Looking back at 2019 is incredibly disorienting. The country is horribly divided. In fact, the president of the United States was just impeached along partisan lines. The government is running trillion dollar (and growing) annual budget deficits, even though the economy is doing well. Still, listening to many politicians and pundits, you’d think the nation is doing terribly and the government isn’t spending a dime. That’s 2019 in a nutshell.
Megan McArdle celebrates the glorious globalization that makes possible an Irish Christmas cake.
George Will laments Democrats’ denial of reality (including of the laws of arithmetic).
But although capitalism keeps producing historically high levels of prosperity and order, its critics on the left keep hurling new terms at it. Capitalism is now called “neoliberalism” or “hypercapitalism” or, question-beggingly, “late capitalism,” and left-wing intellectuals keep pretending they have something wonderful to replace it with.
Jonah Goldberg writes wisely about Trump’s own role in his impeachment.
Here’s holiday wisdom from John Stossel.
While its advocates claim Ex-Im helps the U.S. fight the trade war, reality is quite different. The number one destination where Ex-Im sends U.S. tax dollars is China. An overwhelming majority of that financing goes to state-owned enterprises such as Air China and the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China. Ex-Im isn’t a very good tool to counter China’s industrial policy since its top activity is funneling cash to China’s tools of industrial policy.
