Democrats want to punish the rich with taxes, and Republicans want to punish China with tariffs. The two are analytically equivalent, and both bring to mind H.L. Mencken’s chestnut, “There is always a well-known solution to every human problem—neat, plausible, and wrong.” Maybe six weeks into an Economics 101 course, one encounters the “incidence of taxation” and learns why tax-the-rich and tariff-the-Chinese are fallacious and self-harming strategies. For the past 250 years or so, political leaders have gone through an endless cycle of learning this logic and then forgetting it.
Lance Morrow writes insightfully about Biden. A slice:
For the moment, it would be well to remember that the incredible mess of American politics in the summer of 2024 is the doing not only of the egregious Donald Trump but also of a stubborn, prideful, selfish Joe Biden and his wife Jill and the rest of the Bidens, and his closest aides. In this debacle, Biden’s laurels are withered; he does not deserve much glory. In the wake of his reluctant departure from the race, he leaves a squalor of conspiracy theories and the scandal of his having persisted for so long. Conservative historians will write him off as an incompetent, while progressives—after overpraising his accomplishments—will recall him as the one who left the Democratic Party in chaos and, as may be, delivered the country to the carnivore Donald Trump.
She is also a protectionist and voted against president Trump’s free-trade USMCA (U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement). During her first campaign (she got fewer votes than the Democrat who won the primary in Samoa this year, as I learned from Matt Continetti), she supported Medicare for All (though she later modified her stance. That means she may shift again), the Green New Deal, federal paid family leave, and free college tuition for most Americans. These are only a few things she is for, in addition to all the things that happened during the last few years.
I get that some of her economic positions may be acceptable these days among a few in the New Republican Right. But that doesn’t make them any less worrisome for those of us who believe in economic growth, innovation, and human flourishing.
George Will counsels Democrats to hold an open convention. Two slices:
Democrats face what seems to, but should not, rattle them: the prospect of an old-fashioned deliberative convention, rather than a modern one that merely ratifies decisions taken in states’ primaries and caucuses. President Biden, in what we may hope is the last irresponsible act of his irresponsibly prolonged public career, has said, in effect, to convention delegates and voters: If you enjoyed my presidency (polls indicate that an American majority has not enjoyed it), I urge the convention to nominate Vice President Harris. So, let’s recapitulate the Democrats’ path into today’s political cul-de-sac.
…..
An English person once said of another, “He has risen without a trace.” If only that could be said of Harris, the helium candidate, lighter than air. The eerie strangeness of her public maunderings will live as long as YouTube enables the savoring of her streams of semiconsciousness about space, school buses, broadband in Louisiana, Poland and NATO’s northern flank, nations working together by working together, the border (“We have a secure border”) and equity (“Equitable treatment means we all end up in the same place”).
Perhaps delusions of adequacy disincline her to prepare, or even think, before speaking. Democratic delegates who convene in Chicago should think before possibly handing to her the nuclear launch codes. And they should read their party’s Rule 13.J: “Delegates elected to the national convention pledged to a presidential candidate shall in all good conscience reflect the sentiments of those who elected them” (emphasis added). Shall, not may. It is a duty.
And spare us doubly silly sermons about how Biden’s delegates consented to him, and are his property to dispose of. The noun “consent” comes with an implicit adjective preceding it: “informed.” Voters who supported Biden in primaries were misinformed by him and his party about something germane: his evaporating faculties.
“Biden’s Out. Harris Is In. Everyone Else Is Screwed.”
This letter in the Wall Street Journal is correct:
Contrary to Prof. Graedon Zorzi’s op-ed “J.D. Vance and the Rise of ‘Postliberalism’” (July 17), the postliberal movement isn’t “new.” Many of its ideas have been circulated in the public square for decades—by progressives on the left. This particular brand of New Rightism shares a mind-set with its supposed enemies: rejecting individual liberties such as religious freedom, seeking to grow the administrative state to impose an undefined “common good” and demonizing the free-market system using populist rhetoric. The frequent refrain of many postliberals, including at times Sen. Vance, is that government should be used to reshape the private sphere in accord with their desires.
The notion that Catholic postliberals are merely upholding the social teaching of the Church doesn’t bear scrutiny. To quote Venerable Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, “The human person and his family, being prior to the State, have inalienable rights, such as the maximum of personal liberty and economic well-being constant with the laws of God.”
In the late 1800s, at the height of anti-Catholic animus in our country, Pope Leo XIII referred to the father of our country as the “great Washington.” He also encouraged the founders of the Catholic University of America “to give to the Republic her best citizens.” It’s a charge that applies with equal force today to each one of us. We will also have problems this side of the Vale of Tears. But as Psalm 145 says, “Put your trust not in princes.”
We hope that Mr. Vance agrees and will not be manipulated by a small, power-hungry faction inside the church he has joined.
Andrea Picciotti-Bayer
The Conscience Project
McLean, Va.Prof. James Patterson
Ave Maria University< Ave Maria, Fla.Richard M. Reinsch II
American Institute for Economic Research
Great Barrington, Mass.
Calling for price controls to bring down inflation is like having a baby—easy to conceive but hard to deliver.
In an ironic but understandable turn of events, given that it is “crazy season” when desperate politicians try almost anything to get elected, Joe Biden has announced a White House effort to impose IRS-administered controls on rents charged by landlords in major markets across the United States.
Let’s face it, the idea of just outlawing price increases to limit inflation has superficial appeal. But the Biden proposal should be dismissed for what it is, a clumsy election year attempt to attract some more votes by appearing to quench inflationary fires that ironically Biden himself ignited.
GMU Econ student Michael Peterson decries Gen Z’s “financial nihilism.”
