From the minute the money is spent, government spending slows economic growth. That’s because central planning of resources is central planning of resources. That government spending is an economy-sapping tax requires mention as economists and economic pundits speculate on who will blink first in response to a mindless tariff war, Donald Trump or Xi […]
Xi Jinping May Be An Authoritarian, But He’s Not a Magician Read More »
Right and Left, Republicans and Democrats brought great shame on themselves with their efforts to ban TikTok. Pizza Hut crystalizes the previous truth. But before discussing Pizza Hut, it should be said that free speech means freedom to access any and all information that informs that speech. Which means efforts to ban TikTok on
TikTok Deal or None, Pizza Hut Reveals the Shame of the TikTok Ban Read More »
Panicky politicians caused the coronavirus crack-up, period. If not for their tragic inability to keep their cool, the coronavirus scare would have been anything but. To ignore the seminal role of politicians in the 2020-21 tragedy is to plant the seeds for a future crack-up. To which some will say the above analysis is
Forget Fauci, Forget China, Panicky Politicians Were the Covid Villains Read More »
If leaders of other countries ever really want to weaken the United States, they should embrace collectivism. It’s that simple. Which is but a small reminder that imports never hurt the United States. When others are doing for us, and imports are a tangible sign of just that, we’re quite a bit more able
If Countries Want to Hurt the U.S., They Should Choose Collectivism Read More »
The Chinese artificial intelligence startup DeepSeek is now the most downloaded app in 140 markets worldwide, including Apple’s App Store and Alphabet’s Android Play Store. To say American consumers are enthused about China’s recent breakthrough in artificial intelligence is an understatement, given this vast popularity. This dovetails with U.S. consumers’ love of TikTok — an
Politicians Want a Trade War With China, Americans Don’t Read More »
Ten days ago the shares of Nvidia corrected 17 percent. How could this have happened to such an “owned” and analyzed company? The answer, at least as of now, is that surprise over inexpensively trained and very capable DeepSeek forced investors to at least rethink Nvidia’s long-term dominance. The news on January 26th gave investors
TikTok’s Actual Offense? Innovating While Not Being American Read More »
Oil is the most important commodity in the world when it comes to human flourishing, and nothing else comes close. Stop and think about how intensely inconvenient and impoverished life would be without the goods and services made possible by oil, along with the remarkable advances in work productivity that never would have happened
The Rise of DeepSeek Is Unreservedly Bullish For the U.S. Read More »
“The world is being swamped with Chinese goods, and the United States, Europe and Japan are right to worry about it.” Those are the opening words of a recent Washington Post editorial about Chinese production. The bet here is that the writers of the editorial could be persuaded to rethink their pessimism. Production is always bullish, by definition.
Contra the Washington Post, Exports Are a Bullish Sign of Imports Read More »
“The greatest fever of all was aspiration, a belief in the sheer possibility to remake a life.” That’s what Evan Osnos wrote in Age of Ambition, his remarkable 2014 book about life in emerging China. Osnos reported that as of 2014 the Chinese were second only to Americans when it came to the purchase of
An Envious U.S. Political Class Protests the Chinese Eating Read More »
Bikes were “as indispensable to a Chinese as a car to twentieth century Americans.” Those are the words of Fox Butterfield from Alive In the Bitter Sea, his 1982 book about communist-era China. Call Butterfield’s account of just some of communism’s myriad horrors essential reading when it comes to attaining a tangible grasp of how
The Sickening Cruelty of Life When China Was Actually Communist Read More »
