High inflation, some big bank collapses (with more government to the rescue), war in Europe, millions of boomers leaving the workforce, a nearly nationwide housing crisis. Can't wait to see what's next.
Take care of yourself.
In other news, I am on Substack. It is much less political/ideological than here, which in it's own small way has been liberating and a relief, but I do still get the urge to let my right-leaning libertarian freak flag fly--and it just doesn't mesh well with my stuff over there.
So I'll keep everything separate. Not even sure I want to advertise my Substack yet, but I will be keeping this blog around for the occasional political comment.
I try to avoid doomsday thinking. I mean just look at all the dire predictions from every crackpot since well, ever. They're wrong 99.9% of the time.
But then you see dark clouds on the horizon. You think, well, probably just another little storm and we'll be back to sunny skies tomorrow.
But then your neighbors start falling ill. Just a bug going around, we'll be fine in a week or two.
Then your company announces a round or two of lay-offs. I'll just work extra hard and become irreplaceable. If not, there's always funemployment.
Then your washer and dryer decide to break, and it will cost an arm and a leg to fix, or an arm and a leg plus a disturbing but tempting amount to replace them. I can afford this minor emergency as a one off. We'll be frugal for a while, no biggie.
And then everything you're being frugal with, becomes more and more expensive. I'll just stop buying beef, and buy chicken or pork. Actually, I'll just buy chicken and only for special occasions.
And then you have another emergency. The stress from all of the above likely contributed to it, and now you have a lot more stress. By the way, we're going to war with Russia, a bunch of small kids were shot and killed in a Texas school, your investments are plummeting, your savings are dried up, and if you are still employed, you freaking hate every minute of it. Plus your family is starting to blame you for being so bad at providing for them, at least that's how you feel. Nobody's happy. You and your family's outlook is... uncertain.
Oh and by the way, that storm will be here any minute.
I'm tired, I'm scared, I'm stressed and I don't know how much longer I can keep this up.
But it's not as bubbly as the last one, which is to say there are significant supply and demand issues that make this bubble appear as good 'ol market forces doing what they do.
Disclaimer: I'm a complete amateur when it comes to the housing market, but I know what I've seen and experienced the past several years, compared that to other reports and observations, and well, I'm confident I'm not horribly wrong.
Unless my financial situation dramatically improves soon, or housing prices approach affordable levels soon, I have given up on buying a house. With respect to wealth creation, I'll focus on investing, saving, and entrepreneurship. Maybe I should buy a house I can barely afford, sell it a couple years later and profit. But that's a bigger gamble than what I do with my other investments, plus hassle & ownership headaches, plus nothing ever goes according to plan. So right now, screw buying and living in a house, I'm not playing that game.
But there is a huge demand for housing:
I think it's a combination of many things: cheap money the last several years, the high and climbing prices stirs up the hornet's nest of speculators and flippers further driving prices, high wood prices and supply chain issues, an explosion of remote workers, inflation, etc.
When supply can't meet demand, prices go up (as they should, and that is not a bubble) and the market balances things out. But it's not balancing out.
The below is for an average-sized single family home (3 bed, 2 bath) in a suburban area in northern Utah (where we had water shortages last summer because there are too many people!):
It's listed for nearly $500k.
This is what you need to make to reasonably afford the average single-family house here (click image to enlarge):
$110,000 with 10% down, and that is with little existing debt. Welcome to the real estate game; you cannot play! Something that cannot go on forever, will not.
I'm not an economist, and I've hardly done any research on this... but I think it is increasingly obvious we are in a recession. Not a small hiccup the experts tell us about 6 months after the fact, but something more and ongoing. 2008 levels? I don't know.
I hope I'm wrong or at least that it is not severe.
One might say "obviously, because of covid, supply chain, and inflation." Well yes, obviously. But those were issues months ago and we were only hearing about a possible recession, with others still talking about a recovery.
I'm short on time as always, so just imagine I said something clever and wrote beautifully compelling and logical segues between each point [I might edit this later when I have time].
Having successfully avoided a catastrophic Collapse of the healthcare system due to Covid. Logically, we’re pivoting to crash the system with Covid mandates.
As New York prepares to enforce its COVID-19 vaccination deadline on Monday, Governor Kathy Hochul said a state emergency declaration and other options, including calling in health care workers from the National Guard, are on the table to address any potential hospital staffing shortages.
"I am monitoring the staffing situation closely and we have a plan to increase our health care workforce and help alleviate the burdens on our hospitals and other health care facilities," Hochul said in a statement.
Then read this from Michael Tracey, about a somewhat extreme example which may portend where things are headed, or at least where many want them to go:
The thing of broader societal consequence is that Connecticut College now serves as a miniature test case for what happens when a framework of “permanent crisis” is allowed to persist, long past the point of there being any meaningful “crisis” at hand.
Many commemorations of the 9/11 anniversary this year rightly noted the extreme overreaction the attacks engendered: especially the string of failed military interventions and the erection of a massive surveillance state. All of this was eagerly egged on by a suite of enterprising financial interests which profited handsomely from the frenzied climate of that time. The resulting erosion of civil liberties never hurt their bottom lines; after all, they’re the ones producing technologies to erode them with maximum efficiency.
Do we really suppose that the vested interests which have likewise found such a lucrative market opening with COVID — notably the “endless testing” industry, including the elaborate “surveillance testing” regime that Connecticut College students must submit to — are just going to wind down their operations voluntarily? “Time to call it a day, folks?” Or is the bureaucratic/financial momentum of these initiatives going to assure that they effectively become permanent fixtures of daily life? (I’ve been doing some reporting on the “testing industrial complex,” which is undergoing a post-9/11 style renaissance as we speak, so be on the lookout for that soon. Subscribe, etc.)
Lest anyone find it peculiar that I am devoting so much attention to the goings-on at a fairly obscure liberal arts college in Connecticut, after the Friday article’s publication, I received the following message:
I’m an administrator at a small liberal arts college in Massachusetts and part of their COVID response team. I fear our college would do the same as Connecticut College if our cases increase. We’re already testing students twice per week despite a 95%+ vaccination rate. I’m one of a handful of voices in our group trying to be a voice of reason but am outnumbered. I’m going to share your Substack column with our COVID team in the hopes it will make at least some members come around to the side of reason. It breaks my heart to see college students, who should be having one of the best experiences of their lives, treated like prisoners.
One thing that has me very concerned about the Connecticut College situation is that college administrators are generally obsessed with following the example that other colleges set. There is a profound fear of being seen as an outlier. Our COVID response team has already received an email from the leader of the team asking if we would be ready to implement the Connecticut College plan if our COVID cases continue to rise.
You may have been witness to or participated in the mind-numbing twitter debates about whether to lockdown or not to lockdown, what is excessive and what is merely prudent, etc. Honestly, I go back and forth, but I find myself more often favoring individual freedom (even though I have the cutest little nephew who is immunocompromised, and several high-risk relatives). Those who are at-risk and/or afraid can and should take extra precautions. It's the same with any other behavior, like driving. We take risks, some of them quite deadly, every single day.
We have stopped thinking about a lot of those risks, and left the crass, but necessary cost-benefit analyses of what a human life is worth to somebody else. Somebody we probably don't know, who we didn't vote for, and who is rarely scrutinized for their valuation of a human life. And we mostly sleep comfortably with that fact we choose not to think about.
This reminded me of a clip of Milton Friedman, arguing with a college student:
We are in the midst of a public mass cost-benefit analyses of covid-19 policies. Weighing the risks versus freedom. This is a very messy and mostly decentralized process, with a lot of misinformation, changing guidelines, a mutating virus, a lot of public fear and exasperation--resulting in this mess we find ourselves in.
Then I started thinking about politics. What group is the most politically powerful? Conspiracy theories aside, that would undoubtedly be the elderly. They are the wealthiest, the most likely to vote, and likely the most at-risk group from this virus. Follow the money, follow the votes, follow the politician's survival instincts... you get the idea.
Whether explicitly or not, I posit that a major (if not the chief) contributing factor to prolonged and excessive policy reactions to covid, be it lockdowns, mask/vaccine mandates, school closures, distancing requirements, indoor activity restrictions, is that the elderly do not want to take any chances.
And there's little we can do about it, short of forming an unrealistically new, larger, politician-donating voting bloc and powerful lobby groups of younger people opposed to excessive covid policies. Or start a revolution.
Since both parties have large swaths of elderly constituents, don't expect either of them to step up. We'll get lip-service and a few politicians serving that niche, but I am highly doubtful things will change until the elderly feel much safer and the vast majority of voters are fed up with these policies. And there's always the risk we normalize and ingrain them: forever-pandemic society. Time will tell.
Crypto-related transactions will be considered illicit financial activity, including services provided by off-shore exchanges, the People’s Bank of China said on its website. It added that cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin and Tether, are not fiat currency and cannot be circulated.
Bitcoin slumped in the wake of the announcement, falling 8% to about $41,000 as of 9 a.m. in New York.
Chinese officials are going further to stamp out crypto trading for its ties to fraud, money laundering and excessive energy usage. China already has rules that bar banks from offering crypto-related
services. To get around such rules, traders have moved to over-the-counter platforms and offshore exchanges.
I'm no longer afraid of China, at least not for the long term. They're so arrogant they believe they can control and shape the future of finance and exchange by banning cryptocurrency. Dear China, that ship has sailed long ago. Have fun playing catch-up forever.
Keep chasing that elusive leprechaun with promises of total control and power at the expense of your future, China. There will always be leprechauns to chase, as people will never stop finding ways to subvert authority.
With the uncertainty about China largely out of the way, perhaps the cryptocurrency scene can finally start growing into its own (in any case, now's a good time to buy). It's time to leave the CCP in the dustbin of history.
Politifact-style fact check: Pants on fire! Biden knew the Afghan army would probably collapse, but he could not have possibly known how fast it would've collapsed.
In other words, the leaked phone call pretty clearly demonstrates Biden knew the Afghan army was in poor shape, but requested Ghani to lie about that if necessary. The evidence increasingly points to a royal fuckup of epic proportions, largely thanks to our increasingly worthless political, military, and intelligence "elite."
According to an admission obtained from the State Department, Biden officials recently directed federal agencies to scrub their websites of official reports detailing the $82.9 billion in military equipment and training provided to the Afghan security forces since 2001.
The scrubbed audits and reports included detailed accounting of what the U.S. had provided to Afghan forces, down to the number of night vision devices, hand grenades, Black Hawk helicopters, and armored vehicles.
Reports further quantified 208 aircraft and helicopters; 75,000 war vehicles – including 22 Humvees, 50,000 tactical vehicles and nearly 1,000 mine resistant vehicles; and 600,000 weapons – including 350,000 M4 and M16 rifles, 60,000 machine guns, and 25,000 grenade launchers.
The justification for all this scrubbing? Possible "security risk." The article then deftly points out one of the administration's recent genius 4-D chess moves:
It’s worth noting that the Biden administration already put these partners at risk when officials provided lists of Afghan nationals to the Taliban in a misguided attempt to clear them for evacuation.
"We all have pain and anger when we see what has unfolded over the last
20 years and the last 20 days, that creates pain and anger," Milley
said. "I'm a professional soldier, I'm going to contain my pain and
anger and execute my mission."
YOU'RE STILL TALKING, WHY ARE YOU NOT FIRED? Your mission should be to shut the fuck up and retire, preferably in Antarctica. 20 goddamn years and the Taliban are still in control, the country is ripe for brewing terrorism. Get the fuck out already.
That reminds me of a video I watched recently--sometimes the Youtube algorithm is helpful. Generals need to be fired. Frequently:
Wealth inequality may not be as bad as we are told. Lately, few things seem to be as bad as we are told, except when the government is in charge--then it's worse.
Objection: But wait, those last two are facts! Shouldn't we be teaching children facts?
Answer: Facts are white supremacy, you racist, fascist, homophobe!
Remind
this loon that facts and objectivity are simply constructs of
whiteness. We teach whatever will help us reach the political goals we
want; whether it's true or not is unimportant.
The Lambda variant was first detected in Peru in December 2020 and is now spreading rapidly through South America. A lab study in Japan,
which has not yet been peer reviewed, found that the Lambda variant
could be more resistant to vaccines than the original strain of COVID
and could be highly infectious. Another non-peer reviewed study from NYU researchers found that vaccines generally worked well against this variant.
A $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill on Thursday faces its
biggest test of this week's U.S. Senate debate when the nonpartisan
Congressional Budget Office delivers its judgment on whether the measure
fulfills a promise of not adding to Washington's budget deficits.
A proposal to crack down on cryptocurrency transactions could raise tens of billions of dollars for new infrastructure spending, as lawmakers advance a bipartisan plan.
Increasing
reporting requirements on cryptocurrency transactions is expected to
raise nearly $28 billion over the course of 10 years, according to an
estimate released by The Joint Committee on Taxation on Monday.
The group projected that, collectively, the provisions in the bill would boost revenue by $51 billion over the same time period.
With any luck, this latest attempt at theft-by-government will be a little less retarded (and I will not apologize for using the R-word. Because the infrastructure bill is retarded, especially relating to cryptocurrency, and you need to lighten up):
A trio of senators on Wednesday introduced an amendment to the bipartisan infrastructure bill that would rewrite part of a section, setting up reporting requirements for cryptocurrency transactions.
Sens. Cynthia Lummis, Pat Toomey and Ron Wyden started working on an
amendment after pointing to "unworkable" and "overly broad" language
which they say would implement "broker" reporting requirements on people
who are not really brokers.
These people, like the bitcoin
miners who confirm transactions in the system, would not even be capable
of satisfying the requirements in the bill, Toomey, R-Pa., said.
There should be a law, at least with respect to important and expensive bills, that pet project amendments cannot be added in.
From the Bee, here is the definitive guide to cryptocurrency:
But what IS cryptocurrency?
Cryptocurrency
is a completely virtual currency that exists only online. You never have
to worry about using your wallet because there's no physical money to
keep track of. All you have to do is remember one simple
38-character hexadecimal password, answer the bridgekeeper's five
three questions, and go on a quest across the galaxy to retrieve all
six Infinity Stones to access your account. Easy! There's also stuff
about mining and blockchains and stuff but honestly, we still don't
understand it.
Are there different types of cryptocurrency?
Yes.
Currencies like Bitcoin and Dogecoin are probably the most popular, but
there are hundreds of different types! Some lesser-known varieties
include the following:
BLMcoin
EpsteinDidntKillHimselfCoin
RonPaulCoin
ChuckECheeseCoin
Larrycoin -- a coin exclusively for people named Larry.
Usually as a critique of idealistic communists, socialists, or some other lefty with a big idea involving lots of tax dollars and government coercion, we've all heard the sage advice of Voegelin and Buckley cautioning us not to immanentize the eschaton. And well, that got me thinking about North Korea and YouTube.
While not remotely an apples to apples comparison, the two are similar and different enough to suggest an approximation of what and what not to do, if one is seeking power, profit, or paradise. Despite every communist state's flaws, they seek eschaton, and forever fall further and further short. Basically, North Korea is doing it wrong.
But YouTube is doing something right (mostly, kind of).
In short, one tried to immanentize and the other monetized.
I think probably any human effort to usher in some kind of grand paradise is doomed to spectacular failure. However, we're really good at making lots of little paradises, and we're pretty darn good at spotting those little oases.
Your inner socialist is probably telling you to copy from those little paradises and have the government provide it to everyone.
But don't listen to your little Marx, that way lies suffering (it's been tried, ad nauseam).
Instead, listen to that scrappy, greedy little goblin, and find ways to profit from little paradises. Better yet, find ways to profit off of helping people make little paradises.
When you've done that, you've just incentivized a lot of paradise. YouTube has done that. And several other web companies providing solid platforms for the masses.
For many of you, this is so obvious it's cliche. It's capitalism 101. Yet the struggle continues, since we can't help ourselves from erecting barriers to new and old markets.
What's probably less obvious, is that with the rise of mostly boundary-less platform economies, and with regulators' collective lateness to the tech party, there's a lot of room for optimism. I don't think we're even close to reaching the potential there.
Lately it seems like my only free time is an hour or two in the wee hours, or an hour or two in the morning when I'd rather be sleeping (and sometimes do). So in order to try not to devolve into a lazy waste of space during my free time, I'm going to attempt to occasionally post something here again.
So, to recap what I've missed and what's in the news today, here are some observations and links.
I don't think Trump or any meaningful part of his campaign colluded with Russia. But there is probably a tantalizing something, maybe small, but something. Otherwise I don't see how the FBI and Democrats--which is seemingly redundant these days--can justify this perpetual investigation with virtually nothing to show for it, and survive with any credibility intact. I think, to a significant degree, they're operating on the sunk cost fallacy.
I am almost in disbelief at the North Korean summit. I don't expect it to produce miracles, or much of anything in the way of denuclearization, but the summit alone is quite remarkable. Trump keeps surprising.
Tariffs. I am a believer in free trade, but I also believe in fairness. And I am not opposed to using tariffs as temporary measures to further encourage freer and fairer trade agreements. Naturally, the recipients of increased costs (whether it's from tariffs or fairer trade agreements) don't like it, and are trying various things to stop it. I think the Trump administration expected some push back, but I kind of doubt they expected so much. But one thing I've learned is that Trump, for better or worse, plays chicken quite well. He may yet surprise us again.
Due to new living conditions, I have cable tv now. There is still nothing on. CNN and MSNBC have lost all credibility with me long ago and generally suck; this is still the case. Fox News is getting worse. They always leaned a bit right on most of their shows, especially relative to other news networks, but now it's more blatant, unapologetic, and sloppy. I miss the kind of shows with the integrity and perspective Meet the Press had under Tim Russert.
Pardons. It's about time a president used the power in the middle of a term, and with such frequency. I'm aware it's a slippery slope, especially when it involves political allies, but I think it's worth freeing a few guilty partisans if the innocent and overcharged also go free.
I'm also trying to be more polite while communicating via text, email, or other online media. It's too easy to read something and post your knee-jerk reaction in the heat of the moment. This is partly because my new job involves a lot of emailing and texting, and I've had to force myself to wait a while before responding. Your tone, perspective, and articulation all improve after waiting, even just a few minutes. This precious time also lets you reconsider and reinterpret the possible tone of the text you just read, which is usually very important.
China has nukes, Israel has them, India and Pakistan have them, Iran has or will have them. North Korea has them. Not to mention Russia and several Western nations. Notice a trend here?
Perhaps we've slowed or stalled nuclear proliferation here and there, even dismantled a few of our own nukes. But if a country really wants it, they will get it.
When it comes to the more-or-less publicly known nuclear programs among adversarial, enemy, or rogue states, we have consistently taken a casual approach, up to and including acceptance. We talk tough, we apply the occasional sanction, and we vow to never let Elbonia go nuclear. But we let them, and they do.
Rumor has it the generals get a medal for every purge they survive
I don't know whether the casual approach is better than any other, I'm not even sure if acceptance of nuclear proliferation is a good or bad philosophy. But I do know that people are animals and tend to be scared of big sticks. When a frightened house cat puffs up its fur, hunches its back in the air, starts hissing, growling, and spitting it's usually enough to scare off much larger predators.
If you've spent some time watching nature documentaries, you know that most territorial fights end before they start. And even when it comes to violence, rarely is it fatal. The key to winning a fight with a big dumb animal is appearing to be more vicious and threatening than is worth the trouble. There are exceptions, of course. And those exceptions are bloody.
People are like this. I remember in high school, some punk got mad because I was dating his ex-girlfriend. He came up to me and started yelling and pushing. I yelled back. He threatened hell on earth, said he would put me in the hospital. I was no fighter, and his words were, to my inexperienced ears, a little frightening. I instinctively wanted to back down. For some reason I didn't. I called his bluff. I stood there and said stop talking and do something. He lobbed a few more insults and walked away.
Even though I always believed him to be an idiot, I thought even less of him after that. North Korea does this a lot. They threaten hell on earth, warning that they will put us in the figurative hospital. But they don't, and we know that.
But on the other hand, we are like that too. How many decades have we vowed to stop nuclear proliferation? To stop North Korea? To stop Iran? We are all talk. So are they, but their sticks are getting bigger and bigger relative to ours. The bluff game doesn't really work when players consistently and reliably bluff. The moment somebody catches on, they'll exploit the living shit out of it.
I don't know. Maybe one day the idiots will think they won't have to walk away; maybe they're already exploiting the living shit out of us.
"SHIED AWAY!?" From stopping various Kim Jong-nutbags?? How does he know that? But you know what, my political cynicism tells me this version of geopolitical history is so pathetic it must be true.
Every fracking missile test we hear the hawkiest Republocrat say: "It's time to take the kid gloves off when dealing with Iran/North Korea/insert bad country." Apparently we've been putting those gloves back on prior to every missile test, lest we risk running out of symbolic tough-guy gestures and have to visibly back down. The rhetoric is puffed fur, the actual policy is face-saving nonchalance.
Like I said, I don't know if our apparent policy is better or worse than any other approach. I mean, we would actually have to go to war to stop this, or take Sung-Yoon Lee's optimistic advice and economically blockade North Korea. Which might start a war.
Maybe it's too late to stop North Korea, and perhaps even Iran. But I do know that the longer we wait, the more that becomes certain. Cheap talk I know, but all our options suck. Which is probably why we're doing nothing beyond puffing fur. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I'm reluctant to comment on this at the moment, given my current tired state, but reforming democracy, at least American democracy, has occupied my thoughts in the past. Lately, however, it just hasn't felt worth my time. Politics in general hasn't felt worth it.
Truthfully, they're not worth my time, or any one person's time (which is discussed in the links). I've thought about this tragedy-of-the-commons phenomenon in democracy too.
All of which urges me in the general direction of less centralization and more localization of politics. Of course, localizing more state power and democracy is fraught with its own problems I'm sure. But on that level at least, voters have more influence and control, more incentive to be rational and informed.
And yet a part of me is vaguely wary of localizing politics: why did Western civilization move toward centralization if localization was better? For many good reasons, like economic efficiency and war for example. Perhaps a better balance could be struck.
After decades of more or less irresponsible spending in most of Western welfare-state civilization, the return on investments of throwing money down bottomless pits aren't looking so good. A few of us caught on many years ago:
Sports teams bring little net economic benefit. No disinterested economist has found any justification for the premise that they improve the local economy - instead, they just shift benefit around.
Teams take better care of stadiums they actually own....
Teams always underestimate the tax burden of the stadium and the implied subsidy. Often you see them arguing that the stadium will be funded only out of the revenues from the stadium itself -- well if that's the case, then why does the public need to be involved at all?
Fast forward to 2014, when it's time to bid on the 2022 Olympics. The only bidders left interested are Kazakhstan and China. Haha:
Bidding on the Olympics has been justified for years by one big economic lie: investing in hosting Olympic Games will lead to long-term economic growth.
"Public expenditures on sports infrastructure and event operations necessarily entail reductions in other government services, an expansion of government borrowing, or an increase in taxation, all of which produce a drag on the local economy. At best public expenditures on sports-related construction or operation
have zero net impact on the economy as the employment benefits of the project are matched by employment losses associated with higher taxes or spending cuts elsewhere in the system."
Matheson also argues that Olympic economic impact reports often ignore the significant costs for things like security and conflate "general infrastructure" with "sports infrastructure."
Read the whole thing, and be sure to check out the video showing a lot of the abandoned Olympic stadiums of yesteryear. The only places left willing to throw money down that hole are desperate countries/dictators attempting to prove themselves to the rest of the world.
Before people have started using that or a similar phrase in the affirmative, the world has only gotten better. We are all richer, live longer, less hungry than before, and it's only getting better.
Yet as we always have, we still complain like things are getting worse. This pessimism bias afflicts us all (perhaps that is what keeps us improving things).
Speculate about the Flynn effect, natural selection, availability of capital, population (more hands=more work=more stuff), whatever you want: life generally gets a little better everyday.
Why would our seemingly inexpensive milk soar to $8 a gallon? According to this Time article, because modern subsidies and government manipulation would cease, reverting to older forms of subsidies and government manipulation!
Here's an idea: Don't pass a new farm bill. Repeal the laws we might revert to in the absence of a new farm bill.
Don't get me wrong, I like farmers. I'd prefer to live in a community of farmers than just about any other community. But handing them money because they happen to grow a certain crop, or milk cows, is just horribly misguided wealth redistribution (as most redistribution is, especially welfare for the not-poor).
When's the last time we tried a more or less market-based approach to setting the prices for our milk, corn, and various other subsidized agri-products? Sometime before WWI?
Now I'm no expert, but perhaps things have changed since then. I don't mean to sound facetious, and I do realize our farm subsidies are updated with some regularity. But they are based on a principle that was never economically sound to begin with, developed during a time very dissimilar to this one: protectionism.
Honestly, I could've come at this in different ways. My first reaction was laughter, followed by despair, then apathy, and now I'm kind of ambivalent. Am I wrong to think that this kind of thinking makes perfect sense to only small children and the cognitively disabled:
I was apparently under the mistaken assumption that if you raise the cost of something, you get less of it--employment, in this case. I apologize for my conventional, mainstream, in-the-box thinking.
This new plan is almost as brilliant as the underpants plan:
I kid, I kid. But essentially, it's the same kind of wishful-thinking, horrible understanding and/or ignorance of economics, and logical fallacies that the South Park Gnomes employ.
Then again, maybe it's just how the president "changes" things.
Update: I wrote the post and p-shopped the image before I saw this tweet, but we're on the same wavelength:
