There's no such thing as debt "forgiveness", existentially, and why do we never discuss the morality of economics?

I'm continually amazed by how liberal economists actually don't understand economics at all.  It's bizarre. 

Consider this, brought about by the Supreme Court's determination that the President cannot forgive student loans by executive fiat (which is actually what it decided):

Robert Reich

@RBReich

·

Jun 30

Total student loan debt that would have been erased for millions of Americans: $400 billion Total cost of the Trump tax cuts that largely benefited the wealthy and corporations: $1.9 trillion This is what I mean when I say the system is rigged.

Debt isn't really "erased".  It's transferred.  Debt that is forgiven is transferred to whomever extended the credit.

In this case, the student debt would have been passed on to the public, which already is heavily in debt with; 1) personal debt and 2) the debt the government has already imposed upon it.

Which raises this question. Would transfer of this debt have been moral?  

This hardly ever comes up in the context of this sort of discussion, but would it have been?  The general population of the United States would have acquired the personal debt of students, largely unknown to them, for what reason?

Well, the reason is that most student loans are bad investments, not yielding a sufficient return to pay for themselves.  That can indeed be a personal tragedy.  It is one that is encouraged by the student loan system, which no longer makes any sense.  Loans should be subject to more criteria than simply somebody wants one, but that is about it.

The Government indeed has some culpability in this, and perhaps that provides a basis for "forgiveness", but only if the Government seeks to address the underlying problem, for which there is no evidence.

At any rate, all the Court said is that Congress has to do this.  Part of the Court's ongoing reminder to Congress that it has a job to do, and to the general public that it's up to it to elect people.  Liberals hate that as, by and large, the public isn't too keen on stuff like this, and they know that.

As for tax cuts, I agree with Mr. Reich that taxes should be raised, but the President can't do that by fiat either.  Hence, why these two items cannot be compared, and the "rigged" accusation here is subject to a logic failure.

Fish on Fridays, the Environment, and somewhat missing the point.

Here's an odd item that I found through a British newspaper:

Catholic Church can reduce carbon emissions by returning to meat-free Fridays, study suggests

Eh?

This found:

In 2011, the Catholic bishops of England and Wales called on congregations to return to foregoing meat on Fridays. Only around a quarter of Catholics changed their dietary habits—yet this has still saved over 55,000 tons of carbon a year, according to a new study led by the University of Cambridge.

FWIW, 10% of the British population remains or has returned to Catholicism (more Catholics go to services on Sunday than any other religion in Britain).  England in particular was noted for its strong attachment to the Faith before King Henry VIII, and even after that, as it was not at first clear to people at the pew level that he'd severed ties with it.  This gets into our recent discussion on the end of the Reformation.

Indeed, Great Britain's Catholic roots never really completed faded at any one time.  Peasants rose up in 1549 over the Prayer Book, a good 30 years after Henry has severed from Rome.  Catholic hold outs continued on, on the island, under various penalties of the law, some extremely severe.  And the illogical position of the Church of England that it wasn't really Protestant, while not being able to rationally explain why then it wasn't that, or wasn't, if it wasn't that, schismatic, lead High Church Anglicans to continually flirt with returning to Rome. King Charles I was so High Church his position in regard to not joining the Church didn't make sense, something that his son, Charles II, ultimately did, in spite of his libertine lifestyle.The Oxford movement by Anglican churchmen in reaction to Catholic assertions that their Apostolic Succession was severed lead at least one famous Anglican cleric, John Henry Newman, into the Catholic Church, where he ultimately became a Cardinal.  In recent years, notable British figures have converted to the Church, along with many regular people.

Abstaining from meat on all the Fridays in the year, which in Catholic terms doesn't include fish, was a long held Latin Rite tradition that fell in the wake, in some places, but not all, following the reforms of Vatican II.  It was not part of Vatican II, as some improperly assume, but something that occurred in the spirit of that age.  It was a penitential act, not an environmental one.

For a variety of reasons, I'm pretty skeptical of the "blame it on cows" part of the climate change discussion.  But as a localist and killetarian, I am game with grow or capture it on your own. That isn't really what this is about, but it's worth noting that anything you buy at the grocery store, or wherever, has had a fair amount of fossil fuels associated with it.  The Carbon reduction here would be because fish don't burp much, if at all, or fart much, if at all.  But for that matter, neither do deer or rabbits, ducks or geese, or for that matter grass fed cattle.

Go out there, in other words, and get your own if you really want to save on the carbon.

For that matter, I might note, for those who are vegan, production agriculture is the huge killer of animal life.  I always laugh to myself when vegans think they're saving animals, they're slaughtering them in droves.  Anyone who is familiar with the agricultural logistical chain or how production agriculture works knows that.

I'm for growing it yourself as well, of course, although I've now been a hypocrite on that for years.  I need to get back to it.

Anyhow, the "this would be a good thing for the Catholic Church to do globally in the name of the environment" might be true, or might not be, but it misses the overall point.

Related threads:

The secular left's perpetual surprise at arriving at the Catholic past.

Secular suffering for nothing

Pancake Day.

Blog Mirror: “A Good Dish for the Meatless Meal” Recipe

Subsidiarity Economics. The times more or less locally, Part XIII. The Economic Doomsday Clock

Let's be frank.  If the Administration and Congress do not agree to raise the debt ceiling, sometime within the next two weeks, and probably this week, the nation, followed probably by the world, will go into a Depression.

Truly, this is absurd.

May 22, 2023

Talks between Kevin McCarthy and President Biden resume today.

It's an open question of to what extent McCarthy can even carry through with anything he agrees to, beholding as he is to the populist right.  The Administration, for its part, has approached this looming deadline with some lack of urgency.

Should the country go over this cliff, that's what will be remembered about both of these individuals.

The State of Wyoming and University of Wyoming are partnering with Black Tooth Brewery for the issuance of Wyoming Golden Ale.  The beer launches on May 27.  Labels are brown and gold and feature the Wyoming bucking horse on them.

May 23, 2023

Yesterday's meeting between Biden and McCarthy late in the day was, "productive".  It didn't result in a deal, however.   The parties claim an outline of a prospective deal is there.

May 23, cont.

No deal today.

May 24, 2023

The inevitable is now happening in that Kevin McCarthy, having taken the nation right to the brink, at least by half, cannot close a deal as House members to his right will not agree to yield.  The Freedom Caucus, which represents the most extreme populist Republicans, has put out the following, which appears on Twitter, and lots of its naive acolytes are parroting the lines.

House Freedom Caucus

@freedomcaucus

Republicans must #HoldTheLine on the debt ceiling to bring spending back to reality and restore fiscal sanity in DC. We spend $100+ billion more than federal tax revenues EVERY MONTH. Washington has a spending problem, not a revenue problem.

The irony of many of the followers is that if the nation goes into default, they are amongst the class that will be financially destroyed.  It will be the middle class and lower middle class that will go almost certainly into poverty. The rich nearly always have vehicles to avoid destruction, and the upper middle class will survive. The other two demographics, however, from with the Freedom Caucus and Trumpites draw their support, will not.  A further irony will be that they'll soon be seeking government relief.

Up until today, I'd have guessed that there was about a 60% chance that a deal would be reached this week, avoiding default.  My present guess is that there is a 60% chance that this will not occur, and that this will be the last major holiday Americans will enjoy before the nation goes into a default and enters the worst national recession since the Great Depression.  None of the Congressional power brokers or major Presidential candidates presently announced will survive it politically.

I hope I'm wrong.

May 24, cont:

Every Democrat has endorsed a discharge petition.  In order to pass, it would require five Republicans to join them.

That isn't much, but it may be too many.

May 27, 2023

Janet Yellen now puts the default date on June 5, a move which will only fuel the fire as populists will proclaim the dates are all phony.

May 28, 2023

And a budget deal was reached and, presumably, disaster adverted.

This presuming the House and Senate agree with it, which isn't a safe assumption.

Some of the provisions.

The debt limit is suspended through 2025.  My prediction is that if the Democrats take the legislative branch while also retaining the executive, they'll simply do away with it entirely.  Frankly, maybe the GOP will under the same circumstances.

Non-discretionary spending, where the hard work really is, will be flat next year and increased by just 1% in 2025.

Defense spending increases next year by 3.3%, below the current rate of inflation.

There will be phased in requirements for work for recipients of the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program up to age 54, rather than the current age 49, with a set of exceptions.

Energy permitting will be sped up, even though there's somewhat of a glut of them now.

May 30, 2023

Congressman Hageman is amongst the far right wing Republicans that will not support the budget deal that has been arrived upon.

Failure to raise the debt ceiling by June 5 will destroy the economy and cause an economic depression.  This seems evident, and it is hard to grasp how anyone could support that result.

Kevin McCarthy seems likely to lose his position as Speaker of the House over the matter.

May 31, 2023

The House Rules Committee cleared the budget deal out on to the House floor, but only by a single vote, and only because budget hawk Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky voted for it, rather than allow the country to go into a depression.  Six other far right Republicans were fiscally irresponsible and voted no, voting their ideology and ignorance rather than the facts.

The deal is likely to pass in the House, where the overwhelming majority of Democrats will be for it and probably most of the Republicans.

Having said that, all four Democrats on the Rules Committee voted no, which is a bad sign, along with Reps. Ralph Norman of South Carolina and Chip Roy of Texas.  So a real possibility exist that it will not Pass the House and its questionable what will happen when it reaches the Senate.

June 1, 2023

Just four days away from an inability of the US to pay its bills and, should it occur, a global economic melt down.

Yesterday, the House of Representatives voted against destroying the global economy and voted to approve 

Thsoe voting no were as follows:

Rep. Mark Alford of Missouri

Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona

Rep. Dan Bishop of North Carolina

Rep. Mike Bost of Illinois

Rep. Josh Brecheen of Oklahoma

Rep. Vern Buchanan of Florida

Rep. Ken Buck of Colorado

Rep. Tim Burchett of Tennessee

Rep. Eric Burlison of Missouri

Rep. Kat Cammack of Florida

Rep. Buddy Carter of Texas

Rep. Ben Cline of Virginia

Rep. Michael Cloud of Texas

Rep. Andrew Clyde of Georgia

Rep. Mike Collins of Georgia

Rep. Eli Crane of Arizona

Rep. Scott DesJarlais of Tennessee

Rep. Byron Donalds of Florida

Rep. Pat Fallon of Texas

Rep. Brad Finstad of Minnesota

Rep. Michelle Fischbach of Minnesota

Rep. Russell Fry of South Carolina

Rep. Mark Fulcher of Idaho

Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida

Rep. Tony Gonzales of Texas

Rep. Bob Good of Virginia

Rep. Lance Gooden of Texas

Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona

Rep. Morgan Griffith of Virginia

Rep. Michael Guest of Mississippi

Rep. Harriet Hageman of Wyoming

Rep. Andy Harris of Maryland

Rep. Diana Harshbarger of Tennessee

Rep. Kevin Hern of Oklahoma

Rep. Clay Higgins of Louisiana

Rep. Wesley Hunt of Texas

Rep. Ronny Jackson of Texas

Rep. Darin LaHood of Illinois

Rep. Debbie Lesko or Arizona

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida

Rep. Morgan Luttrell of Texas

Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina

Rep. Tracey Mann of Kansas

Rep. Brian Mast of Florida

Rep. Rich McCormick of Georgia

Rep. Mary Miller of Illinois

Rep. Cory Mills of Florida

Rep. Alex Mooney of West Virginia

Rep. Barry Moore of Alabama

Rep. Nathaniel Moran of Texas

Rep. Ralph Norman of South Carolina

Rep. Andy Ogles of Tennessee

Rep. Gary Palmer of Alabama

Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania

Rep. Bill Posey of Florida

Rep. John Rose of Tennessee

Rep. Matt Rosendale of Montana

Rep. Chip Roy of Texas

Rep. George Santos of New York

Rep. Keith Self of Texas

Rep. Pete Sessions of Texas

Rep. Vicotira Spartz of Indiana

Rep. Greg Steube of Florida

Rep. Dale Strong of Alabama

Rep. Tom Tiffany of Wisconsin

Rep. William Timmons of South Carolina

Rep. Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey

Rep. Beth Van Duyne of Texas

Rep. Mike Waltz of Florida

Rep. Randy Weber of Texas

Rep. Ryan Zinke of Montana

No mistake should be made about the no votes.  The no votes were an outright vote to demolish the economy in the name of a radical concept of economy purity, whether the Congressman understands that or not. Some probably do, and some probably only voted no as they knew the item would pass, thereby giving them the ability to claim that they were voting to balance the budget back home, a claim that depends on voter ignorance on how the budget and economy works, a cynical reliance that has so far proved to be well-placed. The budget cannot be balanced in any way, shape, or form without raising taxes, or deeply cutting into Social Security and its related programs.   Taxes need to be raised, and the current out of control deficits the country is running date back to a misbegotten concept in the Reagan era that by lowering taxes the government could be starved on the vine.

The matter is now in the Senate, where saving the economy will require quick action in a body that's dominated by the elderly.  Moreover, on the Senate side, Gene Shepherd's maxim that fanatics meet each other in their fanaticism is proving true as the opponents of the bill include the members of the far left, and the far right, neither of which seem to grasp how budgets actually work.

June 1, cont.

Speaker of the House McCarthy stated today:

The president walled off all the others. The majority driver of the budget is mandatory spending. It’s Medicare, Social Security, interest on the debt.

That's 100% correct.  As noted in a thread put up just today:

• 63% of the Federal Budget is non-discretionary.  That money must be spent, so you can't touch that.  No cuts.  This category is Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other mandatory programs.
• 30% is discretionary spending.  You can cut that.
• 14% of the budget is on Defense.  That's discretionary, so you can cut that.  In FY 2023 the overall Defense was about $777 Billion.
• 16% of the budget it non defense discretionary, you can cut that.  This is funding for every government program and office that isn't Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, or some other mandatory program, and isn't defense.
• The balance, about 7%, is net interest.  You pretty much have to spend that.
• The total outlays, i.e., expenditures, going into the process, amount to $5.9 Trillion.
• The total revenues are $4.9 Trillion.
• A $1 Trillion deficit, therefore, exists going into the process.

Regarding revenues, we have this.

• 32% of all U.S. Revenue comes through payroll taxes.
• 53% of all U.S. Revenue comes from income taxes.
• 9% of all U.S. Revenue comes from corporate taxes.
• 6% of all U.S. Revenue comes from other sources, such as fees, specialized taxes, tariffs, and gift and estate taxes.

McCarthy has indicated a bipartisan committee is being formed to look at non-discretionary spending. 

A couple of things.

He may need to say these things now, in order to keep his job as speaker, but he may well be damaging the ability to get the deal through the Senate, as the far left will definitely react.

Taxes are the solution to a lot of this.

June 2, 2023

Skywest to receive additional subsidy payment

The City of Casper has voted to approve a $50,000 supplement to the subsidies already provided to local passenger air carriers.  This subsidizes solely the Casper to Salt Lake City flight.  The subsidy will pay for a larger airplane for the flight, through the summer.

If SkyWest, the Delta provider, does not find that this makes the run more popular, it'll likely be cut, and air travel to Salt Lake will end.

In an example of phenomenal speed, the U.S. Senate acted to save the global economy, and against the narrow mindedness of the far right and far left, and pass the budget compromise bill.

A depression has thugs been avoided.

The vote was 63 to 36.

Voting against the bill, on the Democratic side, were:

Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) 

Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) 

Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) 

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.)

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) 

I don't know much about Fetterman or anything about Markey or Merkley, but Warren is one of the most irritating members of the Senate and frequently strikes me as somebody who has a low grasp of things.  Sanders is an economic wingnut. 

More Republicans voted against the bill than voted for it. Voting now were:

Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) 

Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) 

Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.) 

Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.) 

Sen. Ted Budd (R-N.C.) 

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) 

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) 

Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) 

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas)

Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.) 

Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.) 

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) 

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) 

Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.) 

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) 

Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) 

Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) 

Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) 

Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) 

Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) 

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) 

Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-Neb.) 

Sen. Jim Risch (R-Idaho) 

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) 

Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.)

Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) 

Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.)

Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Ala.)

Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.)

Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio)

Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.)

Some of the not votes are no surprise.  Rand Paul, for example, is constantly on the goofball end of things. But some really are.

Both of Wyoming's Senators voted no in what was frankly probably solely a political calculation.  John Barrasso, who has given the deal some praise earlier on, is close to Mitch McConnell, or he was until yesterday, McConnell is a shrewd politician and Barrasso may live to regret crossing him. That Lummis joined him shows that probably both of them added up the votes and knew it was safe, for right now, to take this position as they'd be in the minority and the bill would pass, thereby the country being saved, but they could go home to voters they presume to be ignorant on the real meaning of what was at stake.

Indeed, that might be the case for almost all of these Republicans, which shows that they may frankly be pandering towards what they think the GOP base thinks, that being now safe to do.

Marco Rubio is a genuine surprise.

JD Vance certainly is not.

Graham is not, and maybe the only easily understandable person on the Republican list, to the extent that I know these various individuals views.

Nebraska's Deb Fischer, based on her dull Twitter feed, is not, but is a disappointment anyhow.

Of note, now Wyoming's Congressional delegation has voted with the Democrats they claim to despise the most.  I.e, Wyoming's far right Congressman voted the same way as Social Democrat Bernie Sanders.

As a minor aside, one "no" voter, by declaration, didn't vote n the House vote at all. Lauren Boebert of Colorado was absent.

June 2, 2023

President Biden signed the bill.

Repeated questions are in the naure of "who won"?  Well the American people did as the government won't slam to a halt, interest rates won't skyrocket, bonds won't descend to junk status, and massive numbers of Americans won't be unemployed in short order, including millions in the "let's default class" who didn't understand that they were in the group that would have been cast aside and discarded, some of them forever.

Last Prior Edition:

Subsidiarity Economics. The times more or less locally, Part XII. Holding back the tide.

Related threads:

One of Five Fake Crises

A Civics Lesson

Today

 Today is Earth Day for 2023.

It's also the first weekend day of Spring Turkey Season, which I should be doing, but I'm in the office working, as the law never sleeps.

Or takes a weekend off.

And today is also Independent Record Store Day.

Bud Light, controversy, and why are you drinking that stuff anyway?

Real beer, made locally.

In one of the absurd American corporate efforts to get on the cutting edge of a social trend, irrespective of whether it's temporary, existentially justified, or related to the product, Budweiser released an advertisement with Dylan Mulvaney, a man claiming to be transgendered and who affects a very girlish persona, badly, in a cartoonish fashion.  Indeed, it's an example of how those who claim to be transgendered men sometime affect a much more girlish behavior than girls do, and it's accordingly more than a little cartoonish.  It's a pretty extreme example, which raises its own questions.

Mulvaney is apparently an actor, and came to prominence in the play The Book Of Mormon.  I haven't seen the play and don't care to.  I'm obviously not a Mormon, but I don't like people poking fun of, or making a satire out of, religious beliefs in that fashion.  Eye of the Tiber or The Babylon Bee are one thing, but they aren't actually hostile to religion, and indeed the Bee has come to be controversial as it has started being satirical about society in general, from a general Christian prospective.  The three person team who are responsible for The Book Of Mormon, however, are out of South Park, which is an aggressively nasty cartoon, and one of them is a stated atheist and the other, a theist who declares religion itself to be silly, something that shows a massive intellectual deficit on his part.  It's sort of like saying that you believe in cars but find transportation silly. They aren't coming out of a prospective of love, suffice it to say, and while I haven't seen The Book Of Mormon, South Park is of the National Lampoon brand of humor which is juvenile, self focused, and mean.  I don't know if Book takes a mean spirited approach to Mormons, but what I tend to find is that for people who live outside the Rocky Mountain West, the LDS faith isn't understood in any context at all, and people tend to think of them as 1) some sort of Protestant evangelistic faith, maybe like the Baptists, or 2) something that Warren Jeffs defines, or 3) a tiny silly group.  None of that would be correct, and in the Rocky Mountain West the LDS church is a major institution, not some sort of odd joke.  From a Christian prospective, particularly in from a Catholic one, there are a lot of things that could be taken on, discussed and critiqued about the LDS, but making fun of them in a sophomoric fashion is disrespectful and reflects very poorly on the people doing it and a society that finds it amusing.

My overall view of mine is that if you wouldn't feel comfortable making analogous jokes about Islam, you probably flat out avoid doing it about any other faith.  In other words, if you are going to do a Book of Mormon, you ought to follow it up with The Koran in the same fashion.

That's not going to happen, nor should it either, as The Book Of Mormon shouldn't have.

But I digress.

Mulvaney decided he would affect the appearance of a woman, sort of, at some point and has affected an Audrey Hepburn like style, which nobody in this current age does. Hepburn's style was unique to herself, but she was a genuine, lithe, woman, who genuinely defined grace in her own era, and to a large extent still does.  She wasn't girlish, but rather very mature while young at the same time, and frankly rising up in popularity as a reaction to the Playboy influenced huge boob actresses of the time, something that would actually see further influence in the 60s while really being limited, however, to movies and television.  Mulvaney on the other hand, if truth be told, looks like a really anemic guy trying to look like a girl, and failing at an attempt to affect an appearance of an actress of a prior era, something he's tried to do in a TikTok series apparently called Days of Girlhood.  It's really creepy.

For some weird reason, Budweiser thought he'd make a good spokesman for Bud Light.

Bud Light is awful, as are most of the mass-produced light beers.  I don't know why anyone drinks it, which brings me to this, something that has nothing really to do with transgenderism.

Light beer, or American Light Lager as beer aficionados like to call it, is so popular in the US that even small local breweries brew it.  Small local breweries have gotten really good, and they tend to put out a better product than huge industrial alcohol concerns like  AB InBev, which owns Budweiser.

I really don't think average companies have any place in social movements of any kind. I'll make an exception for companies particularly associated with some sort of institution. So, for example, a company that makes backpacking equipment being involved in conservation, etc., makes sense to me. But beer is just beer.  If there was a cause associated with beer, it would be combating alcoholism, but a cause like that wouldn't exactly sell more beer.

Here the decision was blisteringly odd.  Is AB InBev trying to show its hip cool and down with the times, in a Justice Kennedy type fashion?  The beer market is saturated (no pun), and therefore the only real option left is to try to grab somebody else's market share, but do people who claim to be transgendered constitute a self-conscious body when they buy beer, or are they just people buying beer?

I'm guessing they're just people buying beer.

Obviously AB InBev thought there was some market share to grab there, while not losing some, but as market decisions go, it seems like a rather odd one.

Oh well, it's worth noting that this is the same beer brand that once sent out paintings of Custer's Last Stand, although they probably had their actual market right at that time.

Anyhow, just buy local.  If a microbrewery is boosting a cause, it's probably a local one, or one that's more focused, and it probably doesn't involve a cynical marketing effort like this does.

And indeed, just this past week I went to a local microbrewery and bought two small growlers of their beer.  It actually did have a beer that it had brewed boosting a cause.  I didn't buy it, but I did buy two of their other beers, to go with the first grilling attempt of the season.  The brots I bought were from a local butcher.

There are other options out there, and given that there are, why would a person, causes aside, go with a bad massed produced beer, ever?

Bank collapses, The Economy, Modern Work. A meandering trip through the punditsphere.

I haven't commented on the recent bank collapses at all here, as banking doesn't interest me much.

First National Bank in Meeteetsee, circa 1901.

It should.  Economics does. But banking doesn't.  Given that, I tend to think this probably isn't as big of a crisis as it's being portrayed.

Indeed, I think it isn't.

Not that it isn't important.

A couple of observations, however, on the observations.

On This Week and Meet The Press, Elizabeth Warren was on, meaning she was doing a full court press over the weekend.  Both of her interviews were nearly identical, as both interviewers let her backtrack on a question to give her full, long explanation of the history of this topic.

I have to say, her explanation was good.  I don't know if it's correct, but it was good.  And that's saying something, as I frankly can't stand Elizabeth Warren.

One thing she continually noted is how we weren't watching these big banks like we were "small local banks".  I don't know if that's true either, but she was full of profuse praise for small local banks.

Hey, I'm a distributist and a localist, so I like small banks.  Is there an argument here for keeping small local banks local?

Seems like there is, although with a modern economy you're going to need big financial institutions.  She wasn't arguing otherwise.  It's just an interesting aspect of this.

One member of the banking committee was asked if these banks were "too big to fail" and he flat out said yes, an interesting example of political honesty.

Of note, while the banks are sort of being "bailed out", those who are really emphasizing this right now seem to fail to appreciate that FDIC insurance is being used for this, which suggests that the insured face amount of $250,000 is really way too low.  It probably ought to be more like $1,000,000 at this point.

Robert Reich, whose opinions I have a love/hate relationship with, used the opportunity, predictably, to hammer the rich, writing:

The undeserving rich

Putting the bank bailout in context

A while back I saw somebody commenting to one of Reich's Twitter feeds on this topic, which he's obsessed with, that Reich was rich himself.  According to an online source he has a net worth of $4M, which would mean, quite frankly, that in contemporary terms, he really isn't.  Shoot, half of that could be his house alone, depending upon where he lives, with the house not really being all that much.

Reich's article is an interesting one and basically amounts to an argument that post Reagan, the economy has been rigged to favor the upper 1%, more or less.  That's not how he puts it, of course, but is basically what he believes.  He notes that workers incomes haven't really gone up in 40 years.

All that is true, and from a Distributist point of view, is a nifty argument, the problem is however that the percentage of Americans who are "wealthy" has increased remarkably in the past 40 years.  Indeed, some demographers worry that the American middle class is disappearing not because the middle class is sinking into poverty, but that the upper middle class is moving into wealth.

In real terms, almost nobody, save for people on the street, something that wasn't tolerated 40 years ago, is poor the way the poor were, say, in the 1960s.  Prior to 1950, the middle class was mostly lower middle class and lived on the edge of poverty, That's just not true anymore.  And poverty was by and large worse in real terms at that time, than now.  It's easy to forget that as we have a 1) Norman Rockwell view of the past and 2) we always think our own times are worse than they really are.

Therefore, the Reich argument, the way it's made, really doesn't hold water.

Which gets us to the fact that  the best arguments for addressing the modern economy actually have to do with Social issues, as in Social Justice in the classic Pieper sense, rather than economics.  

What people like Reich, or Warren, edge up on is arguing that life was "nicer" when there was a big middle class.  That's true.  And many things that are unobtainable to even the upper middle class and the lower wealthy class were then, as there were very view super wealthy.  But lib economist don't go there as they are, frankly, just a little left of center on the capitalist scale.

Put another way, the difference between liberal economist and conservative economists is very slight.  Both main camps are fully vested in capitalism and are, beyond that, invested in the theory that a capitalist economy is its own good, rather than the distributist concept, which is another free market concept, that any economy only serves to serve people.

Hardly anyone is going to argue that in the lib or con economic camps, but it's true.  The theory is always that we do this or that for the economy, and then this or that happens to people, rather than considering what do people want, and what kind of economy best serves that.

A really interesting example of this, I'd note, is that really left wing economist essentially join industrialist in concepts that really only serve industry.  They seemingly don't know that.

For example, you'll see left wing economists, and politicians with strong interest in economic topics, argue that we need abortion so that women can work, or that we need government funded day care so that women can work.

This is really only liberal in that it takes the liberal view that pregnancy is some sort of freakish medical aberration that needs to be medicated into extermination or, if a person is so unfortunate that a child is born, it needs to be separated from the Dear Worker.  Beyond that, it's pure industrialism.

The big achievement of industrialism early on is that it took men off of family farms and family workshops and sent them off all day long to work.  In the 20th Century, it started to do the same for women.  Abortion and birth control were big industrial successes, as they meant that there was a way to separate women from biology and all those problematic little people.  Of course, it turned out that people had children anyhow, so daytime child concentration camps had to come about in order to address that.

This, really interestingly, is one area where the extreme left and industrialist have all come together.  Communists, for example, boosted the "let's warehouse all these little problems so that the mothers can toil" approach to things, whereas quite a few modern businesses have put in day cares so that they can take the "time off to raise children: . . no, just bring the little urchins into the business day care".

Here's an area where Reich and company have a real wage point, but not in the manner that they might imagine.  Part of the reason that wages have remained low over 40 years is that we've practically doubled the work force in relationship to the population.  I.e., if where you had 200 adults and 100 workers 40 years ago, now you have 200 workers.  More workers equal less pay.  

Now, I'm not saying that women shouldn't work.  I'm just saying that in our modern economy, they've been compelled to work.  And one way or another, in the modern economy, employers have had to accommodate children in the workplace where they would have resisted even 20 years ago.  

A lot of people are refusing to work now, it seems, or so the society wide rumor has it.  And that does seem to have some merit.

Chuck Todd, on the Meet the Press, noted a labor shortage in his early part of the show this pasts weekend, attributing that to a "restrictive immigration policy".  

Todd is apparently delusional.

The US has the most open immigration policy on the planet.  What the country has been working on, not too successfully, is halting illegal immigration.  That's what Todd really means.  Clamping down on illegal immigration is creating a labor shortage, in Todd's mind.

Illegal immigration actually serves to depress wages for the same reason noted above.  Illegal workers in the country means more workers, and that means lower wages.  D'uh.

All of which suggests, on this topic, that addressing illegal workers would mean a rise in wages, which we have been seeing.  Isn't that what we wanted?  Well, it is inflationary, at least temporary, but having suppressed wages for years, some of that's going to occur until it levels out, which it ultimately will.

All of that gets back to this, what do people want out of the economy?

I suspect they want something of their own.