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America does not have to be perfect to be better than all other nations.
Once again radical hold themselves to no standards while demanding perfection of others and everything so that gives them license to always find fault, to never be satisfied. This is why most liberals come across as miserable souls, always unhappy, gloomy.(See 1 below.)
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Another Rant. (See 2 below.)
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Dick
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1)
Victor Davis Hanson: America does not have to be perfect to be good (despite what radical progressives tell us)
The summer season has ripped off the thin scab that covered an American wound, revealing a festering disagreement about the nature and origins of the United States.
The San Francisco Board of Education recently voted to paint over, and thus destroy, a 1,600-square-foot mural of George Washington’s life in San Francisco’s George Washington High School.
Victor Arnautoff, a communist Russian-American artist and Stanford University art professor, had painted “Life of Washington” in 1936, commissioned by the New Deal’s Works Progress Administration. A community task force appointed by the school district had recommended that the board address student and parent objections to the 83-year-old mural, which some viewed as racist for its depiction of black slaves and Native Americans.
Nike pitchman and former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick recently objected to the company’s release of a special Fourth of July sneaker emblazoned with a 13-star Betsy Ross flag. The terrified Nike immediately pulled the shoe off the market.
The New York Times opinion team issued a Fourth of July video about “the myth of America as the greatest nation on earth.” The Times’ journalists conceded that the United States is “just OK.”
During a recent speech to students at a Minnesota high school, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) offered a scathing appraisal of her adopted country, which she depicted as a disappointment whose racism and inequality did not meet her expectations as an idealistic refugee. Omar’s family had fled worn-torn Somalia and spent four-years in a Kenyan refugee camp before reaching Minnesota, where Omar received a subsidized education and ended up a congresswoman.
The city council in St. Louis Park, a suburb of Minneapolis, voted to stop reciting the Pledge of Allegiance before its meeting on the rationale that it wished not to offend a “diverse community.”
The list of these public pushbacks at traditional American patriotic customs and rituals could be multiplied. They follow the recent frequent toppling of statues of 19th-century American figures, many of them from the South, and the renaming of streets and buildings to blot out mention of famous men and women from the past now deemed illiberal enemies of the people.
Such theater is the street version of what candidates in the Democratic presidential primary have been saying for months. They want to disband border enforcement, issue blanket amnesties, demand reparations for descendants of slaves, issue formal apologies to groups perceived to be the subjects of discrimination, and rail against American unfairness, inequality, and a racist and sexist past.
In their radical progressive view — shared by billionaires from Silicon Valley, recent immigrants and the new Democratic Party — America was flawed, perhaps fatally, at its origins. Things have not gotten much better in the country’s subsequent 243 years, nor will they get any better — at least not until America as we know it is dismantled and replaced by a new nation predicated on race, class and gender identity-politics agendas.
In this view, an “OK” America is no better than other countries. As Barack Obama once bluntly put it, America is only exceptional in relative terms, given that citizens of Greece and the United Kingdom believe their own countries are just as exceptional. In other words, there is no absolute standard to judge a nation’s excellence.
About half the country disagrees. It insists that America’s sins, past and present, are those of mankind. But only in America were human failings constantly critiqued and addressed.
America does not have be perfect to be good. As the world’s wealthiest democracy, it certainly has given people from all over the world greater security and affluence than any other nation in history — with the largest economy, largest military, greatest energy production and most top-ranked universities in the world.
America alone kept the postwar peace and still preserves free and safe global communications, travel and commerce.
The traditionalists see American history as a unique effort to overcome human weakness, bias and sin. That effort is unmatched by other cultures and nations, and explains why millions of foreign nationals swarm into the United States, both legally and illegally.
These arguments over our past are really over the present — and especially the future.
If progressives and socialists can at last convince the American public that their country was always hopelessly flawed, they can gain power to remake it based on their own interests. These elites see Americans not as unique individuals but as race, class and gender collectives, with shared grievances from the past that must be paid out in the present and the future.
We’ve seen something like this fight before, in 1861 — and it didn’t end well.
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2) It is very hard at the moment to determine, is the economy still moving up nicely, or just a little slower. The Fed Beige Book report suggests the economy is moving along at around 2% growth, and steady. The Philadelphia Fed just reported a very large move up in factory activity for its region including jobs and increases in orders. There are no major economic issues in the foreseeable future other than if Pelosi refuses to bring USMCA to a vote. Consumers are spending like they are very flush, and comfortable with their job and their personal debt burdens. Jamie Dimon has confirmed that to be the case based on the data the bank has on consumers. Likely those are both true for most consumers. Wages are still growing, especially at the lower income end, and jobs are secure for almost everyone. Wages are likely to go higher for a considerable time. Yet railcar loadings and truck loadings are slower, which is never good. The world is still slowing, and that harms exports. However, savings are up, and have been for some time, and personal balance sheets are probably as good as they have been for over 10 years, or longer.
House prices remain high and going higher, and 401K values have never been higher, so consumers are feeling more flush and secure. Trade has an effect, but my sense is the topic has been beaten to death for so long that it no longer has the same impact on consumers who are not seeing any impact on prices with inflation remaining at 1.6% or less. Since a lot of Christmas merchandise was brought in before tariffs went on, and some is being sourced from other places, or trans shipped through Vietnam, there is likely not going to be a big impact on retail prices over the holiday shopping season as retailers spread the higher costs over various products so that it is not very noticeable. Business investment is slower, but the whole tariff issue feels like it is being normalized into long term planning, and many seem to be working on the basis there may be no deal, or it is a long way off. We now know it is going to be a long haul before any trade deal happens. In the meantime, supply sources are being moved to other countries in many cases, so the impact possibly will become less as time goes on, and as China becomes less of the key supplier it has been. Also, oil prices seem to be stabilizing around $55-$60, and if there really are eventually talks with Iran, oil prices could decline further. Steady low gas prices is a major windfall for consumers. With consumer spend up .4%, in June, there appears to be no slowdown in that sector which is 67% of the economy. This all puts the Fed in a difficult position because normally there would not be a cut now, but they kind of boxed themselves in, and the markets are putting on enormous pressure to cut. There might be only the 25 BP cut in July, and then no more this year. Too hard to know yet.
There are much deeper problems in China than just the tariffs and companies leaving. Productivity is declining, over leverage continues to be a major issue, and private companies are seriously squeezed for liquidity and working capital. The main driver of Chinese growth has been they came from undeveloped 30 years ago, to very modern and middle class, but using high leverage, and that is now coming home to bite just as the cycle of slower growth which always occurs as countries reach middle class and greater GDP status. In addition, under Xi, the private sector is now 5% less of the economy than it had been, another bad sign, and that is before the big move out of private sector production to other countries. More state owned businesses means much lower productivity and efficiency. Return on capital has plummeted from 19% in 2007 top 8.4% in 2017 and very likely it is lower in 2019. Half of all investment has been infrastructure and housing.
Housing has been way over built in many cities, and there is only so much infrastructure that can be financed and built. And all of this was done with debt. At the same time the population is aging, and the birth rate is low. All of this together means China has substantial structural problems that are just being made worse by tariffs and the move out of so many factories. They will fight for their ability to still steal IP and cheat, but Trump is right to apply heavy and continuing pressure now, and to stop Huawei. It is likely a deal will happen, but it may not happen until 2021 after Trump is reelected, and then Xi has to roll over as Trump is still there and the Chinese economy is struggling. If the Dems win, there may never be a deal, and the IP will never get solved.
USMCA may never get to the House floor, which will be a bad thing, and will come back to be a big problem for Dems in the Midwest and TX. It is good for jobs and trade, and there is no excuse for not passing it. Now they are passing as national minimum wage increase which CBO says will cost well over 1 million and maybe 3 million jobs, and harm the economy. Minimum wage law needs to be left to the states where conditions and cost of living vary substantially. This is another stupid, waste of time political stunt by Pelosi which will backfire. Labor is so in demand that workers are already being paid $15 or more in most places where that is a wage that is required to find any workers. The proposed law also makes teenage minimum $15 which would be terrible for teens trying to get a starter job. It will never go past the House, and will not become law.
The gig economy remains a questionable business strategy, The car services lose billions, the food delivery services also lose tens of millions, and restaurants say they make no money when people order thru the delivery apps. I don’t see how the food delivery services will ever make money, nor how the restaurants can continue to lose money using them. I also do not understand why anyone orders a hot dog, or a cookie to be delivered. By the time the hot dog arrives and you sit down to eat it, it is cold or has been sitting in a warming wrap for far too long. All of this just proves how lazy young people are today, and how they have no sense of cost, that they order cookies delivered. I don’t know where all this is headed, but these companies cannot keep losing this kind of money year after year, which they will do since there is a very low cost of entry for competition.
For years now the hotel industry has tried to make believe Airbnb is not competition. I used to go to hotel industry conferences where the pundits and brands tried to show data that said Airbnb did not steal room nights, and it did not matter. They were very wrong. I thought then, and I am convinced now, that was all just propaganda by the industry to try to minimize a real competitor. Lost room nights are lost forever. Now Airbnb has achieved a real position and their offerings are very good in many cases. They have made good headway even in commercial nights and for vacation rentals. In the Hamptons, Airbnb has displaced the rental market in the mid-priced range- that being the $25,000-$100,000 season range. The very high end, $200,000+ for the season is still not very impacted. I assume it is the same in other high end resort markets. The hotel industry is just not a good place to invest now as Revpar has almost flattened, and is not likely to go up much more than inflation while labor costs continue to rise. There is little to buy at a good price as refi is readily available now at low cost, so sellers are not selling.
In Q2, railcar loadings have slowed, which is often a good early measure of the economy. The same has occurred with truck loadings. A big piece of this is the flooding and terrible weather in the Midwest in spring, and part is the tariffs slowing arrivals in LA ports from China, but part is an actual slowdown. We need to watch to see where this goes over the next two quarters to see if there is a rebound. Based on reports from the WSJ and people I know who have been manufacturing in China, the movement out of China is now a major shift. This is going to hurt China much more over the next year, as it now appears there will not be any deal in the near term, and companies conclude that even if there is a deal, the Chinese will probably cheat, and tariffs could be reimposed at any time. China has made a real mistake on this battle, and it is going to cost them substantially over the next couple of years as more production leaves.
It is ironic that in 48 hours the Dems can pass a resolution condemning Trump for his stupid tweet, but they never could pass a resolution condemning Omar for her anti-Semitic comments, nor her comment that “on 9-11 some people did something”. They could not even pass one condemning anti-Semitism generally. Keep that in mind when you vote. The war against the establishment is going to get worse now between the gang of four who are media darlings, and Pelosi and moderates. Pelosi used to be the radical left, now, by comparison, she is just far left. The more it heats up, the more the Republicans and Trump become winners. If Pocahontas becomes the candidate, which is possible now, Trump will destroy her. I think most normal Americans are sick and tired of everything and everyone being called racist, no matter how innocent they are, or what they said. It is now to the point that anyone who does not tow the line of the radicals is labeled racist. I am fed up with that, and it is said so often now that it has lost all meaning. Trump, or someone in addition to Ben Carson, should publicly go through all that has been accomplished for blacks over the last 50 years, and remind everyone they had a black president, and it did not help blacks nearly as much as Trump and Republicans have. Instead it fed the racial divide that had been disappearing with Obama’s anti-cop rhetoric and Holder’s actions in Ferguson and with Travon, and his apology tour in the Mideast.
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