Government-Sponsored Corporatism Leading to Rise of Populism

Government-Sponsored Corporatism Leading to Rise of Populism

By Daily Bell Staff

2016 Campaign’s Populist Tone Rankles America’s CEOs … Chief executives at big American companies are increasingly frustrated by the populist tone of the presidential campaign, and concerns are mounting in boardrooms and corner offices that anti-business rhetoric may solidify even after the November election. – Wall Street Journal

This Wall Street Journal article makes the point that Trump has positioned himself at the head of an increasingly anti-business GOP.

More:

The GOP “has been captured by a large number of people who basically do not like big,” said Judd Gregg, a Republican former U.S. senator and governor of New Hampshire, who sits on the board of Honeywell International Inc.

By default, there’s nothing wrong with “big.” Theoretically, big business can mean economies of scale and economic efficiency. The oversized corporations of the US, however, are not natural products of the market. Instead, they are the artificial results of government policy.

As we’ve often pointed out, there are three areas where judicial force has been applied, swelling corporations to titanic sizes.

The first is intellectual property rights.

If corporations had to protect their own trade secrets rather than relying on government to do it for them, it is very probable that many corporations would be a good deal smaller.

The second is corporate personhood.

Corporate personhood makes it a good deal easier for individuals to avoid culpability for corporate acts. Those lodged within a corporation can often avoid penalties that would otherwise expose them to significant personal jeopardy. Because they stay in charge, continuity isn’t disrupted and exceptionally aggressive corporate strategies can be maintained.

The third area is monopoly central banking.

Monopoly fiat money benefits the world’s largest corporations inordinately. The money coming out of central banks, especially Western central banks, often finds its way to the largest multinationals first, providing significant liquidity to these massive entities.

There are other ways that “big business” is artificially supported and propped up in the West, but these seem to be the most significant.

To claim that the current US “populist” environment is anti-big business is to radically misconstrue the reality of American capitalism. American capitalism has very little about it that is laissez-faire.

US judicial decisions have created an environment in which gigantic corporations can flourish.

Thomas Jefferson and other founders were so worried about corporate bigness that corporate creation was lodged at the state rather than the federal level.

It was only after the Civil War that judicial decisions began to lay the groundwork for the modern corporate state.

The modern corporate state is almost antithetical to the agrarian republicanism that Jefferson and others had envisioned – a free-market republicanism that was responsible for initial US growth. This Wall Street Journal radically misrepresents the reality of business in the US and throughout the West.

Rhetoric from Republican candidates has grown more populist and less friendly to big business than at any time in decades, while the Democratic race is being influenced by the rise of liberal Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.

Some of these instincts gave rise to the tea-party movement in 2009 and sent dozens of more conservative lawmakers to Washington the following year, fueling gridlock on Capitol Hill.

In the past, The Daily Bell has very clearly identified Tea Party sentiments with an underlying free-market instinct present in the US since its founding. In fact, this sentiment was present in the US long before the Constitution.

Instinctively, people know that “big business” does not present a competitive, free-market profile. The US and the West generally have developed a system more aptly characterized as “corporatism.”

Entrepreneurialism continues to diminish in the US. Regulations, taxes and the underlying judicial support for larger corporations are making it increasingly difficult for people to make even a modest living.

A recent article  entitled, “Authorities Fear Civil Unrest, Buy-Up Gear To Arrest, Disperse, Control Riots,” reported on the growing popular frustration with the direction of US society.

Riot control systems are expected to “generate revenues of over USD 3.5 billion by the end of 2020,” with North America being one of the primary growth areas for upgraded weapons due to “militarization of the police department and other law enforcement agencies.”

The article also mentioned recent comments by top insurer Lloyds in a report warning of a “pandemic of global civil unrest that could go viral, threatening international stability.”

Market-based economies generate entrepreneurial republicanism – a system that encourages both freedom and prosperity.

The US’s “Fortune 500” approach to “big business,” encourages the mingling of government power with titanic private interests. Over time, this trend creates corporatism, which can also be described as fascism. The interlocking, anti-freedom environment of modern Western society is generating increasing push-back for a number of reasons. It’s not a trend that will likely diminish.

Conclusion:  As always, we encourage independence – a “prepper” mentality – focused on personal preparedness. What happens to the larger society is beyond your control, but you can have an impact on your own personal environment. And you should.

DEMOCRATIC FASCISM KILLS GROWTH

DEMOCRATIC FASCISM KILLS GROWTH

By Roger McKinney

Bob Bryan at Business Insider had an interesting column on why economic growth in the US is dying. For the cause, he defers to Mike Thompson of S&P Global Market Intelligence: Thompson claims that large corporations are doing three things: 1) cutting costs, 2) creating shell companies or doing inversions to reduce taxes, and 3) buying back shares in order to boost earnings per share.

Unfortunately, Thompsons seems to think that the strategy suddenly struck executives like the zika virus and made them act in a strange way. But I think the real cause demonstrates how far down the road to socialism the US has traveled in the since WWII. Executives are behaving very much like those of the old USSR.

Guinevere Liberty Nell tells in her book, Rediscovering Fire: Basic Economic Lessons from the Soviet Experiment, how Soviet execs used tricks to meet unreasonable state goals for their industries. For example, the state ordered glass manufacturers to produce so many tons of glass in a year, so they produced thick, heavy glass to meet the tonnage quotas even though few buildings could use the glass. The bureaucrats responded by changing the quota to square meters, but caused the managers to crank out very thin glass that would break in a slight breeze.

Outside of socialists, the mainstream media and mainstream economists, large corporations are the most persistent opponents of freedom and free markets. They have labored and paid out huge sums in bribes to politicians for decades with the single goal of reducing competition. They captured federal regulatory agencies as James Buchanan taught in his public choice school of political economy. Then they had the agencies create regulations designed to crush smaller competitors, of course, all in the name of health and safety, which the socialist mainstream media sell to a gullible and envious public.

Since the Reagan “revolution,” the size of the Federal Register of new federal regulations has grown by an average of 75,000 pages per year, totaling over four million new pages of regulations. Those regulations cost businesses over $1 trillion per year to comply. The largest corporations have little problem paying those costs, but they crush smaller competitors. As a result, most industries have become concentrated in the hands of four or five oligopolists who have a gentleman’s agreement not to compete on price. Lacking a culture of innovation, they have no place to invest their profits but in stock buybacks and financial engineering. They don’t want to disrupt the status quo.

Thompson says that the effective tax rate on large corporations is 29%, but it is still among the highest in the industrial world. High taxes and the costs of complying with massive amounts of regulations hurt the competitiveness of large US corporations in the international marketplace, but they don’t really care about competing. They have the US market, one of the world’s largest, pretty much to themselves.

Industries controlled by cartels of the largest corporations are one of the chief characteristics of fascism, minus the racism. We still have limited democracy, but in our state control of business we are far more like the fascism of Italy and Germany before World War II. US citizens should think of our system as democratic fascism, and that is the cause of our requiem for economic growth.

Contraceptives reduce child poverty, teen pregnancies and abortions or do they?

Contraceptives reduce child poverty, teen pregnancies and abortions or do they?

One way to reduce childhood poverty is to reduce teen pregnancies. Research cited by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention demonstrate that reducing teen pregnancy is a critical and effective way to combat child poverty. So, with all the free access to birth control, why do we continue to have teen pregnancies?

The background

The research shows that teen pregnancy and birth are significant contributors to high school dropout rates among girls. Only about 50 percent of teen mothers receive a high school diploma by age 22 compared to about 90 percent of women who had not given birth during adolescence. The children of teenage mothers are more likely to have lower school achievement and drop out of high school, have more health problems, be incarcerated during adolescence, give birth as a teen, and face unemployment as a young adult. Where are the fathers? Not being responsible or accountable.

The CDC has declared teen pregnancy a public health priority and “winnable battle” that should be attacked using evidence-based teen pregnancy prevention programs with access to youth-friendly clinical services including birth control.  We do this while teen pregnancies continue.

It is also good news that teen pregnancies (as well as teen births and abortions) have steadily decreased, especially since 2008. Even so they remain unacceptably high.

What is driving the decrease in teen pregnancies?

The respected independent Guttmacher Institute just released a study that documents the decrease in teen pregnancies to historic lows since their peak in 1990. The study suggests that increased access to long-acting, reversible contraceptives like IUD’s and implants (LARC’s) are making a difference.

The study says about recent declines, “it appears likely that recent changes in contraceptive use are driving the reduction. There is evidence that contraceptive practices have improved among older teens. A recent study found that the proportion of 18- to 19-year-old women, who report using long-acting reversible contraceptive methods tripled between 2007 and 2009, and promotion and acceptance of these methods among teens and young adult women has increased.” A prior analysis found that contraceptives accounted for more than 80 percent of the decline in teen pregnancies while abstinence accounted for about 14 percent.

The bad news is that the Guttmacher study finds that the rate of decline in teen pregnancies for teens of color lags behind the decline for white teens. Why?

Studies in the state of Colorado and the city of St. Louis, where free or affordable, long-acting reversible contraceptives were made available to teens show the effectiveness of access to those contraceptives. The program in Colorado resulted in a reduction by 29 percent in teen births. In St. Louis, teen births declined to 34 per 1,000 teens versus the national average of 158.5 per thousand.

The cost to all of us from teen births is significant. In 2010, teen births cost the U.S. nearly $10 billion in increased public assistance and health care and income lost to lower educational attainment and reduced earnings among children born to teen mothers. That is spending that will be reduced when we reduce child poverty.

While many clinics as well as Planned Parenthood are providing much needed access to contraceptives and education which reduce teen pregnancies and combat child poverty, teens under 17 continue unabated.

Community efforts to fight child poverty that include access to contraceptives and evidence-based education to reduce teen pregnancies and the child poverty they cause. However, there is still a missing link. That is, impressing upon these young people the consequences and accountability of teen pregnancies. As this narrative explains, teen pregnancy should be a “winnable battle. However, in addition to contraceptives it comes down to the individual making right decisions.

It also makes sense that anyone who seeks to reduce the number of abortions start by driving responsibility and accountability to the individual level.

The Top 7 Ways Liberals Are Making War on Women

The Top 7 Ways Liberals Are Making War on Women

One of the weirdest accusations that liberals have made in the last few years is that there’s a conservative “war on women.” So apparently, women like Condi Rice, Laura Ingraham, Michelle Malkin, Dana Loesch, S.E. Cupp and Nikki Haley are making war on themselves. Who knew?

If anybody is “waging a war on women,” it’s liberals. Of course, in the midst of their war on capitalism, Christianity, the military and the Constitution, it’s understandable that people may not have noticed how hateful liberals have become towards women who don’t share their views, but it’s not hard to see if you’re looking.

1) Disarming women: Unless you happen to be Ronda Rousey or some other female mixed martial arts fighter, a woman is not going to be able to stand up to a man in a fight. The average criminal man can rape, beat or slowly squeeze the life out of the average woman at will in a hand-to-hand fight. On the other hand, no matter how strong the man is, he’s not as dangerous as a trained woman with a gun. That’s why the best friend robbers, rapists and violent thugs have are, liberals who want to forcibly disarm law abiding women.

2) Infanticide: More than 25 million female babies have been killed via abortion. That’s more human beings than the Nazis killed during the Holocaust. Liberals have become so cynical about the mounds of human bodies their polices leave in their wake that they almost universally supported Planned Parenthood even after we found out that organization was literally selling the parts of the children they ripped to pieces.

3) They denigrate stay-at-home moms: As a general rule, conservative are fine with a woman staying home and taking care of the kids or having a career. On the other hand, liberals look down on women who choose to stay home and raise their children. They have the same attitude as liberal congressman Kyrsten Sinema who has said,: “These women who act like staying at home, leeching off their husbands or boyfriends, and just cashing the checks is some sort of feminism because they’re choosing to live that life. That’s bull****. I mean, what the f*** are we really talking about here?”

4) They’re pressuring the military to add women to the draft: It’s bad enough that our young men have to sign up for the draft in case there’s a national emergency, but why do liberals want to send 18 year old girls into a potentially violent situation overseas? To prove some kind of dumb point about equality or to spread that false that women are just as good at the sort of violent confrontations that go along with war as men have turned out to be?

5) Liberals are okay with even the vilest behavior towards non-liberal women: If you’re a liberal politician like Bill Clinton or a Hollywood director like Roman Polanski, liberals will even excuse a rape on your behalf. Ted Kennedy was loved by liberals even though he left a woman to drown to death and didn’t bother to get help until she was gone. Just in the last few days, rapper Azealia Banks called for Sarah Palin to be gang raped by black men. The price she’ll pay for that amongst liberals is zero because they are perfectly fine with the most disgusting, loathsome, violent and misogynistic threats being aimed at women they don’t like.

6) Their economic policies are horrible for women: As Stephen Moore has noted; Obama’s liberal policies have been disastrous for women.

During Mr. Obama’s six and a half years in office women have suffered steeper declines in take home pay than men have. Women have also experienced sharper declines in employment and a faster rise in poverty. The financial squeeze has been especially severe for single women.

...On Mr. Obama’s watch, 2 million more women have slipped into poverty. Wait a minute. This is supposed to be an economic recovery. The poverty rate among women is now 16.1 percent — the highest level in 20 years

...It’s well known that labor force participation has fallen to its lowest level since 1978. What’s lesser known is that the biggest decline in employment has been among women. The female labor force participation rate is now 56.4 percent, the lowest in more than 25 years.

Of course, the liberal solutions to their economic policies that have been so bad for women are even more liberal policies. Try the free market and less government for a change. It helps everybody including, women.

7) They want to force women to share their bathrooms with men: Who in their right mind thinks an 8 year old girl should be using the bathroom next to a grown man who “feels like a woman?” How do you say you care about women when you want to force them to undress next to some guy wearing a sundress? It’s ridiculous and it’s potentially dangerous because it gives perverts and sexual predators a free pass to use the women’s bathroom.

A Legal Examination of Hillary’s Email Debacle

A Legal Examination of Hillary’s Email Debacle

Ronald J. Sievert, a 25-year veteran of the Department of Justice, teaches national security and international law at the George H.W. Bush School of Government at Texas A&M University and the University Of Texas School Of Law. So his explanation of the legal trouble Hillary Clinton faces carries some weight:

Since the beginning of the Clinton email scandal, the nation has been subjected to a political and criminal defense generated smokescreen. The Clinton campaign has attempted to make the public believe that she is not guilty of anything because the information on her much unprotected server was not "marked as classified" or "classified at the time."

The applicable statute, 18 USC 793, however, does not even once mention the word "classified." The focus is on "information respecting the national defense" that potentially "could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation." 793 (f) specifically makes it a crime for anyone "entrusted with ... any document ... or information relating to the national defense ... through gross negligence (to permit) the same to be removed from its proper place of custody." A jury (not a Democrat or Republican political administration) is, of course, the best body to determine gross negligence on the facts of this case.

The courts have held repeatedly that "national defense information" includes closely held military, foreign policy and intelligence information and that evidence that the information is classified is not necessary for a prosecution. Evidence that the information was upon later review found to be classified, however, as is the case with approximately 2,000 Clinton messages, is of course one kind of proof that the information met the test of "national defense information" in the first place.


Naturally, the Leftmedia completely ignores all of this, choosing instead to circle the wagons as if this whole episode were a mere political inconvenience for the inevitable Democrat nominee. Worse, Sievert predicts there will be no indictment from the DOJ, both because it's run by Democrats and because the department just doesn't take the tough political cases due to an "institutional fear of losing." Time will tell.

The triumph of the invisible hand

The triumph of the invisible hand

By Tim Price

“By virtue of exchange, one man’s prosperity is beneficial to all others.” – Frédéric Bastiat.

It remains one of the most powerful metaphors in economics. In 1850 Frédéric Bastiat gave the world the story of the broken window;

The son of a shopkeeper accidentally breaks a pane of glass in the shop. A crowd gathers at the scene.

Pretty soon, the onlookers jump to the conclusion that it’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good. Admittedly, the shopkeeper is out of pocket by the cost of a window. But the glazier just summoned will reap the benefit. Where would poor glaziers be in a world without broken windows? Imagine all the good uses to which the glazier can put his new-found windfall from repairing the damage. Think what he could buy with all that new money circulating through the economy. Perhaps we might all be better off if more windows got broken on a regular basis?

“Stop there!” cries Bastiat, addressing the crowd directly.

Hence the title of Bastiat’s essay: ‘That which is seen, and that which is not seen’.

The six francs paid to the glazier for affecting his repairs are what is seen. The crowd can speculate to its heart’s content to what luxurious end those francs might be expended. But what is not seen is what the shopkeeper might have done with those six francs if he had not had to pay them to the glazier in the first instance. He would, perhaps, have bought some new shoes or a book for his library.

“To break, to spoil, to waste, is not to encourage national labour; or, more briefly, destruction is not profit.”

Government projects may seem to create work for some, but there is also a someone who must pay for them, and that someone is normally the taxpayer. And if the capital is raised from the bond market, it doesn’t come directly from today’s taxpayer – it is extracted from tomorrow’s.

Such projects may also divert spending from a more deserving group. Some government spending might even involve the outright destruction of wealth.

There are, after all, only three ways in which money can be spent. You can spend your own money on yourself. You can spend your own money on other people. Or you can spend other people’s money on other people.

The last is the spending prerogative of government. And government is not the best allocator of capital. Milton Friedman wryly suggested in 1980 that if you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, within five years there’d be a shortage of sand.

As the world economy gets more and more financialised, and as more and more capital starts flowing in ways that are less than wholly transparent, Bastiat’s metaphor only becomes more powerful over time and more misunderstood.

The economist Paul Krugman, for some reason allowed a regular forum in The New York Times, wrote in the aftermath of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami of 2011, that “the nuclear catastrophe could end up being expansionary. Remember, World War II ended the Great Depression”.

Krugman would also claim that the threat of an invasion by space aliens could bring the US economy out of recession within eighteen months.

Not to be outdone, the economist Larry Summers, formerly senior economic adviser to President Obama, told CNBC that Japan’s earthquake and tsunami “may lead to some temporary increments, ironically, to GDP as a process of rebuilding takes place. In the wake of the earlier Kobe earthquake, Japan actually gained some economic strength.” As Bloomberg’s Caroline Baum somewhat tartly responded, “Too bad Japan had to wait sixteen years for another opportunity.”

UK politicians are currently scrambling over each other to point fingers of blame for the collapse of prospects in what remains of the British steel industry – which has been in slow but terminal decline for decades.

Government is not the best creator of jobs, either; its best economic efforts should normally be devoted to keeping out of the way and letting a free market do its job. Saving Tata Steel’s interests in the UK is, sadly, a lost cause.

China’s surplus capacity in steelmaking is now bigger than the entire steel production of Japan, America and Germany combined. The Economist notes that in 2015, British steelmakers contributed less than 1% of world supply. Helping steel workers retrain is the right thing to do. Throwing taxpayers’ money at keeping doomed steel mills alive is not.

This, while foreign investors seem to have given up on Japan, and have resorted to their old habits of treating its stock market like some kind of ATM machine.

John Seagrim of CLSA points out that for the week ending 11th March, foreign investors sold ¥1.58 trillion of Japanese stocks, the biggest weekly sale of Japanese equities since records began. The magic of markets, however, is that for every seller, there must be a buyer. Trust Banks and pension funds have been net buyers of Japanese stocks for 13 of the last 18 weeks. And not everybody regards foreign players in Japan as particularly sophisticated. Interviewed on Bloomberg, Brian Heywood of Taiyo Pacific Partners says that he welcomes the selling by overseas investors, because it largely represents dumb money:

“When the market punctures, there are companies that we want to add to. The market overreacts. We know the company. We’re at 3 percent and we’d like to be at 6 percent. We use it as an opportunity.. Over the last several years, Japan’s market grew more than almost any other equity market, and it’s still one of the cheapest markets in the world. It had margin expansion but it had valuation compression.”

Japan’s ¥137 trillion Government Pension Investment Fund – the largest pension fund in the world – has more than doubled its domestic equity allocation, from 12% to 25%. Now that Japanese interest rates have gone negative, and Japanese bond yields look distinctly unattractive, being also mostly negative, it seems increasingly likely that Trust Banks and other Japanese pension funds will follow the GPIF’s lead and raise their equity holdings. A secular shift towards greater institutional ownership of the market, allied to compelling valuations, accounts for Japan remaining the single largest country allocation in our global value fund.

When it comes to capital allocation, you can go with the dead hand of the State, or you can follow the market’s invisible hand. We favour the latter.

Kasich proves he is a RINO pretending to be a conservative

Kasich donors among those in line for job creation tax credits

Henry J. Gomez

The Cleveland Plain Dealer

CLEVELAND, Ohio - Two of the most generous financial contributors to Ohio Gov. John Kasich’s presidential bid are in line to score state tax breaks for their companies – incentives proposed by JobsOhio, a privatized development agency that Kasich created.

The Ohio Tax Credit Authority, following the agency’s recommendations this week, approved up to nearly $1 million worth of assistance for CC Kitchens LLC and Worthington Steel Co.

CC Kitchens is among the many business interests of Cincinnati Reds owner Robert Castellini.

·        Castellini family members and associates have spent more than $100,000 to help Kasich win the Republican nomination, according to reports filed with the Federal Election Commission.

·     Worthington Steel is a subsidiary of Worthington Industries, where Kasich once served on the board of directors.

Columbus Blue Jackets owner John McConnell, the company’s chairman and chief executive, has invested more than $500,000 in Kasich’s run for the White House.

The tax breaks, offered through the state’s Job Creation Tax Credit program, amount to modest savings and are contingent on the companies maintaining a certain number of jobs over time. State officials emphasize above-board oversight and strongly deny any suggestions of favoritism.

But the credits come as Kasich, locked in a long-shot fight for the Republican nomination, emphasizes his past opposition to corporate welfare and laments the influence of big money in politics.

“There should be no sort of deals because you know somebody,” Kasich told a small group of blue-collar factory workers while campaigning last summer in New Hampshire. “The fact that my father was a mailman and everybody I grew up with were people like us here – why would I want to give a deal to somebody else if you didn’t get a deal? That’s important.”

Now you know.

Why Does Trump Upset So Many People?

Why Does Trump Upset So Many People?

It is the political season and politicians are out in force. They are behaving just like politicians always do. Trump is not. Trump is saying what he thinks and a lot of people like hearing it.

Many people are viewing what he is saying through “Political Optics”. Problem is Trump is not a true politician. The conservatives fear he is really a liberal and liberals are in glee because Trump could be one of them! Both parties have no idea of what to do except fear him!

Trump has no political ideology. He thinks and he speaks without political concern. I believe he is as surprised as anyone that “Plain Speak” has attracted millions. The talking heads and other pundits talk incessantly about him putting his foot in his mouth and waiting for his political collapse. They are continuously shocked! Their views are purely political. They think they are talking to a savvy politician that has boned up on any and all issues. Real leaders don’t think that way. They think strategically and not tactically. Real leaders surround themselves with the smartest people they can find and fire the rest. Real leaders use a consultative approach to decision makers that take in as much advice as they can. They then make the decision and the responsibility that goes along with it.

Trump also speaks like the everyday American. Always ready to give an opinion and not fail to respond when asked. That makes him vulnerable to political hacks that like to trap people. In the process, Trump has managed to have the largest unfavorable ratings of any politician in memory running for office.  Does that bother you? Maybe it should. But, if you look at Trump like looking into a mirror, you will likely see yourself; a non-political person with the country put first and popularity last.

Ask yourself this, have popular politicians hurt or helped this country? Why? You know why, they put politics first.