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The reasoning of Plato and the facts of poverty illustrate that all of our knowledge and technology have not prevented Rhode Island’s slipping toward being civic invalids.
Reading through a New York Times description of the food riots underway in Venezuela, now that the country’s been destroyed by socialism, I’m struck by some obvious juxtapositions that are well separated in the text. Paragraph 1:
With delivery trucks under constant attack, the nation’s food is now transported under armed guard.
Paragraph 29:
Down the coastal road in a small fishing town called Boca de Uchire, hundreds gathered on a bridge this month to protest because the food deliveries were not arriving.
Make it more difficult and expensive to bring food, and food will be harder to get. More stunning is how familiar it all seems. The scenes of destruction of the very infrastructure necessary to produce, transport, store, and sell food are like something out of Manzoni’s description of the Milan bread riots of the Seventeenth Century in The Betrothed. And it’s not just the people’s counter-productive behavior. Here’s the Times:
In response, [President Nicolas] Maduro has tightened his grip over the food supply. Using emergency decrees he signed this year, the president put most food distribution in the hands of a group of citizen brigades loyal to leftists, a measure critics say is reminiscent of food rationing in Cuba. …
At the same time, the government also blames an “economic war” for the shortages. It accuses wealthy business owners of hoarding food and charging exorbitant prices, creating artificial shortages to profit from the country’s misery.
Here’s Manzoni (page 232 of the Penguin Classics printing):
People forget that they have feared and predicted the shortage, and suddenly begin to believe that there is really plenty of grain, and that the trouble is that it is being kept off the market. Though there are no earthly or heavenly grounds for that belief, it gives food to people’s anger and to their hopes. Real or imaginary hoarders of grain, landowners who did not sell their entire crop within twenty-four hours, bakers who bought grain and held it in stock — everyone in fact who possessed or was thought to possess grain was blamed for the shortage and for the high prices …
… [The magistrates] fixed maximum prices for a number of foodstuffs, they decreed penalties for anyone who refused to sell at those prices, and passed one or two other regulations of that kind. But all the official measures in the world, however vigorous they may be, cannot lessen a man’s need for food, nor produce crops out of season. The measures actually taken on this occasion were certainly not calculated to attract imports from other areas where there might conceivably be a surplus. …
… [Grand Chancellor Antonio] Ferrer was behaving like a lady of a certain age, who thinks she can regain her youth by altering the date on her birth certificate.
We have centuries… millennia… of lessons. Right now, we can learn once again from Venezuela. I fear too many people lack the basis to make the obvious connections.
I’ve been warning about the “company state” dynamic whereby an area’s core industry essentially becomes the provision of government services, with the revenue pulled in from the few productive residents and other cities, towns, and states. The goal becomes to attract and create as many dependents as possible so as to justify sending a larger bill to those who have no choice but to pay it. Eventually, though, the productive locals will leave or decide to join the dependent club, and other cities, towns, and states will refuse or no longer be able to cover the bills.
I wonder if that sort of civic and economic structure will set Rhode Island to be akin to the frontier areas as the Roman Empire receded. Here’s Jakub Grygiel:
In those frontier outposts, the locals have to make difficult decisions based on an assessment of how resilient their empire is, how persistent and dangerous the enemy appears, and how strong their own will is. And they experience different stages of geopolitical grief from denial and delusion to perhaps, in the best case, an attempt at indigenous security provision.
Clearly, Grygiel’s talking about security against invaders, but something similar seems likely to happen when a large class of people rely on handouts that simply cease to be handed out, whether one sees the recipients as a replacement for the invaders or you see them as the villagers failing to prepare to defend themselves against events that will damage or take their resources. Grygiel describes the stages as follows:
In some ways, we may already be well into the first stage, perhaps into the second. Government funds cannot be increased at the rate to which officials have become accustomed. Some things (roads and pensions) are showing the pressure on the finances, and intra-progressive political battles are beginning to pit special interests against each other. Next comes the refusal to adjust policies to the obvious future and a desperate search to find any and all sources of new revenue to keep the game going.
When that no longer works, we can expect a fatalism as some sit and stare at the financial wasteland and others refuse to let our society return to the principles of freedom, self control, and self reliance that allowed our society to be so successful in the first place.
James Kennedy argues that road design, not signage is the key for assessing and handling traffic, and that a 6/10 boulevard design makes for better design than a DOT-designed tunnel.
My first thought upon reading in today’s Providence Journal of Democrat Governor Gina Raimondo’s intention to continue Rhode Island government’s relentless push to redistribute money and make business more difficult by increasing the minimum wage and the earned income tax credit was that she has decisively proven that one can know how to make money appear from thin air and still not understand business or the economy. But then I followed a link in Jonah Goldberg’s weekly “newsletter” to a book review by Malcom Harris in the progressive New Republic. The book Harris reviews is by Princeton historian Thomas Leonard, mainly concerning the explicit racism and belief in eugenics of progressives a century ago.
Note these lines from Harris, with the interior quote from Leonard’s book (emphases in original):
Among his revelations: The minimum wage was created to destroy jobs; progressives (including the founders of this magazine) really did hate small businesses and they were all way too enthusiastic about Germany’s social structure. …
The minimum wage, in addition to providing some workers with a better standard of living, would guard white men from competition. Leonard is worth reading at length:
A legal minimum wage, applied to immigrants and those already working in America, ensured that only the productive workers were employed. The economically unproductive, those whose labor was worth less than the legal minimum, would be denied entry, or, if already employed, would be idled. For economic reformers who regarded inferior workers as a threat, the minimum wage provided an invaluable service. It identified inferior workers by idling them. So identified, they could be dealt with. The unemployable would be removed to institutions, or to celibate labor colonies. The inferior immigrant would be removed back to the old country or to retirement. The woman would be removed to the home, where she could meet her obligations to family and race.
As Goldberg points out, one could take modern progressives at their word that an impenetrable wall now exists between them and their ideological forebears when it comes to the racist motivation and still wonder whether they should consider that their erstwhile heroes might have been correct about the effects of a minimum wage.
I’d argue that the answer, as regular readers will no doubt recognize, is that progressives have not changed as much as they, themselves, would like to think. They still believe that, as Harris puts it, they are the ones who should lead all of society. They still want to identify and sort people into that inferior class. But they’ve realized that they can make use of the underclass as a weapon against the more-traditionalist, -motivated, and -individualistic middle, which is ultimately the threat against their elitist designs.
Many of our fears about the future of the economy in light of Baby Boomer retirements and technological advancement could be allayed if we’d just let free market principles work without protectionism.
Reading Carol Bragg’s Providence Journal op-ed titled “Nonviolence transforms R.I. school” might make one wonder how its topic could be considered anything other than an establishment of religion in a public school:
Broad Rock Middle School in South Kingstown has embarked on an ambitious mission to become a model school based on Martin Luther King’s philosophy of nonviolence. The inspiration came from Robin Wildman, a fifth grade teacher at the school who has taught about nonviolence for 15 years. Observers have remarked that they can feel in her classroom the respect, compassion and community she has built with her students.
Wildman accomplishes this by spending the first three weeks of the school year teaching nonviolence lessons, to establish the framework for how the class will operate for the remainder of the year. She says it is time well spent. The outcome is more time spent on teaching, and less on discipline.
Really, substitute a single name and it’s crystal clear that we’re talking a religion, here:
Education in Jesus’ method of nonviolence does this and more. It teaches respect. Encompassing the teachings of Jesus, it promotes love over hate; justice, forgiveness and reconciliation over revenge; respectful dialogue over rancorous debate; and positive, peaceful action over inaction or violence. The Broad Rock initiative has the potential to give young people skills they need for happy, healthy relationships throughout their lives. In addition, it will empower them to play an active, productive role in their communities, state and nation.
The article’s mention of non-profit organizations that are now being brought in proves that this isn’t just one teacher’s technique, but an organized cultural movement beyond the school’s walls. The only conceivable difference between the cult of “nonviolence” and a religion is that the cult doesn’t go so far as to claim any real existential foundation for preferring its teachings over any other. But teachers are still telling children what they should believe about the world, how they should interact other people, and what they should value.
Only a society enveloped in a fog of dim confusion could fail to be outraged at the notion that a secular humanist appropriation of Christianity is perfectly fine in a public school, while schools must be forbidden across the country from allowing any expression of genuine Christianity. This is another example of the ways in which progressivism constrains allowable actions in a way that gives it an advantage as a proselytizing faith.
The grades are out, and once again the status quo fails on the 2015 RI Report Card on Competitiveness. When will the political class learn that their way is simply not working to reach their stated goals? If Rhode Island is to reform its way of conducting business, our elected officials must learn to place less trust in government-centric programs for every problem. We will never improve our state’s employment situation unless we adopted the need reforms that will allow Rhode Islanders to empower themselves to achieve their hopes and dreams. The 2015 report card decisively demonstrates the wreckage that decades of liberal policies have wrought upon our state.
The 2015 RI Report Card shows how Rhode Island’s political class continues to cater to special insiders, while depriving other Rhode Islanders of the opportunity for upward mobility, educational opportunity, and personal prosperity. In the major categories, Rhode Island was graded with two F’s, seven D’s, and one C. The two categories with F grades are Infrastructure and Health Care; the seven D’s are Business Climate, Tax Burden, Spending & Debt, Employment & Income, Energy, Public Sector labor, and Living & Retirement in Rhode Island; while Education received a C-. Among the 52 sub-categories evaluated, Rhode Island received 19 F’s, 24 D’s, 5 Cs, 3 Bs, and just one lone A.
These unacceptable grades should be a wake-up call to lawmakers that a government-centric approach is not producing the social justice and self-sufficiency that Rhode Islanders crave. By burdening the public with policies that discourage work and a productive lifestyle, the status quo is failing the people of our state. On the 2015 RI Report Card on Competitiveness, the Ocean State received “Ds” in the major categories of Jobs and Employment, and in Tax Burden. We must learn to trust in our people and remove the tax and regulatory boot of government off of their backs by advancing policies that empower the average family with choices, that reward work, and that grow the economy.
Only free market policy will transform the Ocean State by advancing policies that empower the average family with choices, that reward work, and that grow the economy. We can no longer tolerate Rhode Island falling further behind. The Center will continue to work tirelessly to promote policies like sales tax reform and school choice in order to help our fellow Rhode Islanders by unleashing their potential. We encourage you to help spread the word about the failing grades the status quo in Rhode Island received this year. You have power to change the Ocean State into a place where everyone can prosper. Thank you.
As you know, Rhode Island was recently classified as one of only two sanctuary states in the country, a disturbing revelation and a costly situation. The figure of just how costly it is to state and local taxpayers popped up yesterday in the course of some related research. F.A.I.R., the Federation for American Immigration Reform, places the cost to Rhode Island of illegal immigration at $278 million per year in 2009.
Think of that. Because state officials have so far declined to implement some very reasonable, simple measures to discourage illegal immigration into the state but have implemented policies that actually encourage it, Rhode Island is needlessly spending an estimated $278 million per year.
Maybe labor unions accelerated the improvement of working conditions a century ago, but technology gives individual workers new leverage, and unions have become part of a retrograde approach to central planning.
Prefatory note: I post this out of fascination with human nature and a deep appreciation for the humor of it.
Saturday kicked off for me, this week, with my being blocked on Twitter by former Republican East Providence Assistant Mayor Robert Cusack. He posted a map showing the relative balance of men and women around the world, and the conversation went thus:
Cusack: Notice that places where men outnumber women is where all the trouble is?
Katz: I guess if you ignore any of the places that it suits you to ignore.
Cusack: Blocked, for lack of sense of humor!
Katz: What a masculine response.
There are a number of interesting observations one could make with just a glance at the map. For one, Russia — bleeding into the notoriously non-problem-free Caucuses and Ukraine — is dark blue, meaning heavily weighted toward women. Even North Korea is blue, as are other areas of the world that aren’t exactly paradise.
For another, where Cusack’s statement carries with it some truth, there is opportunity for interesting discussion. Much of the man-heavy area is dominated by hard-line strains of Islam, where women exist in terrible subjugation (as do men who resist the hard line). In both India and China, one could branch into discussions of the use of sex-selective abortion to follow strong cultural preferences for male offspring.
And that whole topic could return to the importance of the West’s waning formula for structuring families in a way that binds the two sexes together toward harmonious and productive ends. It’s been fashionable for quite a while, now, to condemn the traditional Judeo-Christian vision for the family, but it does (or did) impede the development of a male underclass with no prospects or investment in their society, which (yes) can lead to trouble.
That’s not a one-sided coin, either. I’d be curious what might come of an analysis of the differing nature of problems in areas with many more females. Maybe totalitarians take a different approach there.
Yet another interesting topic would be whether the cliché about women’s more-peaceful nature is actually true. It certainly doesn’t jibe with my personal experience or with my reading of modern society or of history. These are rich topics that leave much room for insights and friendly humor. Cusack went with the banal and humorless direction of anti-male sexism.
Even just within the same wave of my morning reading, I came across this gem from Northeastern University in Boston, where residential assistants — students tasked with helping young adults along with their college experience — are apparently being instructed that it simply isn’t possible to be oppressed if you’re a straight, white male, even (one supposes) in an environment that sets up kangaroo courts for sexual assault and that have 100% female “offices of equity and diversity.”
Contrary to what Robert Cusack may believe, discussion of these matters doesn’t have to be humorless, if we’re mature. Unfortunately, our culture doesn’t seem inclined to cultivate mature men anymore.
This chart, from ZeroHedge, sums up some of the points I’ve been making recently:
Note that the “Reagan Dip” isn’t a reduction in the number of pages of regulation, it’s just a reduction in the rate of growth. The summary of the economic growth of the Reagan era was that the federal government kept up its creation of money in the present through debt while cutting taxes and slowing the growth of regulation, thus allowing the debt-driven cash to flow into productive activity.
This collection of policies revved the economy, and what should have happened in the ’90s was a reduction of debt along with further reductions in taxes and real reductions in regulations. The economy’s growth may have slowed, but the country would have been on a stronger footing, with new digital technologies having already begun to emerge.
Instead, regulations kicked back into high gear, and the Clinton Administration transferred the burden of creating fake money onto the stock market and housing debt.
Regulation helps lock wealth in where it exists, so it’s good for the powerful. But when things begin to fall apart in earnest (as they probably will soon), turning the above chart into negative territory, by actually eliminating regulations, would provide a boost to the economy that would actually help the working and middle classes and shift resources more efficiently.
Debate about Governor Raimondo’s proposed increase in the earned income tax credit illustrates both the spin of advocates and the danger of making wealth redistribution the province of the political process.
Kathy Gregg has more details on Democrat Governor Gina Raimondo’s proposed tax on health insurance in Rhode Island in today’s Providence Journal, and it looks increasingly outrageous. First is a little budgeting trick. The tax kicks in midway through the fiscal year, so on an annual basis, it’s actually twice the cost that the budget advertises:
Targeted to take effect in January 2016, the premium surcharge that Raimondo proposes would raise an initial $6.2 million of the $30.9 million the Raimondo administration is proposing to spend during the year that begins on July 1 to operate the state’s “health-insurance marketplace’’ over the next year.
Over the first full 12 months, HealthSource RI administrators anticipate the surcharge will raise $11.8 million.
And the rate is outrageous, too — above what the federal exchange would charge, for most users:
It would be assessed on the premiums of all health plans purchased in Rhode Island by individuals (at a rate of 3.8 percent) and small employers (1 percent).
As Gregg reports, that will be over $400 per year for some members. The rate is also higher than the similar taxes in Massachusetts (2.5-3.0%) and Connecticut (1.35%).
One thing that is misleading, I believe, is spokeswoman Maria Tocco’s explanation that, per federal law, “a premium assessment has to be levied this way, as premiums must be the same inside and outside the Exchange for the same products.” As I explained yesterday, the governor’s proposed language imposes the rates based on market, not plan. In other words, the governor is taxing all plans whether or not they are offered in the exchange.
I imagine she’s doing that because the rate they’d have to charge in order to follow the method of the federal exchange and still pay for HealthSource would have made Rhode Islanders eyes pop (and further prodded the exodus of productive people from the state). As healthcare expert Sean Parnell estimated for an article I wrote, last year, applying the federal rate to Rhode Island’s exchange would generate around $5 million. Roughly speaking, Raimondo’s tax is more than twice as costly, so if it were structured like the federal fee, the rate would have to be up to nearly 8%.
Obviously, more plans and more people means a lower rate. That’s why Massachusetts and Connecticut can charge less even though their exchanges cost more. But none of this is news. The RI Center for Rhode Island has long been saying that Rhode Island’s market is simply too small to justify its own health benefits exchange.
Even agents of the state of Rhode Island admitted this, back when they were free to be honest. Last June, I quoted from a 2009 report reviewing the lieutenant governor’s proposal for an exchange like HealthSource. Their conclusion back then? “Insufficient scale to justify investment. Do not pursue.”
What’s changed that has a supposedly financially savvy governor touting this as economic development? Perhaps that they think they can get away with it, now.
Looking at nonemployer establishments, while it doesn’t directly confirm a theory of employment versus jobs, suggests that Rhode Island’s problem really is its burdensome business climate.
Rhode Island’s unemployment rate may have “improved” below the 7% milestone, but the underlying data continues to give cause for alarm.
Month-to-month trends of SNAP beneficiaries in Rhode Island and across the country show another way that Rhode Island is unique and reinforces a theory of decline that seems to fit every picture in the Ocean State.
Comparison of a theoretical corporate income tax rate with a comparable sales tax cut illustrates the way in which cutting different taxes benefits different groups and shapes the economy differently.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) spent February releasing research findings that showed the flaws of progressive policies.
Rhode Island insiders and the progressives who love them don’t seem to want to talk about the real risks and opportunities of proposals (like eliminating the sales tax) that would help all Rhode Islanders.
The flow of money through the State of Rhode Island’s budget illustrates the perpetual scam that is government budgeting and should inspire Rhode Islanders to realize that they are allowed to make the machine run the other way.
Justin liveblogs another commission hearing on eliminating the state sales tax, this time concerning the state’s economic modeling of the proposal and alternatives from the Center for Freedom & Prosperity.
Exploring the difference between two measures of employment in Rhode Island reveals yet another reinforcement of the conclusion that the state has the wrong strategy for economic development.
Justin and Bob discuss taxes and wealth on NBC 10 Wingmen, with some afterthoughts from Justin.
The Providence Journal article on RIPEC’s annual business-climate event focuses almost entirely on the presentation of “urban analyst” Aaron Renn, who had this frustrating, unnecessary, and probably counterproductive advice:
New businesses, he advised, generally don’t spring up from nowhere, but instead come from what’s already here. …
“I think the challenge for us is to create plans that are culturally resonant with the state,” Renn said. “I do think there’s an element of advancing the culture, evolving the culture, but the reality is: Cultural change is so difficult. We have to work with the culture and place, and I say the ‘deep history’ because the founding ethos of a place stamps the culture permanently.”
That first line is worth a chuckle, because I agree with it completely. Only, I don’t think it’s within the competency or, frankly, the moral role of a bunch of ruling-class manipulators to leverage the regulatory, tax, and police powers of the government in order to go about “evolving the culture” of the people to conform with their idea of “best practices.”
We do not need “to create plans that are culturally resonant with the state”; we need to get government out of the way to allow the people to make their own plans. Only the population, which has absorbed the state’s culture and which defines where it is right now, has the competence and the right to determine what economic investments and activities accord with the interests, dreams, and advantages of our communities.
The government shouldn’t be in the business of “graft[ing] on stuff from outside,” as Renn says. Rather, new ideas and inputs must be invited in by the people or generated internally through the freedom of Rhode Islanders to determine what would work best for them.
Note former Federal Reserve official Andrew Huszar’s apology for his role in inflicting quantitative easing (QE) on the country:
The central bank continues to spin QE as a tool for helping Main Street. But I’ve come to recognize the program for what it really is: the greatest backdoor Wall Street bailout of all time.
As I was saying… QE and Obama’s massive deficits, requiring money to be injected into government from the economy of the future, through debt, have had little economic effect except to inflate the stock market, not the least because they combine with an increase in regulations, making it difficult to turn cash into productive action. My previous operating theory was that the objective was to inflate the holdings of the investment class to where they were headed during the housing bubble, so as to socialize the bust, but I missed the blank spot where the brakes should have been.
After all, Huszar points out that the stock market stumbles at the mere mention of easing up on the new-money injection. The folks pulling the levers in government have never had an exit plan, and the folks whose portfolios are expanding relative to the shared economy aren’t likely to want the party to end.
Big government and powerful money (both intoxicated from the open taxpayer bar) are in a dance that’s clearing everybody else off the floor and destroying the band’s instruments. This is such an obvious and predictable display from these two lushes that one marvels that a democracy invited them in.
Here’s a pair of straightforward, complementary truisms from those of us who believe the club should be BYOB: You can’t reduce the leverage of the powerful by giving them more power; you can’t empower the people by taking their freedom away.
Justin liveblogs from another meeting of the legislative commission to study the elimination of the sales tax.
“The rest of us, taxpayers and business owners, are left to deal with real life.”
The Roosevelt Society’s inaugural event, featuring “conservative black chick” Crystal Wright, raised the central challenge of the American Right… even though nobody seemed to see it.
Notes from testimony on tax-the-rich legislation raise interesting points about what happened with tax policy and the economy over the past five years and what would be likely to happen under other policies moving forward.