FISCAL INCONTINENCE.

In Reason, Veronique deRugy notes, "Lawmakers have to show they'll back the national debt with future fiscal surpluses, which means reining in government spending."  That echoes the ancient Keynesian policy prescription of balancing the federal budget over the business cycle, which back in the day came bundled with the idea that a fiscal policy so conceived could help fine-tune the economy, with the deficits mitigating the pain in downturns and the surpluses putting a check on investors and consumers during expansions.

THE THOUSAND DESCRIPTIONS OF RENT SEEKERS.

In The Daily Economy, Vincent Geloso comes up with an infelicitous new one, "beefsteak socialists," brownish on the outside, red on the inside, that brown referring to a shirt, to describe a Rube Goldberg-esque accretion of reform upon reform that provides plenty of work for bureaucrats and rent-seekers, each accretion further reducing allocative efficiency.

Two problems immediately emerged. First, this enlargement of government power raised the value of possessing government. Second, government interventions produce unintended consequences. As a result, rather than repeal the original measure, governments frequently respond with another intervention, followed by another. The unintended consequences multiply, and so do the interventions. Growth grinds down to a halt.

There is a risk in blowing all the interventions up and starting over.  Mr Geloso uses the accretion of interventions in Chile leading to a quasi-Marxist government gaining control over a corpse, after which a military coup and shock therapy might have been the most extreme form of starting over.  On a smaller scale, abolishing the Interstate Commerce Commission and privatizing Conrail might have done some good, that is, until the regulatory state started adding on again.

That, Mr Geloso argues, is the nature of public choice: rent-seekers and careerists in the saddle.

The danger for the United States is not that it has reproduced Chile in 1973. It plainly has not. (Yet.) The danger is that American politics is beginning to reproduce the underlying dynamic: rival movements encouraging one another to abandon liberal restraints.

By "liberal restraints," he means modestly ambitious governance with enumerated, separated, and limited powers.  That's not how one makes a name in "public service," and that's how things go wrong.  "There must first be a long process of politicization of every aspect of social and economic life. Reverse that politicization and you halt the weakening."

SOONER THAN YOU THINK.

The crashing in of the real debt ceiling, that is, which is when bond traders buy Treasuries only at deep discounts.  How deep is deep?  Ask the man who trades them for a living?  "Ballooning US debt is a ticking time bomb, billionaire investor David Rubenstein says."

Economists have long contemplated, in the abstract, government activity crowding out private sector investing or consumer spending.  Mr Rubenstein is fretting about government interest payments crowding out government spending on armaments.

"We have, as everybody now knows, $40 trillion of debt. Now, historically, if you go back over the last, let's say, 300 or 400 years, whenever a country paid more interest on its debt than it did for its national security, that's a sign of weakness in the country. Right now, we've crossed that threshold. We're now paying more in interest every year than we are paying on our national defense, and we're paying a trillion dollars in interest, a little bit more than that now, but we pay about a trillion dollars in national defense. And as that continues, the interest goes up, and the money available for defense goes down. That tends to weaken your national security."

That might depend on the going concern value of the United States, as people might still be willing to hold Treasuries to finance the production of Tomahawks and Patriots and all the other tools the Pentagon possess to stay protected against flying Iranian gas mains and whatever else the primitives are cobbling together, and the dollar might still be less shaky than all the other candidates for global reserve currency.

That noted, those deep discounts might present gradually at first.  "Surging US Treasury yields are starting to spook investors."  All at once, sooner than you think?

A "disorderly bond sell-off" is now the top market tail risk. Investors remain bullish, however, on corporate earnings, the AI investment cycle, and economic growth.

US Treasury yields have faced upward pressure throughout September, driven by persistent signs of inflation and elevated crude oil prices.

"Disorderly bond sell-off" is trader-speak for "all at once."  Buckle in.

THROWING MONEY AROUND.

You can take the proposal seriously, as National Review editors do.

Reflexive apologists for Trump’s proposal have tended to focus on the sins of the other party — pointing, for instance, to the unnecessary and inflationary stimulus checks that the Democrats issued in 2021, and to President Joe Biden’s illegal attempt to forgive student loans. But this isn’t a defense, so much as a confession. Those policies were bad, and the Republican Party opposed them. That they were attempted was a disgrace; it was not a catch-all excuse for further reckless behavior. Whatever problems may exist in the American economy in 2026, there is no need for a round of debt-financed $5,000 checks. The central problem of our political era is the persistence of inflation and the associated increases in the cost of everyday goods. Trump’s suggestion would worsen, rather than improve, that issue.

The role of the federal government within the U.S. economy ought to be to provide a stable framework within which free people may thrive. When it taxes, it ought to tax predictably and consistently, with the purpose of covering its spending. When it spends, it ought to spend on those functions that only the national government can fulfill. President Trump’s proposal cannot be squared with the federal government’s proper role — nor, for that matter, can it be justly described as “policy.”

Or, following the Babylon Bee, satire is the best response. "Trump Pledges That If Voters Defeat Socialism In November, They Will Each Get An Equal Redistribution Of Wealth From The Government."  I vaguely remember something called Ricardian equivalence, and Robert Barro asking, "Are Government Bonds Net Wealth?"  There might be a corollary involving helicopter droppings, er, printed money, although even in a hyperinflationary environment, having a windfall of helicopter droppings leaves you slightly less badly off than if they fall on your neighbor.

LET THE THING BE PRESSED.

The mullahs' cheering section at Common Dreams includes one Negar Mortazavi, who asserts, "Trump Cannot Win the Iran War."  Scroll down, though, and enjoy the cope.

Iran does not need to defeat the United States conventionally. To deny Washington a decisive political victory, it needs only to preserve its governing institutions, retain sufficient retaliatory capacity, and make continued warfare costly enough that the United States cannot impose its preferred outcome at an acceptable price.

How many pallets of rial did she get paid for that clanker, and how valuable will they be next week?

Iran cannot match the United States and Israel militarily. But it benefits from geography, a strategy tailored to a stronger adversary, and the advantages of fighting on its own territory, as well as a leadership that views the conflict as existential and has shown a willingness to absorb enormous costs rather than surrender. After six months, that military pressure has still not brought Washington closer to securing its demands. The United States can continue to destroy targets and degrade Iranian capabilities, but unless that pressure changes Iran’s political calculations, further escalation risks producing more destruction without producing a settlement.

That pressure might be having the desired effect.

Israel's Channel 14 reported from sources inside the regime that Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the blusterous blowhard serving as Iran's Parliament Speaker, was caught admitting to others inside the government that the regime won't be able to stand this economic pressure much longer.

That's Duane Patterson in Hot Air, itself a propaganda site, and yet the anaconda's coils well might be tightening. The current national role model is Wimpy, paying you Tuesday for a lamb shank today, "The same way the regime is — by putting everything on credit. As long as everyone just borrows from everyone else but no money actually changes hands, it'll work for a while until the food runs out and the banks collapse."

GRASPING AT PINS.

In July, we noted the National Hurricane Center anticipating a relatively quiet North Atlantic hurricane season.

The National Hurricane Center's Atlantic hurricane forecast is out and it relies on that stronger El Niño.  "NOAA predicts below-normal 2026 Atlantic hurricane season."  There was already at least one named Atlantic tropical storm this season.  That heat wave east of the Mississippi during Freedom Weekend?  We used to call that the lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer.

That doesn't deter breathless journalists from breathlessly anticipating stirrings in the doldrums.

The 2026 Atlantic hurricane season is tracking significantly behind historical norms and may set a new record for its delayed activity. As of this week, the first hurricane of the season has yet to form, far behind the average first occurrence date of August 11.

The current record for the latest first hurricane formation in the Atlantic is September 11, set by Hurricane Gustav in 2002 and tied by Hurricane Humberto in 2013.

"Historical norms" refers to a moving average over the past eight decades, give or take, and it is the same category error your weather reader says when he predicts tomorrow will be way hotter or way colder "than it should be" or when a month's rainfall comes in above or below that moving average.  Complex adaptive systems do what they do.  As of Saturday, "Atlantic Hurricane Season Sets Record for Latest First Hurricane Formation," in the vacuously true sense that there were none yet.

PATRIOTISM, THE LAST REFUGE OF SCOUNDRELS.

In September of 2023, the Walworth County Democrats were touting that Hope and Change.

In October, Hamas did what comes naturally to jihadis.  The following spring, Dementia Joe challenged frontrunner Donald Trump to a debate, taunting "I hear you're free on Wednesdays."  Dementia Joe's brain failed in prime time, and the party replaced him as nominee.  That was not an improvement.

Earlier this summer, the party primary barely rejected a Madison nutcase in favor of a Milwaukee ward-heeler to stand for governor.

Rather than call attention to their embrace of the crazy, this year's tent at the Walworth County Fair went all in on the Red, White, and Blue.

The absence of crowds might say nothing about how the general election will turn out.  The best thing to do with political displays at county fairs is not to engage, whether it's a major party, a minor party,  or those advocates for an Article V convention or some similar single issue.  Orwell's weirdos hang out with Democrats, no matter how much red, white, and blue they display.

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF THE COURT INTELLECTUALS.

I've argued that much of the propensity for university faculty to register as Democrats is self-interest concealed in the rhetoric of Governance by Wise Experts.

Tonight, a parable.  Suppose that it's hard to be a Man of System because those refractory citizens recognize what it is the Men of System are doing and change their behavior to take advantage of, or to protect themselves from, the policies those Wise Experts drew up (as if in Vince Lombardi's playbook) and the policy doesn't deliver what its designers anticipated?

In political economy, particularly in macroeconomic policy, what I've hinted at has a short descriptor, "Lucas critique," for the Chicago income theorist who worked through all the possible audibles the refractory citizens might call.

SECTARIANISM TODAY, SECTARIANISM TOMORROW, SECTARIANISM FOREVER.

Les Leopold asks, "Can DSA’s Brand of Socialism Attract the Broader Working Class?"

No, for reasons that are not too removed from my assessment of a few weeks ago.

When DSA candidates take to the field, they focus almost entirely on populist economic demands—housing and food affordability, fair taxes on billionaires, and Medicare for All. These are socialist in the sense that Social Security, libraries, fire departments, and our current Medicare are socialist, and yet they are also firmly embedded in our capitalist system.

I have yet to encounter a DSA candidate who discusses truly socialist reforms, like the elimination of large private enterprises and workers’ control of the corporations that employ them.

A strict understanding of things socialist suggests that anything "embedded in our capitalist system" involves acceptance of the wages system, and there is no requirement that libraries, fire departments, or pensions, let alone things like roads and water mains, must be government services (the old "mixed economy" compromise.  It is also no accident, dear reader, that Mr Leopold, good communist that he is, will be dismayed that Marxism-DeLeonism is a foreign concept to the priviligentsia who align with "democratic socialism."

LET THE THING BE PRESSED.

Over the weekend, United States Central Command claim to have destroyed drones or rockets carrying mines (or perhaps trash bags or beachballs) in order to effect some kind of closure of Hormuz, or at least the spooking of energy traders.  In retaliation, the mullahs flipped some flying gas mains toward United States bases in Jordan, apparently without effect.  We'll see what Our President orders up.

TRUST, ONCE LOST, IS HARD TO REGAIN.

That recovery is particularly difficult when it is people entrusted with making decisions on the basis of their wisdom or their probity betray it in an egregious way.  In The (Not Detroit) Free Press, Erick Erickson notes, "The same government that used pandemic powers to shutter churches and businesses now wants surveillance cameras on street corners and data centers in backyards. You can’t blame people for saying no."

It's not that the warning signs haven't been with us for some time.  Cold Spring Shops posts have used variations on "governance by wise experts" since the fall of 2009, generally in a skeptical way.

That People in Authority dismissed the observations of — wait for it — medical doctors noticing masked people's glasses fogging up in grocery stories and suggesting the mask mandates and six foot circles and the rest were theater, not policy, probably resurrected the notion of a credibility gap.  Yes, dear reader, my life from adolescence onward has been structured by credibility gaps: thus another one emerging during the Jarrett regency's corona tyranny didn't come as a shock.

JESSICA CORBETT HAS NO STANDARDS AT ALL.

Her Monday column, "‘Deeply Alarming’: Ex-Congresswoman Fuels Fears of Trump Using Nuclear Weapons on Iran," neglects to mention in the headline that the ex-representative is none other than Marjorie Taylor "Madge" Green, who has long been a figure of fun among establishmentarian conservatives.  Common Dreams types get a bit of that fun deep in the column.

“Trump promised no more foreign wars, but may actually be the one who delivers a nuclear holocaust that would likely drag the entire world into major conflict, economic depression, and mass human suffering we’ve never seen in our lifetimes and maybe throughout history,” added Greene, who promoted various conspiracy theories while in office. “People need to speak out and boldly stop this insanity. America is not untouchable. If and when that happens, everyone, and I do mean everyone, will hold ALL of those in leadership right now fully responsible for the rest of human history. Do not use nuclear weapons and stop this war NOW.

Self-styled progressives having no standards at all?  Business as usual.

[S]elf-styled progressives are almost as eager to embrace people who offer concurrence with them than they are to excommunicate people who violate a purity test.  Years ago, there was Ariana Huffington, whose pronouncements as some sort of conservative were on occasion cringe-worthy, and who instantly became a hero to many of the people who eagerly slagged on her as an "idiot" once she switched allegiance and put her money into what became the Huffington Post.

The Militant Normals?  Crazy is as crazy does.  "Marjorie Taylor Greene is back at it, spinning another unhinged conspiracy yarn about the Trump administration secretly plotting nuclear Armageddon against Iran in some shadowy strategy meetings."  The things some people do for relevance.

The best argument for not expanding the size of the House of Representatives according to a cube-root rule or any other formula?  The behavior of the current members.

More districts might make election of a legislative body that more closely approximates the multicultural makeup of the population, even with more sensibly drawn simplest closed regions for the districts. On the other hand, the likes of Ilhan Omar or Marjorie Taylor Greene might become more common in more politically homogeneous districts. That's a case for limiting the scope of government, something that might happen organically as those True Believers gridlock themselves.

Put the right bunch of attention hogs on the same committee, and you're watching C-Span and Jerry Springer comes on.  It figures, doesn't it, that if the House Oversight Committee includes Lauren Boebert, Sandy Ocasio-Cortez, Jasmine Crockett, and Marjorie Taylor-Greene, sooner or later you'd get all the decorum of the Mean Girls' Table at Johnson Middle School."

NEITHER BEER NOR BRATWURST.

Imagine, dear reader, a human interest story from ninety years ago documenting the human side of the Volksbund.  Maybe it could incorporate the rhetoric of empathy and inclusion.

World War I traumatized Germans on both sides of the Atlantic – though in different ways. In Wisconsin and across the United States, war with Germany led to a wave of anti-German hysteria. Self-proclaimed “superpatriots” attacked ethnic Germans (whom they assumed disloyal unless proven otherwise) and denigrated their culture. Sauerkraut became “liberty cabbage” and hamburgers “liberty sandwiches.” Some Germans were forced to kiss the American flag to prove their loyalty, and a few were even physically accosted. In neighboring Illinois, a German immigrant was wrapped in a flag, forced to sing the “Star Spangled Banner,” then hanged. In such a hostile atmosphere, many German-Americans abandoned their ethnic ties. Milwaukee’s Deutscher Klub renamed itself the Wisconsin Club, and hundreds of ethnic Germans Americanized their names. The German Athens had become a shadow of its former self, and those who remained a part of the German cultural scene were left battered, bruised, and defensive.

A human interest story describing a quiet evening dealing a few hands of Schafkopf and enjoying some real beer, or perhaps a livelier story involving group singing or dancing to oom-pah music might put a human face on people who are, after all, neighbors, possibly co-workers, sometimes voters.

No, strike that.  Let's deploy the full culture-studies methodology in the fall of 1938 to "contextualize" North Americans who aren't troubled by the looting of businesses and the sacking of temples; who might perceive their overseas cousins as beset by internal disorder and external punishment.

THAT SOUNDS ABOUT RIGHT.

"Karoline Leavitt Prepared For Motherhood After Spending Last Two Years Answering Millions Of Stupid Questions."

It's Babylon Bee stuff, and yet, it's spot on.  "At publishing time, Leavitt experienced déjà vu after listening both of her kids screaming whilst throwing simultaneous tantrums."

DESPERATELY SEEKING A UNICORN.

In "Taxes Need a Rebrand," Michael Jarvis makes an argument straight out of the early days of the Clinton presidency, when Hillary was actually wearing the pants.  "Too often, tax is framed as a burden instead of a form of shared investment and discussed as a technical obligation rather than the foundation that allows modern societies to function."  Just reframe 'em as "contributions."  (Try not to think of George Lakoff.)

Too often, tax is framed as a burden instead of a form of shared investment. It is discussed as a technical obligation rather than the foundation that allows modern societies to function. Schools, healthcare systems, transportation networks, courts, emergency services, climate resilience measures, and public safety systems do not emerge on their own. They depend on sustained and predictable collective investment, and taxation remains the primary way societies make that investment possible.

You get your Common Dreams commentator card revoked if you even admit of the possibility that many of the items in that passage emerged through the discovery of trade-tested betterments.

THE DEMOCRATIC SPLITTISTS OF AMERICA.

It is the nature of Puritan congregations and socialist movements to read heretics out of the congregation, and surely the heirs to Leon Trotsky can do a better job on the Democratic Socialists of America than I ever could.  "It has to be galling to a century of Leon Trotsky wannabes that their granny glasses, goatees, and jargon gets them nothing by way of elective office, while adherents of the Democratic Socialists of America hold a few prominent elective offices."

SPONSORED RESEARCH IS RISK-AVERSE AND UNIMAGINATIVE.

An earlier post with that title opened,

I've come close to, but never explicitly said, that the use of the national institutes and national endowments to support academic research is censorship per se.  The closest I have come is to suggest that creativity that might otherwise be unbridled and more enthusiastic gets diverted into chasing whatever it is the institutes, endowments, and charitable foundations are funding.  "Whether the work so funded is better than the work professors develop on their own initiative remains to be seen."  It might be worse than that.  "Even if it's not that bad, the sponsored research imperative diverts thoughtful people from playing with whatever ideas appeal to them (yes, many of them might turn out to be bad or trivial, but that's how emergence works) in order to follow what appears to be a Hot Topic (the tragedy being that by the time those grants and working papers hit the conference and journal circuits, the discipline's stars are on to other things) or to make some money."

Put bluntly, it's money wasted.

The James G. Martin Center's Edward Archer characterizes grantsmanship as fostering "The Intellectual and Moral Decline in Academic Research."  In particular, "My experiences at four research universities and as a National Institutes of Health (NIH) research fellow taught me that the relentless pursuit of taxpayer funding has eliminated curiosity, basic competence, and scientific integrity in many fields."

That second post landed in January, 2020, shortly before the relentless pursuit of taxpayer funding involved furrin cleavages.

Alas, for all Our President's efforts at swamp-draining, or swapping out one set of rent-seekers for another, it will still be business as usual, argues J. Scott Turner, in academic science.  "For 75 years, Washington has preached that science needs more government. The White House still believes it."

HIGH MODERN AUTHORITARIANISM IN THE DOCK.

Yes, in the argot of academic political science, when democratically elected representatives delegate responsibility to government employees, and those employees go astray, that's something gone wrong in the way the democratic republic implements policy, not an authoritarian dictatorship at work.

That delegation might be a necessary evil in a complex world.  Something happens that elected officials conclude requires their oversight, and they'd rather identify the outlines of the challenge and delegate the messy work to an independent regulatory commission; or expand the set of inferior officers as they think proper, then delegate by enacting legislation with "The Secretary shall issue regulations" language; or in a pinch, find some Highly Qualified Functionary and with no irony at all refer to that person as "czar."

That sounds pretty authoritarian, dear reader, particularly when such a functionary issues ukases on insufficient information.  "The problem is that these process-worshippers are comparing an ideal technocratic vision, a Michael Munger unicorn, if you will, with a messy reality that the best epidemiologists are still attempting to quantify and contain."

It looks even more authoritarian when such a functionary issues all manner of ukases, a faction of the elected government brooks no criticism of that functionary, other government employees claim that criticism of the ukases not to mention evidence of the ukases going wrong are misinformation or disinformation or downright dangerous, and so-called journalists choosing not to interview people who offer differing perspectives, and the leading social media companies enforcing The Narrative.  Maybe influential politicians and journalists pile on by referring to skeptics as "science deniers," weaponizing a term that originated to shame people who questioned the existence of Nazi Germany's ethnic cleansing.

Under such circumstances, aren't dissident Militant Normals understandably going to bridle at an unelected bureaucrat behaving in an authoritarian way?

So let it be with Don Antonio.

NO. NEXT QUESTION?

Power Line's John Hinderaker asks, "Can Democrats possibly be that stupid?"  The stupidity in question is a proposed New York mandate that grocery stores knock ten percent off the bill of any shopper who uses the self-service checkout.

Unintended Consequences have never been well understood by nanny state politicians.

If not hoping to legislate away high grocery prices, perhaps Donks use edginess might be a way of attracting attention.  "Satanist weddings, beheading chickens, fake weddings, passing bills that protect child sex predators, hanging out with terrorists, hiring pedophiles—what is going on with the Democratic Party?"

Let the hard rain fall.  Mr Hinderaker suggests, "No one should ever vote for a Democrat."

All they have to do is not be sick freaks, and that's a request too far.

EMERGENCE, TEMPERED BY BOURGEOIS NORMS.

Somehow, the people kept the Republic, despite the Framers' misgivings.  "Many Founders Died in Despair About the American Experiment."

The image of the dog that catches the truck and wonders what to do next comes to mind.

People rightly marvel at the miracle that Jefferson and his longtime rival-turned-friend John Adams both perished on July 4, 1826. Less remembered is that the two otherwise ideologically and dispositionally opposed torchbearers for the flame of '76 had each soured on the fruits of their precious Revolution.

"Oh my country," Adams wrote in 1806 to Benjamin Rush. "How I mourn over thy follies and Vices, thine ignorance and imbecility, Thy contempt of Wisdom and Virtue and overweening Admiration of fools and Knaves!"

Founder disgruntlement was the rule, not the exception (and the exception to that rule was James Madison). "Those of them who lived on into the early decades of the nineteenth century expressed anxiety over what they had wrought," wrote the historian Gordon Wood in The Radicalism of the American Revolution. "Although they tried to put as good a face as they could on what had happened, they were bewildered, uneasy, and in many cases deeply disillusioned."

Somehow James Madison could remain optimistic despite the British sacking the Federal Capital during his presidency.