Monthly Archives: May 2017

Politically ravaged marriages it’s worse than ever

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From Fights over Trump drive couples, especially millennials, to split up.

Couples are fighting over President Trump more than ever, and many are turning to divorce court to get out of their politically ravaged marriages.

New data from Wakefield Research found that one in 10 couples, married and not, have ended their relationships in a battle over political differences. For younger millennials, it’s 22 percent.

And nearly one in three Americans said that political clashes over Trump have “had a negative impact on their relationship,” said the report provided to Secrets.

Not sure I could have lasted eight years with an Obama person, or would mind living my own life free from one of Hillary’s cretinous minions.

In the meantime

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The video above was taken at the Sydney launch of The Art of the Impossible, and now I am extraordinarily happy to add that Andrew Bolt has agreed to launch the book in Melbourne. Some details to work out, but will let you know when and where.

In the meantime, let me bid farewell to blogging for a bit. I am going into hospital in the morning for hand surgery that will make it difficult to type for a while.

And let me add that it is safe to watch the video since it is all Mark and Ross. For my views, you will have to read the book.

Trump likes Australian health care which Democrats think is a single-payer system

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Australia’s health care system is the best in the world. It happened by accident with Whitlam having introduced Medibank in 1975 and Fraser having been flummoxed about what to do did nothing other than allow a parallel system of private insurance to compete. The two parallel systems remain, and while both are subsidised by government, the system of care for those at both ends of the income spectrum is as good as one could hope, which is not the same as being perfect.

Which brings me to this where left and right in the United States at least superficially agree on something: Sanders: ‘Trump is right’ on Australian healthcare system. As you can see from the video, Sanders and much of the left do not understand that we have a two-tier system that lets anyone who wishes spend their money to buy higher quality care that can be tailored to their own particular needs. Do the left in the United States, along with their media, ever get anything of importance right?

The Canadian single-payer system is a disaster that has as its one positive feature, that no one ever has to pay a cent when going to the doctor. But the downside is that it is forbidden to buy extra care for oneself (although that may have recently changed) so everyone queues until their number comes up. It is this system that the Democrats want to introduce. It is something along the lines of the Australian system that Trump wants to introduce. My advice, if you are going to get sick, do it in Australia and not in Canada or the US.

And if you want to see an exceptionally funny movie about the Canadian system let me recommend The Barbarian Invasions.

Counting our political blessings

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It’s nice to see an article pointing out how well we have done in having had the US elect Donald Trump. This is by Andrew Klavan who I don’t recall having been a fan during the election but does seem to have seen the light, calling his post Thanks GOP! with not a trace of irony meant. Just by not being Hillary, DJT has done more than could ever have been hoped for. But as Klavan points out, there is much much more to be thankful for even if it is not everything we might have wanted.

So yes, let those of us on the right continue to push for more conservative legislation, and let us complain some whenever we don’t get it. But let’s not be blinded to the fact that things are going pretty well for the good guys right now.

Maybe we could call a pause in carping at President Trump and tarring and feathering Speaker Ryan and scorning Senator Mitch McConnell just long enough to tell them thanks.

To this day, I run across people who tell me they identify with the right side of politics but lament that Donald Trump because president. This is such massive stupidity never mind ingratitude by people who, whatever they may think about themselves, have not the slightest idea how politics works.

William Baumol and me

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Let me add a few words about William Baumol who has just passed away at the age of 95 which is very good going. He truly ought to have won the Nobel Prize in Economics. But what I would like to add to the record is what a truly great academic he was to the full extent of the meaning of the word and in the most positive way one can imagine. It was at the start of my work on Say’s Law back in the 1980s that I came across an article written in 1952 by two of the all time greats of economics, William Baumol and Gary Becker, on “The Classical Monetary Theory: The Outcome of the Discussion”. And whatever you might think from the title, it is about Say’s Law, end to end. And in that article, they craft what has become the modern sophisticated version of Say’s Law which is the division of the concept into Walras’ Law, Say’s Identity and Say’s Equality. I don’t think that’s right, but it was the time of high Keynesianism and it was not worth anyone’s career to criticise Keynes, and so they used someone by name of Lange as the stand-in in an article entirely devoted to showing that the arguments found in The General Theory n Say’s Law were baseless.

While Becker never came back to this issue, Baumol did. In 1977 he published an article on “Say’s (at Least) Eight Laws, or What Say and James Mill May Really Have Meant”. Both articles were important parts of my thesis, and I therefore wrote an article critical of Baumol on his explanation of Say’s Law. My supervisor then said that I should send Baumol a copy before I sent it off for publication which I did. And then – and this is the most surprising thing from an academic point of view – I received an exceptionally nice reply from Baumol to say that he had enjoyed my article but didn’t think I had actually understood him correctly. The details are now completely gone of what and why, and there is no doubt that I do not agree with the Becker and Baumol conclusion, but I also agreed with Baumol that whatever I had been saying was not accurate. So I thanked him for his interest and didn’t even try to publish the article.

But eventually I ended up in a dispute with someone else over Say’s Law and this led to my being invited by the Eastern Economic Journal to lead a symposium. I therefore asked Baumol, along with Mark Blaug and the original person who I had been in disagreement with, to contribute to this symposium, for which I wrote the opening and closing articles. My opening was titled: On the True Meaning of Say’s Law. And while I have refined some of it, I would stand behind everything I wrote at the time.

Baumol in his contribution added to his own previous work. This is the abstract from his article which I can only find here (but it is actually Baumol’s 1977 article that is attached Say’s (at Least) Eight Laws, or What Say and James Mill May Really Have Meant). This is the abstract:

Part of a Symposium entitled, “Say’s Law Revisited,” this note is dedicated to showing that both Say’s and Ricardo’s concerns about unemployment were deeper than even the Kates article (in this symposium) suggests, that this concern even led Say to advocate a clear Keynesian remedy for unemployment: public works. Correspondingly, the paper shows that Ricardo’s disquiet about joblessness constitutes a good part of his reversal on the role of machinery (i.e., innovation) that so distressed his adherents.

I eventually did meet him personally and the impression that I had had in our correspondence that he was a very kind, good natured and sweet individual, as well as being as sharp and analytical as one might wish, was more than confirmed in the three quarters of an hour he gave me of his time. And by the time we met, there was no doubt in his mind how opposite to pretty well everything he thought about macroeconomic theory and Say’s Law I am. He was nevertheless everything one could have hoped him to be both as an academic and a human being. I therefore wished to add my own tribute based on my own brief encounters with one of the truly great economists of our time.

Les Miz after reality finally bites

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An absolutely stunning photo. The people behind the barricades are, of course, the people who put Chavez and now Maduro into power. I wonder what they now know that they didn’t know then. If you look to the government to give you things you didn’t earn for yourself, this is the very plausible place you will end up. That is why when I have gone to see Les Miz, I always cheer for Inspector Javert.

Picked up at Instapundit.

UPDATE: Here is perhaps an article that may have the explanation: What Caused Venezuela’s Collapse Is No Mystery — Except To Economically Illiterate Journalists. So let us see what answer they come up with. This is where they start:

The cause is simple. Socialism. End it and you will end the misery.

I suppose that’s right, but what is this thing referred to as “socialism”. What are its characteristics and what can be done to avoid it? This, I’m afraid, we don’t entirely find out. The rest of the article describes how mainstream journalists evade the issue, with examples from The New York Times, The LA Times and USA Today. They attribute the collapse to falling oil prices, corrupt business leaders and even the weather which brought on a drought. And, of course, these weren’t the causes of the drastic failure of the Venezuelan economy, but after all is said and done, we end where the story began.

It is their unwillingness to admit that socialism can’t work that drives so many mainstream journalists to look for something, anything, else to blame when socialist economies invariable fail.

Socialism is merely a word that describes lots of economic systems, many of which have been very successful. What’s missing is any discussion of what in particular they have been doing wrong. It is this that seems to leave out that specifics of what needs to be avoided and what ought to be done in its place.

It wasn’t Comey it was Obama who did Hillary in

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Listening to Hillary maunder on about Comey does make me think she actually knows the truth but knows she cannot say it herself. I have never been in any doubt that it was Comey who made PDT possible, but it was Obama via Loretta Lynch who was behind it all. I wrote about it a week before the election in a post I titled, Raisin’ Kaine to the highest office in the land which is, of course, reprinted in my The Art of the Impossible: A Blog History of the Election of Donald J.Trump as President. The same scenario was also discussed in another post on November 4. These are the ingredients for what is a very simple sequence that fits every fact not to mention the personal motivations of each of the persons involved. It also explains what Hillary cannot say but more likely than not knows herself.

1) Obama hates Hillary.

2) Tim Kaine is not just from the Obama side of the Democratic Party but was one of the first of the Democrats to defect to Obama in 2007. Hillary would never ever under ordinary circumstances have chosen Kaine for her Vice President, even assuming he would be a great campaign asset which he most assuredly was not.

3) However, she can only run for president if she is not under indictment for the undoubtedly illegal use of an insecure server. Hillary was therefore compelled to choose someone who she would never have chosen as her Vice Presidential candidate.

4) Obama’s aim was to be succeeded by someone with his own agenda to carry on where he had left off.

5) Hillary wanted to be president, but not necessarily serve as president. She is a sick woman which can hardly be denied. She might not have lasted a year before her illnesses would have forced her to resign.

6) But in any case, just in case she was reluctant to give up the presidency once she had it, the evidence of illegal activity could be used to impeach her if she chose to battle on, or at the very least, force her to stand aside and allow the Vice President to take over.

7) Comey had begun the original investigation, which was extraordinary enough. But since it is necessary for Hillary to win if Kaine was to become president, Comey – under instruction – says on his own bat that she has no case to answer.

8) Hillary then moves to the front and looks set to win the election. But now there is no means to force her from office if she doesn’t want to go. So suddenly 650,000 classified emails are found on Weiner’s laptop leading Comey – under instruction from Obama – to open the investigation again.

9) But then, to everyone’s astonishment on the Democrat side of politics, Trump begins to move ahead in the last week of the election, throwing the result into doubt. The investigation against Hillary therefore needs to be shut down immediately. Comey therefore declares that they FBI has gone through the 650,000 emails and states there is nothing there to prosecute.

10) But by then it is too late and Trump gathers just enough momentum due to the various scandals that have surrounded Hillary to win the election.

Hence this: Clinton blames Comey, WikiLeaks for election loss. I think this is exactly right:

Clinton said she was on track to winning the election until Oct. 28, when news broke that Comey had sent a letter to Congress announcing that he had reopened the investigation into her emails. . . .

“I was on the way to winning until the combination of Jim Comey’s letter on October 28 and Russian WikiLeaks raised doubts in the minds of people who were inclined to vote for me, but got scared off,” Clinton said.

Saying that the WikiLeaks came from Russia is just part of the fake news dross, but the WikiLeaks no doubt did matter but was hardly decisive. It was the investigation by the FBI that made her electoral poison. I even agree with her when she says she would have won had the election been held the week before. I wrote exactly this on the first of November, where I discussed A Week is a Long Time in Politics – another post reprinted in my book. There I wrote: “In my view, had the election been held today, Hillary would have won.” We’ll never know since the election was held a week later and bless my soul, by then, thanks to Obama with the assistance of James Comey, DJT was elected instead.

“We have to be prepared to do what we have to do”

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The differences between DJT and his predecessor are profound. Obama was a lightweight far-left dunce who took almost nothing seriously other than his self-importance. Trump feels the weight of the world on his shoulders: Trump: ‘You make a mistake here, there is nothing to work out’. This is the same quote found at Instapundit:

Over the next 40 minutes, he jumps, in classic Trump fashion, over a range of topics, from his relations with foreign leaders to the danger of North Korea, from the election last year to his hopes for America tomorrow.

Yet listen closely, especially when he speaks about decisions involving life and death, and you sense that sitting here, in the Oval Office, as the 45th president has humbled even Donald J. Trump.

“You can make a mistake in deals, and you work it out,” he explains at one point. “You make a mistake here, there is nothing to work out. You know it’s trouble. It could be big trouble. And it is life-threatening trouble for lots of people, potentially.”

A portrait of Thomas Jefferson hangs to his right, one of Andrew Jackson, perhaps his favorite president, is to his left. A bust of a sober-looking Abraham Lincoln sits beneath Jefferson, while Trump’s father smiles broadly from a black-and-white photo behind the Resolute Desk, given by Queen Victoria in 1880 to Rutherford B. Hayes and used by many presidents since.

“It’s a very intensive process,” he says of the presidency. “Really intense. I get up to bed late and I get up early.” He rarely sleeps more than four hours, which is good, he explains, because he can call leaders around the world in the dark hours while the rest of Washington sleeps.

“When I was doing many real estate deals at one time, I always thought that was going to be more comprehensive and lengthier than a day like this.

“It’s not.”

So far into his presidency, as with so many modern-era presidents before him, much of his focus has been on challenges from abroad.

Let me also add a few quotes from the comments at Instapundit which help round out how people such as myself see DJT as president.

The entire interview, whatever you think of Trump’s policies, is an exposition of how stupid the never Trump right was in claiming that Trump was unfit for office. Trump was never anything like the boogieman the Washington establishment created. He was always a dead serious person and someone who anyone but our morally and intellectually bankrupt establishment could see would rise to the responsibilities of the job as well as any President since Reagan. The establishment of course saw Trump as the opposite because in Washington black is white and up is down. They live in their own alternative reality.

“An atmosphere — friendly, happy, energetic — infuses the Oval Office, already glowing with afternoon sunlight. You find yourself wondering what the next discussion among these figures will be, how it might add to two centuries of history, sometimes good, sometimes terrifying, that has unfolded within these curved walls.” Staffers are … happy? In a Hillary administration, they would be slicing themselves to ribbons. I’d love to know how he does it. My guess: Hire the best and quickly get rid of those who don’t work out. This is first-class management. This is what you get from someone who actually knows what he is doing, thanks to decades of experience.

He may not be the most well-spoken President we’ve had, but he brings a certain clarity in action if not always in words. And, he clearly loves this country. That alone is a welcome change from the preceding 8 years. Whatever he does, he’s doing it for the USA. It’s great having a President that isn’t beholden to someone/something else. Also, I never understood why anyone would think he was stupid or ill-informed. I don’t care how many advantages one starts out with, you cannot be as successful in the business world as he is and be stupid. He’s a deal-maker- he knows how to cut through the BS and figure out what the issues are. That would be a statesman who actually succeeds, as opposed to just appearing to be a diplomat by holding meetings, conference calls, issuing statements and flitting around the world.

I think a lot of the charge that he is stupid or ill informed comes from the fact that the media and most of the political class believe in the magic power of words. They are so detached from reality and so immersed in their own obsession with words over reality that they think that being clever and speaking well is the same thing as being competent at something. They think saying something well is the same thing as doing something well.

I originally thought that Donald Trump, during the campaign, was there to clear the Political Correctness out of the way for Ted Cruz. I voted for Ted in the Primary. By the time the General rolled around, I was happy to vote for Donald J. I realize now that Cruz could not have won. Republicans always succumb to Political Correctness. Donald J does not. It’s a new wind that blows across this continent, from sea to shining sea. Let’s not blow it.

The enemy is Keynesian macro

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I’m afraid you can talk about debt and deficits to the end of time but unless you understand that the true enemy is macroeconomic theory with its emphasis on aggregate demand your chances of success are approximately zero. This is the equation of economic death: Y=C+I+G+(X-M). If this is not the focus, then things will just continue as they are until the crash comes and no one is willing to lend to us any more. Two bits from today.

First there was Jennifer Oriel with her Budget 2017: forget the fake patriotism and get working on debt. She sees the point, I suppose, but where is her full-blooded attack on the underlying theory? This is her hardest para but it is hardly a call to arms.

If the government drifts away from fiscal conservatism and ­engorges itself on the elusive promise of growth, it risks driving Australia off the fiscal cliff. It must downsize to reduce debt and ­repair the deficit. It could begin by cutting the morbidly obese ministry down to size. If the Coalition’s patriotism is more than mere rhetoric then it must make plain the case for an Australia-first budget by simplifying the taxation system, dropping the spin and putting the national interest first.

And then there was marcus with his terrifying statistics and historical record. This is a major public service: What did we get for our $400 billion loan? It really is the most blood-curdling analysis I have come across except that other than a few of us out here on the periphery, no one’s blood has been curdled. You really should read it, but my guess is that with aggregate demand at the core of economic theory, the general belief is that this debt and spending has saved us from a fate far worse than our current levels of debt.

Completely wrong, but we still have a lot of capital to run down before we truly hit the skids. So along the way we will put Labor back in who will blame it on Malcolm, or at least Tony. If you do not understand that the problem is the economics of Keynes and the theory of aggregate demand deficiency, you are not even at first base in understanding what needs to be done and why.