A 2019 video of a Kamala Harris campaign event made the rounds on the internet Friday night after the Democrat presidential hopeful unveiled some of her economic proposals, including her apparent desire for Soviet-style price controls on groceries.

During her ill-fated run for president, the now vice president said she could lower prices on drugs simply by having the government seize patents from pharmaceutical companies and “take over.” That’s not how a free-market economy is supposed to work, but the giddy Harris didn’t care:

Even CNN—normally a reliable mouthpiece for the DNC—jumped in with two separate segments savaging Kamala's "price gouging" proposals, which seem to come straight out of Venezuela.

We'll start with the network's Economics and Political Commentator Catherine Rampell, who went off on Kamala's Marxist ideas for almost a full two and a half minutes:

...first of all, nobody can explain what price gouging means. It's like that old line about pornography; I know it when I see it. In the sense that what does it mean to have an excessive price or an excessive profit margin? That seems to be shorthand for a price or a profit margin that bugs me, that seems too high. //

It's not going to be markets, it's not going to be supply and demand that's determining how much your grocery store charges you for milk or for eggs. It's going to be some bureaucrat in DC, which seems totally unworkable, first of all.

We've seen this kind of thing tried in lots of other countries before-- Venezuela, Argentina, the Soviet Union, etcetera. It leads to shortages, it leads to black markets, you know, [and] plenty of uncertainty…

What are these “clear rules of the road” or the thresholds that determine when a price or profit level becomes “excessive”? The memo doesn’t say, and the campaign did not answer questions I sent seeking clarification. //

It’s hard to exaggerate how bad this policy is. It is, in all but name, a sweeping set of government-enforced price controls across every industry, not only food. Supply and demand would no longer determine prices or profit levels. Far-off Washington bureaucrats would. The FTC would be able to tell, say, a Kroger in Ohio the acceptable price it can charge for milk.

At best, this would lead to shortages, black markets and hoarding, among other distortions seen previous times countries tried to limit price growth by fiat. (There’s a reason narrower “price gouging” laws that exist in some U.S. states are rarely invoked.) At worst, it might accidentally raise prices. //

But more to the point: If your opponent claims you’re a “communist,” maybe don’t start with an economic agenda that can (accurately) be labeled as federal price controls. //

The "policy" is horrible, but you're just supposed to be vibing on how she's going to take care of the evil corporations. She apparently vetted this policy like she vetted her running mate Tim Walz — which is to say not at all or keeping her eyes covered about all the bad stuff. //

anon-aqyc Jerry's Middle Finger
an hour ago
They are just following the playbook of every Marxist since the beginning of time. Promise the world and when you get in power bring out the iron fist.

I am aware that Marx did not write about it until the 19th century, but the idea was not new with him. //

St. Joseph, Terror of Demons Jerry's Middle Finger
an hour ago
They know it doesn’t work and they don’t care. If everything fails, that means the elites get more money and more power. //

Donner’s Party
an hour ago
WaPo must have gotten the Memo from Bezoes, that Kamala’s new Joy policy wasn’t going to work for Amazon.
No Amazon, No WaPo, No Job.

"It's going to stop us from being builders, and we need to support the side that's going to let our civilization thrive," Lonsdale added.

That's always been the trouble with leftist policies; they are deeply and fundamentally anti-growth, anti-business, and anti-prosperity. Kamala Harris's policies (at least, what we know of them if you can keep track of her policy changes as they go by) include increasing taxation and regulation and attempting to make sure "everyone ends up in the same place," which smacks of socialism.

These are not things that investment bankers or tech moguls want to hear. //

anon-x8p1
8 hours ago edited
Don' you like the idea Kamala will pay millions of our tax dollars for armies of new government employees, just to track down the price of celery at your local super market?

Always, always, always ask how many new government employees (D) any Democrat program will require. That is the real name of the game - expand Big Government(D).

We are close to a critical tipping point where Big Government(D) finally swallows the rest of us whole. Yes, it is that critical.

Argentina's recent repeal of rent control by libertarian President Javier Milei has led to a surge in housing supply, with the freedom to negotiate contracts, previously restricted, directly causing a drop in rental prices.

Milei, a self-described "anarcho-capitalist" known for his free-market approach, repealed the 2020 Rental Law, enacted by former leftist President Alberto Fernández, which had imposed restrictions on landlords and led to a significant decline in rental availability.

With Argentina's inflation reaching 211.4%—the highest in 32 years—rent prices were adjusted every 12 months, and leases had to last at least three years. The law, introduced in 2020, ended up distorting the real estate market and hurting both landlords and tenants.

The law aimed to provide tenants with more financial security, but by the end of last year, an estimated one in seven homes in Buenos Aires was sitting empty as landlords chose not to rent them out in Argentine pesos. Deposits were capped, and it was nearly impossible to end tenancies early.

For many locals, finding a new apartment had become "mission impossible." But after the repeal, Buenos Aires saw a doubling of available rental units, and rental prices have stabilized. Under the new rules, landlords and tenants have more freedom to agree on lease terms. If the duration isn't specified, it defaults to two years.

Big government. Big spending. Big tax increases. //

IRS data showed that Minnesota loses “about ten households earning more than $200,000 for every six that it gains, which is the fifth worst ratio among the states.”

There are lies, damned lies, and government statistics — and maybe none is more damnable than the official unemployment rate which is half the actual rate, according to Rasmussen. Worse, the number of Americans who are neither retired nor employed is more than four times higher than July's official rate of 4.3%. //

Rasmussen surveyed nearly 9,000 American adults and found that in July the percentage of Americans who are unemployed and looking for work — this is the number that the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) should report each month — was 8.4%. The BLS reported a rosy 4.3% unemployment rate last month, up from June's equally imaginary 4.1%.

From there, things only get worse. Because under Bidenomics, of course, they do.

One in four adult Americans is retired, which is nice for them. Fifteen percent say they're entrepreneurs (that can be anything from driving an Uber to launching a Silicon Valley startup), and just under 30% are employed by a private company.

Nearly one in 10 work for the government at one level or another. //

That means the percentage of Americans who could be working and perhaps would really like to be working but either can't find work or have given up finding work is 18.1%. That's more than four times the official unemployment rate.

It also means that the 45% of Americans who do work in the private sector are, in one way or another, supporting the 55% who don't, can't, or won't work.

Reuters
@Reuters
·
Follow
US Vice President Kamala Harris hailed the latest jobs report and praised ‘Bidenomics’ at an event in Washington, D.C. https://reut.rs/47wSDr1

7:10 PM · Aug 4, 2023. //

The Federal Reserve has raised interest rates in a constant effort to combat inflation. Typically, when you start raising interest rates at that pace, it leads to a recession. I say "typically" because it hasn't happened yet, and many economists assumed the Fed had pulled off the soft landing. However, the sudden contraction in the jobs market has brought those worries back to the fore, and people are panicking.

If the Biden-Harris administration was taking credit for the economy a year ago, then it should be made to take credit for it now. In truth, Biden's policies did create the sharp rise in inflation that we as consumers are still dealing with. In truth, that rise in inflation led the Fed to start hiking rates, which forced the economy to begin to contract. In truth, this has led us to where we are today.

According to Harris' spokesperson, guess who's somehow responsible for their bad jobs report?

"Donald Trump failed Americans as president, costing our economy millions of jobs, and bringing us to the brink of recession," Harris for President spokesperson James Singer said in a statement. //

Ultimately, it always comes down to the economy and Harris just gave a sure-fire reason why you should not vote for her, when she refuses to take responsibility for the administration's own actions. //

WackAMole
6 hours ago
She’s just using the Joe B playbook, lie and assume that the media will agree and the public is stupid.

Value of $3.08 from 1946 to 2024
$3.08 in 1946 is equivalent in purchasing power to about $49.62 today, an increase of $46.54 over 78 years. The dollar had an average inflation rate of 3.63% per year between 1946 and today, producing a cumulative price increase of 1,511.15%.

This means that today's prices are 16.11 times as high as average prices since 1946, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics consumer price index. A dollar today only buys 6.207% of what it could buy back then.

The inflation rate in 1946 was 8.33%.

Argentina's Javier Milei is setting a great example for all world leaders. It's too bad most of them aren't paying attention. //

Times have been hard in Argentina, and the economically-minded libertarian Javier Milei ran for president of that South American nation on a platform of reducing regulations, reducing taxation, and shrinking government to make things better. And it's starting to work.

The catastrophe is yet another reminder of how brittle global internet infrastructure is. It’s complex, deeply interconnected, and filled with single points of failure. As we experienced last week, a single problem in a small piece of software can take large swaths of the internet and global economy offline.

The brittleness of modern society isn’t confined to tech. We can see it in many parts of our infrastructure, from food to electricity, from finance to transportation. This is often a result of globalization and consolidation, but not always. In information technology, brittleness also results from the fact that hundreds of companies, none of which you;ve heard of, each perform a small but essential role in keeping the internet running. CrowdStrike is one of those companies.

This brittleness is a result of market incentives. In enterprise computing—as opposed to personal computing—a company that provides computing infrastructure to enterprise networks is incentivized to be as integral as possible, to have as deep access into their customers’ networks as possible, and to run as leanly as possible.

Redundancies are unprofitable. Being slow and careful is unprofitable. Being less embedded in and less essential and having less access to the customers’ networks and machines is unprofitable—at least in the short term, by which these companies are measured. This is true for companies like CrowdStrike. It’s also true for CrowdStrike’s customers, who also didn’t have resilience, redundancy, or backup systems in place for failures such as this because they are also an expense that affects short-term profitability.

But brittleness is profitable only when everything is working. When a brittle system fails, it fails badly. The cost of failure to a company like CrowdStrike is a fraction of the cost to the global economy. And there will be a next CrowdStrike, and one after that. The market rewards short-term profit-maximizing systems, and doesn’t sufficiently penalize such companies for the impact their mistakes can have. (Stock prices depress only temporarily. Regulatory penalties are minor. Class-action lawsuits settle. Insurance blunts financial losses.) It’s not even clear that the information technology industry could exist in its current form if it had to take into account all the risks such brittleness causes. //

Imagine a house where the drywall, flooring, fireplace, and light fixtures are all made by companies that need continuous access and whose failures would cause the house to collapse. You’d never set foot in such a structure, yet that’s how software systems are built. It’s not that 100 percent of the system relies on each company all the time, but 100 percent of the system can fail if any one of them fails. But doing better is expensive and doesn’t immediately contribute to a company’s bottom line. //

This is not something we can dismantle overnight. We have built a society based on complex technology that we’re utterly dependent on, with no reliable way to manage that technology. Compare the internet with ecological systems. Both are complex, but ecological systems have deep complexity rather than just surface complexity. In ecological systems, there are fewer single points of failure: If any one thing fails in a healthy natural ecosystem, there are other things that will take over. That gives them a resilience that our tech systems lack.

We need deep complexity in our technological systems, and that will require changes in the market. Right now, the market incentives in tech are to focus on how things succeed: A company like CrowdStrike provides a key service that checks off required functionality on a compliance checklist, which makes it all about the features that they will deliver when everything is working. That;s exactly backward. We want our technological infrastructure to mimic nature in the way things fail. That will give us deep complexity rather than just surface complexity, and resilience rather than brittleness.

How do we accomplish this? There are examples in the technology world, but they are piecemeal. Netflix is famous for its Chaos Monkey tool, which intentionally causes failures to force the systems (and, really, the engineers) to be more resilient. The incentives don’t line up in the short term: It makes it harder for Netflix engineers to do their jobs and more expensive for them to run their systems. Over years, this kind of testing generates more stable systems. But it requires corporate leadership with foresight and a willingness to spend in the short term for possible long-term benefits.

Last week’s update wouldn’t have been a major failure if CrowdStrike had rolled out this change incrementally: first 1 percent of their users, then 10 percent, then everyone. But that’s much more expensive, because it requires a commitment of engineer time for monitoring, debugging, and iterating. And can take months to do correctly for complex and mission-critical software. An executive today will look at the market incentives and correctly conclude that it’s better for them to take the chance than to “waste” the time and money.

There is an alternative to shock therapy that has proven to be effective in addressing a debt crisis in the long term. The alternative is to enact effective fiscal rules constraining deficits and debt accumulation. The Swiss debt brake has proven to be the most successful of these rules-based approaches to fiscal policy. Three decades ago, Switzerland experienced unsustainable growth in debt. They responded with a debt brake that caps the growth in spending at the long-term rate of growth in the economy. Over a transition period, the Swiss were successful in bringing expenditures into balance with revenues and in stabilizing and reducing debt. //

The Swiss debt brake is very much a bottom-up approach to reform. Debt brakes were first enacted at the cantonal level and only later at the federal level. The debt brake was incorporated into the Swiss Constitution through a referendum with support from 85 percent of voters. The debt brake provides for a transition period in which expenditures are brought into balance with revenue. The debt brake has automatic triggers, reducing spending when deficits exceed a tolerance level. Deficit spending is permitted in response to emergencies, but the deficits must be offset by surplus revenues in the near term.

After reports that a secret 50-year-long “petrodollar” agreement between Saudi Arabia and the U.S. failed, some warned of the U.S. dollar's global demise. What actually happened?

Contradictions: Some said the agreement required Saudi Arabia to keep oil priced in dollars. But others said that wasn't the nature of the deal.

For Context: In 1974, the countries reportedly struck a then-secret agreement to swap U.S. aid for Saudi Arabia's investment of petrodollars in U.S. Treasurys. There's been an "implicit" agreement to keep oil priced in dollars since the 1970's, but nothing official, MarketWatch (Center bias) told AllSides. Oil is typically priced in dollars worldwide, though Saudi Arabia has recently signaled openness to accepting other currencies.

Donovan's Narrative: Paul Donovan, chief economist at UBS Global Wealth Management, explained the agreement while noting that oil "has always traded in non-dollar currencies," and that contrary reports were born from "confirmation bias" in the crypto world, where many "desperately want to believe in the dollar’s demise." Donovan said Saudi Arabia has "indicated it was happy to negotiate oil sales in other currencies." MarketWatch told AllSides that "practically all of the Saudis oil revenues are priced in dollars."

How The Media Covered It: Outlets like Straight Arrow News (Center bias) and Newsmax (Lean Right bias) reported that the "agreement" to keep oil priced in dollars fell through, though they were contradicted by MarketWatch and ZeroHedge (Lean Right bias), who focused on Donovan's claim that the story was "fake news."

If the laureates understood the difference between academic theory and policy practice, they would not have issued their silly letter. //

About the best thing that Trump can say in favor of his economic policies is that they are opposed by a group of Nobel economists.

It takes time. Normal people know transformation doesn't happen overnight. //

For 30 years, Argentines faced rising food prices every week.

Every week for 30 years.

Well, the libertarian free-market economist President Javier Milei has steered Argentina in the correct direction because, for the first time in 30 years, the country did not experience food inflation. //

Milei is obviously on the correct path. He is also the first Argentine president not to pass a new law in his first six months in office.

To put it bluntly, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are cannibalizing the entire federal budget. //

CBO increased the estimated budget deficit for the current fiscal year by $408 billion and the 10-year budget deficit by nearly $2.1 trillion. //

The (bloated) spending bills passed in March added nearly $1.3 trillion to the 10-year deficit, as higher spending this fiscal year leads CBO to assume (not incorrectly, in most cases) that spending will continue at those higher levels in the future.

Spending on Medicaid and Obamacare subsidies will increase deficits by $511 billion in the coming decade, in large part because more people will continue signing up for “free” coverage. The budget office also noted that “the recent surge in immigration [has] made more people than CBO previously estimated eligible for” Obamacare subsidies, accounting for an increase in projected enrollment. //

To put it bluntly, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are cannibalizing the entire federal budget. Unless and until Congress stops the “Mediscare” rhetoric and gets serious about reforming these programs, our financial situation will continue to get worse. And Lord help the next generation if we don’t wake up and come to our senses sooner rather than later.

 The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a part of President Trump's 2017 'Tax Cuts and Jobs Act' that levied a tax on capital appreciation is constitutional. Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote the majority opinion. Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch dissented.

The court ruled 7-2 that the mandatory repatriation tax, or MRT, is constitutional under the taxation regimes defined in Article I and the 16th Amendment. In short, the MRT imposed a one-time requirement for US citizens and companies to repatriate money held overseas. //

The Moores had earned $0 from their investment, but the value of their investment had increased because the business they invested in was successful. Because their investment was successful, that unrealized gain, which could totally disappear in a few months if things went pear-shaped, was taxed.

Why is this important?

The lodestar of the far left is "income inequality." They want everyone to be poor but them. Where their policies are defeated is by frugality and investment. //

The wealth tax's strategy is to prevent the accumulation of intergenerational wealth and penalize those who work hard, save, and invest in favor of those who consume. Every time your stock portfolio or home increases in value, a wealth tax would make that gain taxable, even if you didn't cash out. //

FreeWilledThinker
an hour ago
I just read the opinion and, even though I am a Constitutionalist and favor strict construction, I would have voted with the majority on this one. The reason why is due to the pass-through nature of the company. Every LLC in the U.S. works this way, where you get a K-1 and get taxed, even where not a cent has come into your bank account.

I think the muddy water comes from the ownership mechanism. As a shareholder, the Moore's wish to treat the pass-through as though it is not taxable on the owned company's income, but it would be were it based in the U.S. and did not pay any tax on the base income. //

Buckeye kamief
18 minutes ago
But that interest would be taxable if NOT in an IRA -- which is the crux of this. These folks were catching gains on a foreign corporation NOT in an IRA, yet because of reinvestment, they weren't paying any taxes. Compare to US tax code in existence -- if you have a stock and it's in a dividend re-investment program, which is effectively exactly what they were doing, you DO PAY TAXES on those dividends, even though you chose to re-invest. That's another reason I agree with the USSC on this one. Their Indian corporation was making money, but not calling it a "dividend", and they kept putting it back in....sorry that's basically tax evasion by US code.

If you follow family-run businesses over multiple generations, a common theme will emerge that is so statistically significant that even Dave Ramsey warns families about it.

When the first generation starts a business, it is often passed down to the second generation who directly witnessed the blood, sweat, and tears that both of their parents invested to make it sustainable. This second generation generally feels an obligation to the investments made by their parents and generally runs the business well. But the third generation has no historical appreciation for the business. They were not alive when the business was born and can’t comprehend a world without it. If the business was passed from the first to the second generation, of course, it will be passed to the third which causes a sense of entitlement. This entitlement and lack of perspective are at the core of why a disproportionate number of third-generation business owners fail.

The United States is now in its third generation of bureaucracy following World War 2. The first generation was directly a part of the pain and sacrifice made around the world to defeat an axis of evil. The second generation of bureaucracy grew up in the shadows of World War 2 and even got a taste of it during the Cold War. But the third generation of bureaucrats and technocrats embedded in unelected offices earning mid-six-figure salaries have none of this. Their version of a threat to democracy is the prospect of a democratic reelection of Donald Trump.

Just like a family business, this third-generation bureaucrat is running this country into the ground and is stirring a populist revolt that I don’t think they understand. Let me explain.

As Zoltar Pozsar, New York-based economist and investment research director at Credit Suisse, put it recently: “That’s dusk for the petrodollar… and dawn for the petroyuan.”

U.S. Dollar Still The World’s Reserve Currency, But Its Dominance Is Slipping

Before you dismiss Pozsar’s comment as an exaggeration, consider that other major OPEC nations and BRICS members (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) are either accepting yuan already or strongly considering it. Russia, Iran and Venezuela account for about 40% of the world’s proven oilfields, and the three sell their oil in exchange for yuan. Turkey, Argentina, Indonesia and heavyweight oil producer Saudi Arabia have all applied for admittance into BRICS, while Egypt became a new member this week.

What this suggests is that the yuan’s role as a reserve currency will continue to strengthen, signifying a broader shift in the global power balance and potentially giving China a bigger hand with which to shape economic policies that affect us all.