Oliver North's Iran Solution

The Iranian nuclear situation is a tough one, with not a lot of easy answer.  Oliver North proposes a partial solution:

But there is one thing, short of war, he still could try -- before the ayatollahs finish building their bombs. He could issue an executive order barring any company, regardless of nationality, that does business with an Iranian government entity from doing any business in the United States.

Not a bad idea.  One problem is that an individual determined to subvert the best interests of the United States could probably find a way to sell arms Iran.  Right Ollie?  

Powerline = Powerfail

John Hinderacker at the popular Powerline blog is no Jonah Goldberg when it comes to his ability to disconnect from reality.   But he can come close.  This one he hits out of the park:

It is hard to imagine how Poland's treatment by Obama could have been worse. It was a week of shock and grief for the Poles - a close NATO ally that has sent large forces to fight alongside America in Iraq and Afghanistan. Obama used the Iceland eruption as an excuse to cancel his trip to the funeral of Poland's president and top leaders killed in the air crash. But those of us who live in Eastern Europe know that Cracow Airport was open and Obama could have flown in there. A president who respected true friends and sacrifices in blood would have made a serious gesture. Not Obama - he took off to play golf and did not bother to take a few minutes to sign the consolation book at the Polish Embassy on the way to the course.

 To be clear, Hinderacker is quoting here.    But hold the phone!   Didn't John hear about the Icelandic volcano's ash cloud that stranded travelers worldwide?  The one that closed airports from Norway to Italy?   You know, the one that dominated headlines for a week?   Well, apparently not.  I have to say, if you hear that airports all over Europe are closed, but then someone says the Kracow airport is open I would at least check on such a claim before using it as a source.   But apparently,   John doesn't know how to use Google either.  Instead he chooses to believe astounding claims unquestioningly.  

Since I do know how to use Google, here's some background.   From the Guardian on April 16:

Poland shut most of its airspace, excepting southern airports like Krakow this morning, but even Krakow airport has now closed.

 Okay, so the airport is closed on Friday, and the funeral was the following Sunday.  How was Obama supposed to get there?  Swim?    And by the way, the ash cloud prevented lots of other world leaders from attending too:

President Obama’s Sunday visit to Poland was canceled at the last minute due to the volcanic ash cloud that has paralyzed Europe’s air traffic. French President Nicolas Sarkozy, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, and other guests have announced their absence at the ceremony for the same reason.

Apparently, the ash cloud also interfered with Hinteracker's Internet connection, cable TV, and newspaper delivery. 

Quote of the Decade

Worried about liberal infiltrators, Kevin Terrell, a self-described colonel in the Ohio Valley Freedom Fighters militia based in Louisville, led about two dozen camouflaged followers on a patrol around the park. "I'm a little apprehensive because of the left-wing nut jobs out there," Terrell said.

Yahoo News

Jonah's Alternate History Part II

This is from Jonah's April 9 column again.  I called it part II because I'm still referring to the same column, although this part doesn't contain much alternate history.  It contains alternate reality.   Here we go:

As Mark Steyn recently noted in National Review, from 1951 to 1997 the share of British government expenditure devoted to defense fell from 24 percent to 7 percent, while the share spent on health and welfare increased from 22 percent to 53 percent. And that was before New Labour started rolling back Thatcherism. If America Europeanizes, who’s going to protect Europe? Who’s going to keep the sea lanes open? Who’s going to contain Iran — China? Okay, maybe. But then who’s going to contain China?

China is going to over run the world, eh?   First of all, it is hard to imagine a less useful measure of military capability than defense spending as a percentage of total budget.   What if your total budget is $100 and you spend it all on the military?   Do you then have the most powerful military in the world?    Of course not.   A much better (but still flawed) way of looking it would be to look at the number of dollars spent on the military.  At least that you're at least a little bit comparing apples to apples.   Here's a nifty Google spreadsheet with the military spending of various countries (you might have to save the spreadsheet if you want to sort it).   It is a couple years out of date, but at least it isn't thirteen years old (!) like Steyn's data.   If we take a look at the various defense budgets we find (in billions of dollars):

UK = $60
China = $61

About the same.  I don't see how look at dollars alone you can come up with much advantage for China.   It also is worth mentioning the British still have quite a good blue water navy, something the Chinese lack.    That's how you keep the shipping lanes open.   Okay, now for Iran, which Jonah says will come take over London unless the Chinese jump in:

Iran = $7.5

No contest.   It isn't even close.   Their budget is piddly.   There is no way Iran could stand toe-to-toe with the UK.   And the neglects the budgets of Germany, Spain, Italy, and all our other NATO allies.  How could a rational human being conclude Europe can't defend itself against Iran?    Iran!   These kind of statements make we wonder if Steyn and Goldberg even believe the stuff they write.  

Now, I mentioned that just looking at dollars is still a flawed metric.  That's because just looking at the raw dollars doesn't tell us what UK bought with all that money.   But it tells us a helluva a lot more than just looking at the percentage of the total budget.   And we have also learned that Western European nations spend substantial amounts of money in relation to the size of their economies.     Goldberg's Iran boogieman is just more alternate reality silliness.  

Jonah's Alternate History Part I

I always thought alternate history novels were fun reads.   Books like "Man in a High Castle" by Phillip K. Dick or the Alvin Maker series by Orson Scott Card.   In his latest, Jonah presents an alternate version of history, but it isn't fun, it is mostly just weird.   And it gets even weirder when he tries to make an argument about current policy based on events that never happened.   The jist of his column is that he says for for at least a century American progressives have wanted to implement a European-style social democracy.   That part is weird enough, because in 1910 there were no modern European-style social democracies.   He goes on to explain that if we adopted a European-style democracy, everything would go to hell, because Europe simply riding on America's coat tails in areas of defense and economic innovation.    He finishes with this:

Europhiles hate this sort of talk. They say there’s no reason to expect America to lose its edge just because we have a more “compassionate” government. Americans are an innovative, economically driven people. That’s true. But so were the Europeans — once. Then they adopted the policies they have today and that liberals want us to have tomorrow.

Let's think about that one for a minute.   He's essentially saying that back in the day when the Euros were more like us (innovative and economically driven), things were great.   Then when they moved towards social democracies things started to go to hell.   Only problem is the opposite is true.   When Jonah's alternate history starts in 1910, America was already richer than all the European countries combined.   Up until World War II, most European economies were essentially crony-controlled capitalism. The bourgeoisie, in other words.  Europeans were always economically driven, but like to gain wealth by going to foreign lands, killing the inhabitants and taking their stuff, and keeping their own citizens in poverty with no hope of upward mobility.   

Jonah suggests that European economies have been getting worse since social democracies were installed in many countries after World War II (he didn't say post-World War II, but that's the changes started to take place).    Let's look at that briefly.   Economists use a measure called gross national income per capita (GNI) to measure the wealth of individual citizens.   The World Bank has a nifty tool to compare the GNI (and lots and lots of other things) of various countries.   Unfortunately, it only lets you display three at a time, but here we go:

Here's the GNI per capita of Denmark, France, and the United States.   One thing to keep in mind is that when you are looking at compounding growth, you should use a logarithmic graph, instead of a linear one like we have here.   From the graph it looks like GNI was pretty close back in the 1960s, but is far apart now.   The opposite is true.   Back in the 1960s the GNI of the USA was close to double that of France.   Nowadays they are fairly close.    What that says is economically European countries started off far behind the USA and have done lot of catching up in the past few decades.  That's far from losing their initiative or economic drive.  Indeed, far more Europeans gained far more economically than at in period in history.   That's nothing to sneeze at.  

Of course, none of that says we should or shouldn't look at certain European style reforms.   Ideas should be evaluated on their own merits.   But we shouldn't dismiss the discussion simply based on a false history.  

Kudows for Kudlow!

I've often said the best thing to do is just to state the obvious.  Larry Kudlow does just that in his latest column

Sometimes you have to take out your political lenses and look at the actual statistics to get a true picture of the health of the American economy. Right now, those statistics are saying a modest cyclical rebound following a very deep downturn could actually be turning into a full-fledged, V-shaped, recovery boom between now and year-end. Conservatives shouldn’t trash it.

I’m aiming this thought especially at many of my conservative friends who seem to be trashing the improving economic outlook — largely, it would appear, to discredit the Obama administration.

Don’t do it folks. It’s a mistake. The numbers are the numbers.

 There you go.   The economy is getting better and there is no point in saying it isn't.  However,  Kudlow warns (mostly correctly my view) that the good news might not continue.    The reason though, is that Kudlow thinks a future tax increase will run the train off the tracks.  As evidence he points to the Clinton tax increase:

Recall that when Hillary Clinton took her Rose Law Firm bonus in December 1992, rather than January 1993, she knew full well that her husband Bill would raise the top tax rate in 1993. So the fourth quarter of 1992 grew at nearly 4.5 percent, but the first quarter of 1993 saw less than 1 percent growth. The temporary growth spurt for all of 1992 was 4.3 percent, but activity dropped to 2.7 percent the following year.

That's an odd statement.  I'm pretty sure Hillary Clinton took her Rose Law Firm bonus in 1992, because she stopped working at the Rose Law Firm in 1992.   Most companies don't give bonuses to people who don't work there.  Also Bill Clinton didn't take office until January 1993, and the tax bill wasn't passed until later that year, so I'm not sure how much you can attribute the 1993 economic growth to a tax bill that hadn't been passed yet.      But I'll concede the point, let's just start at 1993.  However, I do think we should look at the next eight years, and compare them with the Reagan years to see how Kudlow's hero stacks up.

Over the period 1981-1988, GDP grew by 27% (adjusted for inflation of course).   That's not too bad, and in Kudlow credit Reagan's tax cuts for much of that. 

But in the period 1993-2000, GDP grew by 31%.   And that was in the throat of Kudlow's economy-killing tax hike.

I personally wouldn't tie tax rates soley to GDP.  But that's what Kudlow did.  And by his method, Reagan comes out a loser. 

Conceptutally Jonah isn't real Smart

Tom Schaller at the indispensable fivethirtyeight.com had a pretty scorching take down of Jonah's recent USA Today column.   Not quite scorching enough, in my opinion.   Here's a juicy bit:

Hold that thought. Imagine for a moment that Tax Freedom Day was Dec. 31. In other words, picture working 365 days a year for the government. Now, the government would "give" you a place to sleep, food to eat and clothes to wear, but all your income would really be Washington's income to allocate as it saw fit. Some romantics might call this sort of arrangement "socialism" or "communism." But another perfectly good word for it is "slavery" or, if you prefer, involuntary servitude. Now, no one is proposing any such arrangement. But it's an important point conceptually. A 100% tax rate would be tyrannical not just because you have a right to own what you create, but because the government would necessarily decide what you can and can't have. 

 Wow!  Who'd a thunk it?  Taxes are conceptually the same as slavery.   His point is that Tea Partiers get that concept and the rest of us don't.   Okay, maybe if we think about the concept for a minute we'll understand it.  If 100% taxes equals 100% slavery, then zero taxes would be conceptually equal 100% freedom,   Awesome!   Of course, we'd have to do without the stuff we get with our taxes.  Like roads (most of them), police and fire protection, sewers (in most places), a system to ensure food safety, a system to ensure business contracts are enforced in the future, most education, nifty devices like GPS navigation, the Internet, and even computers.  And of course, we wouldn't have a military to prevent the Canadians from coming down here and taking all of our stuff.   In fact, there'd be no real way to prevent anyone bigger and stronger than us from physically enslaving us.   But we'd be conceptually 100% free.   And he gets paid to write this shit?  

It gets better, but not a whole lot.

Indeed, since 1950, no matter where their tax rates have been, from as low as 28% to as high as 91%, the government's take has held at about 19.5% of GDP, suggesting that squeezing taxpayers harder doesn't necessarily yield more juice. 

Jonah, please tell me you're not really that dumb.   The "tax rate" has never, ever been 91% or even 28% for that matter.  The 91% was the top marginal rate in 1951.   That is, back then income over $400,000 was taxed at that rate.   Income below that amount was taxed at lower rates.   That's about $3.2 million in today's dollars, which would be in the top 1% of filers today, and ever fewer back then.   Yet, he's asserting that total federal tax revenue has nothing to do with corporate tax rates, excise taxes, payroll taxes, tarrifs, all the lower marginal rates that the vast majority of filers pay, or even the economy in general.    Goldberg is saying all federal tax revenue is correlated only to the top marginal tax rate that applies a tiny fraction of tax payers and only to part of their income.  That's too absurd for words.   Goldberg is right.  Liberals don't "get" his concepts, because he builds them on false premises.