Stromata Blog

Quote of the Day: Deregulation or Subsidies?

Veronique de Rugy on which approach to try first:

At the end of the day, those in favor of industrial policy must make a choice: Will they first eliminate the regulatory obstacles erected by the government and then assess what might productively be done, or will they instead plow forward with further government interventions – interventions destined to fail? I know the answer, and it worries me. With deregulation, there is less opportunity than there is with further regulation to exercise power.

Mme. de Rugy’s specific target is America’s burdensome regulation of construction of semiconductor fabrication facilities:

Case in point: The Biden administration is spending billions of dollars on semiconductor subsidies while fab construction in the US is one of the slowest in the world thanks to regulations, according to this:

The CSET study looked at fab construction between 1990 and 2020 and concluded that for the roughly 635 fabs built in that timeframe, the average time between the start of construction and production was 682 days. Three countries beat that benchmark: Taiwan at 654 days on average, Korea at 620, and Japan at a staggeringly fast 584 days. Meanwhile, Europe and the Middle East were about on par at 690 days, as was China at 701 days.

 

However, the U.S. clocked in at 736 days, well above the worldwide average and second only to Southeast Asia at 781.

 

Time is money, and wasted time is wasted money.

Quote of the Day: "We Don't Hate Jews. We Just Love the Guys Who Do."

Every word of “The woke wing of Hamas” is worth reading. Here is the conclusion:

 

The woke set’s claim that all they’re doing is criticising Israel is increasingly unsustainable. Their plea goes something like this:

 

‘We don’t hate Jews. We just hate the Jewish State, make excuses for Jew-hating terrorists, disbelieve Jewish women who say they were raped, support pirates whose flag says “A curse on the Jews”, and march alongside people who want all-out jihad on Jews. It’s totally different.’

 

Yes, totally different. Not at all like those guys who thought that Jews were a problem that needed a final solution.

Reminder: It’s WASHINGTON’s Birthday

The federal holidays are listed at 5 U.S.C. §6103(a). The one celebrated on “the third Monday in February” is “Washington’s Birthday”. Not “Presidents’ Day”. (Contrary to what I long believed and the Internet will tell you, Richard Nixon did not rename it sub rosa when he issued his executive order implementing the federal Uniform Monday Holiday Act.)

Some commentators object to the term “Presidents’ Day” because it doles out a smidgen of honor to Presidents who were mediocre or worse. Everyone can furnish his own examples, which became more frequent after Ronald Reagan left the White House. I have a more fundamental objection: The President is only one branch of the government, not an embodiment of the whole. He is not a monarch. If he were, it would be fitting and proper to set aside a day to mark the incumbent’s birth (as is done in Great Britain, where King Charles III is officially honored on the third Saturday in June). Because he is not, it is grotesque to give his portion of the nation’s political structure recognition that is denied to the rest.

Until we have a “Congress Day” and a “Supreme Court and Federal Judiciary Day”, let’s stick singling out our first President.

Image of the Day: Escher’s Election

Bastiat’s Window highlights and illustrates a comment from reader James Nick:

This is looking like it’s going to be the third M.C. Escher Presidential election in a row … the only choice worse than the Republican is the Democrat and the only choice worse than the Democrat is the Republican. We are definitely in a kakistocracy.

“M.C. Escher Election.” Illustration by Robert Graboyes. Penrose Stairs, elephant, and donkey from Wikimedia Commons.

 

Just a Coincidence?

On February 9, 1964, the Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show for the first time, launching the “British Invasion”.

 

Also in February 1964, the first G. I. Joe figures appeared in toy stores. A collector friend marked the 60th anniversary with an email about the line’s early years:

 

February 1964 was the first appearance of the G. I. Joe line in the form of 12" figures meant to give Barbie better company than that country club fop Ken. The series continued this scale with not just American soldiers from different eras, but with famous foreign troops as well (Royal Marines, French Foreign Legion, etc). They also did a line based on real life Medal of Honor winners and astronauts (among my collection I have the Audie Murphy figure and Buzz Aldrin). In 1983 the franchise really took off with the Real American Hero theme of 3.75" figures each with a name and backstory supported by a TV animated series and a Marvel comics run. G. I. Joe became the #1 toy line through the 1980s into the 1990s.The perfect toy for the Reagan Era. The team leader is codenamed “Duke” (just like John Wayne’s nickname). And in the first wave was a female trooper, rather novel for the 1980s. Scarlett (a redhead) comes from a family of martial artists and is head of Joe intelligence (and a jet fighter pilot).

 

 

Another View of the Putin Monologue

Many watchers thought that Tucker Carlson’s interview of Tsar Putin was boring. Some thought it was outrageous: “It brings war, genocide, and fascism.” An old friend of Lithuanian descent found it mostly amusing: “Preppie Mouse Interviews Big Bad Wolf.”

Watching Putin delivering that lengthy and self-flattering version of the history of the Muscovite Despotism to the gapingly naive and historically clueless Tucker was more than a little sad and sent me struggling for a comparison case of the innocent bourgeois herbivore conversing with the monster predator who is, just for now, managing to refrain from making him into an amuse bouche.

 

One pictures Tucker as another Bilbo sitting and interviewing the Dragon Smaug about his current dwarf policies and his friction with the Rivertown. Or as Jonathan Harker listening to Count Dracula boast of his descent from Attila the Hun and victories over the Turk. I kept waiting to hear the howling of wolves nearby briefly interrupt the conversation, and expecting Putin to remark: “The Children of the Night! What music they make!”

 

But neither Bilbo nor Jonathan Harker were anywhere nearly as oblivious to the real nature of their interlocutor. Nor did either publish his own account, failing as Tucker Carlson does, to comment on the disingenuity of the Big Bad Wolf complaining of the possible installation of guard dogs at the neighboring sheep flock as an example of aggression against himself.

 

Nonetheless, “bow tie or four-in-hand, you have to give it to [Tucker], he makes an excellent tie. St. George School clearly grounds its graduates in at least some of the important fundamentals.”

Quote of the Day: Advice for Undergraduates

Kay S. Hymowitz, reviewing Rob Henderson, Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class:

Troubled’s penultimate chapter, which might be subtitled “What I Learned at Yale,” is a tour de force that in a more rational world would be required reading for all incoming college students at elite schools. In it, Henderson developed his now widely cited concept of “luxury beliefs.” Yale students, appearing aware of their own advantages and compassionate to the downtrodden, would proudly repeat ideas that the boy from Red Bluff knew would harm the marginalized. Many of the parents of his childhood friends were drug addicts, yet his college peers cheered on drug liberalization, for example. And why not? It seemed enlightened and cost people like them nothing.

For Henderson, the most painful luxury beliefs were those that undermined families and the childhood stability he had so desperately craved. “Monogamy is kind of outdated,” a Yale graduate announced. She admitted that she had grown up with both parents and hoped someday to marry – monogamously, of course. In such people’s minds, to acknowledge the benefits of two-parent families and the stability that they are more likely to confer is to be insensitive to less fortunate families with different family structures. This attitude gets things backward, Henderson writes: “It’s cruel to validate decisions that inflict harm, especially on those who had no hand in the decision – like young children.” Luxury believers pay no price for ignoring the harms they endorse. In fact, it’s the opposite – they gain social currency at places like Yale. “The poor reap what the luxury belief class sows,” Henderson said.

Quote of the Day: An American Metaphor

Michael Brendan Dougherty, “The President Isn’t Home”:

Joe Biden and America are at risk of becoming metaphorically conflated. The country is aging rapidly. The number of Americans over 65 is set to double in the next 40 years. His forgetfulness mirrors America’s own lack of historical perspective. His unsteadiness on the stage is like our own lack of confidence in the national institutions upon which our lives depend for security and independence. His absence of mind seems to reflect the country’s own absence of strategy on the world stage. America is the old power on the world stage, while others are rising.

More to the point in an election year, our lack of confidence in Biden’s abilities mirrors a similar sinking feeling about the direction of our country. Not even good economic numbers can put to bed America’s sense of unease, fragility, and vulnerability.

There is a great majority in this country who looks upon the forthcoming presidential election with something like sullen horror. Why are our institutions producing this rematch? What is it about American democracy that is so paralyzed? Why, for fear of small risks, are we gambling, well, everything on these geezers?

Super Bowl Investment Advice

Not being much of a pro football fan, I probably won’t even watch the game, much less bet on it, but for those of you who do wager, I offer this tip, free of charge:

 

The San Francisco 49ers will beat the 2-point spread in defeating the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl LVIII on Feb. 11, predicts Allspring Global Investments' systematic equity money management team.

 

The pick is based on the Allspring systematic team's NFL Alphas measurement, which ranks all 32 NFL teams based on how often they overcome oddsmakers’ expectations during the regular season. The systematic equity team was formerly known as Analytic Investors and has been making the measurement since 2004.

 

If those quants’ prediction is correct, it will demonstrate conclusively that Taylor Swift isn’t rigging the NFL playoffs.

Quote of the Day: Centrist Authoritarianism

Tom Slater, “Justin Trudeau and the rise of the liberal strongman”:

For all the talk of populists and their simpleminded working-class voters ushering in a new 1930s, we now see where the true threat to liberty comes from. And not just in Canada. Indeed, we’ve seen the rise of what we might call liberal strongmen – sorry, strongpeople – right across the Western world. From the unhinged Covid authoritarianism of New Zealand under Jacinda Ardern to Emmanuel Macron’s brutalising of the gilets jaunes to Joe Biden’s banana republic to the speech-policing, women’s-rights-shredding rule of Nicola Sturgeon, all of the ‘centrist’ darlings of our age have turned out to be itching to shut up, lock up and even beat up their own citizens. Particularly citizens with the chutzpah to stand up for their rights and their livelihoods.

The Border Bill

Much suspicion surrounds the proposed “Border Act” (no strained acronym, praise be), a compromise immigration bill whose details have been negotiated out of public view. The dislike of covenants secretly arrived at is understandable. On the other hand, the United States Constitution was drafted in yet greater secrecy, and it has proved to be a pretty good work product.

The text of the bill has now been released, and Senator James Lankford (R-Okla.) has posted a summary of its provisions.

The chaotic situation along our southern border has metastasized into a major threat to national security. A subset of Congressional Republicans, among whom Senator Lankford taken a leading role, have used such leverage as they have over the Biden Administration (namely, the threat to cut back aid to Ukraine) to produce what they assert is a workable program to secure the border. It would have been better for President Biden to realize on his own that strong measures are needed to reassert control over immigration. The great majority of Republicans want to America continue supporting Ukraine’s struggle to retain its independence. But the Administration is ideologically committed to “open borders”, and only a threat to derail one of its major policies in another area was able to bring it to the negotiating table.

The negotiated document is doubtless imperfect. The question is whether it is good enough to serve its purpose. I will comment after I know enough to form a rational opinion. Unfortunately, many opponents (and some supporters, too) have made up their minds in advance and don’t want to consider any arguments to the contrary.

There is one stupid argument against enacting any sort of compromise: We can get a better deal by waiting until after the 2024 election. Can we? Yes, but only if Donald Trump is elected President and the GOP retains a majority (a working majority, not a razor-thin margin) in the House of Representatives and Republicans gain enough seats in the Senate to overcome Democratic filibusters. Will all that come to pass? If wishes were horses. . . .