by David Brady, Brett Parkervia Real Clear Politics
Tuesday, July 7, 2020
At the end of March, President Trump was on a roll: Having been acquitted by the Senate in February, he was taking credit for a coronavirus lockdown that “saved 2 million lives,” in his estimate, and was an odds-on favorite to win the 2020 election (a plus-seven-point margin in the RealClearPolitics betting average). RCP’s polling average placed his job approval rating at 47.4%, with over 50% approved of his handling of the COVID-19 crisis.
Every cultural revolution starts at year zero, whether explicitly or implicitly. The French Revolution recalibrated the calendar to begin anew, and the genocidal Pol Pot declared his own Cambodian revolutionary ascension as the beginning of time.
California’s 2020–21 $202 billion state budget spends about three times as much per state resident, adjusted for inflation, compared to California’s 1990–91 budget. And this is after $20 billion of COVID-19 related budget cuts. But as you look around the state, you will not see this much higher spending at work. You will instead observe public schools that are falling apart and potholes on major streets that are large enough and deep enough to take out your rear axle.
The issues that have cropped up in applying present value ideas to government finance, in my last post, caused me to write up a little financial-econometric history, which seems worth passing on to blog readers. The lessons of the 1980s and 1990s are fading with time, and we should avoid having to re-learn such hard-won lessons. (Warning: this post uses mathjax to display equations.)
How should we model surpluses and deficits? In finishing up a recent article and chapter 5 and 6 of a Fiscal Theory of the Price Level update, a bunch of observations coalesced that are worth passing on in blog post form.
On June 12, I posted briefly about the efforts of Justin Wolfers and other economists to get Harald Uhlig fired from his position as editor of the Journal of Political Economy.
Hoover Institution fellow Scott Atlas discusses the new cases of coronavirus, but said that most of the new cases are in the young and healthy people, who do not have problems with coronavirus, which is helpful for herd immunity.
Hoover Institution fellow Victor Davis Hanson talks about the New York Times' fake news story about Russia, then Hanson discusses what options President Trump has to deal with the riots.
Hoover Institution fellow Stephen Kotkin talks about how political regimes around the world are stuck in a series of dead-ends and despair. Most importantly, the China-US relationship has hit a brick wall as their fundamentally different values and interests clash, and a robust policy is the only way forward.
Hoover Institution fellow Stephen Haber joins a discussion concerning whether or not the US is a land where free markets and antitrust enforcement have historically kept monopolies under control.
Hoover Institution fellow Victor Davis Hanson analyzes presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden's first press conference in 89 days and notes that Biden did not quell concerns about his fitness to lead America.
The Hoover Institution will publish On a Collision Course, a collection of five meticulously researched essays written by Yasuo Sakata about Japanese immigration to the United States from a holistic, international, and deeply historical perspective.
On June 30, one of the greatest men in the history of classical liberalism celebrated his 90th birthday. Thomas Sowell stands as one of the greatest thinkers in the tradition of individual rights and economic freedom, of pushing back against the ever-controlling grasp of a stifling central government. Given South Africa is in the midst of the Covid-19 lockdown, with little hope of where we can turn for growth in the future, there is no better time than now to discover the works of Sowell, and advocate for the ideas he holds.
This book discussion will be livecast from 6:00 p.m. IST. The Indo-Pacific is fast becoming the world’s dominant region. As it grows in power and wealth, geopolitical competition has reemerged, threatening future stability not merely in Asia but around the globe.
Niall Ferguson writes about the emerging Cold War between the U.S. and China. Ferguson calls this Cold War both inevitable and desirable. It’s desirable because, among other things, “it has jolted the U.S. out of complacency and into an earnest effort not to be surpassed by China in artificial intelligence, quantum computing and other strategically crucial technologies.”
As coronavirus cases surge in Nevada and elsewhere, it is significant that a concurrent increase in deaths has not yet followed. This reality too often gets lost amid the seemingly daily drumbeat of gloom and doom. Yet it is vital to accurately assessing the pandemic.
In the 1970s, a little book written by Thomas Harris M.D. titled, "I'm Okay – You're OK," sat atop the bestseller lists for 70 weeks. Harris’s concept of Transactional Analysis implied there were ways we can delineate and learn from three “ego-states” to guide and improve our interpersonal communication. In other words, overcoming “negative life positions” unlocks the freedom to change ourselves in positive ways.
There’s been an understandable outpouring of interest about the possibility of a second round of stimulus checks – when, how much, and who will get it? But the upcoming expiration of the $600 per week federal unemployment benefit program, an issue with much deeper economic implications, has been moving to the forefront as its July 31 expiration date draws closer with each passing day.
As school-district officials weigh whether and how to reopen schools this fall during the continuing threat from Covid-19, negotiations with teachers unions will pose a key challenge. Unions at the local level have already shaped districts’ remote-learning strategies during the shutdown, pushing back in some places against what they see as unfair demands on teachers trying to deliver instruction via videoconferencing.
Black workers, the economy, and the jobless would benefit from President Trump’s proposed payroll tax cut, part of the negotiations for a new coronavirus stimulus package, according to an anti-tax group. In a new report provided to Secrets, the Committee to Unleash Prosperity said that Trump’s No. 1 goal of cutting taxes will help African Americans “disproportionately” because they pay more in paycheck taxes, according to studies.
