Douglass North, an American political economist, has called the “natural state”. In this, rents are created by limiting access to economic and political resources, and the limits are enforced by “specialists in violence”. In Russia these are the siloviki of the assorted security and police forces, serving the system as they did in Soviet times. …

Our government goons may not kill us in the name of compliance, but they certainly marginalize us.

MORE: “Gorbachev’s grandchildren: A new generation is rising in Russia: Vladimir Putin’s election victory does not mean that there is no hope.“

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NEW COLUMN UPDATED (YIPPEE!): Trump Must Stop ‘Refugee Caravan’ Invasion With Executive Order

Donald Trump, Homeland Security, IMMIGRATION, Law, Natural Law, The State

“Trump Must Stop ‘Refugee Caravan’ Invasion With Executive Order” is the current column, now on  Townhall.com. 

An excerpt:

Planning for a show-down, a column of 1,500 Central Americans, largely from Honduras, has been beating a path to the Mexican-American border.

Some report that the column has been halted; others dispute that. Interviewed by Reuters in Mexico, a sojourning mother of seven—what are the chances none is an MS13 gangster?—signaled her intention to proceed to the US, if only to teach President Trump a lesson.

Yes, “Make America Great Again” to you, too, Colindres Ortega.

Organizers and participants in this farce aim, very plainly, to publicly demonstrate that the US doesn’t have borders. Led by anti-American agitators, the procession catalyzed the urgency of action to stop an ongoing invasion.

Whether it arrives or not, the caravan is a positive bit of theatre. For one thing, the actors are quite correct. The US doesn’t have borders. For another, the caravan vividly exposes the antagonists in this ongoing tragedy: our overlords in DC. All of them.

To narrow the indictment a tad, note the extent to which the Democrats and their news media have avoided mentioning or covering the caravan. At a time when Democrats are fielding populists like Conor Lamb (who won in Pennsylvania) and former rodeo champion Billie Sutton (he hopes to govern South Dakota)—the mess on the border damns them like nothing else.

It’s these villains who’ve agreed to laws that permit anyone—other than white South Africans—to arrive at that border, do their Les Misérables act, claim to face a “credible fear” back home, get a court date, and bolt like so many rabbits, to be seen again only at the voting booth, the welfare office, the DMV and at DACA demonstrations. They’re the malcontents holding up signs that read “America is racist.”

What all the veiled allusions to “catch-and-release loopholes in American immigration law” imply is this: Ostensibly, there’s no way to turn interlopers away once they plonk themselves on the US border, demand a translator and spin some yarn.

So far, President Trump has “signed a proclamation ordering the deployment of the National Guard to the border with Mexico.” This changes nothing. It remains illegal to defend the border by turning these particular trespassers away.

Other than stare these brazen people down, what will the National Guard do? Change diapers, as they did during the 2014 rush on the border?

Flash back more recently to January of 2016, when candidate Trump began alluding to “President Obama’s irresponsible use of executive orders” having paved the way for him, Trump, to also use them freely if he won the presidential race.

“Amen,” I said at that time—provided Trump uses executive power to repeal lots of laws, not make them. …

“… READ THE REST.  “Trump Must Stop ‘Refugee Caravan’ Invasion With Executive Order” is now on  Townhall.com.  Read it also on  WND.com, the Unz Review, Constitution.com, and others.

UPDATE (4/7/018): YIPPEE! JUST WHAT I ASKED FOR IN NEW COLUMN.

“Memo” or “executive order,” who cares? “Trump has sighed memo ending Catch And Release immigration policy.” A wish come true.

Of interest:

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