The truth about the magical 1950s:
Category: national politics & policies
One of my more persistent critics on this site asked, last week, why I might believe anything the current president says — considering all the lies.
For reasons of decorum I won’t repeat his exact wording.
The odd thing about the comment was not the vulgarity, though (unfortunately). It was the idea that I was relying upon belief in Donald Trump’s veracity. The whole point of my commentary regarding Trump’s handling of trade and foreign policy was to read between some lines.
I try never to believe anything . . . er, everything . . . any politician says.
In Donald Trump’s case, though, there are lies and there are fictions and there are exaggerations. And corkers . . . and “negotiating gambits.” Separating the wheat from the chaff from the grindstone is not always easy.
Based not only on some of what he says, but also on results-thus-far from the EU negotiations, Trump’s idea of “fair trade” appears to be multilateral free trade. But he has chosen a bizarre method to get there: the threat of high-tariff protectionism — which in the past has led to multilateral protectionism, not free trade.
Trump sees everything as a contest. Trade isn’t a contest as such. It’s win-win. But trade negotiations are contests. And Trump’s game of chicken is dangerous.
Regarding foreign policy generally, though, he seems to be playing a more familiar game: we can outspend everybody. The recent increase in Pentagon spending is bigger than Russia’s annual military budget!
So, who pays? Americans in
- higher taxes and
- the consequences of massive debt, as well as in
- the higher prices from his tariffs.
That’s awfully daring of him. For us.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Photo from Max Pixel
President Trump’s promise not to cut one dime from Social Security and Medicare doesn’t square with the fiscal cliff these programs are headed for. To save the system, benefits must be cut, taxes must be raised, or both.
Or else replace the system.
No wonder, then, that John Stossel insists we “Fix Social Security Before It Goes Broke,” and rescues a decades-old proposal: “private accounts,” which he says “would certainly pay retirees more than Social Security will ever pay.”
In Chile, where they have tried this, private accounts have worked out pretty well, contributing to the once-impoverished country’s rise to “the richest country in Latin America.”
Had the United States adopted such a system, at Social Security’s inception, the amount of capital flowing into projects big and small would have not merely prevented the stagflation of the Seventies and brought us almost unimaginable wealth, it might have turned political eyes towards accountability, prudence and stability.
But, because Social Security was set up as a Pay As We Go system, we paid . . . and the money went.
It got so messed up that by the 1980s Ronald Reagan charged Alan Greenspan with “fixing” it. That “fix” mainly meant increasing taxation. The decades of revenue surge over outflow was spent by Congress for war and handouts. And now we’re reaching a repeat of the late 1970s’ Social Security insolvency.
Meanwhile, Chilean leftists “hold street protests against private accounts,” Stosssel reminds us. “They’re angry because capitalists get a slice of the pie.”
Back in the USA, Democrats demand that more benefits be wrung from Social Security. Are they dead set on proving why socialism doesn’t work?
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
The best defense of Donald Trump’s presidency, so far? He is smarter than the rest of us, and knows how to negotiate with bad guys and insider players. We have to discount what he is saying, the theory goes, because he is not telling truths . . . obviously.
He is negotiating.
Take nothing at face value, including Trump’s professed beliefs.
Protectionism, for example. Trump has long been against NAFTA and the modern version of “free trade.”* But, as I noted in late July, Trump does not seem to be demanding managed trade, or high tariffs as a means to protect American producers, or even tariffs as a means to increase government revenue. He appears — at least some of the time — to be using tariffs as a way to bargain other countries to reduce their tariffs.
This method has not worked in the past.
But is Trump different enough a politician to pull off a “madman” strategy to get leaders in other countries to do the right thing and reduce their tariff and regulatory burdens on their own countries?
A long shot — and several sectors of American business are being hurt right now in this “negotiating” (threat) phase of Trump’s outrageous gambit.
Another area where one might express such hope for a master-negotiator president is in reining back the Pentagon. In the run-up to November 2016, Trump sure seemed defiant of the neo-conservative/neo-“liberal”/center-left establishment on foreign policy.
But now he just signed a huge increase in the Pentagon budget: an $82 billion increase.
Is Trump’s plan to bring big-spending military-industrial complex lobbyists to heal by first giving them what they want?
That. Won’t. Work.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* Post-WWII trade policy has consistently defended treaty-based global trade, but with heavy elements of protective tariffs, regulations and subsidies, making the whole thing look less like Free Trade and more like Mis-Managed Trade.
Having the federal government centrally plan the economy is “a huge waste of everyone’s time and resources” states an amazingly common-sensical Washington Post editorial.
“In a well-functioning modern economy, businesses are generally free to buy and sell the things they need, absent a compelling public need for government intervention,” the editors further expound.
Hmmm, a capitol-town rag that regularly extols the virtues of big government regulation of everything now notices the importance of freedom.
Of avoiding, especially, a system where bureaucrats and other government bullies micromanage commerce.
“Were we directed from Washington when to sow and when to reap,” Thomas Jefferson wrote long ago, “we should all want for bread.”
And aluminum.
“Worse,” the Post argues, the system “also politicizes — and, indeed, corrupts — economic life. Companies that feel threatened by any particular tariff exclusion request have the right to present their objections to the Commerce Department, meaning that each decision represents a high-stakes competition for federal favor between at least two companies with every incentive to influence it through lobbying, campaign contributions, you name it.”
Correct. It seems we may have Donald Trump to thank for opening the Post’s eyes.
“[T]he way to get ahead in Mr. Trump’s economy,” those editors conclude, “is not making better products for the people, but making better connections in Washington.”
Tragically true.
But, sadly, true long before Mr. Trump entered the White House. No new powers have been given to Trump.
Let’s drain the stinking Washington swamp. Let’s end the corrupting influence of a regulatory state run amok. Let’s limit the power of the people wielding political power.
How?
Free the markets!
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
“If we can put a man on the moon,” went the old 1970s saw, we can do . . . well, fill in the blank.
Anything!
Man, can that “anything” get really expensive. And when promoters of big government drive the program, anything quickly serves as a first-stage rocket to everything.
During the 2016 campaign, a Democratic Party activist knocked on my door to express confidence that Democrats would provide greater healthcare benefits. “Can we afford that?” I asked.
The question caught her off-guard, but after reflecting on the affordability for a brief moment on my step, she decided, what the heck, surely the great “we” can swing it.
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, the conscience of the Democratic Party (that he refuses to join), likewise ponders healthcare. Sans cost, again, focusing exclusively on bestowing benefits.
Sanders has introduced legislation mandating that the federal government provide Medicare for All.
Fortunately, the folks at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University are not so arithmetic-averse, calculating the price tag for the socialist senator’s bill to be a whopping $32.6 trillion (with a “t”) over ten years.
In fiscal 2019, the U.S. Government plans to spend $4.4 trillion, borrowing a trillion dollars of that to keep the federal spigots spewing cash. So, Bernie suggests nearly doubling annual spending, placing a giant $3.3 trillion cherry on top of the current fiscal pig-out.
And who in Washington has any credibility left to argue against the socialist urging evermore deficit spending on top of massive debt and gargantuan liabilities?
President Trump? Republicans in Congress? The very architects of annual trillion-dollar deficits for the foreseeable future?
That “lunacy” refers to the moon? Mere coincidence.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
