Diana Furchtgott-Roth proposes some measures that could produce more economic growth:

• Fix the Affordable Care Act.
• Allow exports of natural gas.
• Reform taxes.
• Overhaul immigration.

She characterizes these reforms as “easy”, presumably meaning that they need not require federal spending. Quite to the contrary, I think these problems are extraordinarily difficult. If they weren’t, they’d’ve already been done by now.

Clearly, her priorities are different from mine. Allowing more flexibility in the plans offered under the PPACA might make sense but it’s probably politically quite difficult and, frankly, it will do almost nothing to spur economic growth. Her most convincing argument is for allowing exports of natural gas:

Most non-marketed natural gas is wasted, flared into the atmosphere like an open burner on a gas stove. Flaring gas releases CO2 as a byproduct of combustion, so it would be environmentally preferable for the gas to be sold. A third of North Dakota’s total production is flared, or burned. North Dakota’s goal is to reduce its percentage of non-marketed gas to 10% by the fourth quarter of 2020. Allowing more exports would help North Dakota’s economy as well as increase U.S. GDP.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m neutral on increasing GDP. Under present circumstances I see too much daylight between increasing GDP and improving the fortunes of most Americans for me to get very exercised about it. I think what we really need to do is not to sell more of what’s already being produced but produce more. To whatever extent selling more natural gas incentivizes additional production of natural gas I’m in favor of it. Otherwise, I’m indifferent to it.

I agree that tax reform would be helpful. However, I think reform should be more narrowly tailored than this

A better solution would be to lower taxes on capital to encourage more investment. Spending on equipment declined by 5.5% in the first quarter, the largest one-quarter decline since the second quarter of 2009.

The portion of immigration she emphasizes is probably the smallest component:

Immigrants have a higher propensity to start businesses than do native-born Americans, according to a 2012 study by the Kauffman Foundation , which champions entrepreneurship. The author, Duke University professor Vivek Wadhwa, reported that immigrant founders of engineering and technology companies started between 2006 and 2012 employed approximately 560,000 workers and generated $63 billion in sales in 2012. In California’s high-tech Silicon Valley, 44% of businesses had at least one immigrant founder.

I suspect that 90% or more of our immigration consists of unskilled workers from Mexico, other parts of Latin America, and the Caribbean. Offhand I doubt that many of them are coming here to start engineering and technology companies. A more direct way of spurring growth in the number of engineering and technology companies would be federal spending that encouraged engineering and technology companies. The epitome of that kind of spending was the space program which not only caused more money to be devoted to engineering and technology but did so in an area of technology that wasn’t already filled with giant companies that were mobilized to suck up every available dollar as is the case now. I’m not sure what kind of federal spending would encourage that today.

IMO the most immediate effect of expanding the number of H-1B visas would be to push wages down for the engineering and technology workers already here.

As the old wisecrack has it “Lord, send us a cure! The disease is already here.” We need more economic growth now rather in five or ten years and the growth we need will cause more investment and business spending in the United States. I don’t think that any of Ms. Furchtgott-Roth’s proposals would have those effects.

The Watcher’s Council has announced its winners for last week.

Council Winners

• *First place with 3 votes! – Bookworm Room – The need for loud, swift action in response to John Kerry’s libelous statements about Israel
• Second place with 2 2/3 votes –The Right Planet – Journey to the Center of the Common Core, Pt. 2
• Third place with 2 votes –Joshuapundit–Racist Poker….Show Me Your Cards
• Fourth place *t* with 1 1/3 votes –Ask Marion – Sarah Palin… The Case for a Palin Candidacy for President in 2016
• Fourth place *t* with 1 1/3 votes –Liberty’s Spirit – Contretemps and Candidates…The GOP POTUS Run Begins
• Fourth place *t* with 1 1/3 votes –The Razor – Shifting Political Alliances and Friendships
• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 votes –The Noisy Room – War Games As Putin Covets Eastern Ukraine And Beyond
• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 votes –Simply Jews – Patricia McAllister and the Holocaust Remembrance day
• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 votes –The Independent Sentinel – Obama’s Platform Is Eerily Similar to the Communist Party USA’s
• Sixth place *t* with 1/3 vote –The Colossus of Rhodey – “She’s only seventeen, so don’t judge too harshly”
• Sixth place *t* with 1/3 vote –GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD – Future aQ
• Sixth place *t* with 1/3 vote –VA Right! – Obama’s Progressive Ideology Fails on Every Front

Non-Council Winners

• First place with 3 votes! –Doug Ross@ Journal – HIGH CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS: Administration’s Benghazi Lies Were an “Effort to Protect, Re-Elect Obama” submitted by The Watcher
• Second place with 1 2/3 votes– Dorothy Thompson – Who Goes Nazi? submitted by Joshuapundit
• Third place *t* with 1 1/3 votes – The Contentious Centrist – Would You Trust This Person To Babysit Your Children? submitted by Simply Jews
• Third place *t* with 1 1/3 votes – Pop Chassid–20 Photos That Change The Holocaust Narrative submitted by Bookworm Room
• Third place *t* with 1 1/3 votes – KausFiles – A Marxist Analysis Of Hillary submitted by The Glittering Eye
• Third place *t* with 1 1/3 votes – Elder Of Ziyon – The saga of Christy Anastas, Palestinian defender of Israel, continues submitted by The Watcher
• Fourth place *t* with 1 vote –Kimberly Strauss/WSJ – Tom Steyer’s Glass House submitted by Liberty’s Spirit
• Fourth place *t* with 1 vote –Crisis Magazine – How Common Core Literary Standards Undermine Education submitted by The Right Planet
• Fourth place *t* with 1 vote – Rush Limbaugh –GOP On A Suicide Mission submitted by Ask Marion
• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote –Mark Steyn –How Now White Cowman? submitted by The Noisy Room
• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote –Matt Walsh –Here’s The Post Where I’m Accused Of Defending Donald Sterling submitted by Nice Deb
• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote –Discriminations – The Contradictions Of Sonia Sotomayor submitted by Rhymes with Right

The announcement post at the Watcher’s site is here.

John Dvorak has a kind of interesting gripe about the future of tablets:

With sales of tablets falling, the so-called “experts” are now re-evaluating predictions about tablets taking over the computing market. It never made sense in the first place.

All eyes are on the market share leader, Apple, whose iPad sales fell 16 percent during the first quarter. Some of this has to do with customers moving to Android tablets, but a downward trend is clear. The Microsoft Surface also took a beating.

The rationale is that, whatever a tablet is good for, it’s never going to be replaced. Once the market saturates, the replacement cycle is long and slow. Unlike on PCs, there are no tablet apps that are so powerful they need more horsepower. Most users simply use them to read content or play games.

Insofar as a fashion item, there is not much you can do design-wise to a tablet to encourage an upgrade. There are no real design elements. It’s just a slab of glass.

My own view is that tablets, like mainframe computers and notebook computers, are a niche product. There’s a viable niche for them and will be for the foreseeable future. So far I don’t we’ve scratched the surface (to use a wildly inappropriate metaphor) of the potential for smartphones or tablets in the business environment. Interestingly, smartphones and tablets are unlike mainframes and personal computers whether desktop or notebook in that they’re primarily a consumer product rather than spreading from business use into personal use.

I’ve been thinking of starting an online magazine devoted to add-ons for smartphones and tablets for a while now. There doesn’t seem to be anything like that out there or, if there is, it’s certainly keeping its existence hidden pretty well. There’s plenty of material and I would think with and with 150 million smartphones and 100 million tablets out there, you’d think that there might be at least a little interest.

Speaking of re-locating, the Gallup Organization has produced a poll that I find disheartening:

PRINCETON, NJ — Every state has at least some residents who are looking for greener pastures, but nowhere is the desire to move more prevalent than in Illinois and Connecticut. In both of these states, about half of residents say that if given the chance to move to a different state, they would like to do so. Maryland is a close third, at 47%. By contrast, in Montana, Hawaii, and Maine, just 23% say they would like to relocate. Nearly as few — 24% — feel this way in Oregon, New Hampshire, and Texas.

This is hardly surprising. Illinois has the third highest unemployment rate among the states (only Nevada and Rhode Island are higher), a phlegmatic economy, is a fiscal basket case, manifest political corruption, and the lowest state contribution to education of any state.

Illinois is not a destination state like California or Florida or even North Carolina or New York. People come here to work:

Hog Butcher for the World,
Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and the Nation’s Freight Handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of the Big Shoulders…

Carl Sandburg didn’t celebrate Chicago for the climate or for the sights but for working. Recent mayors have concentrated more on making Chicago a place where people like themselves would want to live. We need to make it a place where ordinary Chicagoans would want to live.

Things are not likely to get better in Illinois without some pretty drastic change. If people want change, they’ve got to change the people they want. We’ll get nowhere re-electing the same crooks year after year.

Meanwhile, people are discouraged and those who can will vote with their feet.

À propos of the observations I made the other day, I found this editorial on Toyota’s plan to re-locate its US headquarters from California to Texas interesting, saddening, and discouraging:

Toyota wanted out of California for many reasons: high taxes, steep operations costs and unpredictable state politics. The automaker reportedly had kicked the tires on several locations in Texas as well as in Denver, Atlanta and Charlotte, N.C. And Toyota’s not the only one racing for the exits. In recent years, more than 250 companies have bolted from California, and relocation experts in that state say Texas was their No. 1 destination.

“When you look at the whole package, it’s difficult to be a business here,” said Torrance Mayor Frank Scotto, whose city is the big job loser in Toyota’s move to North Texas.

Toyota has deep pockets and could expand anywhere on its own coin, but Texas made a strong case sealed with a handsome dowry. The benefit to North Texas comes from high-paying corporate jobs and the multiplier effect of new home purchases and countless other spending gains.

You can hardly blame Toyota for its decision but this kind of bidding war is at best a zero-sum game for the country. It’s good for Texans, bad for Californians, meanwhile producing disruption and upheaval.

Oh, de boll weevil am a little black bug,
Come from Mexico, dey say,
Come all de way to Texas,
Jus’ a-lookin’ foh a place to stay,
Jus’ a-lookin’ foh a home,
Jus’ a-lookin’ foh a home.

Scott Sumner has an interesting post about tax reform that’s worthy of your attention. The post also could serve as a sort of Socratic dialogue on which is worse, avarice or gluttony? Sadly, he combines the two but, as any good scholar of medieval philosophy could tell you, they’re different.

I think they’re both bad but that’s a subject for another post.

I did learn something that I did not know from the post. He quotes The Economist:

TO UNDERSTAND one of the gulfs separating the Anglo-Saxon world from continental Europe, consider Warren Buffett’s children. Omaha’s sage investor long ago said he would leave most of his fortune to charity, with more modest sums to his offspring. For Mr Buffett, leaving vast wealth to his children would be “anti-social” in a society that “aspires to be a meritocracy.”

In 26 out of 27 European Union countries, Mr Buffett’s plans would not just be shocking, but illegal. The exception is Britain, or rather England and Wales (Scotland has its own, centuries-old legal system, with a strong continental flavour). In continental Europe a big part of an estate (often around half) is reserved for the surviving children of the deceased and must be equally divided between them.

I wonder how many people will recognize the implications of that? Americans and Continental Europeans have very different assumptions about wealth, assumptions they themselves may not recognize, and, consequently, we need to consider European pronouncements on wealth as seen through that filter.

What’s true in France may not be true here and vice versa.

I was originally going to title this post “Good News”. Then I read the article and revised my opinion:

(Reuters) – U.S. job growth increased at its fastest pace in more than two years in April and the unemployment rate dived to a 5-1/2 year low of 6.3 percent, suggesting a sharp rebound in economic activity early in the second quarter.

Nonfarm payrolls surged 288,000 last month, the Labor Department said on Friday. That was the largest gain since January 2012 and beat Wall Street’s expectations for only a 210,000 increase.

but

The unemployment rate tumbled 0.4 percentage point, touching its lowest level since September 2008. The Labor Department attributed the decline to a drop in the number of unemployed people reentering the labor market as well as a fall in new entrants into the labor force.

The emphasis is mine. Don’t get me wrong. I rejoice in the 288,000 added to payrolls. If we kept that up every single month, those who’s who’ve been unemployed for so long could come back to work in just three or four years. If we kept that up every single month.

But the unemployment rate dropping because people aren’t even bothering to look isn’t good news.

When I read the article’s headline I wondered how a sharp April increase could be reconciled with the GDP figures we saw earlier in the week and now I know. They’re completely consistent and they’re not particularly encouraging. Better than nothing? Yes. But not nearly good enough.

There was one aspect of the report of flat GDP I posted on earlier that I’d intended to mention but somehow neglected to so I’ll mention it now. If healthcare costs hadn’t risen in the first quarter of 2014, GDP would have decreased.

That is a very, very bad thing. Spending more for the same quantity of goods or services is in no way indicative of economic strength. Mirabile dictu I’ve actually read things from people who claimed it was.

While we’re on the subject, Heather Wilhelm has a darned good explanation of my own impression about so much of the debate on income inequality in the United States:

Once you look past the patent silliness and First World problems of the almost-rich mentally scapegoating the already-rich, it becomes increasingly clear why income inequality has become the anxiety of choice for the upper-middle-class left. If you’re mad about your neighbor’s private jet, after all, it makes it a heck of a lot easier to ignore the poor kid from the wrong side of the tracks who was just denied access to a quality charter school—thanks, of course, to the charter-blocking policies of the politicians you voted (and perhaps raised funds) for.

The real income inequality isn’t among people in the United States at all. It’s between the people of the United States and rural farmers in most of the rest of the world. It will be much easier to take the prescriptions for ameliorating income inequality seriously when people start talking redistributing from the rich to the poor rather than from the rich to the “almost-rich” who will, of course, use the money on behalf of the poor.