Economy

Get a Grip on Economic Reality

Mark Noonan7 Comments

Not quite the meltdown we were promised, is it? Oh, I get it – we’re not out of the woods yet. A reshaping of the American and global economic order isn’t going to be easy and there will be rough patches…but after global markets melted down we were promised a new Back Monday this…well, Monday. You know: something like a 25% drop in stock prices. Didn’t happen. A slight drop after all was said and done…and so far today things are positive. Maybe it ends positive or negative…but it isn’t a Crash.

People went into panic mode because they’re stupid and ignorant. A bad combination. The Official Economic Narrative is that tariffs caused or exacerbated the Great Depression. This is dogma – people believe this with the faith of a Christian in the life of the world to come…perhaps even more so. As I’ve said many times over the years, this Narrative is drivel. And we’ll go back to the other Great Depression to illustrate my point.

Other Great Depression? Yes, folks: history didn’t start last week. Been going on for a while now and there really is nothing new under the sun. The Other – or earlier – Great Depression started with The Panic of 1873. Like the Great Depression we’re all familiar with, it was triggered by a financial crash in Austria (then the Austro-Hungarian Empire). But that was just the trigger – a series of bank failures which rippled out through the economic world…not really causing the Depression so much as exposing the underlying economic malaise. The real problem was excess production capacity in the world – and this was created largely by we Americans and the Germans.

For America, in the aftermath of the Civil War we went on a boom of investment in new enterprises, especially railroads. Everyone is familiar with the trans-continental railroad completed in 1869 but that represented only a small amount of the new tracks laid. We had a positive mania for building railroads – and this called forth a lot of attendant economic activity to support this construction. It was all great except for one thing…we were building far more than we needed. The trans-continental was needed but the amount of people and freight to ship across it was limited. The far west still having very low population and there not being a huge Pacific trade like we have today. Meanwhile, over in Germany, the Krauts were slopping over with money they extracted from France after the Franco-Prussian War in 1870 – five billion francs in gold. This infusion of cash plus the euphoria of victory in war cause the Germans to also go on a mania of building capacity they didn’t need at the moment. Oh, sure, like the American railroads what the Germans built (also a lot of railroads) would eventually be extremely useful but it was a very hothouse climate of building capacity that simply wasn’t needed at the moment. And to get all this done the Germans, like the Americans, also created a debt bubble which could only be sustained as long as the building mania lasted. Once the financial crisis was triggered in Austria, the debt bubble came crashing down and started what the people of the time called The Great depression.

And it was a bad one. Around the world all major economic powers felt it and it went on for five or six years. Lots of unemployment, businesses closing, reduced production. Just a miserable lousy time but back in those days Keynes wasn’t born and writing his drivel so everyone just tightened their belts and kept working until the years went on and the economy recovered. And so it did. For the USA, we emerged from it around 1879 and things were swell until the Panic of 1893 tossed us back into a shorter but actually more severe Depression. Lets say, though, that by 1880 the whole world had emerged from the Depression following ’73. With one exception: the richest and most powerful nation in the world: the United Kingdom. It didn’t emerge from Depression until after the Depression caused by the Panic of 1893. In that country the period 1873 to about 1899 is called the Long Depression. It wasn’t as severe as what happened in the USA or Germany, nor as bad as the 1930’s Depression but it was, as you can see, a very long time to be in the economic doldrums. Here’s the curious thing about it – the German and American economies which recovered faster were Protected, while the British economy which was mired longest was Free Trade.

According to our Official Economic Narrative the US and German tariffs should have mired those countries in Depression longer while the Free Trade regime of the UK should have resulted in rapid recovery. Because, you know, a tariff is a tax on consumers and they always cause a Depression. Except, as we can see, history doesn’t show this. It doesn’t even show it for the Great Depression of the 1930’s.

Nothing in economic history was more severe than the Depression of the 1930’s – both for adverse effects and length of time, it was the worst of the worst. This is because there are two things which will cause an economic crash:

  1. Overcapacity.
  2. Decline of demand.

It can be one or both in combination. If you have too much capacity you will hit the wall as you won’t have consumers for all your products. If you lose demand then, well, duh; people aren’t buying your products. The Great Depression of the 1930s was the worst ever experience because it was a very savage combination of both things. And as I’ve said, it all stems from World War One. Really can’t emphasize this enough – the War killed at least 10 million fit, young men. The stored wealth of a century was shot out a cannon. Gigantic additional production capacity was created to feed the insatiable maw of the armies. And then just as the War was coming to a close, the Spanish Flu showed up – to this day nobody knows for sure how many people died of it but estimates run from a low of 17 million to a high of 50 million. Given what happened in the 30’s, I lean towards the higher figure. And that flu wasn’t just any, old flu: for some bizarre reason it mostly killed fit, young men and women (most flu kill the very old and very young). You just gotta think of that scythe through the population of the future…the people who would be having children, building homes, buying products…just gone. Wiped out and over a total period of just six years. As many as 60 million…and this out of a global population of 1.5 billion. It would be like 320 million people dying in the next 6 years. Imagine the dislocation of that!

And that, my friends, was why the Great Depression happened. Not tariffs. Not monetary policy (ie, being on the Gold Standard). Not anything but the fact that while the world built massive capacity 1914-1918 it was losing massive demand…while simultaneously blowing through its entire life savings and then piling up huge, unpayable debts. And the reason why the proposed “cure” for the Depression didn’t work was because the Keynesian model said that if consumer demand is down you can stimulate it with government spending. First off, wow what a stupid concept: the government money is extracted from the people with low demand…how does that do other than harm? But supposed by some magical operation it didn’t harm, how could it help? The people were already out there – needing food, clothing, housing, etc. The demand was there. It doesn’t need to be stimulated. In fact, it can’t be stimulated. Our problem was we could make far more than the people needed while having a web of unsustainable debt honeycombing the financial system. Honestly, the way out of the Depression was probably just an annulment of global debts…just pretend nobody owed anyone anything and start from scratch. Would still have caused a Depression but probably only for a year or two. But here’s the thing, no matter what you did, the only way to get more demand – to get back to that happy time of 1913 – was for the demand lost in War/Disease to be replaced…and that takes new people.

And eventually the world got it – in the post-WWII Baby Boom and a generally more survivable environment for humanity. And it was everywhere all at once. Sure, the Third World had the least immediate improvement but improvements in survival were global – and from infant to adult (lost in the press of events post-WWII is the fact that the introduction of modern, Western hygiene practices during the American occupation of Japan saved more lives 1945-1950 than were taken during the war). This huge increase in population – 2 billion to 8 billion in just a century – is what has made the wealth of today possible. There are 4 people in the world today for every person there was a century ago…all needing food, housing, clothing, etc. A tariff will not close down this demand. The market will remain. And remain insatiable. Trump’s tariffs wouldn’t kill this goose laying the golden eggs…the only thing that can kill it is massive overcapacity or massive population drop (which is coming starting in 2100 but we won’t concern ourselves with that today). All Trump is trying to do is to move some of the capacity back to the USA so that American workers can fill some of this insatiable global demand…like we used to until some moron decided that Free Trade was the way to go. Side note: he’s not really going for zero-zero on tariffs…that’s an element which will be prudentially applied case-by-case but the goal is to get production back home. Bottom line: the tariffs aren’t going away.

Real world, guys. Real world. It is time for us to get back into it. We’ve been living in a fantasy world constructed by morons who are mostly trying to justify continued Moron Rule. The people who have run our system – and run it into the ground – really have no clue what they’re doing. They’re just in charge of it and rich off it and so don’t want it to change. They don’t care that the nation is dying and the world is on fire (the Ruling Class left off any concept of God or morality decades ago)…they got theirs and they want to keep it. Trump isn’t actually threatening their wealth…he’s threatening their position and that is why they are so firmly opposed…but being stupid they can only oppose him via stupid means (but, be careful; stupid people can pull a trigger, as we saw twice last year).

As I said, there will be shocks and even outright failures as we MAGA. Going to happen. Won’t be easy. But we’re on the path to success. Just stick it out.

An Urban Homestead Act

Mark Noonan12 Comments

We do have to think long-term a bit. Our immediate need is to gain control of the government, de-fund the Left and set the stage where freedom and logic have a shot at winning. But the bottom line is that political success in a democratic Republic requires that the people feel like they’re getting advantage out of you being in power. This mostly translates into how are they doing economically.

Trump economic policy, carried through, will go a long way on this – we might be in for a rough year but the cessation of inflationary spending, the tax cuts and the regulatory easements will lead to rapid economic expansion. That’s good and if it comes soon enough it might even allow us to win – or at least hold our own – in the 2026 midterms. But we have to be cognizant of the fact that last November 75 million people voted for a talentless, ignorant person of zero accomplishments. A good number of those voters are just hate-filled, Democrat bigots – not reachable by us no matter what we do. But the fear is that a flip of just 1.5 million Trump voters means we lose. Think of the catastrophe we’d be stuck in right now if Harris was in office. We dodged a bullet – and we need to think of ways to ensure we dodge it going forward.

And the seeds of what we need to do are right there in the election results – Trump did better than any GOPer ever among traditionally Democrat constituencies. These people voted for hope: a hope that Trump would revive the economy and give them a shot. If we don’t deliver on that hope we’re doomed – but if we can deliver even better than expected, those voters might start to come over to us in droves, leaving the Democrats in the position of the GOP 1932-1952. Think of all the Democrats accomplished in that 20 year period we were out: total transformation of the USA. We can do that, too; if we have the power.

Lots of people will have lots of ideas on this and here is mine: an Urban Homestead Act.

All through the big cities we see swaths of totally abandoned residential and commercial land. You’ve seen the videos – just totally blighted buildings (when they’re still standing). Testament to a different America 60+ years ago when our urban cores were places of work and hope, not death and despair. I know what you’re thinking: not another urban redevelopment plan! It isn’t! Promise! Those old liberal urban plans were merely giveaways to cronies…if anything concrete was accomplished it was either useless or merely catered to upper class urban liberals (you know – building an arts center…places to display garbage liberal art and it is all staffed by well-paid liberal foot soldiers). I have something else in mind: to turn decayed neighborhoods back into thriving communities. Turning abandoned factories and stores back into thriving businesses. Here’s the nutshell of it:

The federal government does a survey in a city (let’s say min population has to be 100,000) and if they determine a certain percentage is blighted (I’d go with something like a figure equal to 25% of the blighted land in Detroit), it is seized under eminent domain and becomes federal land (not exactly what was intended with this provision but after Kelo totally reasonable, and what we’re doing is actually good). We don’t overly interfere with local zoning ordinances (except in such cases where they are just liberal NIMBY urban planning trash) – if it is zoned residential, it remains that. So, too, with commercial and industrial zoning. The government clears away the completely useless buildings, cleans up those buildings which are still usable (even if they need work). The resultant properties go into a pool and at fixed times and places, American citizens (only citizens, and never corporations) can stake a claim to the properties…just like the old Homestead Act, if you stay on it for five years and develop it (you know, build or repair the house; open a factory up in that industrial property, etc) then title is transferred to you.

First thing: this will cost. Probably a lot. Not in obtaining the property – under eminent domain the full market value has to be paid but we’re talking here about de-facto abandoned property. We’d have to draw up some rules on that but a rule of thumb would be if the city hasn’t collected property taxes on it for, say, five years before it is seized in eminent domain, then that is abandoned property – it has no legal owner. Sure, there would be lawsuits on it…we’d win them. But the real expense comes in clearing/cleaning the property. But that, my friends, is the first step in giving benefit to the people…this would open up a huge number of low skilled jobs in areas of highest economic blight. Anyone can haul away trash. We just created some jobs – sure, government funded, but still private sector (various contractors would obviously be employed here) and just in cleaning up the mess, that will start to improve the areas we’re working in.

Second thing: making sure we’re not screwing ourselves. One thing is to make sure that the corrupt city governments don’t get their greedy little fingers in here. That’s part of the reason to federalize the property…but it can’t stay federal forever and I don’t want, say, the mayor of Chicago licking his chops at how much property taxes he’s going to be able to collect in five years. So, such property after transfer of title remains federal land for twenty years – federal land, no local or State taxes on it. The provision against corporations getting the land is because I don’t want corrupt political machines in the cities setting up fake corporations to stake a claim and then in five years just selling it off at whatever price after Uncle Sam picked up the tab for cleaning the land. This act is for people, not for governments or corporations. After the title is transferred then what will happen will happen…but the connected are not taking this thing over.

Some incentives:

Aside from being property-tax free for a total of twenty five years, I would also make the labor and material costs of fixing/building on the properties tax deductible. Full ride on it – whatever you spent to get that house or factory into working order, write it off your taxes…and you can allocate those costs over a twenty year period (you don’t have to take the write off in one year…you spent, say, $100,000 on it, go ahead and spread that tax deduction over five, ten or twenty years as seems best to you.

For contractors actually doing the work (as most of it will be) profits from such work are taxed at half whatever federal rate you pay on profits. Massive incentive for contractors to get into this…and pass at least part of the savings on to the customer. So, too, with materials sold to people building on the Homestead properties – you sell lumber then the lumber you sell for this is taxed less. The key here is to kickstart the thing – to make everyone want to jump in. And, of course, the goal was two-fold from the start: to revive these blighted areas, and to provide an increased market for goods and services. Because then the final step here: all materials used in these properties must be American made. We’re not doing this so China can sell us more drywall (some care will have to be taken here – if there is some aspect of this that is genuinely not available in the USA or not available in sufficient amount then we can grant some easements on this requirement…but just think about what is needed to build any structure and you know that 90%+ of it is easily obtainable in the USA). Think of the ripple effects in the economy as more lumber, nails, drywall, ducting, glass, wiring and on and on and on have to be made in the USA to rebuild America.

Anyways, that is the basics of my idea. Sure it would actually need refinement and there would be lots of nuance based on local conditions but the basic concept is to get Americans to rebuild America using American materials for the benefit of Americans. And I’m sure other people will come up with other ideas or improvements to this one. But we need the ideas. We need to talk about them. Send them along to those in charge or who have influence. Even if its just a tiny bit…that is how things are supposed to be done in the USA. Bottom up – the people are the prime movers, the government just clears the decks. And if we do this – and a hundred other good ideas as well – we’ll leave the Left out in the cold. They can’t come up with positive, helpful ideas – because they hate the USA and Americans. They don’t want us doing well – they want us punished for our sins, real and imagined. But as long as they can talk a game about helping, their message will resonate…if, however, we show the people that we’re helping, all the talk in the world won’t change the result.

Making, Mining and Growing America Great Again

Mark Noonan6 Comments

Haven’t yammered on about this issue for a while – but it is time to revisit it.

As everyone knows, I assert that national wealth is only what we make, mine and grow. Tangible goods that allow human beings to live – the more you have, the richer you are. Its the difference between being in a besieged city and having a stack of treasury notes or a stack of pancakes; who, then, is the rich man? In and around our immigration debate – legal and illegal – what we’re not getting is any discussion of what we’re trying to accomplish.

The pro-immigration types are telling us that we must have immigrants to compete in a global market. And there is some logic in this – if India has A Brilliant Scientist then it would be nice if the USA could poach A Brilliant Scientist. You know, like all the physicists we picked up from Europe prior to WWII. This is a “no duh” situation. But are we really doing that? Who are we really getting? A lot of people have dug into the H1B database (which I’m confident they’ll try to make classified so we can’t read it any longer) and found stuff like this:

Fast and Friendly seems to need a lot of foreign employees…to manage convenience stores. Which is an important job – we Americans do depend on our convenience stores – but it doesn’t seem, you know?, crucial to the global success of the United States. And that is before we start thinking it over and realize that a lot of companies are clearly becoming visa mills…and I’ll bet a lot of these “employees” are paying for the privilege and using it as the merest means to skip the immigration line…you know, once in under any sort of legal status it gets hard for us to get them out again.

One thing I’m not seeing in these applications for H1B is things like “farmer”, “miner”, “welder”…you know, people who would actually contribute to increasing American wealth. I mean, we do still have mines and farms and right now they’re beating the bushes looking for welders. But not a lot of H1Bs for these. Why not? Why are our H1Bs for tech workers and, as we can see here, low-rent retail? The claim is that we only do this because out of 340 million Americans we couldn’t find a single person to fill the position and so we had no choice but to import someone.

Sorry, that is just a lie. I get it – there really are some first rate people out there that American corporations would like to hire but the H1B program, whatever it was intended for, has just become a means of importing cheap labor…and likely includes a series of scams designed to rip off the system. It is clearly time to massive reform the H1B system to ensure that there really is a search for American talent and only after that search proves fruitless do we bring in a foreigner…with a proviso that if a foreigner is a stand-out brilliant engineer or doctor or some other solid, scientific discipline we bring them in just because its smart to have as many such as you can get.

And it is also time for us to start getting back to making, mining and growing things. We need to reconfigure the American economy to make it welcoming of the hard worker…the person who is willing to get dirty to make things, mine things and grow things. And in that, maybe we will have to import some foreigners because, lets face it, some Americans are downright lazy (it is a disease of wealth). But however we manage it, we must get back to a productive America…an America that once again builds wealth from the ground up. And, side note on this: if we become a productive America again, then nobody is really going to fuss about foreigners moving in…its the difference between getting an additional factory worker rather than just a lower-wage replacement coder.

South Africa’s Failed Promise: A Warning for the USA

Mark Noonan1 Comment

How are things in South Africa? Not too well:

The peace of a normally tranquil suburban road near South Africa’s capital, Pretoria, is being shattered by the sound of drilling.

These are not prospectors looking for a new source of the country’s mineral wealth, but workers digging for an arguably more precious resource: water.

Private boreholes – like this one being excavated in Garsfontein – are springing up across the wealthier neighbourhoods in the country’s economic heartland, where taps have been running dry.

Why have they been running dry? Not for lack of water – it is for lack of power to keep the pumps running:

South Africa’s state power utility Eskom may have to increase power cuts to an unprecedented level this winter, a company executive said on Thursday, as the country grapples with its worst power crisis on record.

This is leading to some interesting, new experiences of South Africans (aside from having to drill their own wells):

The death toll from a cholera outbreak in South Africa has climbed to 26 in recent days, with dozens more hospitalized while frustration mounts over the government’s response to the disease, which is common in several areas of Africa but rarely spreads in this country…

…Analysts point to chronic power outages that have left economically impoverished areas of South Africa without electricity for up to 12 hours a day as winter takes hold in the Southern Hemisphere.

The South African government response? Blame (and punish) whitey:

Newly-drafted regulations in South Africa are sparking anger over water usage for white people. The nation continues to grapple with the idea of race quota politics aimed at addressing the inequalities caused by apartheid.

Last month, the ruling African National Congress (ANC) government published draft regulations that would implement race quotas for the allocation of water use licenses for businesses.

South Africa is a civilization in collapse. And it is rather sad – I had some hope early on that they’d avoid what the rest of Africa went through when it transitioned to majority black rule. Mandela, especially, impressed as he did speak strongly for racial reconciliation and then, most incredibly, voluntarily left power when he could have easily set himself up as yet another African “President for life”. I figured that after a while of trying Socialism (the ANC emerged out of Communism, of course) wiser heads would prevail and they’d get to work building the wealth necessary to raise the black majority up to First World economic standards. South Africa is a very large country (doesn’t look like it on the map, but its more than 471,000 square miles) which is just slopping over with natural resources. It also inherited a functioning, First World economic system and infrastructure. All it would have taken was work – lots and lots of hard work. And time: at least a century to fully complete the process.

But who wants to work and take all that time?

After Mandela, the ANC opted for favoritism and graft. They took the wealth of South Africa and spent it on themselves and their cronies. This did have the benefit of keeping the ANC in power against its weak and divided opposition but that money was supposed to be spent extending the economic system and infrastructure to black South Africa. It wasn’t spent on that – and over the last decade or so, they didn’t even allocate enough money to maintain the infrastructure they inherited…and so the power and water crisis. And as that crisis deepens the ANC is opting for ever more strident racial politics – it is all whitey’s fault! The legacy of Apartheid! Aside from their proposal to dole out water based on race there is also a growing movement to confiscate white-owned farms (white South Africans do own most of South Africa’s agricultural land) – this is a page out of Zimbabwe.

And it is useful to recall what happened in Zimbabwe. As the post-white government there floundered deeper into corruption and economic decline, they confiscated almost all the white-owned farm land and passed it out to cronies. The drawback here (aside from the injustice) is that these people had no idea how to run a modern, cash-economy farm. Most native African farmers are still subsistence farmers – that means they grow enough for themselves with a small amount leftover to sell for the goods they can’t make themselves. There is a huge difference between subsistence and market agriculture and you can’t just willy-nilly switch from one to the other. You have to learn how to modern farm – and it takes time to do so.

In the end, those confiscated farms (which used to be a breadbasket for Africa) collapsed under mismanagement. The white farmers mostly left but some stayed…on the small plots they were able to keep these (mostly older) white farmers set to work, and taught young black Zimbabweans how to farm. In a few years, these small farms were doing great and while still white-owned, the now very aged white farmers were pretty much retired while the black farm workers were doing well. The Zimbabwe government had a response for all this: confiscate the farms and kick out not just the few remaining white farmers, but also the skilled black farmers working the land. These farms then, too, collapsed under mismanagement.

This is what many in South Africa are proposing to repeat.

And it all comes down to racism, though not as the Global Racial Narrative holds. It isn’t whitey keeping people down. Sure, under Apartheid (and Jim Crow here in the USA) that was the case…but once Apartheid (and Jim Crow) are gone the whole thing becomes a matter of learning and working.

The learning is rather crucial. You don’t just know how to do things. Everything you know was taught to you. You were instructed, even if you don’t remember it. Everyone has to learn.

The economic system and structure of South Africa on the glad morn when Apartheid ended was the product of Dutch and English knowledge applied to South African conditions over a period of centuries. It didn’t just happen – and it wasn’t stolen from anyone. When the Boers showed up in what became Orange Free State there simply wasn’t much there. They reached agreement with some local chiefs about where they could settle but other chiefs were marauding through the area and the Boers had to fight them to secure their lands. That done, they just set to work. It wasn’t easy. They were pioneers in what was mostly a howling wilderness; they had to learn how to farm and work the land to best effect. And they did so.

Make no mistake about it – from the get-go the Boers considered black Africans inferior and would not admit them into Boer society outside a subservient role. They did treat blacks unfairly. You can’t forget that nor undo what happened. But what is crucial to understand is that the Boers worked – they built up out of nothing a modern, functioning society. Around the edges of this society lived black Africans…who also started to learn. But the learning curve was steep and the Boers were exclusionary so there was no full imparting of knowledge from Boer to black African. But there was some and over time black Africans started to enter the modern society the Boers (and, later, the British) were building in South Africa. But most did not; weren’t interested, didn’t like the whites (for good reason) and so kept to their immemorial ways.

But the thing about old ways is that they can’t compete with modern ways. As South Africa went ever higher, more and more black Africans wanted a piece of that pie. The Boers, though, didn’t want to give them a piece and so developed Apartheid. They did want black labor, but not blacks as social equals. Part of this was, of course, sheer malevolent racism…but they also knew that to turn over the country to black Africans would be a disaster. Black Africans wouldn’t know how to run it – just in a practical, day to day sense. It takes time for a people to integrate into new ways of doing things. The Romans governed Britain for more than 350 years – bringing all sorts of social and material advancement to what had been a very backwards people. When the Romans pulled out, the British people forgot how to make bricks.

Bricks. You know: simple rectangular things anyone can make.

Except not everyone can make them. You need the skills – and you also need the settled, regular economic and political system which allows people to take the time to make things like bricks. When the Romans exited they took the skills and the system with them. At the end of Apartheid the black majority simply wasn’t ready to do things like maintain and expand a modern, electrical production and distribution system. White South Africans knew how – and the post-Apartheid government should have had these whites instruct. Instead, they systemically fired the white workers and replaced them with blacks who didn’t have the first clue and only got the job because they were cronies of some ANC power broker.

We’re not supposed to say that, don’t you know? That is, we can’t say that a population of black people is incapable. But it is what it is. Certainly, part of the reason they were incapable was white refusal to teach them over a period of decades. That was grossly unjust – but once again, it is what it is. For whatever bad or good reasons, the black majority simply didn’t know what needed to be done. To get them to the level of the white South Africans was going to take a long time. But nobody can campaign on a promise that you grandchildren will be doing great. The political reality of the sudden transition to black majority rule was always going to be: “vote for me and everything will be perfect”…soon to be followed, after inevitable failure, by “that wicked minority has sabotaged us.”

And it is racism – now just directed at the white minority instead of the black majority. The only way the ANC can fix South Africa’s problems is to enact policies which will eventually lead to ANC political defeat. Can’t have that, right? Much easier (if you’re rich, juiced in and have a government-supplied power generator) to just keep with the current system behind your walled and privately-guarded neighborhood while everything outside goes to hell in a handbasket (yes, Ruling Classes are that cruel and indifferent: they really don’t care how much suffering there is as long as they stay rich – not for nothing did Our Lord say the love of money is the root of all evil). I can easily see the ANC eventually going for anti-white pogroms…which will lead to lots of death and destruction and increased poverty for poor blacks, especially. But what of it? As long as the bosses keep theirs…and as long as the Global Elite looks the other way because the last thing the Global Elite wants is for everyone to pay attention to what is going on in South Africa.

Here’s the bad news – they are bringing this to the USA. Via affirmative action placement in all our institutions and an increasingly brazen racial spoils system the physical infrastructure of the USA collapses in pace with the social collapse as racial animosity increases because people are perceiving that there is a double standard (almost Apartheid-like double standard) in how people are treated by the system. Just as in South Africa, it is unsustainable. Eventually you either have to have people who know what they’re doing, or the infrastructure falls apart (you know; like with bridge collapses and train derailments)…and as the racial divide becomes more stark in how people are treated, social cohesion collapses as people break up into warring tribes, each just looking to loot a bit more than the other tribes.

If we want this to stop then we simply have to stop it. All racial considerations must be dropped. In fact, probably best if we made racial categorization illegal; that is, explicitly forbidding people to take race (or gender, religion, orientation, etc) into consideration on any decision. Merit must be the absolute dictator – from kindergarten to the heights of economic and political power. Anyone who can’t cut it…well, they can’t cut it. Maybe the reason they can’t cut it is because of some injustice in the past. Doesn’t matter. Either you can, or you can’t. If you can’t, then the world still needs ditch diggers…be a good ditch digger and maybe your kid will go to college and be one of those who can cut it higher up the ladder. Sorry that life can suck at times – but all work is honorable and we’re trying to build for the future, not make you feel better today.

What we certainly can’t do is go on as we are – because if we do then in 10 years we’ll have “load shedding” for electricity use as cholera spreads…and while a corrupt Ruling Class steals the last nickel we have. Better for a time a of reality – where we simply call things as they are, and build up from where we are, not where we wished we were.

Financial Crimes

Mark Noonan15 Comments

The Game Stop scandal once and for all exposed just how corrupt the financial system is. The bottom line is that regular folks simply outwitted the Experts and the Experts, rather than take the loss and learn the lesson, called on the power of major corporations and government regulators to squash the regular folks. They do want us to take our savings and dump it in the market, but they don’t want a million of us, each using our $1,000.00, to do what they do all the time – manipulate stock prices for personal benefit.

This was also a rare moment of unity where everyone from Commies to MAGA were united in their outrage. Naturally, most solutions proposed for this are ineffective. I’m still in favor of breaking up all large corporations and confiscating all personal wealth above $5 billion (the proceeds to be distributed by lottery to American citizens in $100,000.00 lots). But even the Commies aren’t in favor of that. So, as we won’t actually solve the problem, a few other proposals.

  1. You can’t sell stock you don’t own (they really do this).
  2. The additional capital gains tax on a stock held less than 24 hours is 90%. Less than a week, 50%. Less than a month, 40%. Thirty one days or longer, no additional penalty. The idea here is to get people to be investors, rather than gamblers.
  3. Corporate boards are responsible, civil and criminal, if financially critical corporate information leaks before public announcement (this to hamper insider trading; don’t go after the guy who acts on a tip – go after the tipster).
  4. Shares of corporations bidding for government contracts in excess of $10 billion cannot be traded until after the contract is released. Once you start the bid process, no one can buy or sell your stock (this to prevent government people from insider trading).
  5. No bail out, ever, for any financial corporation. Sink or swim.
  6. No corporate executive can become a government employee until five years after leaving corporate employment. No government employee can become a corporate executive or board member until ten years after leaving government.
  7. Corporations with a market cap in excess of $1 billion cannot donate to political parties; pay speaking fees; employ spouses, siblings; children, grandchildren, parents, first cousins or in-laws of government officials

I know we’ve all defended free markets – and, in fact, we still do. But the reality is that we don’t have free markets. We have a quasi-feudal, bastard child of Capitalism and Socialism. The economy isn’t for GDP. It isn’t to get rich. It isn’t to provide a tax base. It is to allow one person, working hard and living frugally, to support a family and leave a legacy for children. Anything that is not geared towards that is bad and must go. Until we wake up to the fact that the system, itself, has to go, we really won’t get anywhere.

Thinking About Ships

Mark Noonan6 Comments

The Trump Administration has forced a Chinese company to sell its ownership stake in the Port of Long Beach. This is good, but it got me thinking for a bit about the sad state of America’s merchant marine. Not counting nations like Panama because lots of ships are registered there for tax purposes, the bottom still is that our merchant marine is pathetically small. There are both national security and economic issues at stake here. We need a large merchant fleet because during wartime we’ll instantly need a large number of experienced mariners, as well as a large sea transport capacity. We also need a large merchant fleet because having such gives us the benefit of our control of the seas (right now we keep the sea lanes open for everyone else), maintains a large shipbuilding industry vital for war and, of course, provides a large market for American-made products which go to make up ships.

Our Libertarian friends are going to hate this, but if building up and maintaining a large merchant marine requires protectionism, then that is what we’ll have to do. I’d make it that imports into the USA are taxed at a 25% lower rate if they are carried in American-flagged vessels. 50% lower rate if they are American-built, American-flagged US ships. 75% lower rate if 50% of the crew of that American-built, American-flagged ship is American citizens. I’d make it that all trade ships entering US ports must pass American inspections both as to seaworthiness and the training of the crews (I’m especially interested in the cruise trade here…how many times do we see cruise ships going dead in the water?).

I also believe that if we wanted to, we could build ships of higher quality than any other nation on Earth. Ships that will move faster, be more seaworthy and be cheaper to operate. We are Americans: we can do whatever we want. All we have to do is set our mind to it.

Tariffs

Mark Noonan41 Comments

They are bad! Evil! No good! Or, so we’re told – they are at tax on consumers to benefit corporations! They stifle competition! They caused the Great Depression! Yadda, yadda, yadda. I used to believe all that. Seriously. Bought it hook, line and sinker. But over the past 10-15 years, my views have modified.

Britain was the first nation to really go for free trade. They enacted it in the mid-19th century in service to the Liberal view that the freer the market, the better for everyone. There is, of course, much to be said for this: certainly the “Corn Laws” which the British Liberals got rid of were a horrible anachronism which kept food prices for the poor high just to provide a higher profit for rich landowners. But the dogmatic idea that free trade is always good is, in my view, flawed. And I think the experience of Britain proves it.

Right about the time that Britain went for free trade, it was the economic powerhouse of the world. No one could compete with British manufacturing. If you wanted something, you pretty much had to buy it from Britain. In comparison, the manufacturing capacity of the United States and Germany at the time was negligible…while nations like Russia, Japan and France didn’t even really count in the global marketplace. The introduction of free trade did seem to work. Food prices dropped like a rock as cheap, American grain flooded into the British market and Britain’s economic dominance continued for some time. Until, that is, right around the mid-1870s. At that point, the Germans and especially we Americans started to rapidly overtake Britain economically. This shifting of economic dominance was temporarily obscured by the fact that Britain remained until after World War One the financial center of the world – with vast investments, especially, in the United States, Britain’s financial dominance continued unchecked…but in things like coal and steel production, Britain was rapidly feeling the pinch of growing American and German competition. And it was competition from German and American manufacturers who were still protected by tariffs.

The United States kept high import tariffs in place from the Civil War until after World War Two. There were fluctuations, but they were vastly higher than anything we impose today. In some periods of time, ten times higher than they are today. During the time of high tariffs, the United States went from an economic backwater to the economic master of the world. Trouble is, tariffs went into bad repute in the United States because a high tariff enacted at the start of the Great Depression was blamed for deepening and lengthening that economic blight. And, truth be told, it might not have been helpful to impose that tariff at that time. But, really, I don’t think the tariff made the Depression any worse. What I honestly think people miss when discussing the Great Depression is that a combination of war and disease had knocked out of the global economy about 20-30 million young people who would have been both highly productive and who would have also greatly increased demand…no just in themselves, but in the children they would have had. That sort of hole in the economy was going to cause a major problem eventually. In 1929 it did – but years before then, Britain was already mired in Depression and Germany was only kept afloat by loans from the United States (loans made possible by the massive amount sold by the US to the Europeans during World War One).

In the end, I think it is a mixed bag, as is usual in human affairs. Dogma is for theology and not much else…and Free Trade is a dogma who’s time has come and gone, in my view. In general, you do want a free flow of goods, ideas and people. The nations who trade the most tend to do the best because of the cross-fertilization of ideas and methods which results from that trade. What our Progressive friends call “cultural appropriation” is, in reality, how people develope and expand. The more streams of ideas which flow into your nation, the better off you’re likely to be in the long run. That said, there is also the other side of it: the absolute requirement that a nation, as far as possible, remain master of it’s own destiny. It is simply asinine to think that the United States is better off if a majority of, say, our steel making capacity is outside the United States. At the end of the day, we can’t rely on anyone but ourselves…and so we must have the capacity to take care of ourselves in an emergency. And that means we have to retain sufficient productive capacity to do so – and if that means we have to ensure that some level of American production remains via Protection, then that is what we must do.

You see, the economy is not just a number…it isn’t just how much money is flowing through the land. This is especially true now that we use fake money rather than gold and silver backed currency. The economy is what we do to make a living – what we eat, wear, drive, live in. We are 317 million people and in the final analysis we must retain the ability to survive without importing a single thing if necessary. It won’t do us any good to have a bank account fat with fake money if, when a war comes, we can’t produce enough steel to build the ships and tanks we’ll need to fight and win.

We have to strike a balance between the good of having trade and the good of having the ability to take care of ourselves. There is no “right” answer here. What works may change from time to time and we have to remain flexible. To just Protect a dying business is stupid…but to Free Trade ourselves to the point where our business is dying is equally stupid. I think we need to adjust how we measure our economy – throw out the GDP measure. Let’s measure what we make, mine and grow at home. That will tell us how we’re doing. If in Year X we’re producing 10 million tons of Good A, but we find that in Year Y it has declined to 5 million tons, we should look into why. Is it happening because we’re using less of it? Or is it because we’re now importing 5 million tons of it? And then we have to ask ourselves: in any emergency, how much of this stuff do we need to produce? On the flip side, if we find we’re producing 10 million tons but consuming 20 million, we should look into whether or not our tax and regulatory policies are harming our production or whether its a matter of we’re doing all we can and just can’t meet demand via domestic production. That sort of thing will tell us what needs Protection and what needs Free Trade.

The main thing is to not lock ourselves into a Dogmatic view of these things. We need to look at this in the largest sense of what is overall best for us – not for the world; not for the bankers and the mega-corporations…but what is best for us; the people who have to make a living off the economy.

Find the Jobs

Mark Noonan36 Comments

Here’s a story that is bound to bring a smile to Conservative faces: Progressive pizza shop that tried to pay fair wages (as defined by Progs) goes out of business. And, yes, reading it you can see the utter silliness of Progressive thinking. But what isn’t being noticed is, in my mind, the most important thing: the Progs are trying to gin up $15.00 an hour jobs out of $5.00 an hour jobs because they cannot see other types of jobs.

A Progressive sees things like “lawyer”, “professor”, “community organizer” and says, “hey, what great, well-paid jobs!”, while also realizing that not everyone is cut out to be such…but they have to do something, right? So, $15.00 an hour for making pizza. But is it any better on the right? Not really – most on the right also don’t see any jobs but the sort of jobs they know about…and if you can’t get them, well, to bad, so sad. This has the benefit of not stupidly believing that a pizza slicer can make $15.00 an hour, but it has the drawback of not having any sort of $15.00 an hour job for average folks out there. A bit of a shift in understanding is required.

In 2015 (the most recent year I can find any numbers on), the United States consumed 132.8 million metric tons of steel. In that same year, the United States produced 78.9 million metric tons of steel. Do the math and you can see we imported 53.9 million metric tons. The American steel industry has been operating for some years now at about 70% of capacity. What can we get from this?

1. We produce a lot of steel.
2. We can produce a lot more steel, even without building more plants.
3. We import a lot of steel.
4. Given how much we use, there is clearly a massive market for steel.
5. Given that we do produce quite a lot of it, we can make steel profitably.

So, if we use that much steel and we can make that much steel at a good enough profit to justify making steel, why do we import any steel, at all?

Right now, a steel worker makes a bit more than $20 an hour. Not a bad wage. Given that we import 40.58% of our steel, it stands to reason that we can employ a very large number of additional people making steel at $20.00 an hour. It also seems to me that figuring out a way to boost American steel production is a much better way to provide better wages than to either ignore the problem (as the right mostly does) or to demand that burger-flippers get paid near-steel industry wages (as the left stupidly demands). Do keep in mind, this is just talking about steel workers – but steel is made of things like iron and coal and a host of other materials that have to be produced, refined and shipped…all jobs that, also, pay more than burger flipping and which are clearly profitable industries in the United States because we already do them at a profit.

I’m sure the answer is varied for why we don’t. Our tax policies are insane. Our regulatory policies even more so. We allow foreign producers to dump their product on our market because our investor class has a vested interest in high profit margins on their overseas investments. We have environmentalists going nuts over any sort of productive activity. We have upper class twits who don’t want dirty industries anywhere near them. On and on like that – but we must cut that all out. If you want to see the future of America, think of it as 150 million welfare bums, hooked on drugs, sitting around while Progs “fight for 15” and Conservatives write another article about how great free trade is. Unless, that is, we find a way. Just do it – there’s a way to get the United States not only producing the 132.8 million tons of steel we use, but also exporting an additional 100 million tons. Don’t tell me it can’t be done – it can be done. It already is being done…and if it isn’t being done in sufficient volume to employ every single American in a well-paid job, then it is simply because we’re preventing it from happening.

Dogmatic Adherence to Free Trade is Wrong

Mark Noonan5 Comments

For all my adult life I’ve seen the arguments against any sort of Protectionism – and since the rise of Donald Trump, just more so. I understand fully the argument – the free flow of goods, capital and people tends to work to the benefit of those nations which allow such free flow. This is pretty obvious – the more we allow people the freedom to move about and do as they wish, the better, overall, things are. No one will ever be able to construct a rational argument in favor of just locking everyone out (and everyone in). But this does not mean that there is no argument to be made for Protectionism.

In 2015, the United States produced 79 million tons of steel – not a shabby number. But that number was 35 million tons less than in 1967 and wasn’t quite 10% of China’s 2015 production. The fact that China is producing north of 800 million tons of steel does indicate there is a large market for steel. In fact, the United States just in November of 2016 (ie, last month) imported a bit more than 2.2 million tons of steel. You can rely on it, that come war-time (real war – World War type of war) we’re going to need more than the 79 million tons of steel that we currently produce…and while I haven’t been able to find a break down of just where that 2.2 million tons in November came from, how much you want to bet that a very large portion of it came from China? You know – the nation we’d most likely find ourselves opposed to in a major war. I’m sure there’s some slack in our steel mills; I’m sure, that is, that we can ramp up production. But, how much? How fast? Of what types? How fast, to get down to nitty-gritty, can we increase production of ship and tank armor? A big war means we’d need a lot of tanks and ships. Could we build them?

I bring this up because, first off, steel isn’t something that most people think about – but the world produced nearly 1.6 billion tons of the stuff in 2015. It is a gigantic part of the global economy. And steel is the finished product. You’ve also got to add in all the coal and iron mining and a host of other feeder industries which are in existence just to get you that new car…or that new tank, depending on your need. Our elite leaders like to think in terms of the hot, new technological application – they don’t even think about things like how much steel we have, or how much we might need in an emergency. I also doubt they think of things like corn production, copper mining, finished lumber products…the things which are actually necessary for a functioning economy. A cool new ap to tell you how to get to the grocery store is fine, but it isn’t a necessity. When push comes to shove, you’d better have lumber, and corn, and steel.

I’d like to point out that for all the horror stories of how the Smoot-Hawley Tariff destroyed the global economy in the 1930’s, there still is the fact that the United States rose to economic dominance in the world while we lived in a Protectionist regime. We didn’t become a Free Trade citadel until after World War Two. I also note, with great care, that it was after World War Two that our domestic industry got smacked by global competition. There was some good in that – let’s face it that American cars were becoming pretty lousy until foreign competition forced domestic auto makers to improve. On the other hand, domestic autos were improving massively from the early part of the 20th century until the 60’s. Perhaps the fact that we wound up with the Big Three automakers had something to do with our hidebound auto manufacturing in the 1970’s? If lack of international competition is bad, then lack of domestic competition isn’t all that great, either.

But I also have never fully bought the notion that tariffs caused or prolonged the Depression. Just as I never bought the Progressive idea that rampant Capitalist greed brought on the Depression. I’ve figured for ages that everyone looking at the Depression was ignoring the elephant in the room: World War One and the Spanish Flu epidemic. Ten years before the Depression hit the United States, the world had just finished up slaughtering 10 million fit, young men in war. Add to that the 10 to 20 million fit, young men and women who were laid low by the Spanish Flu in the immediate aftermath of World War One. Add in things like the massive market for manufactured goods in Russia was gone (blasted away by war, civil war and Stalin’s determination to industrialize Russia via slave labor rather than foreign investment); the fact that there was a massive over-capacity in manufacturing (a lot of hot-house manufacturing capacity was built during the war), the fact that rather than building armies and navies the world was rapidly shrinking them and you get a situation where there was bound to be an economic contraction. Just in terms of the fact that upwards of 30 million young people weren’t placing demands on the global economy – weren’t having children, etc – because they were dead and you just know that there had to be a readjustment of the global economy. A readjustment which was bound to be painful – and which wouldn’t be ended until global population was substantially higher than prior to World War One.

The main thing here is to not look for a main thing – it was a host of factors, almost all of which were entirely out of control by anyone, which caused the Depression. Tariffs didn’t kill the economy and free trade wouldn’t have restored it. The economy, as a thing, is that which provides for the needs of the people…and if you suddenly lose 30 million of your most productive (and highest demand) people, you’re going to have a problem. Period. And that brings me to my point: a dogmatic assertion that Free Trade is always best is as asinine as a dogmatic assertion that Protection is always what is needed.

What is needed is a bit of thought – and thought coupled with an understanding that there are no neat and tidy economic prescriptions which will cover all eventualities. In general, Free Trade is good. But in the specific, we need a very large capacity to produce goods here at home – both for our own long-term economic well-being, but also in case of emergency when our trading partners are either at war with us, or simply not able to send us the necessary goods because of the stresses of war.

The most important thing, for me, in looking at the economy is to look to the needs of our people both in war and peace. What do we need to have? Do we have it? If we don’t have it, how do we get it? There are lots of things which will go into answering those questions – perhaps we just need to adjust our tax rates? Reform our regulations? Work out better trade deals with our trading partners? But, also, just perhaps – maybe we need to throw up a few tariffs in some crucial areas to make certain that we have the capacity to look after ourselves at need? As a Catholic, I’m big on Dogmas – you can check out the Catechism of the Catholic Church if you want to start running through them. But all that has, ultimately, to do with the one, immutable thing in the universe: God. Outside of God, everything is a bit fungible, to one degree or another. A low tax, low regulation, Free Trade economy is generally the thing you’re searching for…but it won’t do us the least bit of good to have low tax rates and no ability to feed our people by our own efforts in a crisis.

Don’t get hung up on hard-and-fast rules. Seek for what is best. Be willing to experiment. If one thing doesn’t work, try another. If we try to make dogmas out of transitory economic events, we’re just going to get burned. Remember, once upon a time it was said “what is good for GM is good for America”. Not quite like that any longer – in fact, an argument can be made (and has been made) that if GM had gone defunct in 2009, we might be better off. I think we would have been – because it’s not like no one would pick up the slack on auto manufacturing if GM went belly up. Someone was going to take over the famed names owned by GM and make new cars…and perhaps better cars for a lower price. Holding on to things like corporations just because they’ve been around for a while is silly – but just as silly as holding on to a notion about Free Trade which isn’t really supported by the facts of history…nor by the needs of our nation.

Kevin Williamson to Working/Middle Class: Go Die in a Fire

Mark Noonan11 Comments

Saw this excerpted at Hot Air earlier today and I was astounded by it. I wanted to get the whole article from National Review, but something was screwy with the website and it wouldn’t take my 25 cent payment for it, so I have to go on what is quoted rather than being able to read the entire article. At all events, Kevin Williamson over at National Review has this to say of the sort of people who are backing Trump – and how they view the world:

It is immoral because it perpetuates a lie: that the white working class that finds itself attracted to Trump has been victimized by outside forces. It hasn’t. The white middle class may like the idea of Trump as a giant pulsing humanoid middle finger held up in the face of the Cathedral, they may sing hymns to Trump the destroyer and whisper darkly about “globalists” and — odious, stupid term — “the Establishment,” but nobody did this to them. They failed themselves.

If you spend time in hardscrabble, white upstate New York, or eastern Kentucky, or my own native West Texas, and you take an honest look at the welfare dependency, the drug and alcohol addiction, the family anarchy — which is to say, the whelping of human children with all the respect and wisdom of a stray dog — you will come to an awful realization. It wasn’t Beijing. It wasn’t even Washington, as bad as Washington can be. It wasn’t immigrants from Mexico, excessive and problematic as our current immigration levels are. It wasn’t any of that.

Nothing happened to them. There wasn’t some awful disaster. There wasn’t a war or a famine or a plague or a foreign occupation. Even the economic changes of the past few decades do very little to explain the dysfunction and negligence — and the incomprehensible malice — of poor white America. So the gypsum business in Garbutt ain’t what it used to be. There is more to life in the 21st century than wallboard and cheap sentimentality about how the Man closed the factories down.

The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die. Economically, they are negative assets. Morally, they are indefensible. Forget all your cheap theatrical Bruce Springsteen crap. Forget your sanctimony about struggling Rust Belt factory towns and your conspiracy theories about the wily Orientals stealing our jobs. Forget your goddamned gypsum, and, if he has a problem with that, forget Ed Burke, too. The white American underclass is in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles. Donald Trump’s speeches make them feel good. So does OxyContin. What they need isn’t analgesics, literal or political. They need real opportunity, which means that they need real change, which means that they need U-Haul.

If you want to live, get out of Garbutt.

I don’t know quite where to begin with this from a man who, to this point, has been one of the more intelligent observers of politics. Garbutt, for those who don’t know, is a small town in upstate New York. It’s main product in the past was gypsum – a material used in such things as plaster and drywall boards. Williamson’s point is that it is the fault of the people of places like Garbutt that their lives are miserable. They were morons who didn’t realize you can’t make a living out of gypsum and so should have just moved somewhere else and learned a new trade…like, I guess, moving to New York City and becoming investment bankers, art critics or, well, writers for major national publications. Here’s the thing, though: China produced 132,000,000 metric tons of gypsum in 2015. I have a guess that China would not produce that much gypsum if there wasn’t a market for it. Meanwhile, the United States produced a mere 11,000,000 metric tons of the stuff in 2015…but there lies the tiny town of Garbutt, sitting atop a mountain of gypsum and no one is mining it. Garbutt could be a fine, prosperous community based upon gypsum mining but for some reason we just don’t mine it there any more.

The exact why of it all is beyond my immediate knowledge. I’m sure it was a slow decline of the industry over time and a host of factors provided the reasons for the decline. Could have been bad business practices. Maybe labor troubles played their role. The mining companies might not have installed the latest and most efficient means of mining. Wouldn’t be at all surprised if taxes and regulations made it increasingly difficult to mine at a profit. But I’ll also bet that our various “free trade” agreements opened up our gypsum market to foreigners who sweat their labor and don’t give a darn about worker safety or environmental concerns. But whatever the reasons for the cessation of mining in Garbutt, we should be working to restore it – we use gigantic amounts of gypsum in the United States every year and as we clearly have lots of gypsum in our soil, it is pure idiocy to not take advantage of what we have. Why send our wealth to China for something we can obtain right here at home? And don’t try to lay on me a bunch of globalist nonsense about how China’s gypsum has to be cheaper and it is the mere workings of the free market which dictate gypsum comes from China and Garbutt becomes a dead town. It isn’t the blind hand of market economics which makes this happen – but the warping of economic life by government policy that does it; and warping which is often as not done at the behest of big business which isn’t at all interested in wise policy but in just getting a slightly larger profit.

Because we do, as a matter of fact, produce gypsum in the United States. Nevada produced just under 2.3 million metric tons of the stuff in 2014, representing a 40% increase over the year before. Clearly, good profits are available within the United States in gypsum mining. The conditions which allowed Nevada to produce that much gypsum could obviously be duplicated in New York – but they aren’t. Those jobs are gone, boys, and they ain’t coming back – so goes the old Springsteen song and so go plenty of people in the United States…curiously enough, it is always people who don’t do the jobs that ain’t coming back who assert in forthright terms they ain’t coming back. I wonder if we advised Mr. Williamson that his job is being sent to a guy in China who will do it for 40% of Williamson’s wages how he’d feel about it? After all, I’m sure we can get plenty of Chinese who are just as willing to tell large swaths of the American population they are just miserable failures. It’s just economics, Williamson – the blind hand of a completely free market, you dig?

But what about the immorality Williamson notes? True, our moral failures are all our own. We are created by God with free will and everyone is ultimately responsible for their own choices in life. But it wasn’t the people of places like Garbutt who demanded sex, drugs and rock and roll. That demand was created in places like New York City and Los Angeles by bored, rich people who wanted to spice up their dead, empty lives – and woe to anyone in Garbutt who even made a peep about not wanting it in their community. It is a curious thing we’ve seen for well more than a century – the least eccentricity of the rich must become a requirement among the poor. The rich wanted to live in Babylon, and so everyone must live in Babylon as well. Can’t have some rich guy being held up to moral censure, right? So, the vices a rich man can afford because of his wealth must also become vices among those who can’t afford them, at all. Think of it – the Hollywood producer who puts out pop culture garbage which glorifies bad choices can afford to send his drug addicted son to rehab and bail him out of jail time and again…but the poor slob in some small burg? Can’t do it – his son dies of a drug overdose, or becomes a serial jail bird. But let’s not have any nonsense about calling the purveyors of popular culture to account. After all, no one will want to censor it – but it’s not even that; we can’t even call it wrong to do…that would make people feel bad and, worse, it could lead to a drop off in sales of popular culture products. That, of course would be the worst possible thing – a lowering of profits in the corporations making the product.

Understand this – the support for Trump is precisely among those who have been victimized by a system they don’t control. No, there isn’t a Conspiracy making it happen – just rank immorality, as is always the case when things in human life go wrong. A host of factors have all played their role in destroying communities both economically and morally – and our job is not to arrogantly say, “too bad, so sad” but to identify where we went wrong and then fix it. It is not stupid to want small and mid-sized communities of hard working people. It is the only thing a Conservative should want, for crying out loud. What the heck does Williamson want to conserve? Manhattan? Sweated labor and bribery in the People’s Republic of China? What? Trump is, as I’ve said again and again, no answer to anyone’s problem but he or someone like him will continue to garner support as long as people who should have answers don’t provide them. And as 2016 has gone on, I’ve come more and more to the conclusion that a very large number of people on the alleged right don’t even want to try for an answer – they’ve got swell lives as it is and don’t want to rock the systemic boat which allows them to maintain their swell lives. But grab a clue – there are many, many more millions of people who are shut out than doing well…their numbers grow. Many of them have been suckered into voting Democrat because at least the Democrats say they care…but even that is wearing thin. Trump likely won’t get anywhere, even if he did manage to win the White House but if we on the right don’t start thinking about how to fix this broken nation then mark my words, some sort of authortarian dictator who says he or she will fix the problem will gain majority support in the United States.

And fixing this broken nation means, precisely, finding dignified, profitable work for people who are now out in the cold…and not just in dead mining communities like Garbutt, but in the hollowed out cities like Detroit. People don’t want to live without hope – either we give them real hope, or a tyrant will give them false hope. You can say all you want that the feeling of betrayal by Trumpsters and BLM people is based upon falsehood. It doesn’t matter – it is what they believe. And, truth be told, even if the over-arching narrative such people have is false on many points, it is based upon a true enough situation. A working or middle class African-American man can easily feel that the system is against him; that the cops are unfairly targeting him; that he can’t get out from underneath a byzantine set of laws. A working or middle class white man can also feel that the system is against him; that his job was sent to China for no good reason; that Corporate and government bosses are living high while he’s left with scraps. The two men live it, every day – telling them they are wrong to even think that way just insults them.

I think our best bet is to go to people where they are – listen to them, acknowledge their grief and propose solutions to the problems they think they have. I was out and about among the people today – just regular folks at the swap meet. Working people; people with families to support. If I’d been taking a poll, I bet I would have found two men who would be spoken of most highly among these people: Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. Neither Trump nor Sanders are what these people need – but they are what these people are going for, because no one else is even giving them the time of day. What’ll it be, folks: leave these people to demagogues who will use their rage as the path to personal power, or will we step up and provide them something better? It’s our choice, for now. Very soon, if we do nothing, it will be taken forever out of our hands and we’ll just have to endure what is chosen with no reference to us. One thing is certain in my view, if we just yell about how stupid they are for believing as they do, we’re going to lose.

UPDATE: After I had written this and pondered it for a while, it occurred to me just what I was trying in my very poor way to say – and then I recalled where I had read it before. Below the fold you’ll find it:

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