A smart guy emailed me over the weekend with a very provocative assertion:  All of this income inequality stuff is over-blown political rhetoric.

He makes a compelling case.  Instead of paraphrasing it, I am going to let the smart guy speak for himself:

It seems to me the whole premise of the Obama/Hill Dem position is that a dramatic income inequality trend has ensued.

They are wagering all the chips of the election on that premise and their preferred policy.

What if the premise is wrong?

What if shares of income have been relatively constant or have not changed dramatically from 1979-2006?

What if taking the edges off of market forces, which their policies, by definition, must do, actually reduces the economic pie that Americans basically share pretty constantly (as they move between cohorts over their lifetime)?

An income re-distribution policy carries the burden of dampening growth.  That’s the trade-off between equity and efficiency that most policy makers agree exists.

What then?

 Read more...

There were two really good moments for Mitt Romney is last night’s debate.

One was his smack-down of Newt Gingrich’s moon colony remarks.

I am in favor of a moon colony, by the way, but Newt only trotted out his proposal when he addressed Florida’s Space Coast, and as Romney pointed out, Newt has a habit of promising pork in every State he campaigns in.

Given the anti-pork nature of the Republican primary voter, I thought that was nice shot by the Massachusetts governor.

The other moment came when Mitt responded to the Gingrich allegation that Romney was the most anti-immigrant Republican candidate left in the race.

He was furious and he showed it, which showed that he has a strong spine.

But he also let everyone know that he is a Mexican immigrant too, which must have been a revelation to most of the television audience last night.

I wonder how his Spanish is.

Jeb Bush pointed out in a Washington Post op-ed that the Hispanic community is a pretty diverse group.  Mexicans, Cubans, Puerto Ricans, Hondurans, El Salvadorans, Columbians, Nicaraguans all have different reasons for coming to the United States.  They share the same language, but they don’t necessarily share the same life experiences, views of the United States, habits or wealth potential.  Read more...

The Long Run was one of the best albums ever produced,  and I was thinking about the title song on Tuesday.

I have long believed that our federal government is far too focused on short-term thinking, and our policies are not built for the long run.

And I think that most voters get that fact, which it is one of the reasons they are so frustrated with our national politicians.

Probably the best part of the President’s State of the Union speech came when he used the word “durable” to describe his vision of the American economy.

Of course, it was all bullshit, because the President has been the king of the temporary fix, but the sentiment is exactly right.

Our economy needs to be built for the long run.

What does that mean?

Well, the tax code is not chock-full of short-term tax extenders that expire every year.  The business community wants the tax policy, because they want to pay less in taxes.  But they are never quite sure if the tax policy is going to continue or not, which means they can’t make any long-term planning decisions.  Read more...

My Fellow Americans,

The State of the Union is about at the historical average.

Some things are great.  Some things are not so great.

It is a lot better than it was a year ago, but not nearly as good as a decade ago.

A lot of people are working, and a lot of them are working two or three jobs.

Some people are not working.  Some people want to work but can’t find a job.  Some people have no interest in ever working again and are enjoying ripping off the system.  Some people just can’t keep a job because they don’t have any skills and they don’t have the brains to acquire them.

Innovation is alive and well in America.  Some industries thrive on innovation and some industries die because of innovation.  This is not a good time to be a journalist, for example.

The car industry has made a nice comeback.  Everyone thought it was dead, but then the Japanese made some bad cars, and all of a sudden, Detroit is back on top.

Manufacturing is rebounding, although the bulk of new manufacturing jobs are still being created in China.  I’m not sure how to handle that.  Read more...

I wrote this article for the Ripon Society Magazine a couple years ago and I think it holds up pretty well, so I thought I would share it with you again.

Mr. President:

It is a relatively new tradition for the party that is out of power to give a response to the President’s State of the Union.

This was done initially by Congressional Democrats who in the mid-80’s desperately wanted to give their side of the story in response to President Ronald Reagan’s State of the Union Addresses.

They wanted to provide balance.

In the spirit of balance, I will provide this response to your address.

You have given another well-delivered and glib speech to the country.  You have attempted to convince people that everything you have done is fine and honorable, and everything your opponents have done is corrupt and misguided.

You have continued the fiction that all is well in America, and that the state of our union is strong.  Read more...

Over the weekend, the New York Times had a fascinating look behind the Great Wall of China and how it basically took over manufacturing of the electronic devices that I use every day.

It all started when Steve Jobs decided that he wanted the iPhone to have a glass screen.  Jobs didn’t want his beautiful creation to have an inferior scratched surface, so he demanded that production turn on a dime, and start cranking the stuff out.

Corning, the glass maker, developed a non-breakable, non-scratch surface, but it was the Chinese who had the ability to integrate the whole shebang into a nice little package, and then produce the buggers in huge numbers.

There were three big takeaways from this article.

First, the Chinese work very, very hard.  When the factory owners got the contract, they rousted thousands of workers in the middle of the night, and immediately put them to work on 12-hours shifts.  There weren’t a whole lot of shop foremen who were going to lead any strikes against management.

Second, for a Communist country, they sure believe in the primacy of big business.  That means no rules protecting workers, no rules protecting the environment, no rules helping out the lawyers.  Read more...

This originally appeared in The Hill:

The smart operatives in Romney-world probably aren’t looking for advice from a columnist like me on how to fix their flailing campaign, but I am going to give my advice to them anyway. Here are 10 suggestions:

1) Don’t panic. South Carolina was never going to be friendly territory for Mitt Romney. He did well to finish in second. He had a terrible week, said some stupid things, gave an awful answer on releasing his taxes and he still got a higher percentage of the vote than he did last time in the Palmetto State. His team has to retool, but they shouldn’t fly off the handle. Romney is still the most credible candidate in the field.

2) Ignore Newt. The candidate should never mention the former Speaker by name. He shouldn’t talk about Newt’s Fannie and Freddie days, nor about his ethics charges, nor about his various marriages. Romney doesn’t have to push him over the edge. Newt will walk over the edge all by himself.

3) Let your wife do the talking. The candidate isn’t that great, but the wife is terrific. How many times have we heard that? It happens to be true this time. Anne Romney is an underused asset in this campaign. She should be used more.  Read more...

By all accounts, Tom Coughlin is kind of a jerk.

He is not particularly pleasant to be around.  He imposes all kinds of silly rules on his players.  He is a stickler for details.

He is by no means a visionary.  He doesn’t have fancy passing schemes.  He won’t wow you with football innovations.

The only thing that Tom Coughlin has going for him is that he wins.

Coughlin’s seems more inspired by the past than by the future.  He is a traditionalist who believes in doing things the old fashioned way.  He requires his players to be smart and to be disciplined.  And he doesn’t put up with a lot of crap.

Coughlin is not running to win the Miss Congeniality contest (as John McCain might say).  He doesn’t want to be liked by the media and the fans.  He is not prone to a whole bunch of spin.

Boy, wouldn’t it be nice if there was a Tom Coughlin in the Republican primary field?  Read more...

Mitt Romney is not that popular in the South.

Big surprise.

He got trounced last time around in South Carolina, and he didn’t win a state in Old Dixie.

The question tonight is:  does it matter?

Romney can get the nomination without winning North or South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas.

And, in many ways, he should find that very liberating.

Because, if he should get the nomination, there is very little chance that Old Dixie will vote for Barack Obama.

Romney owes the South nothing (since they helped him not at all in his quest), which means he can embark on a strategy to seize the vital middle, focus on the swing states, and basically ignore them.

This usually isn’t done in Republican primaries.  John McCain certainly bent over backwards to curry favor with South Carolina in ways that hurt him in the general election.  George W. Bush ostensibly was from the South, and he owed his selection to the region in his battle with McCain.  George H.W. Bush had Lee Atwater.  And Ronald Reagan consciously nodded to the Confederacy when he spoke from Philadelphia, Mississippi to open his campaign.  Read more...