A Quick Glimpse into India's Economy

This interested me.

WSJ:

Under new regulations, retail giants such as Walmart, Carrefour and Tesco, long barred from selling directly to Indian consumers, will now be permitted to own a majority 51% stake in joint operations with a local partner. So-called single brand retailers, the likes of Apple and Ikea, can own 100% of their stores, up from 51% previously. Both kinds of stores will have to source nearly a third of their goods from small and medium sized Indian suppliers as well as confine their operations to 53-odd cities with a population over one million.

What is the reaction like to this move by some political leaders?

A sampling of opposition to the retail opening captures this neatly. In Uttar Pradesh, Uma Bharti, a senior leader of the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), threatened to "set fire to the first Walmart store whenever it opens." Her colleague Sushma Swaraj has been busy tweeting up a storm of misinformation about how Walmart allegedly ruined the US economy. Not to be outdone, party stalwart L.K. Advani has temporarily abandoned a quixotic quest to repatriate wealth held by Indians abroad to focus instead on the more pressing task of saving Indian sovereignty from the dangers of cheap cauliflower and cut-price T-shirts.

I hadn't realized that India was still so backwards.  I had heard some things (and naturally all but forgotten about them a few minutes after I had heard them), but this level of regulation had surprised me.



In that, he says the Indian growth rate basically doubled during the 90's after (some) liberalization. 

Yet here's what he says in yet another article:

India stands a pathetic 133rd out of 183 countries in ease of doing business, according to the World Bank's Doing Business 2010. It comes 169th in ease of starting a business, 175th in giving construction permits and 182nd in enforcement of contracts. Legal delays are horrendous: It took 25 years to complete the supposedly top-priority case against Union Carbide officials for the Bhopal gas disaster of 1984.

Transparency International ranks India a lowly 84th in its Corruption Perception Index. The quality of public services, especially education and health, is terrible: India ranks 134th in the UNDP Human Development Index.

Privatization remains a dirty word. The government refuses to reform labor laws that make it impossible to sack workers, discouraging Indian companies from challenging China and Vietnam in labor-intensive sectors. As a result, Bangladesh has overtaken India in garment exports. Financial-sector reforms remain on ice. Price controls on petroleum products have been partially eased, reducing huge consumer subsidies, but if global prices shoot up, price controls will almost certainly return.

Despite such shortcomings, India averaged 8.5% growth in the five prerecession years, and achieved 6.7% even in 2008-09, the worst recession year. It improved to 7.4% in 2009-10, and may exceed 8 % this year. Optimists may seem justified in arguing that India will do better in coming years.

Still, I didn't realize it was as regulated as it is.  53 cities?  51%?  This stuff is insane.

The real tragic thing is that the Indian city of Gurgoan is showing how little government is actually needed.  It's the fastest growing city in India and has virtually no government.  This article is a must-read.

Newt Gingrich: Fucking Idiot

Ok, well, that's not technically a picture of Newt Gingrich, but you get the idea.

I'll tell ya, these Republican candidates keep coming up with more and more surprises.  It seems like around every corner there's some big government, statist plan that they've supported.  (Well, all of them except Ron Paul of course.)

The one that surprised me was that apparently Gingrich supported gun control.

In case you don't know why "gun control" is a bad idea:

1.)  It's your constitutional right to have a gun and you shouldn't have to be dependent on anyone (the police) to defend you when you can defend yourself.

2.)  Everywhere "gun control" has been enacted crime has gone up.

Look at D.C., Chicago, Britain.  Anywhere.  The evidence is overwhelming.  Because, although it sounds trite, that old slogan is true: if you take guns away from the people, criminals will be the only ones with guns.  Or something like that.  The original slogan was catchier, but you get the point.

Ok, so the fact that Newt supports some form of this is astonishing to me.  I thought it was "conservative" bedrock.  I don't know how it ever could have not been.  (Of course, Regan supported a terrible "gun control" law when he was governor, but that's a different story.)

Ok, so here's a bit from the article:

In 1996, Newt Gingrich turned his back on guns and voted for the anti-gun Brady Campaign’s Lautenberg Gun Ban, which strips the Second Amendment rights of citizens involved in misdemeanor domestic violence charges or temporary protection orders –- in some cases for actions as minor as spanking a child or grabbing a spouse’s wrist.

[...]Gingrich also stood shoulder to shoulder with Nancy Pelosi to pass the “Criminal Safezones Act” which prevents armed citizens from defending themselves in certain arbitrary locations. You and I both know that Criminal Safezones don’t protect law-abiding citizens, but actually protect the criminals who ignore them.

Although that's not terrible, it's still not great. These people are supposed to defend these things on principle. Of course, none of them except for Ron Paul have any principles (with the possible exception of Michelle Bachmann, although I don't agree with her on many things.) They go with the wind. Or some of their beliefs contradict other beliefs. For instance, you say you believe in "limited government" then try to regulate people's personal lives.

Let's just give a bit more info on Newt:

Did a stupid "climate change" commercial with Nancy Pelosi:



Supported cap-and-trade.

Dismissed Paul Ryan's Medicare vouchers as "Republican social engineering."

Said that No Child Left Behind "isn't big enough."

Collected $1.5M working as a "consultant" for Fannie Mae  

Claims that "opposition to ethanol subsidies and mandates stems from "big city" folks who just don't like farmers."

Supported the line-item veto.

Voted to give China most favored nation status.

Stumped hard for 2003 Medicare prescription drug bill

Endorsed the individual mandate.
 
Supported subsidizing "clean coal" and "investing in a conversion to a hydrogen economy."

Voted to create the federal Department of Education.  (This vote was 210 - 206.)


Advocated paying kids if they got above a B in math or science.

Supported the WTO.

"[R]eluctantly supported a scaled-down [bailout] plan."

Was a co-sponsor of a bill to re-instate the "Fairness Doctrine."

Wants higher mandatory minimum sentences for drug "dealers" and mandatory rehab for drug users.

I was thinking I'd go into a long list of exactly why all of these candidates beside Ron Paul are not only terrible but hypocrits/flip floppers, but it would be too long of a list!

Was Kennedy a Good President?

People love Kennedy.  He was handsome (at least when he wasn't an anemic kid.)  He had an affair with Marilyn Monroe.  He got killed so nobody could know how much of a fuck-up he truly was or wasn't going to be.

What's not to like?

Well, people obviously hear things about Kennedy.  People say that he was trying to end the Federal Reserve, that's why he got killed.  He was trying to bring us out of Vietnam, that's why he got killed.  He was trying to end some national oil subsidy, and that's why he got killed.

Some or all of those probably played a part.  LBJ being a homicidal maniac who was quite possibly going to get dropped from the ticket in '64 probably also played quite a big role, if not the biggest.  (For more information on this, check out The Men Who Killed Kennedy parts 9 and 8, and 7.  It was aired one time by the History Channel, then pulled.)

But what's the reality of it?  An article in the NY Times opinion section got me thinking.

Here's a section:

The first premise is that Kennedy was a very good president, and might have been a great one if he’d lived. Few serious historians take this view: It belongs to Camelot’s surviving court stenographers, and to popularizers like Chris Matthews, whose new best seller “Jack Kennedy: Elusive Hero” works hard to gloss over the thinness of the 35th president’s actual accomplishments. Yet there is no escaping the myth’s hold on the popular imagination. In Gallup’s “greatest president” polling, J.F.K. still regularly jostles with Lincoln and Reagan for the top spot.

In reality, the kindest interpretation of Kennedy’s presidency is that he was a mediocrity whose death left his final grade as “incomplete.” The harsher view would deem him a near disaster — ineffective in domestic policy, evasive on civil rights and a serial blunderer in foreign policy, who barely avoided a nuclear war that his own brinksmanship had pushed us toward. (And the latter judgment doesn’t even take account of the medical problems that arguably made him unfit for the presidency, or the adulteries that eclipsed Bill Clinton’s for sheer recklessness.)

The second false premise is that Kennedy would have kept us out of Vietnam. Or as a character puts it in “11/22/63,” making the case for killing Lee Harvey Oswald: “Get rid of one wretched waif, buddy, and you could save millions of lives.”

Ok, so what's the reality of the situation?

We've probably all heard of the Kennedy tax cuts that took the top marginal income tax rate down from over 90% to 70%, and brought in more revenue as a result.  Ok, that's good.

Was Kennedy trying to eliminate the Federal Reserve?  This actually seems to be a myth, although a myth that I've heard a million times and I've never heard argued against until now.

After just doing a Google search, the info wasn't making sense to me.  I saw a comment on Zero Hedge that said someone had heard G. Edward Griffin had said EO1110 was a bunch of bunk and didn't get Kennedy killed.

Here's what Wikipedia has to say:

This executive order delegated to the Secretary of the Treasury the president's authority to issue silver certificates under the Thomas Amendment of the Agricultural Adjustment Act.

[...]On November 28, 1961, President Kennedy halted sales of silver by the Treasury Department. Increasing demand of silver as an industrial metal had led to an increase in the market price of silver above the United States government's fixed price. This led to a decline in the government's excess silver reserves by over 80% during 1961. President Kennedy also called upon Congress to phase out silver certificates in favor of Federal Reserve notes.

[...]The reason for the move was that the President had just signed legislation repealing the Silver Purchase Act. With this repeal, the Treasury Secretary could no longer control the issue of Silver Certificates on his own authority. However, the issuance of certificates could be controlled under the President's authority. Hence, for administrative convenience, President Kennedy issued Executive Order 11110.

[...]Ironically, the purpose of the order and the legislation was to decrease the circulation of Silver Certificates, with Federal Reserve Notes taking their place.  [...]If anything, E.O. 11110 enhanced Federal Reserve power and did not in any way reduce it.

So, I no longer believe this Federal Reserve thing.  Seems like a lot of bunk.

About this whole oil depletion allowance, at first I thought it was ending a subsidy, but in reality it seems to be about ending a tax loophole.  I'm much less favorable to ending tax "loopholes" than I am towards ending subsidies, although I could see how it could be good.  I'm not going to read the mountains of pages it would take to understand it.  If you would like to, you can.  Crazy person.

Kennedy was also a bit of a medical socialist.  He supported Medicare, although it wasn't enacted under him, and pushed for "universal health care," (a.k.a. forcing everyone to buy health insurance, or else to subsidize other people.)  Bad.

He approved of wiretapping Martin Luther King, Jr.  Bad.

Kennedy voted against the 1957 Civil Rights Act, which was just like the 1964 act but better because it didn't try to control private businesses.  Bad.

He pushed for an expanded role of the federal government into education.  Bad.

He issued Executive Order 10988 "to promote unionism and collective bargaining in federal employment."  Bad. 
Here's another tidbit:

As Salinger recounts, one evening fellow cigar smoker Kennedy called Salinger in and asked him to go out and buy 1,000 of Kennedy's favorite Cubans by the next morning. When Salinger reported to work the next morning with 1,200 of the fragrant smokes under his arm, Kennedy pulled the bill enacting the embargo from his desk drawer and signed it, making purchases like those his press secretary had made at his orders henceforth illegal.

Bad.

From what I can see, he was looking to pull out of Vietnam, which would have been good.

He of course bungled the Bay of Pigs invasion (bad), but did keep us from getting blown up in the Cuban Missile Crisis.  Good.

Total government spending as a percent of gdp actually did seem to go down during Kennedy, which is good thing.  However, real government spending during Kennedy increased 4.6% a year.  Bad.

My assessment of Kennedy leans towards bad.

HAVE A GOOD DAY!!!!!