Some Links
As I tried to explain to Mr. Trump when he was president, another country’s misguided decision to tax its citizens on what they buy from American manufacturers isn’t a good reason to punish Americans who wish to buy that country’s products. But Mr. Trump is determined to punish American consumers for the misfortune indirectly imposed on our export-heavy manufacturers. This is his idea of fairness.
Mr. Trump sees low tariffs as a concession the U.S. makes to other countries to our own detriment. But low taxes on imports give American consumers more choices, cheaper prices and a higher standard of living. Low tariffs also make American manufacturers more competitive: Imports and foreign competition allow for low input prices. Americans benefit the most from low tariffs.
Mr. Trump’s reciprocal tariffs would effectively allow other countries to determine how the U.S. taxes its own citizens. So much for America first. And Mr. Trump often contradicts himself on reciprocity. On a trade-weighted basis, the U.K., Europe and Canada all impose lower taxes on American manufactured goods than the U.S. imposes on comparable imports. Mr. Trump isn’t proposing that we match their lower tariffs, but to add another 10 percentage points—minimum—to the tariffs we impose on Americans who buy goods from Europe and Canada.
There are points in Shika Dalmia’s piece about the election that resonate, and she correctly notes that some libertarians have blind spots to Trump’s deficiencies. She also overstates her perceived obligation to vote for Harris, euphemizes Harris’s many faults, and denigrates those of us who choose neither.
But my real objection to it comes from passages such as the one below. Its text suggests she has simply adopted a number of stances from the political left that she’s now smuggling into her anti-Trump arguments.
It also happens to be factually wrong on its main claim. The 1619 Project was not about giving African-Americans “cultural space” to interpret the past. Most of the 1619 Project’s “interpretations” were not even from African-American perspectives – they came from the New History of Capitalism school, which is overwhelmingly comprised of white male ideological leftists at elite institutions. Other aspects of its historical account outside of slavery came from historians like Kevin Kruse, another white male leftist at an elite institution.
By attacking and denigrating those of us who pointed out historical errors at the core of the 1619 narrative, Dalmia owes it to her readers to at least make a factually sound case when she presents a defense. She has not done so.
Wall Street Journal columnist Mary Anastasia O’Grady writes insightfully about immigration. A slice:
A first step toward a solution is to acknowledge the role of a soft labor market in bringing the numbers down. During times of high demand for employees in the U.S., the word goes out on migrant communication channels. These networks function extremely well. A young man in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, knows the restaurant in Chicago, Phoenix or San Francisco where he will find an opening for a busboy. When opportunities dry up, the word also goes out. The U.S. economy needs immigration, and the ebb and flow of humans is the market responding to demand.
The Biden administration’s decision to use legal parole to accept 30,000 migrants a month from Venezuela, Cuba, Haiti and Nicaragua is a common-sense and humane approach to managing migration. Applicants file with Homeland Security, not the State Department, for lawful U.S. entry from their home countries and if approved can live in the U.S. for two years. They must have a U.S. sponsor who can show adequate assets and income to support them. Contrary to nativist claims, those accepted pay their own airfare. Ukrainians also qualify for parole.
I want to articulate two reasons for government failure. One is that without the profit incentive, government selects for the wrong behavior in managers. The second reason is that government tries to do too much. As a sprawling enterprise, government is bound to be clumsy.
GMU Econ alum Dominic Pino uncovers evidence that Lina Khan doesn’t understand plain English. (HT Dan Klein)
Here’s Timothy Taylor on the economics of AI. A slice:
To put it another way, the economic issues about AI do not involve the capabilities of the technology in splendid isolation; instead, it’s how AI technology interacts with workers and consumers, with production and consumption of goods and services. Some tasks that workers currently do will be replaced, but possibilities for brand-new goods and services, as well as improvements in existing ones, will be created. I do not pretend to know how it will all work out in the decades to come, but I do know that in the globalized world economy, the AI cat is already out of the bag. Paul Romer (Nobel ’18) offered a pithy aphorism a few years ago: ”Everyone wants progress. Nobody wants change.” Alternatively, one might say that some folks are fearful or hesitant about change until or unless society or government has full control over the direction of change and complete knowledge of its future effects–in which case, of course, it barely qualifies as “change” at all.
Jim Board rightly warns us to fear those who promise us “freedom from fear.”
Tyler Cowen urges Effective Altruists to learn some finance.
Jay Bhattacharya describes the House report on HHS covid propaganda as “devastating.” Here’s his conclusion:
Probably the most important recommendation: HHS should never again adopt a policy of silencing dissenting scientists in an attempt to create an illusion of consensus in favor of CDC groupthink.
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