July 13, 2020

On The Foolish Quest For Cosmic Justice Through Government Coercion

July 13, 2020/ Francis Menton

A couple of days ago a reader sent me a personal email (not a comment on the blog) responding to my June 30 post with the title “Reminder: How Progressive ‘Programs’ Keep African Americans Down.” The post discussed issues including that African Americans in the United States have lower recorded average incomes and wealth than the averages of other ethnic groups.
The key point made in the responsive email was this (paraphrase): “You are full of criticisms for all the attempts to solve these problems, yet you never propose any solutions yourself.”
That is correct. I have not proposed “solutions” to these “problems.” And there is a reason for that. The reason is that no “solutions” to these “problems” exist; at least, no solutions exist if the concept of an acceptable solution consists of some government spending program or order or command issued to the people.

July 11, 2020

New York City Rent Regulated Tenants Are About To Face A Reckoning

July 11, 2020/ Francis Menton

In New York City, the residential real estate market is subject to an almost infinitely complex tangle of rent regulations. Of about 2 million rental apartments in the City, approximately half, or one million, are subject to the regulations.
The rent regulations are one of the principal devices by which our politicians seek to achieve perfect justice and fairness for their constituents through government command. Is your rent too high? We’ll order it frozen! And indeed, in three of Bill de Blasio’s now seven years as Mayor, the “Rent Guidelines Board” that he controls, and that oversees the regulated apartments, has ordered freezes of the rents under its jurisdiction, the third such freeze having just been ordered on June 17.
So, as a tenant, which would you prefer: (1) the benevolent protection of the rent regulation system and the Rent Guidelines Board to assure that your landlord can only ever raise your rent in tiny annual increments, if at all? or (2) take your chances with the hurly burly of the free market?

July 09, 2020

July 09, 2020/ Francis Menton

Over the past several days, you have probably seen multiple articles reporting on reverses suffered in the U.S. courts by developers of pipelines to transport oil and natural gas. In one case, a Federal District Court even ordered an existing, operational pipeline to shut down pending further environmental review. The multiple court decisions have been covered in the New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times, CNN, and every other large news source that you can think of.
Meanwhile, on June 19 the BP oil company issued its annual Report titled “Statistical Review of World Energy,” this version covering the year 2019. I’ll bet you haven’t seen anything in the news about that one. I make that bet because, aside from one article in Forbes magazine, every piece that I can find covering the BP Report appears in some sort of specialized or industry publication.
If you just read what appears before you in your news feed, you could be forgiven for getting the impression that producers of fossil fuels are on the run and will shortly be driven from the scene. But if you take the time to look, you can find the real picture in the BP Report. . . .

July 06, 2020

July 06, 2020/ Francis Menton

President Trump calls it the “fake news.” I’ve tried to steer mostly clear of that term, but it just gets harder and harder. You keep thinking that it must be possible to turn to some newspaper or TV news channel for just some basic information on what is going on in the world. But it turns out that the desperate effort to come up with something, anything that will defeat the Republicans or the President requires distorting or suppressing even the most basic facts of what is happening.
There were three years of the Russia, Russia, Russia collusion hoax. Has any media outlet that promoted that fraud ever issued any sort of apology or correction? If so, I have never seen it. Ditto for the Ukraine “quid pro quo” that wasn’t. Just this past weekend, Trump gave what I thought was a very decent and unifying patriotic speech at Mt. Rushmore. Here is the text. For every major left-wing media outlet, it was “dark” and “divisive.” Try reading the text and see if you can find that. Could they really think that nobody would read the text?
But then, the significance of Trump’s speech is a matter of opinion. Let’s consider a matter much closer to simple fact: the number of daily cases and deaths from the Covid-19 virus in the U.S. . . .

July 04, 2020

July 04, 2020/ Francis Menton

It’s the Fourth of July, and everyone in America has so much to be grateful for. To name just a few of the most obvious things: a freedom-based economic system, prosperity beyond anything imaginable through all prior human history, and ongoing new miracles from information to communications to photography to entertainment. (Right now we’re streaming “Hamilton.”).
Of course, the toxic left-wing media, let alone rioters on the streets, are filled with nothing but anger, resentment, rage and hate. What is wrong with these people?
Over the past few days I took a break from my pandemic-induced exile in the country to visit my regular haunts in New York City. There, the Mayor and City Council there are doing everything in their power to destroy the place as quickly as possible. But even with still mostly-deserted streets and the few people walking around having masks on their faces, there is still plenty to appreciate. . . .

June 30, 2020

June 30, 2020/ Francis Menton

Suddenly the country has descended into a paroxysm of guilt over the situation of African Americans, particularly the fact that as a group they have not caught up to whites or other ethnic groups in average income or wealth. Accusations of “systemic racism” or even “white supremacy” are everywhere, particularly issuing from the Black Lives Matter movement.
And accompanying the accusations are newly insistent demands for more spending on government programs and redistribution schemes of every sort. More for housing programs, more for social work programs, more for education programs, more for homelessness programs, and on and on. Perhaps the ultimate such demand is the demand for “reparations,” . . .
Even assuming that resources are infinite, is there any reason to believe that this kind of thing can ever meaningfully improve the lives of current and future African Americans in this country?
This seems like an appropriate time to remind readers that this site contains a treasure trove of posts giving details of the enormous amounts of means-tested anti-poverty and redistribution programs already in existence in this country (currently running in the range of $1.2 trillion per year if federal, state and local spending are all included), and of the total failure of any of those programs or any of that spending to alleviate poverty of African Americans or other poor Americans to any meaningful degree.