Soccer, Germany, And The Ukraine

With all due respect to the International Olympic Committee, FIFA and UEFA are the two most corrupt sporting organizations on the planet. Yet:

FIFA has kicked Russia out of the 2022 World Cup in Qatar as it issues a joint statement with the UEFA saying all Russian clubs will be banned from events until further notice following the country’s invasion of Ukraine. [Emphasis added].

Now Vladimir is not shaking in fear because these actions do not change the the probability that the Russians will win the World Cup or a Russian club the UEFA Champion’s League. Those are both still zero but FIFA had Russia host a recent World Cup so it is a positive surprise.

And the NRO editors report:

[I]n a stunning speech to the German Bundestag, Chancellor Olaf Scholz has declared that in the face of Russian aggression, Germany will rearm and spend 2 percent of GDP on defense “from now on, every year.” Berlin will also fund an immediate $110 billion infusion into the German military in order to improve its roundly criticized readiness.

Of course, the two percent is just meeting the NATO minimum requirement and Germany could have said something about becoming less dependent on Russian energy but until now they have been close to a partner for Russia so this is a small positive step. We should also remember that all praise should go to The Ukraine for their spirited resistance. If the war was already over all of this would be too little too late. It might still be but we are seeing some belated signs of leadership from folks in the western democracies. What will the State of the Union bring?

Red Dwarf And The Ukraine

Red Dwarf, started in 1988 and, despite several hiatuses, still running, is one of the great television comedies. Don’t just take our word for it. It has won many awards and here is an item from the Wikipedia post we just cited:

In a 2019 ranking by Empire, Red Dwarf came 80th on a list of the 100 best TV shows of all time.

Wow! Ranking 80th of all series, not just comedies, is high praise. We suppose the average voter had not seen as many series as us. If you haven’t seen it you deserve to binge watch it during these challenging times. It is consistently laugh out loud funny.

The Lady de Gloves alerted us to the connection between Red Dwarf and The Ukraine. We think it is episode three of season three that is titled Polymorph. The Polymorph is a creature that can change shapes and feeds off emotions and sucks all of one emotion out of each of the characters leaving them astoundingly one dimensional as they try to cope with the evil Polymorph.

The Lady de Gloves sees the situation in The Ukraine as many one dimensional characters just like the Red Dwarf episode and we agree. Specifically, there is a connection between the Rimmer character in the show and the western democracies. Rimmer has all of an emotion, we think it is aggression, sucked out of him and becomes a peacenik. When the French and others made similar gestures like putting The Ukraine colors on the Eiffel Tower she quoted (or nearly) Rimmer saying, “And if that doesn’t work we are going to hit him with a major, and I do mean major, leaflet campaign.” It is a gesture that shows a lack of will to confront evil. She said it again when the UN Security Council is having a meeting with numerous adjectives. We’re not sure what to do but such gestures are not helping.

Well, we are sure of part of the answer. Part of the answer is for the US government (and other countries) to take the restrictions off the oil and gas industry to reduce Russian influence. We don’t expect it but we would love to hear in Tuesday’s state of that Keystone XL, expanded leases, LNG exports, and so on have all been approved. We are betting on the moral equivalent of leaflets.

So we have crazy Putin,

Sidebar: Really. There is serious discussion, see Judson Berger in NRO’s The Corner, that Putin is not mentally right. Does crazy subsume evil? End Sidebar.

the brave Ukrainians, and the feckless west trying to get a resolution. We wish it were a TV show rather than real life.

What To Do About Not-For-Profits

We have been over the lack of commitment to free markets and economic growth by governments in general and the USA in particular before but it is a perennial problem. To review, we have had the Great Enrichment as chronicled by Deirdre McCloskey. During the 19th and 20th century humans leaped from a per capita income of $3 dollars a day to $100 a day. Jonah Goldberg has a very readable appendix in Suicide Of The West on this topic. More recently free markets have expanded beyond their traditional bounds and led to an unprecedented reduction in extreme poverty. But governments have been reluctant to embrace free markets. The Heritage Index of Economic Freedom for 2022 ranks 177 countries and only seven with a total population of less than 50 million are classified as free.

What led us to this review is an expose by the WSJ Editors (yes it is behind a paywall)about the problems with philanthropy and particularly the Hewitt Foundation. The Editors quote the Foundation:

“For more than 40 years, neoliberalism has dominated economic and political debates, both in the U.S. and globally, with its free-market fundamentalism and growth-at-all-costs approach to economic and social policy,” the press release says. It “offers no solutions for the biggest challenges of our time, such as the climate crisis, systemic racism, and rampant wealth inequality—and in many ways, it has made those problems even worse.

We are not sure if it is stupidity, dishonesty or both but few paragraphs can match the one above. We usually bold the parts in question or error but in that paragraph everything is wrong except for: the press release says. We will respond to the historical inaccuracies in the first sentence. It marks time from the Reagan administration when the US and many other counties successfully reversed direction to move in the direction of free markets. The US government has, unfortunately, never been in or even near the grips of free-market fundamentalism and, again unfortunately, never ever had a growth-at-all-costs economic or social policy. If you investigate all the 177 countries Heritage ranks you might find one where free-market fundamentalism reigned for a while but you might not. Many governments have nudged towards free markets to be part of the Great Enrichment but few, if any, have embraced it.

We will let the WSJ editors respond to the second sentence about markets and solutions:

Actually, capitalism [we’ve been using free markets] offers solutions to all of those challenges. The largest reductions in carbon emissions have come from natural gas, thanks to the market innovation of shale fracking. Competitive labor markets have helped minorities rise despite residual racism because bigotry is too expensive. The wealth created by free markets and innovation, along with global trade, has lifted billions out of poverty. Extreme global poverty has plunged to less than 10% from 45% in 1980 while world GDP has more than tripled.

Free markets are the best chance countries have to get the growth fairy to visit. JFK was wrong that a rising tide lifts all boats but it does lift almost all of them and it produces a surplus to help the ones that leak. You should read the whole WSJ editorial if you can. Governments have a problem avoiding free markets because they need to enrich their people. Of course, few if any governments back free markets whole heartedly because they prefer the power they get from crony capitalism. Not-for-profits from foundations to universities to the YMCA are a bigger problem because there are fewer incentives for them to behave. We wish we had a solution.

The Bright Side Of The Putin Disaster

The USA is trying to decide what to do about Putin and the Ukraine. Unfortunately our leadership consists of The Frontrunner, Triple A, and one third of Wynken, Blynken, and Nod. We wish them well but nothing in the last year makes us think they will have much success.

Some conservatives (we would say faux conservatives) see the bright side of this international disaster in partisan terms. What is bad for the Democrats is good for conservatives. We disagree for two reasons. First, the fact that our allies don’t trust us and our enemies don’t fear us can’t be undone by an election. The events of the last five years including but not limited to many trying to paint The Donald as a Russian agent, stopping the Keystone XL pipeline, and letting the Nord Stream 2 go through have put the USA in a terrible position to do anything. We need Harry Truman in 2024 but we are highly unlikely to get him.

Second, if the GOP wins because of Democrat incompetence it should bring little joy to conservatives. It is not about political wins and losses. We have a whole list of serious policies to fix including but not limited to energy, entitlements, trade, and policing. We need serious people with serious ideas. That excludes The Donald. Democrat incompetence rarely brings out the best in the GOP.

The bright side is that Putin and The Ukraine have brought some focus to energy policy. The left was trying to get The Frontrunner to stop natural gas exports. Now he is being hit from the right about his right, e.g., Larry Kudlow, that his energy policies are a substantial part of the reason for the situation in The Ukraine. And there is an election in November. Well, voting will start well before then and as we know those early ballots often determine outcomes. So we are risking WWIII but USA energy policy is unlikely to get any worse in the near term and might get much better in the intermediate term. We didn’t say it was a big bright side but it is something.

The Joy Of “Anti”-Racism

Steven Hayward at PowerLine has the can you believe it story of the day. The good folks that run the Seattle and King County’s public health have a commitment to equity with regards to bicycle helmets. We can never guess what equity, equality of results, folks are going to be concerned about. We would have thought that public health folks would be worried about injuries. But no, here is the first part of Steven’s quote:

Bike helmets save lives and help prevent serious injuries. A review of several published studies estimates that bike helmets provide a 63-88% reduction in the risk of head and brain injuries for people who ride bikes. As part of the movement to encourage the use of bike helmets, the King County Board of Health passed a law in 1993 requiring anyone riding a bike to wear a helmet.

However, data presented to the Board of Health has shown racist and discriminatory enforcement. Seattle Police Department data collected and analyzed by Seattle Neighborhood Greenways and the Helmet Law Working Group shows that police disproportionately gave helmet law citations to Black, Indigenous, and People of Color cyclists.

Steven seems to have added the emphasis. As Steven points out there is no evidence of racist or discriminatory enforcement unless, as we add, you are an anti-racist. That is, any statistical difference between groups must be racism. Their words say they want to help people from favored groups but their actions say let ’em die on the streets.

Munich: The Movie

Almost a year ago (02/23/21) we reviewed Munch the book by Robert Harris. We thought it was excellent. We still do. Now Netflix has created Munich the movie based on the book. Scott Johnson at PowerLine and Andrew Roberts at Washington Free Beacon have their knickers in a knot about the movie and have changed the subtitle to The Edge Of Nonsense. We are unconvinced by either.

Sidebar: First, three things
One, we are second to none in our admiration and affection for Winston.
Second, we have only read the book but Andrew says it is a faithful adaptation.
Third, despite what Pokemon Go implies, excellent is not a good as great. Robert’s book is a novel and it is excellent.
End Sidebar

Scott and Andrew are worried that Robert will rehabilitate Neville. Here is Andrew:

In the movie [and the book], [Neville] Chamberlain is presented as having always known that there was a good chance of war taking place, but being ready to sacrifice his reputation to buy time for rearmament. Yet in reality on his return from Munich [Neville] said that “This is the second time in our history that there has come back from Germany peace with honour. I believe it is peace for our time.” So was he lying to the British people?

We are not convinced that Robert really trying to make Neville a hero for two reasons. First, he has a really neat plot around the Munich Conference and college chums Paul and Hugh. Neville is a B or C character who is placed in a more flattering light than usual. We still know what happened after Neville returned home. We know for certain that he was wrong to declare “peace in our time.” Still, Robert has made us think if Winston’s successes were only possible because of Neville’s failures. Making folks think is an excellent accomplishment for a novel.

Second, unlike many conservative-progressive conflicts there are no shortage of books and movies about Winston. He wrote many of them himself and he is often the hero. Here is a movie list. The book and the movie are about the Munich conference. Winston wasn’t invited. Robert has every right to make the book about Hugh and Paul and to a lesser extent about Neville and Adolph. We all should know what happens next so it doesn’t need to be part of the plot.

We are going to watch Munich the movie. We would encourage you to watch it too but first read Munich the novel. We don’t read Robert as saying that Neville is a hero but that Paul, Hugh and even Neville are human. Human failure is why we got WWII. Very close to zero of us get to be Winston.

Free Speech, Intellectual Freedom, And Rhetoric

What to do when faced with epic decisions? Kevin D. Williamson has a great post at NRO: Put Down The Torch. Pick Up A Book where he persuasively argues for intellectual humility. We need to think, read, and listen and even then we can’t be certain. Therefore, we should support freedom of speech and intellectual freedom. You should read it all more than once. It is a wonderful piece of writing and a good reason to subscribe to the National Review, be an NRO member, and get Kevin’s newsletter.

Kevin puts you as the decider for witches and Galileo. Here is the second bit:

Be honest with yourself: If you had been present at the trials of Galileo, and everything you knew or had ever known pointed to his being in the wrong — the evidence of your eyes and all common human experience, the views of the most learned men and trusted of your community, every book on the subject you’d ever heard of, the proclamations of both church and state — do you think you would have made the right call?

We can’t know for sure but we think that Kevin is right that few of us would have the perspicacity to make the right call. Even fewer of us would be willing to put our lives on the line for freedom of speech. Being attacked by the Catholic Church or the witch burners, to name a few, could be a decidedly more unpleasant outcome than being attacked a Twitter mob.

Kevin has created a beautiful piece of rhetoric to focus our minds on the importance of intellectual engagement when we are asked to adjudicate David versus Goliath situations. We are one-hundred percent with Kevin on the importance of intellectual engagement and freedom of speech. Kevin has not addressed what you do once you have adjudicated. If you adjudicate for Goliath there is no need to get worked up but if you are with, for example, the accused witches then there are more decisions to make. Are you going to fight witch burning? Suppose there are two political parties. Party A wants to hunt out and burn all the witches by encouraging citizens to identify witches. Party B wants to ban witch burning and to restrict free speech by making it illegal to call any person a witch. Is free speech that critical to you that you would support Party A?

Of course, our rhetorical story is at least as extreme as Kevin’s but the Virginia governor’s race is a real example. The GOP candidate wanted to ban Critical Race Theory (CRT) in K-12 schools. The Democrat wasn’t sure if there was CRT in the schools but sure didn’t want it banned. Our position on CRT has been to belittle not ban it. That, however, was not a position of any of the candidates and it was unlikely to win if it was. If we were a VA citizen we would have voted GOP despite our stand on free speech. We understand that others might come to a different decision.

Intellectual freedom and free speech are great things that we should encourage and fight for. Kevin has told us a great story that we should remember. The reality is that in many political decisions like elections there won’t be one side with the intellectual heft. We should do it much less than we do now but sometimes you need to pick up the torch.

More Simplifying The Tax Code

Dominic Pino tells us he got an award for recommending simplification of the tax code to help the IRS. Color us disappointed that we didn’t even get a participation trophy. Of course, the trophy giver, one Kevin Drum, was making a [strange] point about the original post. Dominic says about Kevin’s award:

[Kevin] writes that Republicans want the IRS to be poorly run because “it helps make taxes unpopular,” as if that’s a cause that needs any help. Taxes are unpopular because they involve the government taking your money, which is something that has rankled Americans since at least 1776.

We would go far beyond Dominic to say that tax collectors have rankled humans for much longer. We have watched many versions of Robin Hood including the TV series and the tax collector is always getting payback for his behavior. Our memory is getting hazier now be we think there was a recognition that the Prince or the Sheriff was the main evil doer rather than the tax collector.

Sidebar: Yes we know Robin Hood is a character of legend. We also know that nobody came out of the film concerned about how poorly Errol Flynn treated the tax collector. And, wow, there are so many versions of Robin Hood. And, as always, there are limits to human memory. End Sidebar.

Regardless of what political actors do, the tax collectors, the IRS for most of us, are going to be unpopular. Political actors can, however, do two things to make them less unpopular. First, they can simplify the tax code. Second, they can take a kind attitude towards de minimus transactions.

Simplifying the tax code is often code for raising taxes. You would think that Democrats love to raise taxes and they especially would love to raise them on high income people. Yet, that is not what we see. Democrats are supported by high income folks from blue states. It makes sense for Democrats to go to bat for them and for the GOP to make it political.

A generous de minimus amount would help make life easier and better for the IRS. We don’t know exactly how to do this but it is clear that folks don’t want to make 1099s out for the baby sitter. The current administration has gone in exactly the wrong direction (emphasis in original):

The American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 requires that sales completed on all e-commerce platforms —including Ticketmaster — are subject to reporting to the IRS as of January 1, 2022. This means that any seller or fan earning more than $600 annually as a result of a sale, or sales, through any U.S. Ticketmaster marketplace (including Account Manager) is required to complete a 1099 form.

Notice that it says $600 in sales rather than profit annually. We report our profits from these sources but $600 in revenue is way to low a place to start. It is going to flood the IRS with 1099s. It is surely not making the fans or the folks at Ticketmaster and elsewhere happy with all the costs of compliance. Our average asking price was just a shade under $300 per ticket and almost all tickets are all sold in pairs. So that means that selling a single pair tickets will often trigger the $600 mark and means, in our finely calibrated analysis, that 1.5 zillion season ticket holders are going to get 1099 forms early in 2022. So will the IRS. We see some wisdom in taxing the profits on selling tickets. We see no reason to set the minimum sale amount at $600. We would consider $5,000 or $10,000 but $600 will drive tax payers and tax collectors crazy.

Nobody needs to love the IRS but there is no reason to abuse it either. The good news is that the IRS and the average taxpayer have common ground. It would be good for both the average taxpayer and the IRS if the Congress could reduce everyone’s workload by simplifying the tax code and legislating reasonable de minimus amounts.

Economic Freedom in 2022 And 2024

The Heritage Foundation released its annual Index of Economic Freedom (IEF) for 2022. We don’t hold it as perfect but we are big fans of the Index. Werner Todd Huston and Jeff Dunetz at the Lid summarize the US results and get it right in the headline: US Economic Freedom At Its Lowest Point Ever. Here is the summary from Werner and Jeff:

In its annual survey, the Heritage Foundation reports that the U.S. has fallen 2.7 points to an all-time low score of 72.1 and has hit its lowest rank globally of 25th place among nations with the freest economies. The 25th ranking is down from ranking 20th a year ago.

The score and the ranking of the US has fallen substantially so it is not just a COVID thing. We have two points we would like to make. First, folks like The Bernie would like us to be more like Denmark but that would be a step in the right direction, towards economic freedom. Denmark does substantially better than the US with a rank of tenth with a score of 78.0 compared to the US stats of twenty-fifth and 72.1 cited above. Many of the other choices for comparison with the US like Finland, Norway, and Iceland cluster with Denmark. Denmark is now what the US aspires to in economic freedom.

Sidebar: The IEF is comprised of many elements. Denmark does have high government spending and a high tax burden to restrict economic freedom but most of its other measures are good. The US is better than Denmark on those categories but has a fiscal health score of zero. Zero! And a much better but not very good score for trade freedom of 75.2. End Sidebar.

Our second point is about who can restore economic freedom to the US? Werner and Jeff think that the GOP can do it:

The question is will the GOP take over Congress in the midterm elections only ten months away? Until the socialist-leaning leftists are out of office, don’t expect our economy to become free again.

We are unconvinced about the GOP and particularly The Donald. Our primary problem is fiscal health. The GOP and particularly The Donald have avoided any inclination to improve our fiscal health. One of our secondary problems is lack of trade freedom. The Donald and at least some of the GOP have pledged and succeeded in making that problem worse. One step to see that the GOP does what Werner and Jeff hope is to remove The Donald from any GOP decision making. The problems that the last three presidents have ignored should now be clear to everyone. It is time to be serious about economic and finance. Unfortunately, our procrastination is going to make this painful.

Economic Policy Meets Foreign Policy

As The Donald recedes in our rearview mirror some folks are trying to create a movement called national conservatism to honor his memory and try and create a legacy. We have two initial comments before we get into details. First, what an awful name. However it is abbreviated detractors are going to end up using Nazi. Second, as often happens, when you modify something you end up eliminating the part being modified. The Donald did a number of conservative things like reduce corporate taxes, reduce red tape, and nominate judges. National conservatism seems to reject the conservative actions taken by The Donald.

We were reading Paul Mirengoff at PowerLine on What Does A National Conservative Foreign Policy Look Like and Michael R. Strain at the National Review and NRO with Forget The Economics Of Grievance. We recommend you read both in full as you wave goodby to The Donald.

We do not pretend to be a foreign policy guru. Our main point with Paul’s post is when the national conservatives are laying out their system. Here is Paul quoting a post by Klon Kitchen taking issue with the national conservatives:

[T]he authors concede that “the United States has real differences with Beijing. We must punish industrial espionage. We must defend treaty allies. And we must seek a more balanced trade relationship.” But they quickly add, “we should also find areas of cooperation, exchange and shared interests, seeking to avoid any future wars and instead communicating with mutual respect for a civilizational equal.” [Emphasis added]

Klon has nothing to say about the part in bold. Probably, that is because it is more about economics that foreign policy. Balancing trade overall is a silly idea and trying to balance trade with each individual country is an amazing level of foolishness usually reserved for leftists. Check out the rest Klon has to say so you have an idea of the debate.

The foreign policy from The Donald’s acolytes is worth considering although we think Klon gets the better of the argument. Michael explains why economic nationalism is poor policy for the folks it intends to help. He starts with The Donald’s (and conservatives everywhere) successes:

Indeed, the two major economic-policy accomplishments of the Trump years were standard conservative economic fare: needed reform of the corporate tax code — including a lowering of the statutory corporate-tax rate from 35 to 21 percent and the allowing of businesses to immediately write off the full cost of qualified new investments — and a less onerous regulatory regime than existed during the Obama presidency.

The Donald specific stuff like tariffs and trade wars didn’t work and Michael provides evidence and analysis. We don’t know how the idea of taxing our citizens and companies through tariffs ever became an idea that is popular. You need to read Michael in detail so you can disabuse yourself of 16th century economic thinking.

We would like to see a discussion on foreign policy in, at least, the GOP. We can’t have much of a discussion on economics until the other side comes up with some quality ideas worth considering.