The Trump NLRB in 2020 restored the longstanding “direct control” joint-employer standard. But then Biden appointees reinstated a version of the Obama rule, which was blocked by federal courts last year. This restored the Trump rule, which is now being challenged by the SEIU at the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.
This regulatory ping-pong creates uncertainty that is damaging to small businesses. That’s all the more reason for Congress to pass a bipartisan House bill that would codify the Trump NLRB rule for franchises.
Mr. Trump vowed on Monday night that “as long as I’m President, I’ll always defend your right to run your own small business, and do it well.” If he means it, he’d also reduce his tariffs and stop his Administration’s mass deportation raids at law-abiding workplaces. Deregulation and tax reform were the secret sauce to his first-term’s economic success that helped him win re-election.
Please, sir, can we have another order of that—and hold the rest?
The National Review Staff decries “Trump’s incoherent tariff message.” A slice:
President Trump recently announced that he was reducing tariffs on coffee and other food items, a reversal that Charlie Cooke, on today’s edition of The Editors, cites to blast the president’s tariff policy as a whole.
“This has been from the beginning just garbage. Garbage,” Charlie says. “They can’t decide what the tariffs are for. They change that every eight minutes. . . .
“I’ve seen presidents lie. . . . I’ve seen presidents fail to grasp the subject matter. I’ve seen presidents flail around and search for different arguments, test one by one the best messaging, and then eventually settle on whatever worked. I have never seen a policy that was over and over again in repeated cycles sold on completely self-contradictory grounds,” Charlie says.
Who’d a-thunk it?: “”World’s top aluminum producer adds markups as Trump tariffs drive up consumer costs.” (HT Scott Lincicome)
While [Neale] Mahoney and [Bharat] Ramamurti pay lip service to standard objections, they miss the glaring elephant-in-the-room Econ 101 issue: Budget constraints. Every dollar of “relief” for one party is a dollar of “burden” for another, plus the inefficiencies of redistribution.
Sure, “sharply rising rents and utility bills wreak havoc on family budgets,” if the families don’t follow the screaming market signal to move. (Which is not painless, for sure. Incentives never are.) But the money comes from somewhere. Rent controls and energy price caps wreak havoc on landlord end electric utility budgets. The money must come from somewhere.
…..
I hate the word “policymaker.” It’s every leftwing economists’ dream, I guess, to be installed as an aristocrat and “make policy.” This is politics, not policy, redistribution in the name of electoral gain, as Mahoney and Ramamurti make clear. There is no “policy.” There is politics. This is redistribution by force. For better or worse, but don’t sugar coat what you’re doing.
“Step in if there are signs of price controls becoming permanent or spreading to other parts of the market.” Hello? 80 years is not permanent enough? Are not “policymakers” like the new mayor of New York “stepping in” precisely to extend and expand controls? Sunset clauses are sunrise clauses. “Targeting controls to well-defined groups — such as existing tenants and low-income households.” After “budget constraint” lesson 2 of Econ 101 is “incentives.” When existing tenants get a big break, they have a big incentive to remain existing tenants, see above. When households experiencing low incomes (I refuse to use “low-income” as an immutable characteristic) receive benefits they have a big incentive to remain low income.
Well at least they are honest enough to say “accept some trade-off between immediate relief and weaker long-run investment.” Yes, existing renters got relief in 1942. We are stuck with the long run.
There are many other good reasons why only four countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development currently have wealth taxes, down from a dozen in the 1990s. A complex tax code means a corrupt one. Sweden’s wealth tax, which stood at 1.5 percent before its repeal in 2007, discriminated between different kinds of assets. Either California’s wealthy would lobby for their investments to get favorable treatment, or politicians would decide on a whim what they think should be left alone. Either approach would inevitably distort investment decisions and make the economy less productive.
Arnold Kling does some mortgage-payment arithmetic.
“Robert George resigns from the Heritage Foundation.” A slice from a Wall Street Journal editorial:
The Heritage Foundation debacle isn’t over. The decision of Kevin Roberts, the conservative think tank’s president, to embrace podcaster Tucker Carlson, criticize those who push back on Mr. Carlson’s Jew-baiting and friendly interview with Hitler fanboy Nick Fuentes, and even accuse critics of serving a “foreign government” continues to damage the institution’s reputation.
