Streetwise Professor

With 5 weeks and a day until the election, the vacuity of the campaigns is manifest. What is particularly disturbing is that two seismic issues–the US government’s parlous fiscal state and the broken American military–are not even mentioned, let alone addressed.

With respect to Harris, this is not surprising. Her campaign is refusing to discuss any issue whatsoever. And maybe not surprising with Trump either. He has his hobby horse issues and little time for anything else.

With respect to the US government’s finances, what is striking is that they were once a centerpiece of US political discussions and campaigns. Reagan made deficits a major part of his campaign in 1980, and did so to a somewhat lesser degree in 1984. If memory serves, budget issues were also actively discussed in the 1976 campaign: Jimmy Carter advanced “zero based budgeting” as a means of getting government spending under control. Even Clinton took budget issues seriously, if grudgingly. Remember Carville’s remark: ” I used to think if there was reincarnation, I wanted to come back as the president or the pope or a .400 baseball hitter. But now I want to come back as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody.”

Now US budgetary woes are far far far worse than in 1980 or the early-1990s. But nary a peep from either candidate, or either party generally. This despite the facts that (a) inflation is a major issue, and (b) as hard as the Democrats try to deny it, the most likely cause of the inflationary spurt at in the first couple of years of the Biden administration was the huge spurt in spending. (And yes, some of this was Trump’s doing–which may be why his is silent on the issue).

The US is on an unsustainable fiscal course. The longer it remains on this course the more disastrous the grounding will be. The only real question is how the government will structure the inevitable default unless spending growth is cut dramatically: future inflation is the most likely way. The hear no-see no-speak no deficit approach of both parties will lead to catastrophe.

With respect to the military, the list of structural problems is large, but two stand out: recruiting and procurement.

Trump sometimes talks about one thing that is a source of recruiting woes: the insidious penetration of wokeness and DEI into the military. Harris will of course never talk about that, least of all to say that it is a problem. But the recruiting crisis had multiple causes, and at the very least a responsible presidential candidate would (a) recognize the problem, and (b) pledge the creation of a red team task force from outside the Pentagon to analyze the problem, identify causes, and recommend fixes.

Insofar as wokeness is concerned, a West Point graduate wrote a stinging article about how it has taken over West Point. In response, the PR flack at USMA (a full colonel no less) wrote that the critical article was “problematic.” Problematic is a verbal tic with the woke, and its use in this context adds “QED” to the critical article.

Procurement is also a dire problem, especially in the Navy. Just today it was announced that there may be a serious bad welds issue on subs and carriers built at Newport News Shipyard. But that is just the latest in a series of failures in Navy shipbuilding. Everything is late and way over budget. And some of the things that have been built in the last 20 years (LCS and Zumwalt in particular) have proved to be misguided efforts that add modestly to hull count but not to combat capability.

Trump talks about the China threat. Harris not so much (of course) but the administration does. The military’s structural problems–severe enough that it may not be exaggeration to say that it is broken–seriously jeopardize the US’s ability to counter China and indeed may be an inducement for China to be more aggressive. Serious candidates would make this an issue. But we don’t have serious candidates.

Which will lead to serious problems down the road. And not too far down the road at that. Indeed, it may be the case that whoever wins in November 2024, they will regret it, because the “winner” will reap the whirlwind that has been sown on spending, on the military, on immigration, and myriad other matters over the past decade plus.

UPenn has penalized Professor Amy Wax for “a history of making sweeping, blithe, and derogatory generalizations about groups by race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, and immigration status.” I presume this standard will be applied now to all Penn faculty. (I crack myself up sometimes).

Penn has suspended her for a year on half-pay, permanently eliminated her summer support, and stripped her of her endowed chair. It could have been worse: previously she was under threat of termination.

Wax certainly speaks forcefully. But this should not be disqualifying for a professor. In fact, it should be encouraged. Free marketplace of ideas and all that. Those who disagree can do so just as forcefully.

But without employing coercive force–which Penn has done. Probably because they realize she would give better than she gets if they actually dared to debate her.

So what has Wax said that offends Penn so?

One is her remark: “Here is a very inconvenient fact Glenn [Loury], I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Black student graduate in the top quarter of the class and rarely, rarely in the top half.” Note, she asserts this is a fact. Asserted facts can be verified or proven incorrect. If she was wrong, Penn would no doubt have been tripping over itself to prove her so. They have not, claiming that they don’t disclose grades–a patently bullshit excuse because it would be possible to refute her statement with anonymized data.

But they haven’t.

Qui tacet consentire videtur: “he who is silent is taken to agree.” So we can take her statement as true.

What is the sin in speaking the truth? Well, when it gores certain oxen and undermines sacred shibboleths.

The New York Times says that in another transgression Wax “derided as unrealistic television ads depicting ‘Black men married to white women in an upper-class picket-fence house.'”

So riddle me this: is it a representative, realistic depiction of the US? If so, what is the need for reparations, affirmative action, anti-racism, etc. etc. etc.? The incoherence here is obvious. On the one hand, the NYT and its fellow travelers fervently believe that blacks are oppressed and victimized and that this justifies aggressive state action, but it is apparently beyond the pale to say that ads that show the opposite are unrealistic. Both of those things cannot be true.

Some of her other statements are not strictly factual, but certainly well within the bounds of civil discourse and vigorous academic debate. Among those receiving the most attention are from an interview she did with Tucker Carlson:

Penn Law professor Amy Wax tells Tucker Carlson that "Blacks" and other "non-western" groups harbor "resentment, shame, and envy" against western people for their "outsized achievements and contributions." pic.twitter.com/jpQmOU554C

— nikki mccann ramírez (@NikkiMcR) April 11, 2022

I recommend you listen to the entire video rather than rely on the clip-quote summary in the post–which we will see is essential with virtually every media discussion of Wax.

These statements are in fact an example of what Michael Anton calls the “celebration parallax”:

In contemporary speech, on any “controversial” topic—or, to say better, regime priority—the decisive factor is the intent of the speaker. If she can be presumed to be celebrating the phenomenon under discussion, she may shout her approval from the rooftops. If not, he better shut up before someone comes along to shut him up.

The left validates, encourages, and teaches, and indeed celebrates, “resentment, shame, and envy” by “people of color” who were in their telling victimized and oppressed by the West: they think that these emotions are fully justified and should be employed to attack the west. Hell, that is basically Franz Fannon in a nutshell. (Just look at the excoriation of “colonialism” on campuses today: the alleged victims thereof are celebrated for speaking out).

Wax has observed the same phenomenon, but as an advocate for western civilization, objects to it, particularly among those who flock to and are embraced by western countries.

That is, since Wax does not celebrate this agreed-upon phenomenon, “someone” (Penn specifically) has come along to shut her up.

This Carlson interview is the source of another charge against Wax, namely (per the WSJ):

During the appearance, Wax asserted that “Blacks” and other “non-Western groups” harbor “resentment, shame and envy” against Western people for their “outsized achievements and contributions even though, on some level, their country is a shithole,” according to a decision published in 2023 by then-Penn President Liz Magill.

Listen to the interview. That’s not what she said. Yes, she said “shit-hole country” but in a different part of the interview, and did not apply it as broadly as the above quote implies (second post below):

Wax then attacks Indian immigrants for criticizing things in the US when "their country is a shithole" and goes on to say that "the role of envy and shame in the way that the third world regards the first world […] creates ingratitude of the most monstrous kind." pic.twitter.com/dUL9coinS9

— nikki mccann ramírez (@NikkiMcR) April 11, 2022

The relevant part: “Here’s the problem. They [Brahmin women from India] are taught that they are better than everybody else because they are Brahmin elites and yet, on some level, their country is a shit hole.”

Note the dishonest mashup of the quote from the WSJ, which is attributed to Magill–who by the way was forced to resign from her presidency for her, well, shameful handling of and testimony about anti-semitism at Penn. The mashup implies Wax applied the epithet “shit-hole” to the countries of origin of all “non-Western groups” when in fact she was referring to a very narrow group (some female Brahmin doctors at Penn Med) from one very specific country whom she has observed personally.

Wax was pointing out the ingratitude and hypocrisy of those who criticize the United States for poverty, racism, and inequality who (a) have reached the pinnacle of success in this country, and (b) come from a country that by all of these measures is far, far, far worse than the US. Wax is basically saying: “Physician, heal thyself” or “physician, heal thy country.” Or (to use another Biblical expression): “why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?”

And as for the pejorative “shit-hole”, pretty much everyone who has spent any time in India will say it is literally accurate.

Wax makes pains to say that she is not applying this to all Indians, all Brahmins, or even all Indian Brahmin doctors (thereby contradicting Penn’s claim that she makes “sweeping . . . generalizations about groups”). But I would note that I have long remarked on the fact that high status Indians in the United States are disproportionately leftist. (Another example of the celebration parallax, no doubt: the left celebrates fellow leftists).

In sum, Wax’s real crimes are: (a) pointing out truths (often uncontested and even acknowledged) that discomfit the left, and (b) defending the West generally and the US specifically from attacks by non-westerners/non-Americans who have actually been their beneficiaries. In a world where academic freedom and free speech were valued, these would not be crimes, but subjects for debate. But debate and argument is not something that the left can possibly abide–because they would lose. So instead they punish, censor, and silence.

And not just Amy Wax. This is a classic example of pour encourager les autres. Especially those who have not yet attained Wax’s record of achievement. (The treatment of Roland Fryer by another disgraced Ivy League president, Claudine Gray, is another).

The message: stay on the reservation, or else.

As the nation slouches the last seven weeks to the election, the stupidity metastasizes. We are approaching a singularity of stupidity.

Trump’s latest brainwave is to impose (by executive ukase, apparently) a “temporary” cap of 10 percent on credit card interest rates:

BREAKING: Trump announces that as president, he will immediately implement a temporary 10% cap on credit card interest rates

"We can't let them make it 25% and 30%."

Credit card interest rates are at a historic high under the Kamala-Biden regime. His simple plan will alleviate… pic.twitter.com/yENoVsqv1S

— George (@BehizyTweets) September 19, 2024

Where to begin?

First consider the embrace of executive fiat to implement major policies which undermines his main substantive virtue as someone who will restrain government power.

Then remember what Milton Friedman said about “there is nothing so permanent as a temporary government policy.”

But most importantly, er, controls on interest rates are price controls. And unless I’m hallucinating I remember Trump attacking Harris’ rather lame price gouging proposals (since abandoned, apparently) as full on socialist price controls. In fact, what Trump is proposing is far more socialist than what Harris did.

Maybe he’ll say he’s not a socialist but a convert to traditional Catholicism and therefore an advocate of usury laws. But regardless, his latest foray into off-the-cuff economic policy making completely undercuts his previous rhetoric and actually provides cover for Harris to propose real price controls just as she has aped other Trump policy ideas.

This is an example of the downside of economic populism, and a not immaterial one. And like many populist economic measures it would damage those it is intended to help (or at least, to appeal to). Such restrictions would essentially result in the loss of credit and credit cards by large numbers of low and low-middle income individuals.

Trump also said he will impose (again by fiat evidently) 200 percent tariffs on Chinese EVs imported from Mexico. This appeal to the autoworker vote (especially in Michigan) would be rendered completely unnecessary if he just eliminates EV mandates as he’s promised. He is right that EVs suck, and that no one will buy them unless forced to. So eliminating the mandate will mean EV imports from China–or Mars–for that matter will pose no threat to American autoworkers.

Just look at Europe, HQ for the EV Fluffers.

No need for tariffs on Chinese EVs if you don't force people to buy EVs. https://t.co/shkboR81cw

— streetwiseprof (@streetwiseprof) September 19, 2024

I would truly love to be evenhanded here and find some Harris policy proposal to bash. But I can’t. Because she hasn’t any. Her’s is a candidacy for the times, however–a drag queen story hour by somebody pretending to be someone they are not. A mash up between Mean Girls and Miss Congeniality:

You think I exaggerate? I think not!

This speech brought to you courtesy of the Department of Redundancy Department. https://t.co/FPRk9QlnNX

— streetwiseprof (@streetwiseprof) September 19, 2024

We have to hope that Bismarck (“There is a special providence for drunkards, fools, and the United States of America) and Adam Smith (“there is a great deal of ruin in a nation”) are both right.

Of course the other major news is the second assassination attempt on Trump. (Or as the regime and its media sockpuppets insist on saying the “apparent” assassination attempt). I have to admit that I was wrong about the effects of the first attempt: it did not stop the Democrats (and their media sockpuppets) from demonizing Trump. Indeed, the latest attempt has led them to ramp up their demonization, and to add to it by blaming the assassination attempt (sorry, sorry, “apparent” assassination attempt) on Trump’s and Vance’s rhetoric.

I can’t even.

The vampiric Mario Draghi dropped a big report on how to fix the European economy. It is one of the most ridiculous things I have ever read.

It starts out with a sober summary of how screwed the European economy is, but doesn’t even attempt to diagnose why it is screwed. By failing to do so, it offers prescriptions that will screw it even more.

Draghi is blunt in his assessment at the poor relative performance of the EU economy vis a vis the US over past decades–which is doubly damning because it’s not as if the US economy has grown like gangbusters. This is (correctly) linked to low productivity growth. Draghi attributes this poor performance to underinvestment and a lack of innovation.

But these are mere symptoms. Draghi utterly fails to answer the essential questions. Such as: Why is there underinvestment? Why is innovation so clearly lacking in the EU? What is the underlying disease that is causing these symptoms?

Could it be a heavy tax burden? Huge government indebtedness? Suffocating regulation? Extremely generous welfare and retirement benefits? Climate policies that substantially increase energy costs? If not these, then what?

These questions are not even asked, let alone answered.

It is insane to offer prescriptions–which Draghi does at scale–without first diagnosing the problem. But that’s exactly what he does.

And what prescriptions they are. In brief, a massive increase in investment on the order of $900 billion per year; since the private sector is unlikely (according to Draghi) to stump up this amount, extensive government funding of it; and in addition to government funding, government direction of the investment through industrial policy.

All of which involves more begged questions. The most important of which is if an increase in investment has the huge payoffs that Draghi asserts, why won’t (and why hasn’t) the private sector gladly make (and made) it? And: why must the government direct these investments? Why doesn’t privae capital flow to where it can earn the high returns that Draghi claims exist?

Draghi recognizes that industrial policy historically has largely failed. But again, there’s a failure to ask why in a serious way. Instead, in an echo of “communism has failed everywhere because real communism has never been tried,” he advocates doing industrial policy better. Real industrial policy would involve, for example, targeting sectors, not companies.

But again: why has industrial policy almost always and everywhere been targeted at companies? Draghi doesn’t ask, so of course doesn’t answer. Public choice forces obviously turn industrial policy into rent seeking opportunities which are exploited by companies (which are economic agents) rather than “sectors” (which are not).

Draghi makes the right noises about reducing the regulatory burden in the EU. But seriously–how will a plan that if implemented grant more powers to the centralized EU bureaucracy that is responsible for the existing crushing regulatory structure in Europe magically reduce the regulatory burden? Indeed, industrial policy is all about intervening to produce outcomes that differ from those that the market would produce, and such interventions are inherently coercive, regulatory, and bureaucratic in nature.

“We’ll solve the problem of too many rules by adding more rules” never works out well.

Another illustration of the cluelessness of this plan. According to Draghi, the ~$900 B in annual investment is necessary to achieve both competitiveness and climate objectives. Er, competitiveness and climate goals are inherently antithetical. Again, Draghi fails to consider whether the climate goals, and the policies adopted to achieve them, are one of the main drags on European investment, productivity, and growth.

In essence, Draghi is plumping for Europe to adopt the Chinese economic model. Leverage out the wazoo to spur growth through massive centrally directed increases in investment.

(In the UK this is being referred to as “supply side economics,” presumably because the government will intervene heavily on the supply side through state investment. That is an utter perversion and inversion of the term, which originally meant reducing government tax and regulatory burdens so as to encourage greater supply of capital and labor inputs by private individuals and firms).

Apparently Not So Super Mario hasn’t realized that China is now well and truly shtuped and its vaunted model is predictably (and as predicted by me and a few others) proving unsustainable. Not to mention that Europe definitely cannot benefit from factors that allowed this unsustainable model to persist for as long as it did (notably a vast pool of low wage labor). Indeed, Europe has the same demographic problems that are undermining China’s future prospects.

In sum, by failing even to consider the underlying drivers of Europe’s economic malaise and advocating that Europe implement a model that is becoming more discredited with each passing day to fix it, Mario Draghi is dooming Europe to accelerated decline, rather than offering a roadmap to recovery.

Perhaps luckily for Europe Draghi’s plan was declared DOA by Germany. No country has shown enthusiasm for it. But it’s not as if they are brimming with bright ideas–Germany in particular.

Meaning that if you are discouraged by American economic prospects–cheer up! Could be worse! We could be Europe.

A quick follow up on the implications of a national majoritarian system.

Under the Electoral College, the marginal value of a vote in a national election varies across states. At present, the marginal value of a vote in say California or New York or Texas is zero or close to it. The marginal value of a vote in a battleground state is higher. (Because Hillary was an idiot, she didn’t take this into account, and ignored Wisconsin and other places).

Under national majoritarianism, the marginal value of a vote is the same everywhere. This alone would tend to cause candidates to shift their efforts–and their promises–away from closely divided states, and those elected would adopt policies that disadvantage the closely divided states to reward California, etc.

I conjecture that the marginal cost of getting votes is lower in urban areas, especially for Democrats (particularly when fraud is taken into account). If correct, this would further shift electoral efforts and policies away from closely divided states to urban areas.

Relatedly, the median voter nationally is likely urban or very urban adjacent. The median voter in many closely divided states is not. Using the Median Voter Theorem as a crude predictive tool, this also means that policies in a national majoritarian system would skew heavily pro-urban.

Since progressives are overwhelmingly urban, it is no surprise comrades that they prefer this system.

But this analysis also demonstrates that the system would be inherently more divisive than the present one and lead to regional disagreements that could rise to the level of secession attempts or rebellion in a country with as much regional diversity as the United States. Since government is inherently redistributionist, and driven more by distributive goals than efficiency ones, a shift in power to the urban areas would lead to greater wealth extraction from the non-urban areas (and/or a reduction in benefits in these areas).

Distributive policies inherently create tensions and disagreements, and since their impact will vary substantially between urban and non-urban regions, this will create inter-regional tensions that can lead to calls for exit, since voice will be pointless under this system.

(And note that this diversity exists intra-state, consider states like California, New York, and Illinois with large urban centers and large rural areas. Or the “Greater Idaho” movement in Oregon with rurals wanting to get away from the coastals).

The main obstacle to concerted secessionist pressure will be that the regions disadvantaged under a national majoritarian system will be highly geographically dispersed, whereas the advantaged regions will be highly concentrated: the Red-Blue maps by county illustrate this clearly. The scattered and diffuse and itself heterogeneous area of net losers will find it hard to coordinate on collective action. Isolated and uncoordinated secessionist pressures are easily suppressed.

Contrast this to the pre-Civil War South. The opposition to the Federal government was geographically concentrated and had considerable homogeneity. (With exceptions like the mountainous regions of Tennessee, North Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama–which were often in quasi-rebellion against the Confederacy. The mountain region of Virginia did secede from it). This made collective action on secession feasible.

So I would predict the progressive national majoritarian constitution would lead to seething discontent over widespread areas of the country, but would be unlikely to result in widespread secession or rebellion precisely because the discontented areas would be so far flung.

Nonetheless, rising discontent, even if inchoate, would lead the security state to ramp up its repressive efforts. Meaning that an America under a progressive constitution would be far less free than the country is today.

The latest buzz from The Hive has been “kill the U.S. Constitution–it’s dangerous!”

(H/T Powerlineblog.com)

In addition to the NYT’s buzzing, there is a long article in The Atlantic, and a new book from UC Berkeley law dean Erwin Chemerinsky making the same case. (He’s a piece of work, but that’s a topic for another day).

In reality, this isn’t a new thing. At all. Progressives have always detested the Constitution. Woodrow Wilson, Eternal Torment Be Upon Him, was particularly adamant that the 18th century creation was an atavism that obstructed progress–his vision of progress, anyways. Progressive historians Charles and Mary Beard wrote prolifically about the defects of the Constitution, focusing particularly on its allegedly tainted origins as a scheme of the rich to dominate the common folk. That theme has been updated–and not for the better–by the recent anti-Constitutionalist focus on the document’s illegitimacy due to its supposed purpose to entrench and enhance slavery. (Neither the Beards nor the modern day slavery obsessed had/have any clue of what they were/are ranting about).

Progressives have two basic underlying problems with the Constitution.

First, that it is a deliberately anti-national majoritarian document. This causes them particular chagrin today because the Republican Party has only won a national majority of the popular vote once in the last six presidential elections, yet has won the presidency three times. And especially because Donald Trump was one of those winners.

Second, that it (especially the Bill of Rights) is based on natural law principles, which are an anathema to progressives. They believe in positive rights granted by the government, not natural rights emanating from Our Creator (to quote the Declaration of Independence). FDR talked about the Four Freedoms–positive rights like “freedom from want.” Obama repeatedly denigrated natural rights and pushed positive ones. Kamala Harris is parroting that today–she is hostile to free speech but touts “freedoms” that are positive rights.

These objections overlap to some degree, because the constraints on majorities in the Constitution impede progressives’ ability to achieve their positive rights ambitions.

As the NYT headlines demonstrate, a good deal of progressive ire stems from immediate, short-term political frustrations, namely the existence of Donald Trump, the fact he was president once, and the mere possibility he may be again.

This focus on the here and now makes the anti-Constitutionalists like monkeys with matches and gasoline. They clearly have not thought through what a dismantling of the Founder’s construction would cause.

Eliminating the Electoral College and/or dramatically altering the Senate (the two primary anti-national majoritarian elements of the Constitution) would lead to changes that are utterly unpredictable, and unlikely to result in the achievement of progressive dreams.

Simplistically, they think–Democrats almost always win the national popular vote, so if we move to a system that decides elections on that basis Democrats will be in power forever. No Donald Trump will ever exist again.

Such projections are idiotic.

With an entirely changed system, everything will change. Parties will change. Platforms will change. Electoral strategies will change. Candidates will be different.

The Democratic popular majority+periodic Republican Electoral College victories (and Senate majorities) outcome is an equilibrium in the existing system where the parties roughly optimize with respect to that system. Change the system, all the actors will adjust and only fools believe that the outcome will be a permanent Democratic popular majority resulting in permanent Democratic rule. (Ironically, long periods of single party dominance occurred under the existing system).

Far more concerning is that secessionist and rebellious tendencies would be much stronger in a system without the Electoral College. That system provides an incentive for parties and politicians to pay attention to parts of the country they would almost certainly ignore absent the Electoral College.

One conceivable electoral strategy is to concentrate on urban areas and let the rest of the country go screw. But there will come a point where the ignored will want out.

Remember, without the anti-majoritarian elements in the Constitution, the United States would never have come into existence in the first place, precisely because smaller states feared being ignored, powerless, and exploited in a national majoritarian system. That is, without the Electoral College, most states would have wanted to come into a union: without it, many states in it will want to get out.

Further, the Founders recognized that majoritarian systems are inherently unstable. (Game theory supports their intuition). This instability would be manifested in the changes in electoral strategies, policies, platforms, etc. alluded to above. And instability increases the odds of rebellion or secession.

In sum, if the progressives get their way, be afraid. Be very afraid.

And that’s what this is really about: progressives desperately want to get their way. Right now. And that’s why it’s no coincidence that the anti-Constitution movement is happening now, in the wake of a major shift in the Supreme Court.

When the left controlled the Court it could grudgingly accept the anti-majoritarian elements of the Constitution because they could get their way on major matters by having the Court bend and twist the Constitution like a Gumby. That allowed them to outflank an executive and Congress chosen on non-national majoritarian grounds on matters important to them.

Now that route is blocked, at least for the time being. The short term “fix” the ever impatient progressives have come up with is court packing–which is what FDR tried to do when the Court stymied him. But why limit their ambitions to changing the Court? Why not just change the whole damn system?

They want change and they want it now. And they are only thinking about the now, damn the future.

A Constitutional system that has endured for almost than two-and-a-half centuries is under grave threat, event absent a jettisoning of the Constitution. The dominance of the security state, with its inveterate hostility to natural rights like free speech and a right to bear arms that threaten its control, is the immediate threat. Changing the Constitution along progressive lines–and perhaps replacing it altogether–would guarantee the dystopian future towards which we are already slouching all too rapidly.

So the presidential race is set. God help us.

The “Democratic” Party, which never ceases to tell us its dedication to “saving ‘our’ democracy [sic]” selected the voteless wonder, Kamala Harris after unceremoniously defenestrating Joe Biden. Donald Trump steamrolled everyone in the Republican primaries, and literally dodged a bullet, to run against her. So November, here we come.

Harris has been, shall we say, coy in her policy proposals. Not only voteless, she’s been interview-less since she was anointed. She has given one economic policy speech which even media partisans (but I repeat myself) found pathetic.

On the right, the speech gave rise to accusations that Harris is a socialist, or indeed a Marxist/communist. I disagree.

Her father, from whom she is obviously estranged, is indeed a hardcore Marxist. But one who has engaged in serious thought and scholarship–as much as I disagree with it. Harris, on the other had, has a lazy, California left perspective devoid of any evidence of serious thought beyond “what can I say to advance my political ambitions and get money from leftist donors.”

The element of her policy speech that triggered the cries of “commie” was a lazy, hazy proposal to implement a federal ban on “price gouging” for groceries. Though to illustrate how thoughtless her embrace of this proposal is, she didn’t say “price gouging”–she said “price gauging,” whatever that is.

Critics called this a price control policy. If only. It’s nothing as comprehensive as the 1971 Nixon Wage and Price Control disaster. It’s more along the lines of Gerald Ford’s WIN–Whip Inflation Now–buttons, mere rhetorical gas.

The proposal is clearly the result of a poll and focus group-driven process. People are pissed about high prices. The prices they are most pissed about are for food and groceries. But it is absurd to think of setting the price of the over 30,000 items that most supermarkets carry, and many people are sympathetic to the idea that corporations cause high prices, so Harris proposes to delegate to some part of the federal blob–probably the FTC–to go after stores that price gouge, although that term is not defined.

How this would work in practice, given the fact that there are over 45,000 supermarkets, again each carrying over 30,000 items, is hard to figure out. Any attempt by the FTC to enforce would be completely arbitrary. The antithesis of a rule of law, which for all its economic defects, a legislated system of price controls would have in its favor.

But this policy proposal is purely political grandstanding and I am sure Harris has no plans actually to follow through on it. She has to pretend to do something about inflation. And she expects you to pretend along with her.

The most disturbing part of the proposal is the theory of inflation underlying it. “Corporate greed.” Which apparently follows some sort of Markov regime switching process, with corporations being ungreedy during some periods, like the Great Moderation, and then randomly switching to greed mode in, oh about January, 2021. Such a mentality bodes ill for coherent anti-inflation policies.

Other elements of Harris’ speech were similarly poll-driven, counterproductive pablum. Housing prices are too damn high! So give people money to buy houses! Which, of course will drive up housing prices, meaning that the main beneficiaries will not be the target (“first time homebuyers”) but current homeowners. Harris did say some things about reducing restrictions that inhibit supply, but these are local matters that the federal government can do little about.

The housing fetish is also disturbing because it represents a reversion to the kinds of policies that brought on the Great Financial Crisis.

Relatedly, she criticized the purchases of large numbers of homes by Black Rock and the like. This is also a popular theme, on both left and alt-right. But as I wrote some years ago, this criticism fails to answer the fundamental question of why this phenomenon is happening. I continue to maintain that it is almost certainly the result of post-GFC changes to the banking and mortgage credit markets that were designed to prevent a recurrence of the proliferation of mortgage credit that was at the epicenter of the GFC, policies that raised financing costs to individuals more than to the Black Rocks of the world. Meaning that to counter this trend it would be necessary to unwind those changes and party like it’s 2005.

Harris has also apparently embraced some of the worst Biden/Democrat policy proposals, notably raising the capital gains tax and imposing taxes on unrealized gains for some wealthy individuals. Capital taxes are horribly inefficient, and actually fall predominately on labor: higher capital taxes, less capital, less productive labor, lower wages.

The unrealized gains tax is truly demented, a nightmare to implement, a recipe for gaming (with highly distortive effects on capital allocation), a godsend to tax accountants, and likely unconstitutional. Other than that, it’s great.

Given her track record it takes little imagination to understand that if elected hers would a policy of economic Californication. What a disaster that would be.

Not that Donald Trump gladdens this economist’s heart. For the most part, he is as economically clueless as Harris. The main difference, and this is not a good thing, is that he holds his cracked views with conviction.

On taxes you could say he is OK, except that these views are completely at odds with his insouciance on spending. Trump got the spending ball rolling that triggered the inflation that took off when Biden took office: Biden supersized what Trump had started. He has shown no signs of getting spending under control, and on entitlements in particular, has been a stalwart defender of the (unsustainable) status quo.

Trump’s views on tariffs–in particular his stupid belief that the incidence of a tax falls completely on the party upon whom it is levied–are embarrassing.

Trump’s only advantage over Harris–and it is not an immaterial one–is that he is averse to regulation and wants to roll back the federal bureaucracy (though good luck with that) whereas Cali Kamala loves the blob. Trump’s regulatory policies were pretty good (as Casey Mulligan has documented): Harris’ would be a disaster.

For me, that’s the tiebreaker in this battle of economic nitwits. Yay.

All meaning that the next 70 days will be devoid of any coherent debate on economic matters. Instead, the campaign will be the political equivalent of non-stop “yo mama” schoolyard rhetoric. Which will actually be more entertaining than watching these two talk economics, although each would probably be equally depressing.

I don’t have a dog in this particular fight, but since (a) the UK often plays the Ghost of Christmas Future to the US, and (b) the UK ruling class-most notably the current PM, Keir Starmer-has felt free to pontificate on similar events in the US, it’s fair game for me to comment on the unrest (riots) that rocked the UK recently.

The proximate cause for the riots was the murder spree by the Welsh-born child of Rwandan immigrants, who knifed to death three young girls and badly wounded eight other individuals at a Taylor Swift-themed yoga party. In part due to the refusal of the UK police to identify the assailant, rumors soon spread (including on social media) that the murderer was a Muslim immigrant, leading in the first instance to violence against mosques, etc.

The ruling class immediately jumped on the mistaken beliefs about the perpetrator to condemn the rioters as ignorant racists, which in their minds fully justified a crushing response by the state.

This narrow interpretation of the cause of the riots that spread far beyond the site of the original crime (Sunderland) was unsurprisingly opportunistic and self-serving. It permitted the complete decontextualization of the riots in a way that denied a priori any legitimate justification and thereby rationalized the unleashing of a “standing army” (Starmer’s words) against these rioters–measures that were conspicuously absent in other violent civil disturbances–hence the bitter complaints about “two-tier policing.”

The brutal slayings in Sunderland were merely the last grain of sand dropped on a pile of grievances that has been accumulating for literally decades. The allegedly unreasoned and indiscriminate reaction to this single grain was just an example of the non-linearity inherent in such situations. In emergent orders–social orders particularly–a single event can set off a massive reaction that seems disproportionate and unrelated to it. This is often true in revolutions. A single event unleashes massive latent forces that have been building for extended periods. This is why authoritarian governments are so hell bent on suppressing any dissent no matter how seemingly minor. Small sparks can ignite social explosions.

The mountain of grievances clearly related to a single factor: mass immigration into the UK, and especially mass immigration from some of the most misgoverned and dysfunctional parts of the world with radically different cultures from the native inhabitants. In this environment, a mass murder by an individual only peripherally related to the underlying source of grievance could spark massive unrest. Further, given the recent history of the UK (consider, for example the bombing of the Ariane Grande concert in Manchester, or other mass stabbings that have occurred in the UK in recent years e.g., on a bridge in London in 2017) it is not at all surprising that many people would leap to the conclusion that a Muslim was the perpetrator in Sunderland.

The grievances have built inexorably precisely because any dissent from the ruling class view has been ruthlessly targeted and suppressed. When voice is denied, again and again, it will inevitably come to the point that the aggrieved will substitute violent deeds for words.

But it is exactly these things that the British ruling class cannot admit, and is in fact at great pains to deny precisely because of its direct culpability for mass immigration, its malign effects, and the identity of those who have borne the economic, cultural, and psychic damage. It therefore has to deny vehemently the underlying cause and place full blame on the evil of the rioters.

British classism is also on full, ugly display here. Indeed, it is worse than its historical antecedents (e.g., in the Victorian era) because there is not even the palliative of condescending paternalism: it is merely vicious hatred, disdain, and disgust.

The sick irony is that those who refuse to look honestly at “root causes” here (in no small part because they are the root cause) routinely invoke “root causes” to excuse, rationalize, and justify other social dysfunctions–including rioting far more destructive and violent than that that has occurred in the UK recently. Starmer represents a perfect example. He delivered sick-making remarks about the George Floyd rioting that explained them, and hence excused them, as the understandable consequence of systemic racism. The British ruling class has been similarly disposed to excuse and rationalize Muslim violence as the product of legitimate grievance.

Root causes for me, but not for thee, you yobs. Your root causes are totally illegitimate.

Like J6 in the US, alas, the riots are worse than a crime–they are a blunder. They have given the increasingly authoritarian British state the justification to engage in mass jailing of its political dissidents. Further, given the inevitable role of social media in disseminating information and opinion about the riots and the causes, the riots have provided a justification for the state to increase its power to control and censor it. Indeed, the head of London Metropolitan Police has even threatened those expressing their wrongthink outside of the UK with arrest and extradition.

Wouldn’t that be fun.

Thus, this backlash against egregious mis-government has redounded to the benefit of that dysfunctional government and the class that rules it.

Which demonstrates the fundamental dilemma of the mis-governed. How can one resist malign authority without strengthening it, like sowing dragon’s teeth? I don’t have an answer, except to say that direct confrontation has exactly this effect.

The US faces very similar issues–hence the Ghost of Christmas Future metaphor. However, I doubt it will play out here similarly to the way it has in the UK. The reason is quite simple. The white working and under classes are still present in numbers in UK cities where they are tooth and jowl with the immigrants. That is not the case in the US: white flight occurred long ago. So a UK-style white riot is not in prospect here.

Urban white rioting is a staple of the Oi genre, which is uniquely British. There’s nothing like it in the US.

The underlying conditions that have sparked rioting in the UK are therefore not present in the US. But the severe discontent about mass immigration is, as is the ruling class’s determination to crush any opposition to it. So something will likely happen here, but it will be different. How exactly, I can’t say.

Like Trump, Kamala Harris chose a VP candidate who does not broaden the ticket, but for a different reason. Trump chose someone who he believed would secure his legacy. Harris chose someone from the same ideological wing of her party because there is no other ideological wing of her party. And if there is some black swan out there who isn’t hard left, the party would by no means countenance his or her selection.

So we get Tweedle-left and Tweedle-Woke.

The only question is who is to the left of whom and who is more woke than whom. (Not that you will ever hear the phrase “far left” in a media that says “far right” so often they must have Tourettes). It’s probably a push. The main difference is that whereas Harris has been a senator whose only job was to pose, flap her jaws, and cackle and who as VP who has been a cipher even by the do nothing standards of that position, Walz has been the chief executive of a not small state who has had the power to put his woke vision into action.

I will spare you the litany of all his greatest hits and just focus on a few of the most egregious.

He was likely the most oppressive, authoritarian governor during Covid. He set up a snitch line for neighbors to tattle on those violating his sacrosanct lockdown diktats.

He also played Nero during the George Floyd riots of 2020, letting Minneapolis burn rather than call in the National Guard (his service in which he brags about constantly and evidently dishonestly). Then he preened about it. (He does that a lot).

I guess he was better than his wife, who went full Colonel Kilgore and said that she loved the smell of tires burning in the morning.

Of course there’s all the LGBT stuff–Minnesota is arguably the most radical state in the country in this regard, Walz declaring it a “sanctuary state” for troubled, confused, and/or mentally ill children who can’t get sexually mutilated in their own states.

And immigration, natch.

A walking–waddling, actually–nightmare.

Of course, he is being packaged as an aw-shucks, folksy man of the Midwestern soil. We should not be surprised that a big fan of drag shows is dragging as a homespun Minnesota nice guy, rather than what he actually is.

In our all Orwell, all the time world, the Harris-Walz campaign is supposedly all about “freedom.” As near as I can figure, that means the freedom to abort and have the government give you shit.

You know, American freedoms!

Your results may vary. First 10 Amendments not included.

That last is not hyperbole. Walz has said: “There’s no guarantee to free speech on misinformation or hate speech, & especially around our democracy.”

Harris has also vowed to confiscate guns by executive order. Walz has said he wants to ban guns he carried in war. Because he didn’t carry any guns in war. Which I’m actually all behind, because he never actually carried a gun in war.

In the past it was common to hear “there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between the candidates.” You can’t say that now. We have a populist loose cannon vs. a ticket consisting of two people who if they aren’t literally communists, they could sure get a job playing them on TV.

Last night Joe Biden mumbled a speech that allegedly explained his decision not to seek the Democratic Party nomination for president. He explained nothing. Indeed, it was farcically nonsensical.

He claimed that (a) he is one of the greatest presidents ever, with remarkable accomplishments, and (b) “the best way forward” for the nation was for him not to run–and thereby not continue his great leadership.

There was no explanation of how he got from (a) to (b). It was like the speech was written by the Underpants Gnomes of South Park: 1. Be a great president. 2. ???? 3. Don’t run for a second term.

The speech really sounded like him making the case for a second term that should have been met with cries of “Four More Years!” But no: he’s outta here.

Square that circle for me.

For her part, Stupide Jean-Pierre asserted that Biden’s decision had nothing–NOTHING–to do with his health. He’s hale and hearty and fit to be president not just for a half year, but four and a half years.

So what is it then? Inquiring minds want to know. (That would necessarily exclude the media, of course).

We therefore have a Schrödinger’s presidency. He is too dead to stand for a second term, but too alive to leave office before the end of his first.

That quantum uncertainty is extremely convenient for the Democratic Party, which engineered this entire fiasco: indeed it is their creation. Biden’s obvious decrepitude means that they had to get rid of him as a candidate, but having him leave office now would create extreme political difficulties.

Going the 25th Amendment route would lead to Congressional hearings–which would result in awkward questions regarding how long he has been non compos mentis and who knew it when and the machinations behind his defenestration. Resignation would put Kamala Harris in the presidency, and require the naming of a vice president–which would also entail Congressional hearings. Not having a VP would also mean that Kamala could not break ties in any legislation that the Democrats try to ram through before a possible, and indeed likely, defeat in November.

It is beyond obvious that the real reason for Biden’s involuntary exit is that the Democratic Party “elite” (most prominently Barack Obama) and its donors deemed Biden unelectable. Meaning that they decided to disenfranchise its primary electorate, and indeed, to rubbish the entire primary system to return to the pre-1968 party boss system.

In the name of “our” democracy, dontcha know. (Just who this “our” encompasses is an interesting question. Democrats always utter the phrase in a very proprietary way).

Well, truth be told they had already rubbished the primary system in 2020 and especially in 2024, when the Party rigged the system so that Biden would face no real primary opposition. (Recall that several states actually canceled their Democratic primaries).

But Biden’s increasingly impossible to conceal mental incapacity blew that clever scheme to smithereens. So the same consiglieri (and especially the capo di tutti capi, Obama) who brought upon themselves-and the nation-that fiasco have again decided to smother even the possibility of competition for the nomination and install their preferred candidate-Kamala.

Selection, Not Election: The Sequel. (Could actually be Part IV. The nomination process was rigged in 2016 and 2020 (just ask Bernie), and obviously twice in 2024. There hasn’t been a truly competitive, election-driven nominating process in the Democratic Party since 2008).

Perhaps there is reason for optimism. Since their Plan A was an epic failure, why should their Plan B (which is just a variant of A) work any better?

One of my interlocutors on X said that this all reminded him of The Death of Stalin. There are some parallels, but it reminds me more of the ouster of Khrushchev: a coup mounted by the party to remove its leader who had become inconvenient.

Either way, it’s all very, very Soviet.

And by the way: does a coup count as insurrection, or nah?

And speaking of Soviet, the airbrushing of Kamala’s past and the rewriting of history that began the second she was anointed would make a 1930s Soviet propagandist blush. The sick part is that one could argue that the Soviet apparatchik knew that the consequences of not doing so were the gulag or death: the U.S. media is doing it because they want to. They are again using Orwell as a playbook not a warning: “He who controls the past controls the future.”

The past few weeks have been the most shameful in American history. But I believe that the weeks to come will put them in the shade.