When Colleges Say "Inclusive," What They Really Mean Is "No Conservatives"

The New York Post quotes my liberal arts study in an editorial today.  The editorial notes that speakers invited to campuses like SUNY Albany are overwhelmingly left wing.  At Indiana the rato is 30:9; at GWU the ratio is 9:2; at Alabama the ratio is 9:2, and at Vermont it is 44:2.  

This kind of phenomenon is consistent with the claims of Jonathan Haidt, the founder of Heterodox Academy and a brilliant psychological ethicist.  I am reading through Haidt's book Righteous Mind now, and his point is that moral reasoning is chiefly used to justify emotional moral reactions.  

Moral reasoning is not the way that we come to our chief political conclusions.  Rather, we tend to reason in a way that justifies conclusions at which we have arrived. We arrive at the conclusions in the first place through emotion; we then seek to confirm the emotional reaction by exposing ourselves to people and to reasoning that agrees with our feelings.  

As a result, social science is by nature susceptible to ideological bias as social scientists skew their findings, whether intentionally or unintentionally, in the direction that fits their preconceptions.  That occurs with respect to hiring as well as campus speaker invitations. 

Women's Studies: 50 Points If You Punch a Nazi, and You Define What "Nazi" Means

This is an eminently quotable satire of women's studies by a  California adjunct professor who calls herself "Embarrassing Mom" (h/t Glenda McGee). Women's studies is an increasingly influential component of history and social science.

How the Democratic Party Has Caused Upstate New Yorkers to Flee

Upstate New Yorkers flee in large numbers.  According  to Jeff Platsky of the Binghamton Press and Sun-Bulletin. (h/t Glenda McGee),  84 people leave Broome County each month, 39 leave Chemung County, and 29 leave Tioga County.   

Platsky observes that every single county along Route 17 from Orange County to Pennsylvania has declined in population over the past decade; moreover, in upstate New York overall, 42 of 50 counties lost population.  Route 17 runs along the state's southern rim, known as the Southern Tier, which borders Pennsylvania. 

The reason is simple: lack of jobs. Yet, the Democratic Party has prevented  fracking in the Marcellus basin, which would have created thousands of jobs.  Instead, the jobs went to Pennsylvania.  Meanwhile, New York has the worst income inequality in the country--and the highest electricity rates.

Much of the protest against fracking has been misguided. For instance, Youtube  carries several videos of people who are able to ignite their tap water. The video makers claim that the problem was caused by nearby fracking. 

I asked a colleague at Brooklyn College about the videos.  The colleague, Constantin Cranganu, is a geologist who has written books on fracking. He told me that the water was catching on fire before the fracking and that fracking cannot possibly cause this, in part because the fracking occurs at a depth of over a mile while the water well is 100 or 200 feet deep.  Thousands of tons of rock separate the well from the fracking drill. 

Yet, meshuggener Democrats show this video to each other and proclaim that they wear the mantle of the one settled science, courtesy of Youtube, Bill Maher, and Al Gore. 

Writing in Forbes in 2015, Jude Clemente notes that New York's natural gas consumption had risen by more than a third, to 60% of its entire energy generation, but the state cut its natural gas production in the interest of ideological purity. The anti-fracking proponents are rich Democrats who work in tax-subsidized businesses: academia, government, law, and health care.  They have no qualms about forcing blue collar laborers into permanent unemployment. 

The handful of upstate counties that have gained population in New York mostly have been the ones surrounding Albany, seat of New York's bloated state government, or college towns. 

Platsky notes that there have been plenty of bureaucratically inspired, state-subsidized development schemes, all of which have failed.  

The exit of manufacturers like IBM and GE in the 1980s has not been followed by the kind of innovation that occurs in a free market economy. New York's high tax rates and totalitarian regulatory regime have inhibited entrepreneurship.  Retirees have little incentive to stay because of the cold climate and high taxes. 

The Trade War, Central Bank Contraction, and Stock Market Volatility

Two useful emails today came from Liberty Investor’s Brandon Smith and Daily Proof’s Jim Rickards. 

Based on the correlation between G3 central bank balance sheets and stock prices, Smith  writes that the rising stock market has had had little to do with free markets but rather is the product of central bank asset purchases.  When the central bank sells assets, stock prices will reverse. 

The G3 are the US, Japan, and Europe. 

Smith claims that currently fashionable stock buybacks are the last gasp of paper money stimulus.  The trade war, in Smith’s view, is a mere distraction. 

                                     Source: Brandon Smith, Liberty Investor

Central bank monetary expansion, the result of expansion of central bank balance sheets, underlies the rising stock market that we have witnessed for the past century.  What have been remarkable about the post-2008 period are the enormous quantity of bank credit created, the enormous quantity of assets purchased, and the enormous stock market bubble. 

Central bankers and their shills in the media and academia claim that reducing asset holdings will not matter because so much assets have been purchased.  It is kind of like Bill Gates giving to charity: He is still very rich even after giving away a lot.  The Establishment claims that contraction can be done gradually and in the Goldilocks manner--just right. 

At the same time, additional regulation, including tariffs, can reduce the potency of the narcotic of flexible money by making firms less profitable, i.e., reducing efficiency.   Once a given regulatory system is in place, monetary policy will drive the stock market, but if there is disruption, then there can be sharp change. If the disruption occurs in tandem with monetary contraction, then it seems likely that it can contribute to declines.   

Smith is right that monetary contraction will threaten the stock market; adding tariffs to the mix can contribute, but it is not the underlying factor.  

Jim Rickards has been writing about central bank policy for a long time, but he puts greater emphasis on the tariffs.  He cites Patrick Donahue and Arne Delfs of Bloomberg news, who have written a piece about a warning by German chancellor Angela Merkel of a potential global financial crisis because of the tariffs.  

The Establishment is always careful not to question  central banks, for the state depends on wealth extraction from the productive population using paper money.  In this way both the financial sector and the state are aligned with the central banks. The general population believes the claims of the media and universities that big government is necessary to its well being and low wages are necessary to their happiness--except when the subject of income inequality is raised; then,low wages are a problem that requires bigger government.

Hence, Rickards's comments are compatible with Smith’s claim.  Smith's claim that news about tariffs is coordinated with central bank policy is impossible to substantiate, but the underlying elements are present. 

While stock markets decline because of monetary contraction, tapering, or deleveraging (choose your mumbo jumbo) and contraction saddens Wall Street, the average American has been hurt financially by the long-term, century-long monetary monetary expansion. It has led to declines in innovation rates and the real hourly wage. It also has led to expanding income inequality.