George Will understandably fears further institutional deterioration of the United States Senate. Two slices:
Imagine a future without the filibuster: After abolition, the first Senate controlled by a slender Republican majority might pass a national right-to-work law, a national voter ID law and much more. The next Democratic-controlled Senate might repeal all this, before enacting a $20-dollar-an-hour national minimum wage, card check unionization elections and much more. Then, a subsequent Republican-controlled Senate would continue the ping-pong legislating and repealing. The “mutable policy,” “unstable government” and “public instability” that the Founders (Federalist 62) warned against would become normal.
Barack Obama’s 2020 canard that the filibuster is a “Jim Crow relic” is refuted by the unlimited Senate debate that preceded segregation laws (and even the Civil War), and filibustering by progressives such as early-20th-century Wisconsin Sen. Robert La Follette. More recently, Democrats used the filibuster to thwart Republicans’ attempts to repeal Obamacare, block funding for Donald Trump’s border wall, force enrichment of the pandemic-era Cares Act, preserve taxpayer funding of abortion, block criminal justice reform, and for other progressive causes.
In 2005, Obama, then a member of the Senate minority, warned that “if the majority chooses to end the filibuster,” “bitterness” and “gridlock” would worsen. Such situational ethics are not uncommon.
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Some critics say the filibuster causes Congress’s procedures to frustrate the public’s expectations of swift-acting government. But by forcing the legislative process to take time to “refine and enlarge the public views” (James Madison, Federalist 10), the filibuster encourages more judicious expectations.
Judge Glock surveys Kamalanomics. A slice:
In her time in the Senate, Harris positioned herself on the far left of a Democratic Party already moving sharply to the left. According to DW-NOMINATE, a measure that compares the votes of senators and representatives and ranks members from -1 (most liberal) to 1 (most conservative) Harris was the second-most liberal member of the Senate when she served from 2017 to 2021, behind only Elizabeth Warren. In fact, her overall voting record is more liberal than that of Bernie Sanders. Though it is difficult to compare members across time, Harris’s score (-0.709), which is based largely on economic votes, ranks among the more left-wing in American history.
Neither candidate seems to have learned much from history. Every 100 years or so, the protectionist wing of the Republican Party pushes through significantly higher tariffs. The outcome is never good. In 1930, at the start of the Great Depression, Congress enacted the Smoot-Hawley tariffs. The stated purpose was to protect U.S. industries and absorb the excesses that resulted from productivity advances in the 1920s. The tariffs aggravated the dramatic global depression and were repealed two years later. The Tariff of 1828—the so-called Tariff of Abominations, which raised tariffs by up to 50%—accentuated the divide between the industrialized North and the agricultural South and was largely reversed three years later. Why don’t the lessons from history resonate?
Tariffs are fees charged on goods imported by U.S. companies. These increased costs typically result in higher prices for consumers. The hope is that the increase in the relative costs of imports compared with goods produced domestically will lead to a shift toward domestically produced goods. But the benefits of any shift are more than offset by inefficiencies, the higher costs to domestic consumers, and the foreign retaliation that usually occurs. Frequently the result is slower global trade, which isn’t good for the U.S.
In 2018 Mr. Trump imposed tariffs of 25% on steel imports and 10% on aluminum imports, declaring, “Trade wars are good and easy to win.” China retaliated in various ways and Mr. Trump’s promise that manufacturing jobs would suddenly flood back to the U.S. proved worthless. Global trade and production declined and U.S. manufacturing jobs flattened. Tariffs violate the simple but sound law of comparative advantage. It may be wise to ban trade in sensitive goods related to national security, but Mr. Trump’s fear of bilateral trade deficits with foreign partners is simply economic nonsense.
On the Democratic side, the Biden-Harris economic platform includes an assortment of tax increases aimed at wealthy taxpayers. Purportedly these tax hikes will raise revenue to pay for costly Democratic spending priorities. Some proposals are simple job destroyers, while others are truly menacing. Significant increases in corporate taxes, including raising rates, nearly doubling the rate on global intangible low-taxed income, and raising taxes on high-income employees of private firms would reduce expected returns on capital and cut business expansion and hiring plans.
Sheldon Richman warns against “the populist trap.” A slice:
If you care about individual freedom and general prosperity, you’ll want to avoid all shades of populism like the plague. It is economic illiteracy proudly proclaimed and writ large. As an alternative to libertarianism, it is bad in its own right—freedom is not on its agenda—but it is bad also because it is wedded to nationalism. That is, it treats the nation-state—not individuals and their projects—as the fundamental unit. It’s ours against theirs. Disregard the hosannas to persons, families, and local communities. It’s the nation that matters.
Don’t believe me? Then why do populists always want to interfere with people’s right to trade as they wish regardless of borders? Never mind that protectionism holds the seeds of economic and military conflict and that unmanaged global trade is global cooperation.
Arnold Kling has doubts about Kamala Harris’s alleged, newly minted popularity. A slice:
On the Democratic side, the word has gone out that “we are energized.” But it feels like a top-down directive that I predict will not register with the public at large. Who can actually feel genuinely energized about Kamala Harris? Yes, the white college-educated women of the Democratic Party will cheer for Harris as their standard-bearer leading the anti-Trump forces into battle. But standing on a pedestal that reads “I’m not Donald Trump” or “I support abortion rights” will not give Harris an aura of grandeur.
On Wednesday a mob outside Union Station tore down U.S. flags and burned one to chants of “Allahu akbar.” In place of Old Glory, they sent up the flag of Yasser Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization. An outnumbered police officer was dragged and thrown to the ground.
The mob defaced federal property, writing slogans such as “Hamas is comin” on the Christopher Columbus monument and “Qassam, Qassam, make us proud,” cheering Hamas’s military wing, on the American Legion’s Freedom Bell. A protester shouted on video about killing the Jews. A few waved Hamas and Hezbollah flags.
Kevin Corinth writes about the new study that finds that “giving people unconditional aid causes them to work less. Also writing on this study is Eric Boehm.
Here’s more wisdom from James Pethokoukis. A slice:
Some of its worst critics view market capitalism as inherently dehumanizing, despite its productivity prowess. They see it as a system where corporate greed exploits workers, consumers, and communities for profit. This perspective argues that capitalism reduces humans to mere instruments, denying their basic dignity. Only small-scale, local businesses—bodegas, maybe—are viewed positively.
All of which represents a profound misunderstanding of the world’s dominant socioeconomic system.
Kimberlee Josephson explains “how rent-seeking wrecks the soul of enterprise.”
