Is The United States Economy "Working" For Everyone?

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  • At his various speeches and rallies, President Trump likes to tout a particular list of recent indicators of a strong U.S. economy — relatively robust growth, very low unemployment (including for women, African Americans, and other minorities), and a booming stock market.

  • Meanwhile, the recurring theme of his Democratic rivals is that the economy is somehow not “working” for average Americans. All the Democratic candidates propose massive increases in government spending and programs supposedly as the way to make the economy “work” better for the average family.

  • Without minimizing any of the statistics cited by the President, there is an even more revealing place to look to get a true idea of the overall success of the American economy, including success for those toward the lower end of the income distribution. That place is the statistics for per capita GDP and income. . . .

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Evaluation Of Mike Bloomberg As A Presidential Candidate (2)

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  • Part of my service to readers is the ongoing evaluation of the various candidates for the Democratic nomination for President, with emphasis on those candidates who seem to have some reasonable chance of rising into the top ranks and maybe even getting the nomination.

  • Previous posts have focused mostly on Joe Biden (nine posts) and Elizabeth Warren (four posts). Both of those two now seem to be fading in the polls and in early results. (Can I claim some of the credit?)

  • Mike Bloomberg could be the guy who is now going to step in to fill the breach. Certainly, he has enough personal cash to far exceed the spending of the very best-funded candidate who relies on money raised from third parties. He is spending big in the Super Tuesday states, and focusing on behemoth California. So don’t count him out.

  • As things have heated up, Mayor Mike has started to go toe to toe with his rivals by putting out various plans and proposals to define his candidacy. . . .

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The Democrats Are Trying To Get Trump Re-elected

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  • Unlike in many recent years, I actually watched a good piece of the State of the Union address last night. It seemed that it might be interesting to see how Trump would deal with the challenge of delivering this speech with the “impeachment” still technically pending.

  • Granted, the most important function of the modern SOTU is to give the sitting President an opportunity to force members of the adversary party, in front of a large national audience, to admit by their conduct (failure to applaud or stand) their opposition to many of his most popular policies. But the question is, is Trump just better at this game than his predecessors? Or is it that he really is not much different from his predecessors — certainly, not much different from Obama on this subject — but that the Democrats are so crazed in their hatred of the man that they fall time after time right into his trap?

  • Surely, the Democrats in general, and Nancy Pelosi in particular, given an hour to think about it, could easily have predicted sixty to eighty percent of the points that Trump was going to make in the SOTU. After all, Trump almost certainly chose most of his points by their results in poll-testing. When Trump made an easily-predicted point that was non-controversial, the Democrats could have coordinated and agreed to offer some half-sincere smiles and at least a smattering of polite applause. They then could have saved the folded hands and frowns for points of real disagreement.

  • But no. With the camera unforgivingly fixed on Pelosi (sitting behind the President) for almost the entire time, we got that unflinching scowl, nearly from beginning to end of the speech. In the instances when the camera cut away to focus on other Democrats, almost always they were following Pelosi’s lead. On point after point that I thought few to none would oppose, Pelosi sat there motionless and scowling away. . . .

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More Government Spending Does Not Buy Results In Education Or Poverty Reduction

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More Government Spending Does Not Buy Results In Education Or Poverty Reduction

  • Here in New York, we love to feel good about ourselves for our compassion for the less well off. Yes, we pay higher taxes than they do in other places, but for that we get a much higher level of social services to lift up the poor and the downtrodden. Or at least, that’s the narrative.

  • I first covered this subject back in the very early days of this blog, on November 13, 2012, in a post titled “Why New York City Is A High Tax Jurisdiction.” That post pointed out that in fact the differential in public spending (and therefore taxes) between New York City and other jurisdictions could be found almost entirely in three things, none of which provided any measurable improvements in life quality to the poor and the downtrodden.

  • Somehow, in seven plus intervening years, almost no one seems to be paying attention to how New York just throws money away to achieve worse results than those achieved elsewhere for half the money. But over the weekend, the New York Post made an exception, publishing an op-ed by a guy named Ryan Fazio titled “NY and CA spend billions more in taxes than TX and FL — and get worse results.” Fazio updates many of the statistics that I had collected for the 2012 post.

  • Let’s focus on spending for K-12 education and for anti-poverty programs.

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Two Reasons Why Continuing A Little With Impeachment Might Not Be Such A Bad Thing

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  • As of this writing it looks like the impeachment farce in the Senate may end as early as tomorrow. The Democrats’ “more witnesses” gambit appears to be fizzling out — although that is not a certainty until the vote is taken. I suppose that ending this thing is for the better.

  • However, I do have a couple of reasons why having it continue for at least a little while longer may not be so bad.

  • The first is that there is an obvious witness for the President’s side to call, someone whose testimony could be the first real “bombshell” in this whole matter. No, it is not Joe or Hunter Biden.

  • Who is the person that the President can call who is most analogous to these star witnesses for the Democrats? . . .

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Forcing The U.S. To Accept Immigrants Who Will Become Public Charges (2)

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  • Who runs the federal government of the United States? Is it the elected President and members of Congress? Or is it a permanent bureaucracy committed to expansion of its own size and power, together with a critical mass (potentially well less than a majority) of sympathetic federal judges who can be called upon as necessary to strike down any disfavored policy initiative from the elected branches?

  • Or, in an even more cynical formulation, is it that the elected officeholders can run policy when they are Democrats, but when Republicans are elected the bureaucrats get to rule with the assistance of select members of the judiciary?

  • To view the dynamics of this process at work, there is perhaps no more striking example than what has occurred on the question of the extent to which the U.S. can exclude immigrants on the ground that they are likely to become “public charges.”

  • We last visited this subject back in October 2019, in a post titled “Maneuvering To Force The U.S. To Accept Immigrants Who Will Become Public Charges.” This post is a sequel to that one. . . .

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