“The Trump Administration has come in with brute force, attacking working people and institutions from all angles. Its ’flood the zone’ strategy has left many feeling confused and powerless. But the MAGA forces are not unstoppable. Strong coalitions among labor and social movement organizations offer one of the best hopes for blocking the rise of white Christian nationalist forces and countering authoritarianism with progressive power. In fall 2023, United Auto Workers (UAW) President Shawn Fain called for unions around the country to align their contracts to expire on May 1, 2028, to join the UAW in their next round of bargaining with the Big 3. This was in part a call for class solidarity, to bring workers together across unions, labor and social movements and geography. It was also an acknowledgment that some of the biggest demands that UAW members have — strong pensions and healthcare — cannot be won alone.” (03/14/25)
“Donald Trump wants to create a sovereign wealth fund (SWF). It’s a bad idea if your standard is freedom, free enterprise, and free markets. That’s not Trump’s standard, but we already knew that. A sovereign wealth fund is a government-run investment program. Where does the money come from? In the private sector, people save money (defer consumption) and let entrepreneurs and capital owners (perhaps including themselves) use it to produce goods and services that serve consumers sooner or later. … Governments with SWFs typically used budget surpluses to get them going. We might ask why those governments didn’t cut taxes and spending instead. After all, the government had taken in more money than it required to cover its spending. If you look at this from the politicians’ and bureaucrats’ point of view, the answer is obvious. They like using other people’s coerced money for social engineering.” (03/14/25)
“The idea of acquiring Greenland isn’t fundamentally as daft as it sounds — the place is rich in natural resources and located conveniently to support the Arctic ambitions of whichever regime controls it — but absent the consent of its inhabitants, the means of acquisition are necessarily reduced to war. And the thing about wars is that short little wars tend to turn into long big wars. I’d say ‘unexpectedly,’ but history says to expect it. Would Trump really pull that trigger? If so, it probably won’t be over ‘national security’ considerations. The reasons will be domestic and rooted in the economic chaos produced by his ‘trade war’ antics.” (03/13/25)
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Jacob G Hornberger
“Libertarian supporters of an ‘Ellis Island’ type of immigration-control system are receiving a lesson in the fallacies of their system. They imagine an immigration-control system in which the federal government is vetting every foreigner and rejecting only the few ‘bad’ ones. What they fail to understand is that once federal officials are given the power to determine who comes into the United States, that power is inevitably going to be abused by encompassing ever-growing groups of innocent people. That’s, in fact, what happened with the Ellis Island system … Starting out with rejecting people who had tuberculosis, the Ellis Island immigration-control system was gradually expanded to encompass ever-growing groups of people, including anarchists (which ought to concern so-called anarchist libertarians, including those who favor government immigration controls and a border police state), prostitutes, mentally impaired people, people who might become public charges, and Chinese.” (03/13/25)
“The Democratic Party has been trying to paint negotiations as appeasement. During the 2024 elections, the Democratic platform condemned then-candidate Donald Trump’s ‘fecklessness’ on Iran and ‘love letters’ to North Korea. When Trump argued that the U.S. should negotiate with countries like Iran and Russia over economic sanctions, Kamala Harris'[s] campaign attacked his ‘weak’ and ‘reckless foreign policy.’ But some Democrats seem to regret taking that line. ‘Being afraid to negotiate, to my mind, is the ultimate sign of weakness because it just proves that you think that if I get in a room, you’re going to trick me and I’m going to do something stupid,’ Rep. Adam Smith (D–Wash.) said during a panel discussion Wednesday. … When asked by Quincy Institute Vice President Trita Parsi whether Democrats were seen as warmongers, Smith admitted that the party ‘walked into that problem.'” (03/13/25)
Source: EconLog
by Christopher Coyne & Andre Quinta
“Populism is one of the most important political phenomena of our time. Yet, it is still poorly understood. At its core, populism is built on the notion that the masses are engaged in a struggle against corrupt elites who have rigged the political and economic system to their advantage. Whether left-wing or right-wing, this is the essence of the populist narrative: an appeal to ‘the people’ against ‘the elite’ and the claim to restore power to ordinary citizens by breaking the grip of entrenched interests. But can populism effectively challenge crony capitalism—a system where the political and economic elite are entangled? Can it truly dismantle the grip of entrenched interests? In a recent working paper, we argue that populist movements are likely to fail to deliver on their promises. The reason is that populism does not resolve the dual epistemic and incentive challenges necessary for success.” (03/13/25)
“Among the most common economic justifications for tariffs today is that they’re needed to shrink a U.S. trade deficit that has long cost us jobs and dragged down economic growth. On both the left and the right (including the current occupant of the White House), trade balances — both overall and with specific countries like China or our new mortal enemy, Canada — are treated as a scoreboard for quickly judging the success or failure of U.S. trade policy and globalization more broadly. And seemingly every time the government releases the latest trade balance figures, at least one business journalist — and usually many more — will earnestly write that the U.S. trade deficit ‘improved’ (shrunk) or ‘worsened’ (increased), and that the deficit is a drag on economic growth. Yet little that I just wrote is actually correct.” (03/13/25)
“Some days it seems like oligarchy is inevitable. But as we enter the Age of Complexity and decentralization, the Iron Law might be bent or broken.” (03/13/25)
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Fabricio Antezana Duran
“When thinking about Latin America, most people immediately think of its giants: Brazil, Argentina, Chile, and Colombia. Big cultures, big economies, and a notable presence in international affairs. But a new player has been making increasingly prominent appearances on the global stage: Paraguay. This small, landlocked country of nearly seven million people, located in the heart of South America, has historically been overlooked in international economics and diplomacy. Yet, despite its size and relative obscurity, Paraguay is beginning to crack the formula for economic success.” (03/13/25)
“United Nations-backed human rights experts on Thursday accused Israel of ‘the systematic use of sexual, reproductive and other gender-based violence’ in its war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip. … Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lashed out at the Human Rights Council, a U.N.-backed body that commissioned the team of independent experts, as an ‘anti-Israel circus’ that has ‘long been exposed as an antisemitic, rotten, terrorist-supporting, and irrelevant body.’ His statement did not address the findings themselves. The findings by the Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, which seeks to document in minute detail the allegations and evidence of crimes to bolster accountability for perpetrators, could be used by prosecutors at the International Criminal Court or in other jurisdictions to try to bring justice to victims and their relatives.” (03/13/25)
