Almost Classical

Supporters of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton seem to be stuck in reality distortion bubbles. This is slightly more pronounced on the Trump side, where outright misinformation is believed. But the Clinton supporters are quick to selectively cite misleading information. Misleading data are only slightly better (and sometimes worse) than wrong information when trying to understand and correct problems. Trump supporters: He lost the popular vote. There was no widespread fraud, no mobs of illegal immigrants storming the ballot boxes. He lost, and lost significantly on the raw national popular vote total. (But it is complicated. See notes to Clinton supporters.) He is the least popular president-elect in the history of polling data. There is no mandate. He plans to nominate a cabinet that troubles many traditional conservatives, libertarians, and progressives. That's not a way to build bridges when you lack a mandate. He has a serious problem with facts. You know, that "tr...

Stop blaming polls or calling them "wrong" because only the Huffington Post polling was seriously flawed. Every other model actually offered accurate *ranges* of potential outcomes. The polls were not wrong. Polls give probability not certainty. They were accurate. If I tell you Hillary Clinton has an 85% chance of winning... hello? She still has a 15% chance of losing. People didn't want to accept that. They assumed 85% = she can't lose. Sean Trende has attempted to explain this with the example of Pennsylvania. The commonwealth was a close election: so close that one percent in both directions did change the winner, but that does not make the polls incorrect. It wasn't the polls: It was the pundits What occurred wasn’t a failure of the polls. As with Brexit, it was a failure of punditry. Pundits saw Clinton with a 1.9 percent lead in Pennsylvania and assumed she would win. [ Note: Margin of error was 3% in most polling! ] The correct inter...

speaking at CPAC in Washington D.C. on February 10, 2011. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Republican candidates, and the GOP in general, lost many of us in the "almost classical" liberal and libertarian subset of voters since 1992. The 1996, 2000, and 2004 elections drove us further away as the GOP enabled candidates and voters with no cohesive loyalty to classical liberalism . Some of us voted for George W. Bush in 2000, hoping for a return to the ideals of efficient (not non-existent) government and personal freedom. That hope quickly evaporated, as Bush was anything but fiscally responsible. Non-intervention went by the wayside, too. From the Patriot Act to No Child Left Behind , Bush was the president libertarian-leaning, local-government promoting voters feared. A Republican taking away rights, imposing federal mandates, and engaging in wars without end. Our first votes for "W" were our last votes for W… and yet he won again (and with the popular vote) in 2...

speaking at CPAC in Washington D.C. on February 10, 2011. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) The economy is already rocky. This election won't bring a stable, growing economy, and it could bring disaster. In business, I'd rather know what taxes and regulations are ahead of me. If you can plan for something, there's stability. You might not like the programs and proposals of Hillary Clinton (I don't), but you can plan for what she would pursue as president. Donald Trump? His candidacy embodies the uncertainty businesses fear. It is like waiting for a natural disaster, but you don't know which type of disaster. Do we seek higher ground, to avoid a flood? Do we go into the basement to avoid a tornado? Trump is going to be something, but what will he be? Don't assume Trump cannot win. He can and he might. I'm not suggesting support for Hillary Clinton, either, but I am more concerned about Trump. The world today needs free trade. We need open borders. ...

The Inaugural Address reveals a lot about Pres. Obama. President Obama’s Second Inaugural Address - Washington Wire - WSJ :  Through it all, we have never relinquished our skepticism of central authority, nor have we succumbed to the fiction that all society’s ills can be cured through government alone. Our celebration of initiative and enterprise; our insistence on hard work and personal responsibility, are constants in our character. I wish I could believe he meant those words, but too often it seems Pres. Obama has faith in central planning, that bureaucrats do know best what is "right" for the rest of us. He is insufficiently skeptical of government, its expertise, and its power. The next section is more along the lines of "You didn't build that…" (a statement I and many others have explored in context of his full campaign speech). The president reminds us that "collectively" we stand. A false argument, since nobody is arguing against all gov...

Congress has a long history of ceding power to the executive branch. The arguments for this, that administration requires expertise and efficiency, do little to justify the surrender of Constitutional authority. Sadly, this surrender of power to unelected and too often unaccountable bureaucrats shows signs of accelerating. Review the administrative expansion under Presidents Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama and the number of regulations issued are depressing. President Obama has a penchant for the expensive, too. The Daily Caller In his 2012 State of the Union speech, Obama claimed, "I've approved fewer regulations in the first three years of my presidency than my Republican predecessor did in his." Obama's statement was true, but skewed, because he's far outpacing Bush in the production of "economically significant" regulations, each of which imposes costs of more than $100 million per year, said Wayne Crews, a vice president for policy and director of...

History is constantly rewritten and reinterpreted. Democrats and Republicans are both gifted at such rewrites. However, this isn't my rhetoric blog, this is an economics site. Let's take a look at the historical realities of claims by Democrats that the "Clinton Tax Rates" were responsible for boom times and a reduced annual deficit. A quick note: We did not have a surplus under Pres. Clinton. We had a projected surplus over a decade, but no actual surplus. Budget gimmickry likely overstated the ten year total, too, since that assumes no disasters, wars, or recessions. Good luck living in that fantasy land. For actual Clinton debt numbers, consider the following: Yes, the deficit was almost eliminated in FY2000 (ending in September 2000 with a deficit of "only" $17.9 billion), but it never reached zero--let alone a positive surplus number. And Clinton's last budget proposal for FY2001, which ended in September 2001, generated a $133.29 billion de...