The Real Divide

Bureaucrats with protected job security don't worry about economic growth.   Why should they?  From their point of view, private sector job creation is a nuisance issue.  Bureaucrats and others who live off taxpayers are far more interested in social issues and climate change.  Mundane, routine issues like getting a job are not of much interest to someone basking under the "tenure" positions in public education and higher education.

The private sector is full of folks concerned about profits and about jobs.  How crass?  The bureaucrats, protected from the vagaries of free markets, are able to mull over the big issues of the day like creating safe spaces for transgenders and climate change.  These issues are very appealing discussion topics for people who don't have to worry about how to support their family.  Protected, as they are by taxpayer-provided funds, they are free to mock ordinary citizens who fend for their life in the private sector.

This is the real American divide -- between taxpayers funding all of this and those "five-percenters" sitting loftily in government, non-profit, or education industry luxury.  They can talk all they want about the issues they like, which are mostly irrelevant to poor folks and low income folks, who need jobs and hope.  These "five-percenters" are busy finding ways to impose higher and higher barriers to the hopes of those less fortunate.

So, if your living room is dominated by discussions of climate change, it is likely that the bread winners in your house are bureaucrats or taxpayer-funded clericals who don't face a market test - ever.  If your living room is dominated by discussions of how to find next month's rent or a job, you are likely a participant in the private sector.

This is the true American divide.  That's why the media and their friends in the bureaucracy are interested in climate change.  They don't need to worry about economic growth and the standard of living of the average family, as long their personal economics is unaffected by any of that.

The Taxpayers as Bad Guys

There is a remarkably block-headed article by Gretchen Morgenson in today's NY Times about the student loan crisis.  Morgenson, who sometimes makes sense, makes no sense in today's article.  Her article is about the repayment, or lack of it, process that takes place when it is time for the borrower to repay.

Wow!

You would think that these college students were totally incompetent to read a loan document.  You would probably be right.  It is highly likely that very few of these borrowers should have gone to college in the first place, much less had a convenient, taxpayer-backed, way of borrowing.

There was no discussion in the article about whether or not any of these students worked during their college years -- a phenomenon that is all too infrequent these days.

There is no concern in this article for the interest of the lenders, who are out the money.  They turn out to be the villains in Morgenson's article.  This is the usual NYTimes narrative -- those lending money are villains.  This theme was the usual tale of 2008, where mortgage lenders were villified while those who lived high on the hog -- way above what they themselves could reasonably support -- were portrayed as the victims.

Why do you think students need so much loan money today?  Could it be that all of those administrators pulling down high six figure incomes, while working a six month year, are costly to support?  Take a look at the pay rate of deans, provosts, university presidents, sexual assault specialists, gender studies directors and on and on. These folks make a fortune and they have dramatically added to the cost of education.

Those who, unwisely, expanded student loan access to prop up the current over-bloated, wasteful colleges and universities, are the real villains.

Rather than blame lenders and innocent taxpayers, Ms. Morgenson should look into the root causes of the absurd costs involved in obtaining a college education today.  While she's at it, take a look at the absurd courses of study that these borrowers are pursuing.  No wonder they can't pay these loans off.

This problem results from an unholy alliance of university administrators and folks like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders who think that the average American should pony up for every cause that those motoring around in limousines and fancy jets can dream up.

Avoiding Reality By Focusing on Inequality

All of the discussion about inequality enables people to ignore real issues of poverty.  There can be a lot of inequality and no poverty, at least in principle.  If so, what of it?  But, more realistically, there can be very little inequality and massive, ubiquitous poverty.  Is this what the "inequality" crowd really wants -- everyone to be "equally" poor?

Sometimes you wonder.

The usual policy proposal from the "inequality" crowd is to raise taxes and give money to bureaucrats and allow for no accountability for the funds so dispensed.  What will that do?

It certainly won't eliminate poverty.

In fact, that doesn't even seem to be the point.  The point seems to be to "get even."  Bureaucrats, and here I include most employees in the educational establishment, want more money.  That is their number one thing.  They resent the incomes made possible by people in other professions and they want theirs.  Eliminating poverty is never the point.  In fact, their proposals usually logically imply more poverty and, in particular, more long-lasting poverty.

They are okay with that.

So long as bureaucrats gain relative to the one-percenters.  But, of course, many of the bureaucrats are one-percenters.  So the plan is to catch up with the other, wealthier one-percenters.

This is all about envy by bureaucrats.  The inequality game has nothing to do with helping poor people improve their standard of living.

That's why the inequality crowd is not concerned that their proposals reduce economic growth, limit opportunities in the poorest neighborhoods and enrich bureaucrats and eliminate accountability for the spending of public money.

The reality of the plight of the poor is not something that is of any real interest to the inequality crowd.  Their focus is elsewhere.

America's Future - On Display in Venezuela

Take a look at the political program of Hugo Chavez, the late popularly elected leader of Venezuela.  Then compare that program to the political program of Obama/Clinton.  Both programs claim that the issue of the day is wealth and income inequality.  Both propose major taxes on "the rich."  Both demonize the business community.  Both argue that retail stores overcharge for their products and underpay their workers.  Both propose dramatic increases in the minimum wage.

Neither program ever references economic growth -- ever!  Both programs see capitalism as an essentially evil institution.  Both see American foreign policy history as essentially predatory.  Both see the Castro regime in Cuba as benign and see American history as a history of evil and exploitation.  Both have little or no respect for the rule of law and are prone to arbitrary "executive actions," put forward by unelected bureaucrats, ignoring the duly elected representatives of actual voters.

Similar programs tend to produce similar results.  So, now that the Chavez program has been thoroughly implemented in Venezuela and Chavez is dead and gone, how is Venezuela doing?

Check out today's NYTimes.  An article by William Neuman and Particia Torres describes the now-desperate plight of the average Venezuelan.  What few goods and services are left in Venezuela are funneled to government workers and political supporters of the regime, reminiscent of the old Soviet regime and the modern day economies of North Korea and Cuba.

Venezuelans now resort to black market activities to provide even the most basic goods and services while the political elite bask in luxury.  Credit cards are now being replaced with barter as the economy increasingly backs up toward stone-age economics.  Except for government employees and the political leadership of this disastrous country, everyone else is broke, starving, lacking health care and basic education and bereft of hope.

In that sense, inequality of wealth and income has been eliminated in today's Venezuela, but that is mainly because wealth and income have collapsed to poverty levels.  This is the end game of the "inequality" gambit.  Meanwhile, the political leaders of Venezuela live high off the hog in a style that even Obama and Clinton would envy.

The "inequality" cause is a political ploy promoted by folks, like the Clintons and Obamas, who possess extreme wealth, unearned by any free market activities.  The end game is political domination and reduced living standards for the masses.  Cuba and Venezuela are the icons for this "inequality" dream.

No country in the history of the world has improved living standards by adopting the Chavez-Obama-Clinton program.  Only free markets can deliver higher living standards.  Every time free markets have been abandoned for political sloganeering, the average citizen's life style collapses.  There are no exceptions throughout history.

Notice that in the recent nationally televised debate featuring Ms. Clinton and others, no one bothered to mention economic growth at all.  Growing the economy no longer matters to these folks. Instead the focus is on dividing a dwindling economic pie.  The average American should check out the NYTimes article on today's Venezuela to get a glimpse into their future, if the Obama-Clinton regimes get their programs fully implemented.

Tough Call on TPT, But "No" Is the Right Answer

The president received the authority to negotiate the Trans Pacific Trade agreement with several Asian countries -- the biggest is Japan -- from the Congress.  Now, the Obama-negotiated trade agreement is headed to Congress for approval.  For reasons apparently known to no one, some of the agreement details are "classified" and even Congressmen, expected to vote on the measure, are not permitted to read it in detail.  If that sounds absurd, it is.

So, do you vote yes or no?

The first question is: can you vote on something that you are barred from reading?

The second question is will approval of this deal further the expansion of free trade or make free trade more difficult to implement in the future.  Why?  The president has loaded this deal with concessions to big labor and to environmentalists that gut most of the "free" in "free trade." If this deal becomes a pattern for future deals, then it should be rejected for that reason alone.

If you can't read the details in the agreement, then it should be rejected for that reason alone.

Is there much left to say?  This deal should be rejected.

"Affordable Care" Costs Spiral Out of Control

The "Affordable Care Act" is turning into a bad joke.  There has been zero material reductions in the number of uninsured, the main goal of the act, while health insurance costs as well as basic health care costs are spiraling out of control.

For most American families, health care costs, if you add in the rise of deductibles, are now nearly double what they were before the ACA come into existence, little more than five years ago.  Meanwhile the quality of health care available to the insured has dramatically fallen, as bureaucrats replace doctors as the decision makers. 

There are no incentives for government bureaucrats to produce quality health care at a reasonable price -- so they don't -- why should they?  Only rich and powerful liberals like Obamacare, as the ACA is known, mainly because they don't have to experience it.   Only the poor and middle class have to fight their way through life with Obamacare -- Obama and Hillary have other ways of getting their health care.

The public has always been right on this issue.  Obamacare has never been popular in any polls with the average American, who saw through the fabrications and misrepresentation of the Obama Administration and their allies in a Democratically-controlled Congress.

But the truth is now there for all to see.  An article in today's Wall Street Journal by Evelyn Everton and Chris Hudson notes the disastrous impact on state budgets of the "free-money" medicaid expansion.  States already reeling from misrepresentations by politicians of the costs of public retirement systems are now overwhelmed by the dramatic and apparently unexpected costs of "free-money" medicaid expansion.

The staggering costs of medicaid expansion should sink the almost non-existent presidential hopes of Ohio Governor John Kasich, whose misrepresentations of the facts regarding medicaid expansion are embarrassing to his candidacy.

The idea that government could provide a health insurance scheme that could maintain health care quality and reign in costs was a ridiculous proposition in the first place, something a majority of Americans have known from the very beginning.  Only an autocratic, undemocratic elite could impose something as horrible as Obamacare on the American public, who will, in time, overturn this nightmare.

Only free market health care and free market health insurance can deliver quality health care at a reasonable cost.  Europe learned that long ago; Americans are learning it now.

The Keystone Rejection is Ridiculous

By rejecting the Keystone pipeline, the Obama Administration has exposed North America to more environmental damage, not less.  The product that would have been shipped by an environmentally friendly pipeline will now be moved by rail, environmentally much more threatening.

Typical environmentalist policy -- destroy the environment while claiming to help the environment.  Even Heather Ross, an extreme environmental activist, made exactly this point in her book "Green Gone Wrong," in which she thoroughly documents how environmental activists have, on balance, damaged the environment by their activist policies.

Results don't matter to environmentalists.  The only thing that matters to these folks and to Obama is the narrative, even if that narrative is a false narrative.