Immigration and trade

Question: What is an easy way to reduce immigration in to the US (if you want to do that)?

Answer: Buy what they have to sell. If they can make good money at home, they are less likely to want to come here.

Question: Won't we lose jobs?

Answer: What do you think people do with the dollars we send them in return for foreign goods? There is only one thing to do with dollars -- buy American goods,  invest in American companies, or buy US government debt, and the government spends it.

Question: But what about those jobs moving overseas?

Answer: Some jobs do move overseas. But those dollars, flowing back, create new jobs in the US. There are losers. It is true. There are also winners. That is also undeniable. Trade restrictions basically transfer jobs from some people in the US -- new jobs in export-oriented industries or industries fueled by foreign investment demand --  to other people in the US -- old jobs. And they do so inefficiently, making Americans buy more expensive goods overall.

Question: What's another way to reduce immigration in to the US (if you want to do that)?

Answer: Help their homes to be peaceful as well as prosperous. The costs of feckless foreign policy are not just lives and countries ruined, refugees washing up on our and europe's shores, but electoral and political responses.

(Economists. Forgive me for using the misleading "create jobs" rhetoric, in the interest of connecting with non economists. You know what I mean -- create wages, opportunities, businesses, etc.)

Corporate Tax

My view: the corporate tax should be zero. Not just a zero rate, but the tax should be abolished. Lowering a rate is just an invitation to renegotiation, and a quick raise when the next party takes over. Lowering a rate keeps all the lobbyists around to keep all the exemptions going. To reduce a tax, you must follow the advice of a zombie movie -- kill it, and drive a stake through its heart. Burn the code, delete it from the hard drive.

In my best guess, the tax is entirely really paid by consumers in higher prices and workers in lower wages. However, it works best only with a shift to a consumption tax (progressive if you wish) on individuals.

In the news, Marginal Revoultion has a short piece on eliminating the corporate tax, linking to Utah Senator  Mike Lee and to Matt Yglesias, Scrap the Corporate Income Tax. When I agree with Matt on something, a rare event, I like to celebrate. Matt:

"Closing loopholes while lowering rates would still leave the basic structure in place, with well-connected companies ferociously lobbying for their tax breaks. We need something much bigger and tougher that corporate income tax reform: an alternative source of revenue that will let us do away with the corporate income tax entirely. 

.. Just give up. Though the corporate income tax as presently constructed supports a small army of accountants, tax lawyers, lobbyists, and CNBC talking heads, it doesn’t raise very much revenue.

Rather than trying to mend the tax, we ought to end it and replace it with something else.
Pick who or what we want to tax, and tax it deliberately."

Lee writes

"..what would a tax system that puts American workers first look like? It would start with a cut in the federal corporate tax rate. Not to 25 percent or 15 percent, but to zero. Eliminate it altogether."

Issue 1 Incidence 

What, shouldn't corporations "pay their fair share?" As both authors recognize, corporations bear no tax burden. Every cent of corporate tax comes from people -- from higher prices for products, lower wages for workers, or lower profits for investors. A corporation is just a shell, money goes in and money goes out.

Uncommon Knowledge Interview

A broad-ranging interview on economics and policy by Peter Robinson as part of the Hoover "Uncommmon Knowledge" series. Click above for youtube, or

· Hoover Institution: http://www.hoover.org/research/whats-wrong-american-economy

· Twitter: https://twitter.com/uncknowledge/status/823926553058775042

· Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/UncKnowledge/

· Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/BPF8TnJgsBz/?taken-by=uncommon_knowledge_show

· Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spe619WX-Q4

· Bitly Link: http://hvr.co/2jqxNkp

The full transcript is available on the episode page at http://www.hoover.org/research/whats-wrong-american-economy.

Chinese Tidbit

From the WSJ moneybeat blog:

China’s central bank extended support on Friday to a group of unnamed but large banks...  the People’s Bank of China extended a longer-term but temporary liquidity facility... Details on the facility were typically vague. In recent weeks it has also injected record amounts of cash. 

The move gives banks some breathing room for now, just as interbank liquidity stresses escalate. The new facility, analysts from ANZ say, doesn’t require banks to post collateral like other facilities typically do. And it makes it easier for them to reach a key regulatory barometer that monitors banks’ liquidity risk in cases of stress in the short term. A helping hand can lighten another burden–but not for long.

"Interbank liquidity stresses" and central bank long term "loans" without collateral are not a good sign. An escalating war on capital flight is not a good sign either.

Bruni on Rule of Law in Regulation

I found Frank Bruni's opinion piece in the Sunday New York Times noteworthy on the whole question of rule of law in regulation:

Hillary Clinton as New York City mayor?

Imagine the fun:  City building inspectors start to show up daily at Trump Tower, where they find a wobbly beam here, a missing smoke detector there, outdated wiring all over the place. City health inspectors fan out through Trump’s hotels, writing citations for clogged drains in the kitchens and expired milk in the minibars. 

The potholes near his properties go unfilled. Those neighborhoods are the last to be plowed. There’s a problem with the flow of water to his Bronx golf course, whose greens are suddenly brown. And the Russian Consulate keeps experiencing power failures. It’s the darnedest thing. Clinton vows to look into it, just as soon as she returns from the Hamptons.

..His [Trump's] hometown is her fief. She’s the boss of him whenever he’s in the Big Apple, and he’s in the Big Apple a whole lot.

...I’m fantasizing, yes, but with a glimmer of encouragement....there are so many scores she could settle, so many ways she could meddle. ...above all there’d be the torturing of Trump...The city’s Mexican Day Parade would be rerouted, from Madison Avenue over to Fifth, right past Trump Tower. A new city zoning experiment would locate detention centers in the strangest places. And in the city’s libraries, “The Art of the Deal” would be impossible to find, while upfront, on vivid display, there’d be copies galore of “It Takes a Village” and “Hard Choices.”

There is no indication that Bruni is kidding, that any of this would be both monstrously illegal, unethical, and a disaster for New York, and no disclaimer from his editors.

As far as I can tell, Bruni is a middle of the road Democrat, and a fan of large-government regulation.  (Like the rest of the Times, Bruni seems currently in full-tilt Trump Derangement Syndrome, with 11 out of his 14 columns since the election criticizing Trump, rather than policy, so if he's really a free-market deregulator, let me know.)

So how fascinating that Bruni -- and his Times editors -- seem to think it so natural that regulation and public services they admire -- building inspectors, muncipal water and power, zoning, even the public library -- should naturally be bent, far beyond legal limits, to partisan political service. Building inspections are used to punish political enemies, but we're supposed to trust that the IRS, Obamacare, EPA, FDA, NLRB, and Dodd-Frank are not?  Or is it just that illegal abuse of power is just fine and normal in the hands of their friends?

And how deeply naive. Really?

Leaders vs followers?

The Jan 9 Wall Street Journal had this nice graph, accompanying an article by Josh Zumbrun, "Top Economists Grapple with Public Disdain for Initiatives they Championed"

The question is this: Should we understand politicians as assembling coalitions of voters with fixed policy preferences? Or should we instead regard politicians as leaders, who give voice to general dissatisfaction, and their followers picking up ideas?

Most political analysis takes the former view. People are mad about China, the TPP, immigrants, or whatever, and Trump comes along, listens, and represents these preferences, and wins. Easy models of political preference put preexisting policy views on a line, and then think about where leaders choose to place themselves.

The article echoed the common view too

Surveys from the Pew Research Center have documented dwindling support for free trade. In 2014, 60% of Democratic voters and 55% of Republican voters supported such trade agreements. In an October survey, however, support among Democrats had fallen to 56% and support among Republicans had nose-dived to 24%.

I'm coming to a different view. Yes, people are unhappy. But the average American is busy with a real life, and doesn't think a whole lot about cause and effect in public policy. How many have read NAFTA or the TPP, or have any idea what's inside?  How many have thought about automation vs. regulation vs. trade as the source of industrial decline?

It seems to me the ideas come from the leader, giving voice to their voter's frustrations. Policy views then become general signals of team allegiance. Witness how many Trump supporters, interviewed, supported him despite not because of policy stances.

And witness the graph. How could it possibly be that in two years, opinions on the value of free trade among Republicans dropped by half, while virtually unchanged among Democrats? Surely, this is not a change of view independent of candidates, that Mr. Trump was just quicker to recognize. Surely, this represents the opposite -- candidates, especially Mr. Trump but also many of the others, denounce trade, and followers follow.

The good news is that ideas held lightly and as a badge of support can more easily change.   And other leaders can channel the same discontents to more profitable analysis of our country's problems.