Paul Krugman, ersatz leftist economist, being schooled by a real economist, Nobel Laureate Angus Keaton on how immigration hurts wages. It's a simple matter of supply and demand more supply of labor puts downward pressure on the cost of labor (more supply of something makes it cheaper to purchase).
Krugman, who puts his leftist ideology first, should know this. It's first year university economics. Krugman just doesn't understand the basics, so everything he spouts is, from an economic standpoint, trash.
But Angus Keaton goes one step further, and correlates the supply of labor to income inequality - downward pressure on the cost of labor benefits the rich and hurts those at the lower end of the income scale (the poor), whose only real ability to earn income comes from supplying labor. This reduces costs for the wealthy and decreases income for the poor, obviously exacerbating income inequality.
There's a point of equilibrium between supply and demand, which every market, even for the market of labor, seeks to find. If you are constantly increasing the supply of labor, that equilibrium point keeps shifting, and that shift for the price of labor, is ever downward.
Via Sean Collins at Spiked, a great summary of what is going on leading up to the 2024 election:
The first of Donald Trump’s criminal trials kicked off in earnest this week in New York. Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg has charged Trump with 34 felony counts, alleging that he falsified records to cover up a ‘hush money’ payment to porn star Stormy Daniels.
It’s an unprecedented case. Never before has a former US president, or a leading candidate for an upcoming presidential election, faced criminal charges. There’s a good reason why America hasn’t had such a case before: seeking to jail your political opponent is generally understood to be something only banana republics do.
It’s also an absurd and unjust case, involving novel legal theories and obvious political intent. No one other than Donald Trump would be subject to such charges.
The Manhattan trial is part of the ‘lawfare’ offensive that is currently being waged by President Joe Biden and the Democrats against Trump. It is one of four criminal cases that Trump faces. He also has two federal cases, related to his handling of classified documents and to the ‘January 6’ riots, and one in Georgia, alleging that he subverted the 2020 election. These other cases are delayed, so the Manhattan case may be the only one to be tried before the November presidential election. Democrats have even tried to knock Trump off the ballot in multiple states, an anti-democratic scheme that was stymied by the Supreme Court last month.
JUST IN: DOJ lawyer Michael Dreeben says it's perfectly fine for Obama to drone strike innocent civilians while arguing in favor of prosecuting Trump for "election interference."
Remarkable.
The comment came after Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh cornered Dreeben by asking… pic.twitter.com/sNmHj7VwZo
I think it is reasonable to consider the president ordering drone strikes against a terrorist target not a prosecutable offense, even if unfortunately, innocent foreign civilians are killed. But then contrast that position to the president questioning the veracity of election results as being a prosecutable offense and it just becomes weird. Really, quite, weird.
In The president Trump criminal immunity case, the justices, even the leftist justices, are asking the real questions, not the questions being asked in the lawfare cases against Trump. Even far left judge Ketanji Jackson Brown, asking a left-leaning question, is addressing a legitimate concern, even if it doesn't apply in the Trump case.
Of course the conservative justices are asking the better questions but the two questions are flip sides of the same coin; "Can the president do whatever he wants with total immunity?" vs. "Can a political candidate be prosecuted for political reasons, by his opponents, with total immunity for the false prosecutors?"
Really they are the same question to some degree because it's what we are seeing the Let's Go Brandon administration trying to do to Trump; prosecute an opponent as president, with total immunity and no consequences.
The answer to the question should not be an easy simple one for political expediency. Suggesting the president can do anything he wants with total immunity (murder?) is dangerous. Suggesting that a president or former president or a presidential candidate can be prosecuted by anyone for any reason, real or fictitious, is equally dangerous. There must be some balance in the answer that supersedes the immediate political interests of the two political parties. That's not something to be solved with expedience. It requires a sound ruling from SCOTUS and a subsequent reasonable legislative discussion and eventual law based on that ruling.
That is not to Trump's immediate benefit, but it is to the country's benefit. What as Trump supporters we can hope for is something that lays waste to the lawfare for the time being while a longer, broader and more thoughtful approach takes place after the 2024 election.
I was digging through my old posts this morning, looking for a specific one (that I have yet to find). It led me just now to post on a tangential topic. And now it's led me to an entirely unrelated topic. This time, it's about a notion that actually relates to my previous post - Democrats keep making the same mistakes.
In that previous post, I noted that the Democrats' mistakes on Israel and Hamas are driven by politics rather than by morality or even national security. However, their mistakes on the economy and unemployment are driven by political and economic misunderstanding. Socialist policies lead to bad outcomes.
Some people look back on the Obama years with nostalgia, but it's undeserved:
The U6 president, unlike his Nobel Peace Prize, now has an accomplishment he has truly earned. He has presided over the longest stretch of unemployment above 8% in the history of unemployment in the United States (reported by HuffPo - emphasis added);
Stronger job creation could help President Barack Obama's re-election hopes. Still, the unemployment rate has been above 8 percent since his first month in office – the longest stretch on record. No president since World War II has faced re-election with unemployment over 8 percent.
Of course back then, spin mattered. Now it doesn't - few believe this "president" is doing a good, and few believe that spin matters more than who votes and which votes actually get counted. Sad but true.
None of this matters to Democrats, it's about accumulation and retention of power. That and their socialist agenda which they either believe completely or just use to help centralize their power. Nothing more. Hurt Israel, hell hurt Americans. As long as it serves their purpose it doesn't matter to them. That's evil.
As I've said many times over the years - they are either too stupid or too evil (or maybe both) to be allowed to lead the country.
In 2012 I shared a post about Democrats flip-flopping on their stance on Israel and Hamas. Back then the Democrats were tacitly trying to hold together a fragile coalition that included groups who apparently despise each other - to this day.
Here's an excerpt:
The Democratic National Convention, reeling from today’s chaotic fiasco surrounding the reinsertion of pro-Israel, pro-God language into the party platform, has announced that President Obama personally intervened to ensure that that language was revived. But Politico is now reporting that President Obama approved the original, Jerusalem-less, Hamas-less language less than a fortnight ago. He didn’t try to change the platform “until after Republicans jumped on the omissions of God and Jerusalem late Wednesday.” And his own party was clearly against it – the people on the floor of the convention probably didn’t even vote in majority numbers for the reinsertion of pro-Israel, pro-God language. They booed Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, the DNC chairman, off the stage after he rammed through the measure on the third vote.
Their fragile coalition is fracturing finally. They can only hold the lies to both sides together for so long, and apparently that's about 12 years.
This has happened before. Remember when the left wing media held secret meetings to align their news stories back in 2012? I blogged about it, I'll find a link and add it ASAP. The point is this conspiracy is real, and it's not new news:
The left is an alliance of viciously self-interested groups. This why the Left will ultimately eat itself. It's why Trump is beating Let's Go Brandon in the polling, the sane left is abandoning the left altogether in a grasp at normalcy. The only way to stay on the left is to out-crazy the rest of the pack. Who can keep up with that? Who wants that? Obviously the elite do and so do the echo chamber nut jobs in the media.
Those who stick around for it will devolve back into their self-interested packs with their support my cause OR ELSE mentality. Alec Baldwin case in point:
Canada has long espoused multiculturalism under various Liberal governments for many decades now, dating back to the previous Prime Minister Trudeau (an equally bad leader to his son). The list of failures of this supposed approach to a social fabric, is that all it serves to do is rip the social fabric. Canada used to marvel that our "cultural mosaic" of multiculturalism was superior to the American melting pot approach to a social fabric (i.e. bring your own culture, but adapt and add only the best parts of what you were leaving behind to American society).
The truth is multiculturalism is an unabashed failure, and it's begun to take deep root in America. Do not allow yourselves as a nation to continue down this path to eventual failure:
Sheetz did criminal background checks on job applicants. The Let's Go Brandon administration is suing Sheetz because they said it was racial discrimination. No, it's about hiring people without criminal records. By the administration's logic they should be suing themselves for upholding policies and political positions (wittingly or not), that keep poor people poor and desperate enough to become criminals in the first place.
Canada has a monopoly problem. It serves as a cautionary tale for any economy becoming oligopolistic or worse, monopolistic. The trend in Canada has been towards fewer and fewer players in most major industries. It harms consumers, employees and stifles innovation. In Canada it has become a critical problem.
No worse monopoly than government, and there is no bigger monopoly than government. Socialists who are anti-business and prefer to consolidate power favor government as producer. They are in favor of an even bigger super-monopoly, refusing to see the error of their own illogic.
I'm a Gen-Xer, early enough in that generation to be just post-baby boomer. I'm not saying we were brought up properly. The Baby Boomer generation were not typically terrific parents, most of what was said in this clip was very typical of my childhood and also true of most everyone I knew growing up together. They made a lot of mistakes as parents. But I feel like I have a lot more resilience than I see in subsequent generations.
That lack of resilience probably enables Millennials and Gen Z susceptible to woke culture and safe spaces and all that that entails. And there's a lesson to be learned from that.
Let's stage a Let's Go Brandon clip, except they forgot to destroy the scripting part by mistake. If there's no script, Let's Go Brandon can only stammer. That's how we knew this sort of thing has always been scriptyed.
I'd like to tell Cher, Barbara Streisand, Meathead (aka Rob Reiner) et. al. "Do not come to Canada when Trump wins in November 2024. We don't want any of you and your socialist elite tripe." But instead, I'll let the facts, and others say it instead.
In summary, Canada is broken, really, really, badly broken. It's thanks to the socialist policies of Justin no-brains Trudeau.
And for the rest of America's sake, do not allow Let's Go Brandon to drag the United States further down this path. PLEASE!!!
That's how bad it really is, but it gets a lot worse. This video, is REAL!
Trudeau's popularity is in the gutter but we are stuck with him for another 18 months or so. You in America have a shorter window to try to fix things. GET IT RIGHT before this happens to you:
(For context, 1 liter is 0.264172 U.S. gallons, and the price per gas per liter has just gone up to $1.79, or $6.78 per gallon!)
There are so many more of these but here's a view from what seems to be the left side of the political aisle, and it explains why Justin Trudeau is so despised now:
It's not too late to stop this from happening in America. All you have to do is not vote Democrat. Vote Republican or this WILL happen in America, guaranteed.
I'm a Canadian, living in Canada. I like my country, but I don't love it. I certainly don't like our current facsimile of a leader. I do love what the United States is supposed to be, and throughout most of it's history, has been. In the United States you have your own facsimile of a leader at the moment. One who can barely stand, who can barely speak, barely walk, and clearly barely think, is no leader.
America has the capacity, as a country, of unparalleled greatness. If that greatness is not eroded by the people who would have you forget your history.
Here is one small sample of what it means to be American. This used to be celebrated. It should be celebrated again, instead of your pronouns:
A while back Joe Rogan responded to the viral video of Canadian opposition leader, and next Prime Minister, Pierre Poilievre disarming a leftist reporter. He was impressed but had trouble with the leader's name. This video will fix that for Joe Rogan, and others who have struggled with reading or pronouncing Pierre Poilievre's name:
Death to America chants includes death to the American government. It means her job, possibly even her safety. Does she care? Not enough to say anything. Her radical agenda comes first.
Once again I have a lot going on with my day job, my company was bought out by another and there's been a lot of transition work going on, both before and after the switchover. As a result I haven't been able to post as much in the way of my own thoughts as I'd like. I've been leaning on videos by others and just adding some of my own thoughts quickly to it. It's been less than ideal, but this blog has always been a time permitting situation. Nevertheless in previous years I have been able to still manage 500 posts per year relying on that formula.
I don't expect that to change. I just wanted to offer an explanation as to why my posts have been probably more reliant on videos by others of late as compared to earlier this year, where I tried to offer more exposition than in the past few years. Early on in this blog's history it was mostly my own exposition. I sincerely wish to return to that and at some point this year, I believe it will be the case again. Short term though, likely not.
Blogger has afforded me a platform, but not much of an income (I only make about $30-$50 per year from AdSense). So while it is an enjoyable pursuit, a worthwhile pursuit, it's not a living. Therefore, sadly, the day job must come first, at least until I retire.
More frequent expositional posting will return, as soon as possible.
Courtesy of Paul Joseph Watson, Jimmy Kimmel ignores the fact that where America is unclean, is predominantly the progressivist bastion cities he applauds for other reasons. Kimmel is willfully blind to the correlation of leftist policies and resulting filth.
When Democrats say these things it's supposedly not violence. Then they make up falsehoods about violence on the right. Not blanketing all Democrat voters, but those who do espouse violence are vile people.
Nebraska is trying to get Donald Trump one more electoral college vote. About time. This notion of proportional allocation is a miasmic sewer hole of ways to shift votes to Democratic candidates. You don't see New York or California doing this, why should a solidly Republican state do it?
Recently Piers Morgan had YouTubers Nerdrotic and The Critical Drinker (a personal favorite) on his show to discuss Disney's recent parade of flop movies. It was a good discussion but my takeaway went in an entirely different direction, not involving Disney except peripherally . Firstly, here's their discussion before I pivot away. Notice there are two other guests to round out the panel debate but meh, who cares.
As I said, a good discussion, but not my point. My observation is that more and more we are seeing (no offense intended) second tier YouTubers show up on more mainstream outlets. Let me be clear, neither of those gentlemen are second tier in terms of content. I mean that they are not at the level of say a Joe Rogan or Jordan Peterson in terms of viewership. Not yet at least.
Why are these people being elevated to mainstream status? Again, I am fans of both of these YouTubers, this is not meant as a slight at them. They are talented, educated, intelligent and well spoken. But why them, why not say Ben Affleck (whom I would be much less likely to watch on Piers Morgan's show)? I think I know the answer, or at least a few possible answers.
Firstly, I already answered it in part; who wants to watch Ben Affleck pontificate on anything? We have already seen him make a clown out of himself on Bill Maher's show. So there are ratings to consider. But then why not Ben Shapiro, who is clearly a top tier catch? Maybe it's because he is already a known commodity. Media is always looking for the next new thing, and when you have people like Nerdrotic and The Critical Drinker who can do just as good a job as guests, you are in the right (perceived) lane as mainstream media. Furthermore, you can't just keep doing the same thing and expect to maintain ratings. If that was the case, TV shows would all be reruns, music artists would only make one album, and Gone With The Wind and Wizard of Oz would be the only movies in theaters. New and different don't always work, but they do often enough to be absolutely 100% necessary.
Secondly, Nerdrotic and The Critical Drinker have become a bit more than just second tier. They have over a million and nearly two million subscribers respectively. These are not small players. The media in general is at a point where has to embrace these independent content producers because they are continually losing ground to the likes of YouTube. As the saying goes, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. Unfortunately I think much of the mainstream media, and I'm not talking about Piers Morgan here, have not understood the main lesson here. The reason people are going to YouTubers, is the same reason they had started moving to Netflix; you are producing crap that people do not want to watch. The woke message hammering in movies and shows is not a winning formula. Ironically, this was the Piers Morgan Disney debate's topic in the above clip.
Disney is still not getting the message it seems.
As an aside, I've noticed this happening more on the right side of the political aisle than the left side. That could be an observational bias since I watch very little left leaning content, it's hard to stomach for long. But the idea that it's predominantly a right sided phenomenon does make sense. The right has far fewer celebrities and therefore needs more 'celebrities' than does the left. The right is more open to conversation from outside the echo chamber; we are not a lockstep thinking group. Therefore we need new perspectives, the left mostly does not.
If the left eventually comprehends all this, it will hopefully be too late to save their media hegemony.
You cannot force people to recognize a holiday they don't recognize. You especially cannot do it on Easter. That, is exactly what Let's Go Brandon and the far left LGBT social mafia are still trying to do:
I'm no longer sure that tyranny is an eventuality. In 2009 I despaired it was inevitable. It isn't. There are real reasons that the danger exists, as Academy of Ideas points out:
But ultimately, there are cycles that tyranny begets liberty which in turn begets liberty. Everything is cyclical. Tyranny is certainly part of that list of cyclical things. But when I say tyranny is not inevitable, I mean specifically a few things.
tyranny is not inevitable at this point in history
tyranny is not an inescapable end state for all
tyranny is not universal in the sense that it will exist in all places at all times
tyranny cannot ultimately overcome our God given, inalienable rights
Tyranny as is argued in the video exists in many forms. The video is not wrong. But there are degrees of tyranny and different locus points for tyranny; for example woke culture's attempted tyranny is as much tyranny as government's impositions. But the spirit of freedom is a flame that cannot be snuffed. And so long as that's true, tyranny cannot only not be absolute, but it can be held at bay for long periods of time, It can be pushed back. It can be fought and defeated withe every successive generation, if they choose to do so. That is an encouraging thought.
Calling out the New York Times does not matter. Mostly it doesn't matter to be more precise. The New York Times will not change it's stripes because people who already thought they were vile, disgusting, manipulative and deceitful see this as vile, disgusting and manipulative (and probably deceitful too). The New York Times is what it is: a radical left propaganda vehicle, and nothing more or less. It will not change, it's too late. It will go down to absolute bankruptcy continuing to do what it has been doing for decades; lying for the left's ignoble cause.
Where this does matter, is to those who pay attention that they may be reminded of what the NYT is, and to those few who happen upon the story on Fox and are awakened to the ill intent and evil of that rag.
