RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/capitalism-still-working-1542308386

So far so good with the ongoing U.S. experiment in expanded economic liberty. Americans are confident about their financial prospects and enjoying a strong jobs market. And it shows. The Journal’s Harriet Torry reports today:

Retail spending by American households rose in October, a sign outlays started on a strong footing headed into the holiday shopping season.

Sales at retail stores and restaurants rose 0.8% from the prior month, the Commerce Department said Thursday. That exceeded the 0.5% increase economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal had expected.

The Journal’s Justin Lahart adds that “while there were some special factors that helped boost the overall number—higher gasoline prices increased service-station sales and hurricane-related sales helped hardware stores—business was generally good all over. Clothing stores and sporting goods stores both registered sales growth of 0.5% on the month, for example, and department store sales were up 1.3%.”

Despite a weakening global economy and concerns about how President Trump’s trade stare-down with Chinese dictator Xi Jinping is going to end, the U.S. economy appears to be logging another solid quarter.

Yet polls find that young adults in the U.S., perhaps scarred by a decade of financial crisis and then sluggish growth, are disturbingly open to socialist central planning of the economy. Vermont’s socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders is the most influential policy maker in the Democratic party, though he’s still not a member. Now, having succeeded in centrally planning Amazon’s warehouse wages, Mr. Sanders wants to do the same to Walmart . Yet history counsels deep skepticism regarding claims that such government coercion will lead to higher living standards.

Modern readers may naturally think of contemporary economists like Paul Krugman when they think of botched economic forecasts. But Mr. Krugman’s errors look rather small compared to those made by the inventor of socialism. Columbia University b-school professor Charles Calomiris writes:

It is worth remembering that Karl Marx regarded socialism as an economic necessity that would emerge out of the ashes of capitalism precisely because capitalism would fail to sustain wealth creation. Marx made many specific, and erroneous, predictions about capitalism, including its declining profitability and rising unemployment. His analysis did not consider permanent economic growth in a capitalist system to be a possibility. And his “historical materialist” view of political choice claimed the rich and powerful would never share power voluntarily with their economic lessers, or create social safety nets. Writing in the mid-19th century, Marx fundamentally failed to understand the huge changes in technology, political suffrage, or social safety net policies that were occurring around him.

Only 135 years after the death of Marx, profits are surging in the world’s largest economy. Lindsey Bell of CFRA Research notes that third-quarter earnings growth of 28.3% for S+P 500 companies is among the best in decades. Ms. Bell adds that “the overall sales growth rate of 9.3% for the S&P 500 in the quarter was impressive as top-line momentum continued for the fourth quarter in a row. In the second quarter, sales were 10.3% higher year-over-year, up from about 9% in the prior two quarters and significantly higher than the average growth rate of 4.0% since the emergence from the Great Recession.”

Marx doesn’t just own the biggest blown earnings call in the history of markets. Prof. Calomiris notes that many of Marx’s other predictions also turned out be catastrophically off target:

Not only has socialist theory been wrong about the economic and political fruits of capitalism, it failed to see the problems that arise in socialist governments. Socialism’s record has been pain, not gain, especially for the poor. Socialism produced mass starvation in eastern Europe and China, as it undermined the ability of farmers to grow and market their crops. In less extreme incarnations, such as the UK in the decades after World War II and before Margaret Thatcher, it stunted growth. In most cases, socialism’s monopoly on economic control also fomented corruption by government officials, as was especially apparent in Latin American and African socialist regimes. The adverse economic consequences of socialism led the Scandinavian countries to dial back their versions of socialism in the past decades. CONTINUE AT SITE

https://amgreatness.com/2018/11/11/progressive-politics-
Some progressives lamented the apparent defeat of radical progressive African-American candidates such as gubernatorial nominees Stacey Abrams of Georgia and Florida’s Andrew Gillum by blaming allegedly treasonous white women. Apparently white women did not vote sufficiently en bloc in accordance with approved notions of identity politics tribalism.

According to this progressive orthodoxy, being female, gay, or minority trumps everything else. But, of course, no one believes in such mythical notions of solidarity, least of all progressives themselves.

White women were expected in Michigan, for example, to vote against a sterling African-American senatorial candidate John James, whose résumé was far more impressive than his victorious opponent, incumbent Senator Debbie Stabenow.

There was no such thing as minorities on the collective barricades when it was a matter of defeating California congressional candidate Elizabeth Heng, first-generation child of refugees, Asian, female, former Stanford student body president, and Yale MBA in her singular bid to unseat a seven-term white male Democratic incumbent.

The outraged identity politics industry has entered the realm of insanity when it screams at the “treason” of white women while bragging that 95 percent of black women voted for a white male Robert O’Rourke against Latino Ted Cruz—while deploring that 59 percent of white women who voted against white male O’Rourke.

In fact, progressive advocates sought to ensure that lots of black, Asian, and Latino men and women lost their senate, congressional, and state house races anytime they were pitted against white-male or white-female left-wing opponents, often with far more power, money, and influence at their disposal.

So dispense once and for all with the idea of the universal sisterhood of identity politics. Or at least recalibrate and redefine minority status as being a progressive of any race or gender first, and, only incidentally, female or nonwhite.

https://amgreatness.com/2018/11/04/the-stages

Having explored the historical genesis of liberal derangement, especially in the wake of Donald Trump’s election in 2016, and having disclosed the role to be played by Denial after the probable failure of Democrats’ “blue wave” in 2018, we now proceed to the next stage of our analysis. We turn our attention to the forms of liberal Anger that are likely after November 6th.

Part three of a four-part series.

Anger is, as previously discussed, the dominant emotion discernible in the Left’s reaction to Trumpism. In fact, rage is rampant among liberals. What has kept this anger in check, however, is a sense of assurance that the Trump phenomenon is something akin to a death spasm among conservatives. Leftists have long assumed that “progress” of the sort they desire is inevitable, and indeed they can point to many victories won in the last few decades. Moreover, soaked as they are in identity politics, the Left puts great stock in America’s changing demographics. They presume—understandably, given their inveterate anti-white racism—that the “browning” of America can only foretell doom for Republicans.

They ignore the obvious counterargument: this country has been “browning” for a long time, and the Republican Party is today stronger than it has ever been since the 1920s. In any case, it cannot be overstated how integral it is to the peace of mind of liberals to assume that the Republican Party will soon die an ignoble death, and therefore, they believe, any upsurge in nationalism or conservatism is a temporary aberration. The march of history towards the broad, sunlit uplands of progressivism will soon resume.

The failure of the “blue wave” would be a punch in the gut to this attitude of complacency and self-satisfaction on the Left. The American people will have chosen Trumpism and Republicans not once, but twice. As leftists see it, this will mean an affirmation of “hate” and a rejection of their own worldview of “inevitable” progress. The liberal throng (sometimes understandably mistaken for a mob) will have expended vast energies, and donated vast sums, to achieve a victory that remains elusive if not utterly improbable. The bile will rise in leftist throats as it begins to dawn on them that the last gasp of conservatism, which they perceived President Trump to hail, may instead be an enduring realignment of American politics that is favorable to Republicans. They will despair at the fact that millions of women and minorities, who by rights belong on the Democratic plantation, deserted the cause. They will, in short, experience anger on a scale that will make 2016-18 seem like child’s play.