Election Reflections

The sense to let things settle.  Especially when the public, or the private, sea is most turbulent.  There come whirlwinds into human traffic, storms of passion, when it is wise to seek a safe harbor with smoother waters: many times is an evil made worse by the remedies used.  Gracian #138

George Rebane

As we sit in wait for the election of our lifetime, many of us are in a cold sweat as to what may be our country’s fate if the neo-Marxist Left prevails this upcoming Tuesday.  Our Left’s not so hidden agenda is to remove the United States as the main impediment to global governance.  It does this by fostering drastically flawed policies for conducting the country’s economy, education, and foreign policy (to include blatantly porous borders).  The Left’s inventory of governance deficits is large and continues to grow, immune to ongoing appeals of reason and historical evidence of their failures wherever these have been implemented.

Today I will focus my screed on the Left’s successful attempts to put in play a malformed economy that is accepted by an alarmingly large share of the country’s (lightly read) electorate as having fixed the Trump legacy, if we are to believe the polls.  And specifically I want to highlight the entire notion of the Left’s goal to implement wage/price controls (“price gouging”) across the land should they also dominate Congress.  They have convinced a large contingent of us that Kamala’s economic plan (what plan? where?) is backed over Trump’s by scores of economists from sea to shining sea.

Longtime RR readers know my assessment of economics as a field of study and informer of policy.  Most certainly there is nothing scientific about economics when it comes to quantitative models designed to predict the future – i.e. contain equations with time as the independent variable.  Wherever such models have been applied, they have shown themselves to be woefully inadequate for the job for reasons I have detailed many times.  Yet they persist, perhaps serving the economists’ ongoing desire to be accepted into the more respectable community of science. 

In this regard I offer the celebrated British macro-economist Lord John Maynard Keynes as an example of one who did not understand the impact of wage/price controls and gave us his ‘demand side’ model of an economy which continues to infect the thinking of government planners all over the world.  His economics began to fray in the 60s and 70s when governments’ demand infusion policies did nothing to mitigate stagflation.  However, leftwingers like Barack Obama gave Keynesianism another chance after the 2008-09 recession, and demonstrated to the world how such demand based economic policies gave rise to the most impeded and slowest recovery in the history of US recessions.

Getting back to wage/price controls.  It is easy to show that anyone who continues to believe that wage/price controls will increase the quality of life in an economy is way past those who still believe in a flat earth.  At least the flat earthers can stand on a hill and point to the surrounding horizons to demonstrate that the earth is always flat from here to there.  The true believers in w/p controls have never had such a hill to stand on.  Theirs is a pabulum-based body of evidence that crumbles under any serious examination.

The more successful economists have been those who interpret economic behaviors in terms of very apparent and recorded behaviors of individuals when presented with economic choices and decisions.  Successful economists of this stripe have been men like Smith, Bastiat, von Mises, Hayek, Hazlitt, and Freedman.

Henry Hazlitt contributed to a widespread understanding of economics with the publication of Economics in One Lesson (1946), a paperback translated into over ten languages with which he intended to attract readers put off by Friedrich Hayek’s more dense and massive classic, Road to Serfdom (1944).  (The highly recommended Hazlitt tome is now in the public domain and available here along with a chapters summary here.)

This September’s issue of the Hillsdale College Imprimis (here) features an updated reprise of the Hazlitt essay ‘The Dangers of Price Controls’ which also appeared in the very first issue of Imprimis in 1972.  (Imprimis is a monthly pamphlet on governance and cultural issues that is subscribed by 6.6M people worldwide.)  The essay opens with –

The first thing to be said about price and wage fixing is that it is harmful at any time and under any conditions. It is a giant step toward a dictated, regimented, and authoritarian economy. It makes impossible arrangements that both sides are willing to agree to. It sets aside contracts that have already been made in good faith. If an employer wishes to give a man a raise in pay, and the man deserves it, he is nonetheless forbidden to do it under the new regulations. This is a grave abridgment of individual liberty. … Price and wage fixing does harm even if there is no inflation. In a free economy prices are constantly changing. They are changing to reflect changes in supply and demand, in costs, and in a hundred other conditions. Some prices are going up, other prices are going down. If an effort is made to freeze prices and wages exactly where they are, it immediately disturbs the relationship of prices and comparative profit margins, which decides what things will be made and what quantities they will be made in. It upsets the process by which the free market decides how thousands of different commodities and services are to be made in the proportions in which people want them.

So now I and those of my persuasion sit here holding our breaths for Tuesday night when we may receive a hint of the kind of future that awaits us all.

Comments

[The Estonian Fox]

"Yet they persist, perhaps serving the economists’ ongoing desire to be accepted into the more respectable community of science."

George, you need look no farther than the fact that Alfred Nobel did NOT include an Economics Prize as part of his 5-Prize legacy. Maybe he simply forgot?

So the Riksbank had to step in with their ersatz Econ. prize, specifically:
"Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel"

[Scott O]

I would posit that economics is an actual science and quite a simple one at its core but becomes bewilderingly complicated as it is worked through our various financials shenanigans thought up by clever lads aided by marketers, politicians and lawyers.
It is the fact that free market capitalism operating under the law of supply and demand ultimately has to bend to the will of human nature because (duh) it's humans that run the whole shebang. And humans are perverse creatures at times who will fight fiercely for the right to cut their noses off to spite their face.
I would say that folks like Charlie Munger and Jeff Bezos are the sort of people we can point to as being "economists". They understand the basic laws of economics and apply them skillfully in the actual market place. Folks like Paul Krugman can write endlessly about economics, but he operates in a world of fantasy. He believes that the market should operate as a healer of social ills and deliver a utopian world of health, happiness, and peace to all humans. Much as a witch doctor believes that certain incantations and dancing will heal a stricken patient.
Paul Krugman writes to an audience that wants to hear him tell them what they want to hear. That he is for what they are for and hates what they hate. And he wraps his tales in economic terms so as to convince the villagers that he has magic powers.
What ever the results of the election, we are still faced with the same over-arching issue - we, as a collective nation, have lived well beyond our means to the point almost of financial ruin. The entire world of developed nations are swimming in debt that can not be repaid without a serious shock to almost everyone.
Sadly - war was always the result (or solution, to some) of such a problem in the historical past. But thanks to our technological advances, war is now unthinkable to most. Perhaps a slow slide into a Brave New World of tightly controlled abject poverty for almost everyone will be the answer this time. We'll see. In the meantime, life goes on and the housework and yardwork still needs to be attended to.
Cheers!

[fish]

Posted by: Scott O | 04 November 2024 at 08:30 AM

What ever the results of the election, we are still faced with the same over-arching issue - we, as a collective nation, have lived well beyond our means to the point almost of financial ruin. The entire world of developed nations are swimming in debt that can not be repaid without a serious shock to almost everyone.
Sadly - war was always the result (or solution, to some) of such a problem in the historical past. But thanks to our technological advances, war is now unthinkable to most. Perhaps a slow slide into a Brave New World of tightly controlled abject poverty for almost everyone will be the answer this time. We'll see. In the meantime, life goes on and the housework and yardwork still needs to be attended to.

....and this is why I don't think TEAM EVIL has any real concern about the results of tomorrows idiocy! They're not stupid and they know what's coming. What better way to weather the storm than letting this big flaming bag of dog poo break on the Tangerine Tornado's expensive Italian loafers and wait for the next round when the number of slack jawed South Americans (not just them we're importing all of the world riff-raff) has swelled still further!

Plus....it kills any thought that Heels Up ever needs to be considered in the future for a role like this!

[George Rebane]

re ScottO 830am - Fields of science have a documented understanding of sufficient fundamental processes which are then integrated into higher level models that can be successfully used to explain past observations (data) and reliably predict the future values of relevant dependent variables (e.g. the state of the system). Such models then succumb to the two requirements of science - falsifiability and Occam's razor. Economics has never made progress toward toward satisfying these seminal requirements, hence it has yet to qualify as a science. See also Efox's 606am comment.

[Gregory]

The dismal science is one part voodoo and the rest applied mathematics.

[Scott O]

I agree that economics is the dismal science. Any kind of test or experiment has the problem of control. It is almost impossible due to the vagarities of human nature. That is why I scoff at the notion of "testing" the idea of UBI. The test subjects know it is a test and will therefor not act in a manner as if they had certain knowledge of it being a permanent way of life. Furthermore - they must still interact with others who are not part of the test and the results of the "experiment" are muddied even more. This is hardly a way to conduct any sort of scientific experiment.
Some very basic aspects of economics have been tested many times and the results are pretty much all in agreement. An abundance of a resource will tend to lead to a waste of that resource. Being able to quantify just how much is to be considered abundance and how much is considered waste is where it gets very non-exact and non-scientific. So we are left with a fact of nature with little ability to advance it to a higher level of certainty and control. (see George's concerns) And that is where many would throw up their hands and declare economics to not be any sort of science at all.

[Don Bessee]

Speaks for itself -

https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/cnns-van-jones-nervous-harris-164045622.html

;-)

[Don Bessee]

Had to blink and read it again, thought it was the onion for a minute but its true -

Harris campaign tells Muslim interviewer he can't ask about Gaza, she talks up bacon instead: 'Taken aback

https://www.foxnews.com/media/harris-campaign-tells-muslim-interviewer-he-cant-ask-about-gaza-she-talks-up-bacon-instead-taken-aback

;-)

[Scott O]

"Harris campaign tells Muslim interviewer he can't ask about Gaza"

Has anyone informed the clump of cells called Kamala Harris she won't be able to do that with other govts if she actually attains the office of POTUS?

This is what happens when your insurance policy is a complete idiot and suddenly you find you actually have to invoke your policy. A Harris presidency will be a disaster, but a highly amusing one at that.
The LSM will pull every muscle in their being trying to carry her water to make her look good.

[Eulogized Hillbilly]

"Election of our lifetime"

Will we be saddled with a Felon of many indictments and many convictions because Drumpf minions have bought into all the MAGA propaganda,

or will we elect a former Attorney General to hold this fascist criminal to account for his crimes.

[Gregory]

Not a MAGA here, billhilly.

Many convictions? Do tell.

[Scott O]

Hilarious!

"because Drumpf minions have bought into all the MAGA propaganda"

Yeah - some of us have this wild idea that the world was way more peaceful back when Trump was POTUS. And we have good solid folks Trump put into the SC who actually rule by reading the Constitution.
Hillbilly thinks that's just propaganda.

[Scott O]

I think some people have forgotten that no matter who wins, tomorrow is another day and you'll still be needing your integrity.

"Michael Beschloss warned Morning Joe viewers that if Donald Trump wins reelection. that could mean historians are no longer allowed to write history and people are no longer allowed to express their opinions on television."

OK.

[fish]

If they're smart maybe only need a single abortion in their whole life....

Who Voted? A Younger, More Female Electorate

But high crime, relentless inflation, and crushing taxes courtesy of progressive governance....they'll be able to enjoy that daily!

https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/trump-harris-election-day-results-2024/card/who-voted-a-younger-more-female-electorate-OjR32h2trXcY5yy4Rk5u

[Don Bessee]

Prop 36 called a win!

;-)

[Scott O]

Once again - Florida has counted their votes and shows the rest of the nation how to it correctly.
Possibly the other "certain" states could maybe learn something?

[Scott O]

Harold Ford on FOX is begging for mercy and that Trump will be magnanimous in victory.

Sure, Harold - exactly the same as the Dems were with him.

[Scott O]

Well - the Dems got to kill a squirrel and a racoon.
So - there's there that.

[Scott O]

"Harris surrogate and billionaire investor Mark Cuban conceded President-elect Donald Trump had won on election night, sending him congratulations through social media."

Why couldn't Harris have done that?
As soon as they sober her up, I'm sure she'll have some more word salad for us.

[Barry Pruett]

Crickets from the peanut gallery

[Scott O]

Barry 6:33 - They're packing their bags. The death squads are coming for them, remember?

[Gregory]

Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee. Sink all coffins and all hearses to one common pool! and since neither can be mine, let me then tow to pieces, while still chasing thee, though tied to thee, thou damned whale! Thus, I give up the spear!

-Melville

An unhinged Democrat true believer?

[George Rebane]

Please continue your election comments under 'Trum Wins!'. Thanks.