Policy and Government
In the Washington Examiner, Tim Worstall says the stock market gains help more than just investors.
The WSJ reports Trump’s tariffs hurt U.S. manufacturing.
“The Clash of Capitalisms.” Branko Milanovic, at Foreign Affairs, calls “Game Over:” “Capitalism rules the world.”
And says that the next fight is between liberal and state-controlled capitalism.
Excerpt:
Capitalism rules the world. With only the most minor exceptions, the entire globe now organizes economic production the same way: labor is voluntary, capital is mostly in private hands, and production is coordinated in a decentralized way and motivated by profit.
There is no historical precedent for this triumph. In the past, capitalism—whether in Mesopotamia in the sixth century BC, the Roman Empire, Italian city-states in the Middle Ages, or the Low Countries in the early modern era—had to coexist with other ways of organizing production. These alternatives included hunting and gathering, small-scale farming by free peasants, serfdom, and slavery. Even as recently as 100 years ago, when the first form of globalized capitalism appeared with the advent of large-scale industrial production and global trade, many of these other modes of production still existed. Then, following the Russian Revolution in 1917, capitalism shared the world with communism, which reigned in countries that together contained about one-third of the human population. Now, however, capitalism is the sole remaining mode of production.
It’s increasingly common to hear commentators in the West describe the current order as “late capitalism,” as if the economic system were on the verge of disappearing. Others suggest that capitalism is facing a revived threat from socialism. But the ineluctable truth is that capitalism is here to stay and has no competitor. Societies around the world have embraced the competitive and acquisitive spirit hardwired into capitalism, without which incomes decline, poverty increases, and technological progress slows. Instead, the real battle is within capitalism, between two models that jostle against each other.
Phillip W. Magness, a senior research fellow at the American Institute for Economic Research, praises Sen. Rand Paul’s new book critiquing socialism, as reprised by the FB page of The Capitalist League.
It’s a tradition, Paul notes, that has long afflicted the Left. Apologizing for tyrants and tin-pot dictators is a long-running pattern among Western socialist intellectuals, dating back to the 1930s paeans to Stalin that British playwright George Bernard Shaw and economists Sidney and Beatrice Webb penned before the full extent of his genocidal acts was understood. The formula is always the same: initial praise for a socialist revolutionary as he takes power, followed by a quiet retreat once he predictably descends into repression and brings his country to ruin.
…
However one might assess the other results of his legislative career, Senator Paul has proven a persistent critic of socialist thought, and this book is an earnest plea to take seriously the threat it presents. It is directed toward consumers of conservative political commentary, but its warning is sincerely offered as well to those elsewhere on the spectrum. One only hopes that sensible voices outside conservative circles respond to that sincerity by subjecting today’s socialist movements to the historical scrutiny that their many adherents are all too eager to evade.
Monetary
Steve Forbes: By 2030, countries will be adopting the gold standard.
Regulatory
On Newsmax, Director Kudlow says President Trump will let you keep your health care plan.