How Obama's Progressivism Destroyed the Economy

Mancur Olson's Power and Prosperity was published two years after his death in 2000.  In it, he describes exactly what made the world's major economies so prosperous.

Yes, Olson says, free markets are critical, but the power of trade and of the division of labor to improve the human condition is so great that they can not be stopped, not by an anarchical Hobbesian "state of nature," or by the most oppressive of governments, or by the almost anarchical black markets they engender.  Free markets are so essential as to be irrepressible; informal ones are to be found in all societies and all eras.

How Mega-Stupid Does the Left Think We Are?

Yesterday, the liberal local New York paper (LLNYP) published this whiny essay from Warren Buffet claiming that he and his 400 closest economic peers -- the mega-rich he calls them four times -- wouldn't mind being taxed a whole lot more.

By Buffet's own numbers, if we had confiscated all the top 400's earnings in 2008, it would have raised about $0.09T ($90.9B), or about 0.6% of the 2011 federal deficit.  That's if we take every dollar of it, not just tax it at the highest rate for earned income of 35%, since that would raise only 0.2% of the deficit.

Kinda makes you wonder: if Buffet's so rich, how come he's not smart?

The Economic Tyranny of Commerce Clause Interpretation

The language in Article I Section 8 of the Constitution on regulation of interstate commerce seems clear enough to me.  With some intervening unrelated verbiage excised, it says this

The Congress shall have power ... To regulate commerce ... among the several states

For over a century, it was held to mean little except that States were prohibited from regulating commerce with other states.  But like a structure with a sound foundation twisted by an architect gone mad, the decisions of Supreme Courts since then have erected a commerce clause jurisprudence -- a fancy phrase for a collection of interpretive decisions -- that has destroyed the original meaning of that language.

If Only the Election Were This November...

If only the 2012 Presidential election were three months away instead of fifteen.

Here is notable Democrat partisan Ronald Brownstein's National Journal analysis of The Awesome One's state-by-state approval numbers for January through June as reported by Gallup.

Saying the Unthinkable

Even those of us who bitterly resent the collectivist nanny state -- the Federal Motherment, as it were -- are often unwilling to recommend to our political champions that they advocate to the electorate what is needed to restore our economic vitality.  We fear the political reaction by the inattentive and muddleheaded middle.  The left uses that concern against us, presuming to the mantle of the Washington wise men, of the elite managers of the economy.   Lately, though, they have shown a sort of group insanity in reaction to the writing on the wall.

What the Dog Didn't Do In the Night (Wall Writing -- Part III)

Here is Michael Barone echoing my commentary on Walter Russell Mead's commentary on Stanley Greenberg's analysis of what the dog didn't do in the night.* 

The Debt Limit Deal (Tea Party On -- Part IV)

Some have asked how I view the debt ceiling deal.

I made clear early on that the Republicans could not stand up against the public pressure that would result from a refusal by the House to increase the debt ceiling.  I said it again, and again.

A fixed debt limit and the subsequent immediate balanced budget would have meant an immediate spending cut of forty percent, since today we are borrowing 40 cents out of every dollar we spend.  While freeing the resources tied down by that spending would eventually be a good thing, the abruptness of the change would have been economic brutality.

The Writing on the Wall (Part II)

Yesterday, I told the tale of two progressivists seeing the writing on the wall.

Today, the tale becomes an epic, as Walter Russell Mead weighs in, explaining it all to Stanley Greenberg, who is one baffled leftist pollster.  It seems that he can push-poll American adults to tell him what he wants to hear, but the votes don't ever tally the same, never minding the fact that polls of adults don't square with polls of registered or likely or actual voters.

Did The Debt Limit Deal Cause Black Thursday?

If the middle of the US body politic hadn't kicked the debt limit can down the road and Obama and Geithner had pulled the trigger on their plan to stick holders of US Treasury obligations -- three quarters of whom are US citizens -- by defaulting on interest payments, not paying soldiers' families, and not mailing Social Security checks to Grannies everywhere, then the media would surely be telling us at this very moment that the Tea Party Terrorists had caused today's 500 point drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

The Boehner Rule (The Math -- Part III)

Almost eight days ago, acting in my previous capacity as math professor I sent you a message titled " I've Done the Math" in which I told you that in order to have the deficit decline toward zero over some number of years, it was sufficient to adopt a simple rule.  That rule, first articulated by the Republican House Speaker John Boehner in May of this year, is that for every increase in the debt limit, an equal decrease be made in future spending over the desired period of decline.

At that time, I said that this point seemed not to have been made by any other observer of the debt ceiling battle.

Progressivists See the Writing on the Wall

And now we have the left's never-ending whine.

Kevin Drum in Mother Jones quotes Jared Bernstein from his blog at length, ending with this

Those of us who do care about [the progressive ideal] will not defeat those who strive to get rid of it all by becoming better tacticians. We will only find success when a majority of Americans agrees with us that government is something worth fighting for.

Drum agrees: