The New York Post reported last week that employment in the media declined by 15,000 in 2018. Much of the reason, according to the Post, is substitution of social networking advertising for traditional media advertising. Technology available through Facebook and Instagram enables advertisers to directly go to consumers rather than rely on media to serve as intermediaries. The decline in the economic stability of the media comes at a time when its credibility is questioned by conservatives and even by the president. Yet, news organizations hope to convince consumers that they offer unbiased news so that consumers will subscribe.
Perhaps there are opportunities for new forms of news. I subscribe to two online newspapers, but I read them infequently. I more often rely on subscription newsletters like Jim Rickards's Strategic Intelligence and David Stockman's Deep State Unclassified as well as specialized investment sites like Morningstar and Kitco.
A Lockean or conservative alternative to the leading newswire services might energize individual conservatives to start their own newsletters and blogs. The advantage the socialist-and-pro-Fed press has is its funding base, which enables it to obtain breaking news. A news service that is made available at low cost to conservatives might help break the left's monopoly on news and information.
I have been listening to the audio version of Tucker Carlson's Ship of Fools: How a Selfish Ruling Class Is Bringing America to the Brink of Revolution. As I've previously reported, the book is well written. I disagree with Carlson's take on economics, but his account of American culture upset me. Carlson seems to be making a case for New Deal-Roosevelt "liberalism" (I prefer the term "social democracy") to become the new conservatism, which is a mistake. Many of today's core problems, such as income inequality, are the direct result of Progressivism and of New Deal centralization and subsidization of special interests. Also, immigration restrictions, which are central to Carlson's narrative, are not the solution, although I increasingly see immigration as a cultural threat, albeit one that could be eliminated by an education system that, unlike the current one, emphasizes a shared American culture.
At the same time, Carlson eloquently tears apart militarists Max Boot and Bill
Crystal, and his caricature of Chelsea Clinton, dumbed-down child of white privilege, is
hilarious. His depiction of American elite ideology as a version of left-wing
extremism mixed with militarism and some liberalism (as in immigration) suggests a convergence of Democratic and Republican elite ideology, and the elite's selfish indifference to the harm its money printing and confused economic policies have caused is why Trump won. Unfortunately, while I like Trump, while I admire his courage in the face of media attacks, while I admire his contempt for both the media and policy elites, his emphasis on protectionism and immigration restrictions won’t change much, and protectionism will make things worse
if not corrected down the road.
Carlson's book scores many points when it comes to American culture, which is in disarray. Unwed mothers have become a critical voting block, and the policies that they advocate will be corrosive to economic growth and progress. On a social and cultural level, I'm now convinced that immigration
poses a serious threat to American culture and American freedom. The attacks on boys and men, the
intolerance of feminist extremists, the absurd environmentalist religion—none of this is
news, but put it all together, and it seems that the country is in serious moral
trouble.
At the same time, Carlson's premise is ultimately elitist. He concludes that elites need to do a better job of caring for the average American. In a free country without a Fed, big government, or the other Progressive paraphernalia of Progressivism and the New Deal, Americans would be able to care for themselves, as they did in the 19th century.
Sunday, February 17, 2019
Sunday, February 10, 2019
America, Land of the Social Security Check, Home of the Welfare Dependent
I applied for Medicare on Friday. I'm going to be 65 in roughly three months. When I called the Social Security Agency (welcome to socialist America), I had an hour-and-fifteen-minute wait before I could get through, and they told me that I had to apply online. Mark Zuckerberg needs to know, and make no mistake, Facebook can know if it wants to. The Social Security website froze me out because I had typed in the wrong password when I had checked it several months before, so I called the helpline, which involved an additional 50-minute wait. The young government worker was helpful, and I eventually applied after a four-hour battle.
As I was waiting on voicemail, the SSA proudly announced that 50 million Americans are currently on Social Security. The number of Americans on means-tested welfare is roughly the same, about 52 million. If you add the number of government employees, about 22 million, that's 124 million. In July 2017 there were 252 million Americans over age 18, the voting age. That means that 124/252 = 49.2% of Americans are dependent on the state. If you add to that the people who work in zombie industries that would not exist without state support-- including Wall Street, the auto industry, and public partnership real estate--the percentage of voters who depend on government is well above 50%.
In other words, the productive sector in America is well below 50% of the economy. So much for land of the free, home of the brave--or liberty and justice for all. America is a socialist welfare state with a dependent population.
I recently finished Garrett C. Fagan's audio Roman history series from the Great Courses, which was a wonderful experience. The Great Courses lectures are all wonderful, and Rome was one of my favorites, along with Vejas G. Liulevicius's World War I. Fagan teaches at Penn State and Liulevicius teaches at the University of Tennessee. My next one will be William R. Cook's history of the Catholic Church.
In between, though, I am listening to Tucker Carlson's audio book Ship of Fools. Carlson makes a number of excellent points, and I am finding the book to be educational. Also, his writing is sharp. I'm only up to Chapter Three. (I listen to all this in my car, so it is slow going.)
Carlson blames much of the recent decline in the American economy on elite selfishness and immigration. Some of his arguments parallel Christopher Lasch's in his books The Revolt of the Elites and The Culture of Narcissism. Like Lasch, Carlson notes that the segregation of elites in all-white, upper-income neighborhoods makes them insensitive to the effects of the policies they advocate.
Carlson's pillorying of Democratic Party looters is awesome. His discussion of dumbed-down, overprivileged millennial Chelsea Clinton is hilarious, and his discussion of Mark Zuckerberg and the ugly effects of Facebook are eye opening. He accurately depicts the Southern Poverty Law Center as a one-time opponent of racism that has become a fraudulent partisan advocate for Democratic Party elitists.
As well, Carlson accurately depicts the current economy as one of decline for the average American and one of subsidization and privilege for financial, political, and technology elites. However, a point of disagreement is that Carlson places the blame on immigration.
Real wages have stagnated for the past 50 years, since the early 1970s, when immigrants were less than five percent of the population. Immigration is not the reason for stagnant real wages. It is at most a contributory factor, but in the absence of regulation and subsidization, immigration flows would adjust to the market- clearing level. Native Americans ought to enjoy an economic advantage over immigrants, who do not know the language and culture. Increasing the minimum wage is likely harming immigrants, whose labor is less valuable than native speakers. I'm not convinced that immigration is the real problem, and Carlson does not offer much fact for his claim. The real hourly wage began to stagnate in the 1970s, right after the abolition of the gold standard and less than 10 years after the establishment of Medicare and Medicaid. By 1980 immigrants were still only six percent of the population, but real wages hadn't grown in seven or eight years.
At the same time, it may be time to put a moratorium on immigration because of the anger it has caused. I have heretofore been in favor of open immigration, but about ten years ago I remember thinking that perhaps a moratorium on immigration might be helpful to American workers, who have suffered grievously at the hands of the Fed, the Democratic Party, and big government. In general, a free economy based on limited government will result in optimal economic outcomes, including rising real wages, modest income inequality, and a stock market, with six percent returns. In the 19th century most of the returns from the stock market were in the form of dividends.
Besides immigration, my chief point of disagreement with Carlson is that he seems to believe that old-fashioned state activist liberalism--New Deal liberalism,--ought to be the new conservatism. The old-fashioned state activist liberalism of the 1930-1970s may still capture President Trump's supporters' imaginations, but it will not restore the economy; it will not restore real wage growth; it will not return the country to the rapid economic growth of the laissez faire, Progressive, and New Deal eras (which ended in the 1960s).
It is true that much of America's elite--the Clintons, Buffetts, Goldman Sachses, Zuckerbergs, Soroses--are a cancer on the average wage. It is also true that New Deal policies led directly to their ascendancy, and the group that was in power before them was already taking the country down a primrose path. Replacing today's rapacious, politically correct, finance-and-technology elites with the military-industrial complex about which Eisenhower and C Wright Mills warned and included George HW Bush's dad, Prescott Bush, will not change the underlying problem, which is the result of monetary and regulatory systems controlled by a centralized, special-interest dominated state. The federal government has squashed real wages and allocated credit to crappy technology like Facebook, crooked Wall Streeters like George Soros, and crooked hacks like the Clintons and Bushes.
Franklin Roosevelt, copying the innovations of Gustav von Schmoller and Bismarck in Germany, implemented a system that has similarities to what brothers Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus imagined for Republican Rome in the early phases of the Roman Revolution, which led to its becoming a dictatorship, then an empire, and ultimately a monarchy: Their plan was to give the plebeians cheap grain. (Later in the empire Emperor Septimius Severus made grain free.) The dislocations of World War I and Progressive eras paralleled the processes in the Roman Revolution, which lasted about 150 years. Although the Progressive era was short, its system may last for as long as the early empire and the Pax Romana, which lasted 150-200 years. It may be that in 2,000 years historians will view our era as an extension of the Progressive and World War I eras. This is already occurring as historians are beginning to view the two world wars as one war.
It is sad to see an America with the beautiful ideals of Locke and Jefferson turned into a bread-and-circus, totalitarian state dominated by the nincompoops of today's state, technology, and finance elites and their dumbed-down propagandist-journalists. Carlson's hilarious depiction of psychopath Max Boot is on the money.
Even if President Trump follows the proscriptions of Carlson and slows the looting by state, technology, and Wall Street elites, there is little hope for improvement because Americans have been satisfied with a $16,000 Social Security benefit, a welfare check, and Medicare. The dynamics of public choice and special interest behavior guarantee that a large, centralized government will benefit the most corrupt and opportunistic, and Carlson's debate with the Democrats ignores the underlying dynamic.
As I was waiting on voicemail, the SSA proudly announced that 50 million Americans are currently on Social Security. The number of Americans on means-tested welfare is roughly the same, about 52 million. If you add the number of government employees, about 22 million, that's 124 million. In July 2017 there were 252 million Americans over age 18, the voting age. That means that 124/252 = 49.2% of Americans are dependent on the state. If you add to that the people who work in zombie industries that would not exist without state support-- including Wall Street, the auto industry, and public partnership real estate--the percentage of voters who depend on government is well above 50%.
In other words, the productive sector in America is well below 50% of the economy. So much for land of the free, home of the brave--or liberty and justice for all. America is a socialist welfare state with a dependent population.
I recently finished Garrett C. Fagan's audio Roman history series from the Great Courses, which was a wonderful experience. The Great Courses lectures are all wonderful, and Rome was one of my favorites, along with Vejas G. Liulevicius's World War I. Fagan teaches at Penn State and Liulevicius teaches at the University of Tennessee. My next one will be William R. Cook's history of the Catholic Church.
In between, though, I am listening to Tucker Carlson's audio book Ship of Fools. Carlson makes a number of excellent points, and I am finding the book to be educational. Also, his writing is sharp. I'm only up to Chapter Three. (I listen to all this in my car, so it is slow going.)
Carlson blames much of the recent decline in the American economy on elite selfishness and immigration. Some of his arguments parallel Christopher Lasch's in his books The Revolt of the Elites and The Culture of Narcissism. Like Lasch, Carlson notes that the segregation of elites in all-white, upper-income neighborhoods makes them insensitive to the effects of the policies they advocate.
Carlson's pillorying of Democratic Party looters is awesome. His discussion of dumbed-down, overprivileged millennial Chelsea Clinton is hilarious, and his discussion of Mark Zuckerberg and the ugly effects of Facebook are eye opening. He accurately depicts the Southern Poverty Law Center as a one-time opponent of racism that has become a fraudulent partisan advocate for Democratic Party elitists.
As well, Carlson accurately depicts the current economy as one of decline for the average American and one of subsidization and privilege for financial, political, and technology elites. However, a point of disagreement is that Carlson places the blame on immigration.
Real wages have stagnated for the past 50 years, since the early 1970s, when immigrants were less than five percent of the population. Immigration is not the reason for stagnant real wages. It is at most a contributory factor, but in the absence of regulation and subsidization, immigration flows would adjust to the market- clearing level. Native Americans ought to enjoy an economic advantage over immigrants, who do not know the language and culture. Increasing the minimum wage is likely harming immigrants, whose labor is less valuable than native speakers. I'm not convinced that immigration is the real problem, and Carlson does not offer much fact for his claim. The real hourly wage began to stagnate in the 1970s, right after the abolition of the gold standard and less than 10 years after the establishment of Medicare and Medicaid. By 1980 immigrants were still only six percent of the population, but real wages hadn't grown in seven or eight years.
At the same time, it may be time to put a moratorium on immigration because of the anger it has caused. I have heretofore been in favor of open immigration, but about ten years ago I remember thinking that perhaps a moratorium on immigration might be helpful to American workers, who have suffered grievously at the hands of the Fed, the Democratic Party, and big government. In general, a free economy based on limited government will result in optimal economic outcomes, including rising real wages, modest income inequality, and a stock market, with six percent returns. In the 19th century most of the returns from the stock market were in the form of dividends.
Besides immigration, my chief point of disagreement with Carlson is that he seems to believe that old-fashioned state activist liberalism--New Deal liberalism,--ought to be the new conservatism. The old-fashioned state activist liberalism of the 1930-1970s may still capture President Trump's supporters' imaginations, but it will not restore the economy; it will not restore real wage growth; it will not return the country to the rapid economic growth of the laissez faire, Progressive, and New Deal eras (which ended in the 1960s).
It is true that much of America's elite--the Clintons, Buffetts, Goldman Sachses, Zuckerbergs, Soroses--are a cancer on the average wage. It is also true that New Deal policies led directly to their ascendancy, and the group that was in power before them was already taking the country down a primrose path. Replacing today's rapacious, politically correct, finance-and-technology elites with the military-industrial complex about which Eisenhower and C Wright Mills warned and included George HW Bush's dad, Prescott Bush, will not change the underlying problem, which is the result of monetary and regulatory systems controlled by a centralized, special-interest dominated state. The federal government has squashed real wages and allocated credit to crappy technology like Facebook, crooked Wall Streeters like George Soros, and crooked hacks like the Clintons and Bushes.
Franklin Roosevelt, copying the innovations of Gustav von Schmoller and Bismarck in Germany, implemented a system that has similarities to what brothers Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus imagined for Republican Rome in the early phases of the Roman Revolution, which led to its becoming a dictatorship, then an empire, and ultimately a monarchy: Their plan was to give the plebeians cheap grain. (Later in the empire Emperor Septimius Severus made grain free.) The dislocations of World War I and Progressive eras paralleled the processes in the Roman Revolution, which lasted about 150 years. Although the Progressive era was short, its system may last for as long as the early empire and the Pax Romana, which lasted 150-200 years. It may be that in 2,000 years historians will view our era as an extension of the Progressive and World War I eras. This is already occurring as historians are beginning to view the two world wars as one war.
It is sad to see an America with the beautiful ideals of Locke and Jefferson turned into a bread-and-circus, totalitarian state dominated by the nincompoops of today's state, technology, and finance elites and their dumbed-down propagandist-journalists. Carlson's hilarious depiction of psychopath Max Boot is on the money.
Even if President Trump follows the proscriptions of Carlson and slows the looting by state, technology, and Wall Street elites, there is little hope for improvement because Americans have been satisfied with a $16,000 Social Security benefit, a welfare check, and Medicare. The dynamics of public choice and special interest behavior guarantee that a large, centralized government will benefit the most corrupt and opportunistic, and Carlson's debate with the Democrats ignores the underlying dynamic.
Thursday, January 31, 2019
Jim Cramer's Gold Gene
According to Kitco, Jim Cramer has predicted a 15% increase in the price of gold. I last bought a physical ounce of gold in the fall of 2018, when the price dipped to $1,165. It is currently above $1300. I don't know where the price will go. Jim Rogers believes that it will fall back to $900, where it was in 2008. I'm still a buyer at $1300, but not much above. I had bought some gold investments in the 1300s a year or two ago, and some are still in the red, but the inflection point seems to be approaching.
I once ran into Jim Cramer on the New York City subway. There was this dapper guy standing in front of me while I was half napping, and I kept thinking that he looked familiar. I finally roused myself out of my torpor and asked him, "Do you work at Brooklyn College?" He replied in a whisper, "Television Show."
I like his show, but I don't watch TV often. I see Cramer as a voice of Wall Street. Hence, when Kitco quotes Cramer as follows, there is reason to think that a bull market in gold is near:
Don’t listen to the Fed watchers who claim that Powell caved to the stock market or the president...The only thing Powell caved to is reality … This is about the economy — who doesn’t want a healthy economy? If Powell had stuck to his plan for a series of lockstep rate hikes, it would’ve been a lot more devastation to Main Street than to Wall Street.
It pays to read between the lines when listening to Wall Streeters talk about the Fed. If they ever told the truth, there would be a revolution. What Cramer is saying is that short-term economic contingencies are making long-term dollar declines necessary. That means that gold will rise. The $1500 price target is a short-term prediction based on Cramer's intuition or inside information. The ultimate price of gold in our lifetimes is likely to be much higher. That's because of massive indebtedness.
My late friend Howard S. Katz used to talk about a commodity pendulum, whereby monetary expansion causes low-interest-rate borrowing by miners, who overexpand. That crushes commodity prices in the short run. In the long run the miners go bankrupt because of the competition from the overexpansion, and the declining supply leads to sharp price increases.
My guess is that there will be a short-term bubble, perhaps to $1500 as Cramer says, then a downturn, perhaps as far back as the 1100s, but not necessarily. This will punish short-term buyers, making it easier for insiders to buy at a cheaper price. Eventually, we will be seeing much higher prices in gold. It is debatable whether an ultimate dollar collapse will lead to a new gold standard. If it does, we could see $10,000 gold, so my 2010 prediction of $3,500 may have been too low.
I once ran into Jim Cramer on the New York City subway. There was this dapper guy standing in front of me while I was half napping, and I kept thinking that he looked familiar. I finally roused myself out of my torpor and asked him, "Do you work at Brooklyn College?" He replied in a whisper, "Television Show."
I like his show, but I don't watch TV often. I see Cramer as a voice of Wall Street. Hence, when Kitco quotes Cramer as follows, there is reason to think that a bull market in gold is near:
Don’t listen to the Fed watchers who claim that Powell caved to the stock market or the president...The only thing Powell caved to is reality … This is about the economy — who doesn’t want a healthy economy? If Powell had stuck to his plan for a series of lockstep rate hikes, it would’ve been a lot more devastation to Main Street than to Wall Street.
It pays to read between the lines when listening to Wall Streeters talk about the Fed. If they ever told the truth, there would be a revolution. What Cramer is saying is that short-term economic contingencies are making long-term dollar declines necessary. That means that gold will rise. The $1500 price target is a short-term prediction based on Cramer's intuition or inside information. The ultimate price of gold in our lifetimes is likely to be much higher. That's because of massive indebtedness.
My late friend Howard S. Katz used to talk about a commodity pendulum, whereby monetary expansion causes low-interest-rate borrowing by miners, who overexpand. That crushes commodity prices in the short run. In the long run the miners go bankrupt because of the competition from the overexpansion, and the declining supply leads to sharp price increases.
My guess is that there will be a short-term bubble, perhaps to $1500 as Cramer says, then a downturn, perhaps as far back as the 1100s, but not necessarily. This will punish short-term buyers, making it easier for insiders to buy at a cheaper price. Eventually, we will be seeing much higher prices in gold. It is debatable whether an ultimate dollar collapse will lead to a new gold standard. If it does, we could see $10,000 gold, so my 2010 prediction of $3,500 may have been too low.
Monday, January 21, 2019
Sunday Snow
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| The Bushkill Creek as seen from my yard on Sunday, Jan. 20 |
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| My house. The snow was about six inches deep. |
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| Went for a walk on Moon Haw Road. A cabin that belongs to one of my neighbors. |
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| The view from Moon Haw as I walk back home. My house is at the foot of the small mountain ahead. |
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