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Solutions

What Are We Doing Here?

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Let us begin with an acknowledgment that the capitalist system is, hands down, responsible for alleviating more suffering than possibly any other human endeavor, barring the discovery of fire. Capitalism is, at its essence, the natural economic system of human beings. Wether we are trading Dollars for Playstations or figs for pigs, there is simply no dispute that a system which allows for such incredible specialization in vocation (you can’t work on particle physics if you are worried about an early frost ruining your corn field) has paved the way for the breakneck advancement in all aspects of human knowledge and innovation. Yet this does not mean that the systems that have grown up around capitalism are not ripe for reform, and calling for reform should not be construed as a repudiation of capitalism.

One could argue that the inexorable march of progress enabled by the capitalist system also set the stage for the dire social and environmental situations we find ourselves grappling with in 2020, and they certainly wouldn’t be wrong. The search for better, faster, and cheaper production of goods and services has certainly lead to the exploitation of natural resources. Unfortunately, human labor is a natural resource and the efficiency machine that is capitalism has resulted in an environment in which outsourcing and technological advancement has led to a perpetual depression of wages. The question is then one of recalibration. How do we, as a society, nudge capitalism into resuscitating our currently flatlining middle-class?

The answer is government.

Libertarians currently reading this article.

Now, here is where our current hyper-partisan moment cuts off all reasonable debate. There are those in our society that feel any government intervention (I’m looking at you Ron Paul) is tantamount to tyranny, and their polar opposites that advocate for nothing short than a socialist revolution. These factions own the digital space, nuance has no chance on Twitter, but the vast majority of the American electorate is likely floating around somewhere in the middle of these two extremes. The trick is striking a balance in which government policy is leveraged to gently nudge the market into providing more human-centric outcomes, and we need the market to provide these outcomes organically. If we want rising wages and prosperity to a greater percentage of the population we need to use policy to steer the market, not force the market.

So you may be thinking, “How the hell do we do that, Dick? How do we ‘nudge’ a system predicated entirely on generating maximum profits with maximum efficiency into a greater distribution of wealth, all without forcing said change by government mandate?” Well, first off, thank you for asking such an incredibly specific question tailor made to set up a response. The answer lies in using policy to provide an additional market force, rather than a mandate.

Changes in Corporate Tax Structure

I suggest that a simple change to the application of corporate tax rates would provide a clear incentive to raise wages, while also eliminating the Byzantine system of loopholes that currently exists.

According to the The Tax Foundation, the average corporate tax burden in European OECD countries stood at 21.9% in 2019. The average worldwide rate came in at 24.18%. For comparison, the top statutory rate in the United States is 25.9% and that sounds about right. If you dig a little further, you notice that the U.S. generates only 4.4% of its revenue from corporate taxes, as opposed to the OECD average of 9.5%. This is likely due to the accounting wizardry utilized to lower the effective tax rate well below the statutory rate.

I propose replacing the current system with a loophole-free variable corporate tax rate. One which caps at 25% at the high end and 5% on the low, but with an important caveat. The tax rate paid would be dependent on wage disparity between the top 10% and bottom 50% of earners within a given organization (all of these figures obviously subject to debate by individuals smarter than myself). An organization that is rewarding its executive class in an outsized manner would be subject to a higher tax burden than an organization that maintained a greater balance in compensation between executives and the average employee.

Now in setting up such a system there would undoubtedly be some logistical issues that would need to be hammered out. You would need, for instance, a mechanism to take into account stock options and other creative forms of executive pay. The benefit of such a system would be the financial incentive it would place on an organization to raise the wages of its lowest paid employees, or rein in extravagant executive pay. Any reasonable organization would likely raise wages to retain talent, rather than simply surrender capital to the government with no competitive return on that capital. All without contentious political battles regarding periodic increases in minimum wage, mandates are replaced with market forces.

Universal Healthcare

This one likely requires an entire series of articles to explore in its entirety, but the institution of a universal healthcare system in America could very likely spur massive economic growth. America posses possibly the most dynamic economy in the world, yet the system of employer-based healthcare is potentially acting on a brake on entrepreneurship. From 2007 to 2019, application to form businesses have dropped by 16%. The Great Recession is definitely at work here, but the rate has failed to keep pace with the economy as a whole.

One reason could very well be the exploding cost of healthcare in America. There is a massive risk to entrepreneurship in America caused by this cost. The cost of healthcare without an employer subsidy is simply astronomical. From CNBC.

According to eHealthInsurance, for unsubsidized customers in 2016, “premiums for individual coverage averaged $321 per month while premiums for family plans averaged $833 per month. The average annual deductible for individual plans was $4,358 and the average deductible for family plans was $7,983.”

That means that, last year, the average family paid $9,996 for coverage alone, and, if they met their deductible, a total of just under $18,000. Meanwhile, an average individual spent $3,852 on coverage and, if she spent another $4,358 to meet her deductible, a total of $8,210.

This type of financial exposure is a very real impediment to the continued dynamism of the American economy. I would suspect that this also acts as a depressive factor in wage growth. The average American wage earner is beholden to their employer to subsidize this huge portion of their financial lives. The healthcare is a de facto portion of their compensation. This has major economic ramifications for wage growth, as healthcare itself act as a means of hampering competition in the free market.

Anthropo-Capitalism

The refocusing of market forces os going to be integral to the future economic success of this country. The free market is always the best option to achieve this and smart, pragmatic government policy is necessary to ensure the market remains free. We need to actively pursue policy that removes barriers to entry into full market participation, this includes entrepreneurship and increased wages.

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Commentary

Rise of the Justice Democrats

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Now that the 2020 election season is in the rearview mirror, the fragile truce between various factions within the Democratic Party appears to have reached its end. In fact, the dust had hardly even settled (you would be free to argue the dust is still swirling as of this writing, but that is a debate for another time) before progressive Representative/ Full-time Twitter Warrior Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was warning Democratic leadership to stack the Biden-Harris administration with progressive-minded activists or risk big losses in 2022 and beyond.

Justic Democrats pushing to block fiscal moderates from positions in Biden Administration.

There is a profound rift emerging in the Democratic Party that closely mirrors the rise of the Tea Party faction of the GOP. The ideological engine of the party has been seized by progressive-minded ideological purists under the Justice Democrat banner, yet the party leadership clearly favors a more moderate approach. This places the party in a catch-22 in which the DNC is forced to straddle the line between two disparate ideologies in national races. It’s hard to believe that Ilhan Omar and Joe Manchin exists within the same party, yet this is the position Democrats find themselves in.

There is no more Donald Trump to hold together these strange bedfellows. The cracks are there, Nancy Pelosi has already announced this is likely her last rodeo as Speaker of the House, likely a tacit acknowledgement of the rising power of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and The Squad. The Squad is actively testing the limits of their influence right now with several members actively circulating a petition to block undesirables from key positions in the nascent Biden Administration, namely the selection to head the Office of Management and Budget, Bruce Reed.

It is hard to imagine that Bruce Reed is the second coming of Ron Paul, as the progressive corners of Twitter seem to assert, but the nuances of Mr. Reed’s fiscal philosophy are almost irrelevant. The Ideology Inquisition is in motion.

So what happens next? It all depends on how the Georgia Senate run-off races play out. Should the GOP win out and maintain control of the Senate then the House Democrats are free to pass and endless stream of progressive moon-shots, knowing full well they have McConnell to play off as the bad guy. The real fireworks would be Democratic control of the Senate. Schumer and Pelosi would then be in the unenviable position of passing actual legislation, which of course runs the risk of having said legislation actually pass into law. This leads to a difficult tightrope to walk, Democratic leadership would be forced to craft a bill that manages to appease the Justice Democrat wing while also not forcing Democrats in moderate seats into politically untenable votes.

Long story short, losing the Senate puts off outright intra-party war by 2 years at most. Just as the Tea Party forced the GOP into a spiral of increasingly extreme conservative positions, the Justice Democrats are already moving to aggressively challenge Democrat incumbents in primary challenges. It is a race to the left, with America left stranded in the middle.

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Uncategorized

Interference Auto Pilot

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November 3rd, 2020 has come and gone. The ballots were cast and counted. Joe Biden is the President Elect (as far as I can tell) and the predictions of massive electoral meddling perpetrated by foreign actors appears to have been avoided.

By all accounts the newly created Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency led by inaugural Director Chris Krebs managed to fend of all manner of nefarious attempts on the structural integrity of our 2020 election. The agency, created by President Trump to prevent foreign intrusions, prevented foreign intrusions. Now, unfortunately, Director Krebs made the mistake of confirming that the election was indeed secure and was summarily fired by President Trump. But has the manipulation truly been averted? Or has the manipulation simply been moved onshore, no longer outsourced? Made in U.S.A.

The actions of the Russian government in 2016 were not new, the actions themselves were old school. Obfuscate, confuse, mislead. Sow division and mistrust. Enlarge existing social fault lines. None of these actions are novel approaches to geopolitical meddling. This was just the leveraging of a new medium to bring these techniques into the 21st century on a grand scale, and we appear to have made adjustments to counter them. That is a positive development.

It appears, however, that the damage has been done. The spectacular use of social media to fan the flames of social discord in America succeeded in a spectacular way. Our political environment no exists in a purgatory of partisan propaganda. The gentle push from Putin’s troll farm has sent us into a cycle of increasing polarization, any given event is an opportunity for posturing. Social media, with it’s algorithms set to prioritize engagement over all else, feeds us content tailor made to outrage. We are being shuffled into silos of thought and seem all too happy to be with our team, lashing out at “the other.” Shooting snarky tweets off with no thought to actual debate, just to debase those we disagree with.

We have proven we can keep the enemy from breaching the gates, but can we stop ourselves from burning down the city?

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Commentary Opinion

Spooky Season

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It’s Halloween. Normally the streets would be crawling with ninjas, zombies, Fortnite characters, strollers, and caffeinated parents. But these are not normal times, the roads are empty for the most part, and death pervades the American psyche to a far greater degree than usual. Those that did take to the streets to seek some semblance of normalcy tonight likely did so on heightened alert for the sounds of sniffles and sneezes. Millions of individually wrapped Kit Kat’s, Starbursts, and other treats will be carefully wiped with disinfectant. Any cough that develops over the next 14 days will likely be cause for anxiety.

Yet even now, while we all await the crest of Covid-19’s second wave (or second leg of the first possibly), the endless avalanche of political ads remind us that life continues. The question is just how much life is left in our republic? Just how deeply has the infection of partisanship degraded our nation. There is legitimate concern that the increasing political tit-for-tat has entered a death spiral. It is very possible that the United States as we know it is already dead and shuffling towards crisis.

The perceived political stakes of every issue facing our nation has lead to a situation where both parties are more than comfortable removing any guardrails to outright majority rule. It has reached the point where they issue outright threats to push the envelope further once they assume the reins of power.

Sen. Mitch McConnell warns Senate Democrats will come to regret the removal of the 60 vote threshold on Presidential appointments.

In 2013, when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid Went executed the so called “nuclear option” and removed the 60 vote threshold for Presidential appointments, Sen. Mitch McConnell warned of the downstream consequences of removing rules that forced bi-partisan action.

Now, is this to say that Harry Reid and the Senate Democrats are solely responsible for the current situation where Senate Republicans are forcing through Judicial appointments at historical rates on simple majority votes? No, clearly the system had degraded past the point of bi-partisanship at the time. Reid was forced into the option due to political stonewalling of any and all of Obama’s Judicial appointees. Yet it can’t be ignored that the floodgates were opened at that point for complete disregard of previously respected Senate rules. The move laid the groundwork for the appointment of three Supreme Court Justices under McConnell’s guidance. Yet we are nowhere near the endgame.

Obama advocates for the removal of the filibuster during his eulogy of Rep. John Lewis.

We have reached the point of no return. When former President Obama used his eulogy of Rep. John Lewis to press for the removal of the filibuster rule on legislation it was clear there was no appetite to restore the checks on simple majority rule. There is little doubt that within the next several years, perhaps as soon as the next year if Democrats gain control of both the Senate and Presidency, the passage of law in this nation will take place on a simple majority vote.

We stand on the precipice of increasing instability. A reality where the nation could potentially be ripped between two extreme political poles with every change of a simple majority. There will be no stabilizing effect maintained by the Senate.

Where does this leave the nation? It is nearly impossible to maintain any sort of societal cohesion when a plurality of voters will be able to force feed their legislative will on their rivals. It is nearly impossible to craft any sort of lasting legislation without bi-partisan buy in. Each law passed would be subject to immediate nullification following each election, this has dire implications downstream for business and financial markets.

We are left facing a complete degradation of social, political, and financial stability should we continue down this path.

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Commentary Opinion

Cancel, Cancel, Cancel

10/28/2020 was a big day for America’s history of free speech. It is a long and storied history, important enough to be first and foremost in the Bill of Rights. Alexis de Tocqueville dedicated an entire chapter to it when exploring the rough edges of our American democracy. The ACLU fought to defend it when the rights of Neo-Nazis to march in Skokie, Illinois were threatened. The free market of ideas is a core tenet of America and has endured its fair share of attacks over the past 200 years and today it its braced against two separate foes. One a dysfunctional body jockeying for political leverage. The other? Twitter.

The first is the Senate, packed full of partisans each looking for an edge in the upcoming election, looking to strike a blow to the foundation of our modern internet. Senators from both major parties spent 4 hours hurling talking points at the leaders of Google, Facebook, and Twitter in was was supposed to be a hearing regarding Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Democratic Senators spent their allotted time pushing for suppressing conservative viewpoints labeled Russian propaganda. Republican Senators railed against perceived blocking of conservative talking points, but really spent the time staging promotional videos for their base.

But the political circus in Washington is nothing new. The major threat to our hard fought right to freedom of speech, our freedom of thought, is Cancel Culture. A digital mob with its woke fingers wrapped around the larynx of America. On the very same day that the Senate was holding hearings on the law that allows for the free exchange of ideas across the breadth of humanity, Americans were using that amazing power of communication to force speech from public spaces.

The Twitter mob renewed its push to punish Joe Rogan for his uncompromising defence of free speech by attempting to spur a boycott of Spotify, who recently signed a licensing deal for the wildly popular podcast, following Rogan’s decision to have the highly controversial conspiracy-theorist Alex Jones return despite a prior ban on the Spotify platform. The outrage ranged from claims of the two spreading vaccine disinformation (Jones may have, Rogan certainly did not), Jones’ past denial of the Sandy Hook shooting (which Jones denied on the show, but seems like a cover for his legal troubles), to just a general desire to cancel anything involved with Jones in any way.

Now, is Alex Jones insane? Possibly. Does he hawk vitamins and supplements while making dubious claims as to their effects on human health? Absolutely. Does he believe that current events are the result of high level agreements between the leaders of our terrestrial governments and inter-dimensional entities? Does he also believe that these meetings take place through the use of powerful psychedelics that allow humans to access these aforementioned dimensions? Maybe, I’m not entirely sure, but let’s go with yes.

What Jones may or may not believe is irrelevant. He has a right to believe whatever he wants and if the Joe Rogan’s of the world want to have a 3 hour conversation exploring the depth of those beliefs, they have every right to do that too. Anyone offended as the right to not listen to those beliefs. Hell, they have a right to attempt a boycott if they want. The issue lies in the inability to tolerate an offensive viewpoint. Having the right to an action does not make the action right. Any attempt to silence an odious opinion is as offensive as the opinion itself.

A democracy depends on the free exchange of ideas. Does anyone really think that Alex Jones is so persuasive that the mere exposure to his lunacy will corrupt the minds of America? Of course not. It appears those pushing hard against Rogan believe the American population so stupid, so malleable, that any concerning viewpoint needs to be shielded from view. Stuffed away and forgotten. It also presupposes that their own viewpoint is so correct that it cannot be challenged. This is the truly frightening idea. The idea that one group has a monopoly on righteousness, on truth. These are the hallmarks of zealotry.

The greatest irony of #cancelspotify and the backlash against Rogan is that the following day saw the release of a multi-hour conversation with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Glen Greenwald that touched upon this very tendency of the mob to suppress free speech. This is a man who broke news of the National Security Agency blatantly violating our collective 4th amendment protections through illegal . This is a man who intimately understands the true value of the rights enshrined in the United States Constitution. This is a man who was forced to flee, along with Edward Snowden, the country as a result of breaking this news.

Yet, despite the egregious nature of the N.S.A.’s transgressions against our enumerated freedoms, the Twitter mob cares more about canceling guy who believes U.S. leaders are dropping acid to hammer out intergalactic trade deals, than enacting justice for a whistleblower who sacrificed his freedom to bring these transgressions to light.

Perhaps Rogan is the one who has it right.

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Commentary News

What Now?

To no one’s surprise, Amy Coney Barrett has been elevated by a 52-48 vote to be the nation’s 9th Supreme Court Justice, replacing the iconic Ruth Bader Ginsberg and entrenching what appears to be a firm 6-3 balance in favor of the court’s conservative wing.

While the court’s ideological split is often discussed as mirroring the political concepts of “conservatism” and “liberalism” that currently dominate our current national discourse, in reality the divide is one of jurisprudence and judicial philosophy. It is not uncommon for “conservative” Justices to rule on a given case in a way that favors a politically liberal outcome ( such as newly appointed Neil Gorsuch ruling in Bostock vs. Clayton County that the 1964 Civil Rights Act protections against discrimination rooted in “sex” also extend to LGBTQ Americans) or for “liberal” members of the court to similarly reach decisions that run contrary to their perceived ideologies. This has not stopped the usual suspects from running to their battle stations (although, to be honest, they really never left) to fire off Twitter salvos decrying pre-ordained legal rulings.

Of course, Mr. Blumenthal is in the thick of things and slinging emotional bombs in all directions.

Now it is clearly not a surprise that Democratic lawmakers are up in arms and decrying the impending death of American society. In their narrative Amy Coney Barrett and the Supreme Court are gearing up, as we speak, to turn America into A Handmaid’s Tale by the end of the next court term.

This is not to say that the country does not stand on the precipice of monumental change, some likely to be brought forth by the new dynamics on the court. It does. But the reason we are on edge is not simply because Donald Trump got lucky or the fact that Mitch McConnell would sell his soul for this very result (he would). It is again a direct result of what has not happened over the last several decades. It is a direct result of the slow atrophy of the Legislative branch, which is quickly becoming the gallbladder of our American democracy.

The Supreme Court is one, of three, coequal branches. It does not lord over our society, crafting America as it sees fit. Does the court wield monumental influence? Yes. Yet the influence of the court can be tempered by a robust Congress. The members of both chambers do themselves, their offices, and America a disservice with everyday spent fundraising in lieu of legislating. Everyday spent turning the gears of the partisan spin machine in lieu of meaningful debate, is a day spent allowing America slip farther from being a functioning democratic Republic by choice and closer to a Kritarchy by necessity.

The Legislative branch needs to make a deliberate effort to turn away from the temptations of partisanship and work to legislate in a comprehensive, bi-partisan manner to keep “Kritarchy” a form of government that requires a Google search, not the reality in America.

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Commentary News Opinion

Posturing, Pandering, and The Supremes

The SCOTUS confirmation hearing exposes just how broken our political institutions have become.

For one week in October Amy Comey Barret took center stage in the ongoing Kabuki theater that grips the nation. We heard gloom, we heard doom. We heard plaudits and praise. And we heard it all in alternating 20 minute soapbox speeches.

The hearings to consider the elevation of Judge Barrett to the Supreme Court are over and gone, receding into the rear view mirror and out of the social consciousness. Yet we have learned absolutely nothing of substance in regards to Judge Barrett’s judicial philosophy. We learned nothing about her suitability to assume a position to the court. We did learn, however, how many different ways one human being can decline to speculate on the same succession of hypothetical legal scenarios.

We have reached a point in this nation in which our descent into hyper-partisanship has rendered the political process almost impossible. Although it would be wonderful to have a series of hearings in which Senators could ask probing legal questions and receive a candid answer from a nominee, the political environment makes this impossible. Any utterance is subject to extreme vetting. Any opinion rendered would be quickly subjected to the Right/Left spin cycle and plastered across the social media landscape. These were not hearings, they were depositions.

Any vacancy to the highest court in the land has now become an existential battle. The Supreme Court was not envisioned as an omnipotent council of elders set in place to rule on and sway policy in the United States. Yet, due to the slow and steady abdication of responsibility by the Legislative branch, this is exactly the position we find ourselves in. The legislative process no longer exists for the most contentious policy questions facing the nation. Gun control, healthcare, immigration. All of these issues have become partisan weapons, issues to stir the base and drive fundraising for the next election cycle. There can be no compromise because there is no reasoned debate. Neither side can be seen to even acknowledge the feasibility of a rival policy proposal so we are left with an endless cycle of political brinksmanship where policy poison pills are tacked on the budgets, or defense authorization acts.

Now, while the legislative process has ground to a halt, the problems facing America do not simply disappear. They linger. So now, in lieu of a robust and collaborative legislative process, the most feasible way to address policy questions is to force a tailored lawsuit through the Judicial system to the Supreme Court. Chief Justice John Roberts, to his credit, has bent himself into legal knots to avoid the court being used as a blunt instrument to circumvent the proper legislative process but this balancing act becomes more and more perilous with each successive vacancy.

In theory, any given ruling by the Supreme Court is not the final verdict on any given policy. The court rules on legality. In a properly functioning legislative body a Supreme Court ruling would be seen as a impetus to craft a law that would pass judicial challenge. Compromise would be made, legal issues resolved. The hearings show just how far we are from that utopian reality.