A modest defense of tariffs
Posted By: Big Bopper, 1/18/2025 8:02:38 PM
From publications like The Wall Street Journal, you might conclude that tariffs as an economics practice is in the same category as piracy, slavery and child labor, but worse. Economists’ main complaint with tariffs is not that they’re destructive and immoral. Economists don’t make moral judgments, after all. There’s a reason they call their profession “the dismal science.” No, economists’ main complaint about tariffs is that they’re stupid. “Tariffs are stupid” is Economics 101. It’s a given. It’s econo-dogma. The Pope may or may not be Catholic, but popular business publications preach from their printed and pixeled pulpits that tariffs are indisputably, irrevocably, universally, invariably stupid.
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A modest defense of tariffs
3 replies
From publications like The Wall Street Journal, you might conclude that tariffs as an economics practice is in the same category as piracy, slavery and child labor, but worse.
Economists’ main complaint with tariffs is not that they’re destructive and immoral. Economists don’t make moral judgments, after all. There’s a reason they call their profession “the dismal science.”
No, economists’ main complaint about tariffs is that they’re stupid. “Tariffs are stupid” is Economics 101. It’s a given. It’s econo-dogma. The Pope may or may not be Catholic, but popular business publications preach from their printed and pixeled pulpits that tariffs are indisputably, irrevocably, universally, invariably stupid.
Question: What do the following have in common?
Stupid pet tricks
Bungee cord jumping
Abolishing the borders that define a country
Making oneself a human cannonball
Commuting the duly imposed death sentences of convicted murderers and rapists
Setting oneself on fire
Surrendering Afghanistan to barbarians from the 11th century
Jumping Snake River Canyon on a rocket-powered motorcycle
Closing all the schools to prevent transmission of a disease that barely affects children.
Answer: What these have in common is that all are stunts. They are designed to attract attention, and they succeed in doing so. But that’s all they do.
If you tell me you’ve taught a poodle to mix a martini and serve it to a parakeet, I’ll probably watch.
Four young Congresswomen – not even Senators – accomplished something that eluded years of Democratic Presidents and their woes.
Jimmy Carter in his malaise, Bill with Monica and his cigar, Lyndon Johnson and his Vietnam War – none of that was able to accomplish what these four young Congresswomen accomplished.
They destroyed the Democratic Party.
It was a perfect storm that began around the year 2020. China leaked a bioengineered virus from its biowarfare lab – probably accidentally – to produce worldwide mass hysteria and lockdowns of billions of people.
It gathered steam when a thug died in the hands of a white cop. Protests and riots ensued, weirdly exempted from the lockdowns.
Jesus turned water into wine. Modern-day abolitionists want to turn that wine into poison, and modern-day drinkers want to chase them out of town. We’re come a long way baby.
Not.
Let’s start with some facts:
As a long-time drinker, I can say with some authority that alcohol is a toxin. Half a quart of hard liquor in half an hour will probably leave you unconscious. More than that can kill you.
However, people rarely drink that much, that fast. Those who do are probably engaging in many other reckless behaviors, too, that will kill them long before the alcohol does.
Jimmy Carter informed us back in 1976 that he had “looked on many women with lust” and “committed adultery many times in my heart.”
The fact that a man’s heart or other organs have lusted after many women is not exactly news. The reason men don’t go around broadcasting their lust is because it’s obvious. It would be like saying, I get horny on days that end in a “y.”
But Carter did tell us about his lust – in a formal interview with Playboy, perhaps fittingly. He evidently thought that a man’s lust was newsworthy, if the man was him.
Increase legal immigration
13 replies
Guess what these people have in common:
Albert Einstein
Enrico Fermi
John Audubon
John Muir
Elon Musk
Nikola Tesla
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Irving Berlin
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Levi Strauss
Dikembe Mutombo
Liz Claiborne
Mariano Rivera
Melania Trump
Andrew Carnegie
Audrey Hepburn
Yo-Yo Ma
Ayn Rand
Elie Weisel
Sergey Brin
Bob Marley
Sammy Sosa
Carlos Santana
Henry Kissinger
Rupert Murdoch
Alexander Hamilton
You’ve probably guessed it – each was born outside the United States, and immigrated here. Most became full, legal American citizens after undergoing the citizenship process, including passing history, civics and English language tests that most American college graduates would flunk.
The list could go on for thousands of pages, but you probably get the drift.
I miss the TV dads – and my own too
8 replies
You know them. They were in your living room and part of your family conversations every night, especially during those 60-second breaks.
Before America was siloed into warring tribes by ratings-hungry cable TV and, later, by click-hungry internet sites, these men defined fatherhood for two generations. They were uncool before uncool was cool.
I’m aware this isn’t Fathers Day, other than in a specific religious sense. But Christmas always bring back family memories for me, particularly of my dad, which gets me thinking about the role of dads everywhere.
AI “thinks” hospital gowns make sense
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Marc Andreessen is a very successful Silicon Valley venture capitalist. In picking and investing in early-stage tech companies such as Twitter and Facebook years ago, you could say he swims with the sharks, and swims very well. His firm has over $45 billion under management. He was recently the subject of a wide-ranging interview by Bari Weise, the intrepid founder of The Free Press.
The hottest thing in Silicon Valley these days is AI – the acronym for Artificial Intelligence.
Henry Kissinger argued that geopolitical negotiations are successful only if they are backed by an implicit or explicit threat of force. In that argument, he echoed Teddy
Roosevelt’s quip a century earlier that America should “speak softly and carry a big stick.”
The contention that adversarial negotiations are successful only if you have some leverage to exert is an obvious truism. But American leaders need to re-learn this truism every so often. They naively – and sometimes malevolently – come to believe that the way to get along with the bad guys is to kowtow to them.
. . . Is how a headline reads in today’s Wall Street Journal. To which my reaction was, what next?
First, the trannies were in the closet. Then they came out, apparently just to go to the bathroom. The one for girls.
Then they were in the Cabinet of the future former President and current organized crime boss who both commits and pardons family criminal acts. (One stop shopping, is he.)
The next thing we knew, they were competing in athletic contests against real women – or, as much of the media dubs them, “birthing persons” or “menstruating persons” or “persons with a bonus hole” or (my personal favorite) “non-transgender women.”
The news tonight is that Worst President Ever (hereinafter “WPE”) has pardoned his son.
You know the one – the crack-smoking, drug-addicted, whore-mongering, influence-peddling, gun-toting, tax-evading, lie-teller.
After stating time and again – but that was in the past, so it doesn’t count – that he wouldn’t, WPE proved himself to be as big a liar as the miscreant son.
Don’t say I didn’t warn you. I explicitly warned that WPE would do this, but for obvious reasons he would wait till after the election.
I also proposed that the pardon would seal the judgment of historians on WPE – that he is indeed the WPE.
So there we are. WPE has
The news tonight is that Worst President Ever (hereinafter “WPE”) has pardoned his son.
You know the one – the crack-smoking, drug-addicted, whore-mongering, influence-peddling, gun-toting, tax-evading, lie-teller.
After stating time and again – but that was in the past, so it doesn’t count – that he wouldn’t, WPE proved himself to be as big a liar as the miscreant son.
Don’t say I didn’t warn you. I explicitly warned that WPE would do this, but for obvious reasons he would wait till after the election.
I also proposed that the pardon would seal the judgment of historians on WPE – that he is indeed the WPE.
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