Rice County Republicans

The Rice County Republicans site was suffering from technical difficulties which precluded any posts.  This collection of articles have some that date back to the week of 25 MAR 12.  Sorry for the inconvenience.

ECONOMICS / BUSINESS
This story in the Financial Times of London (free registration required), Obama’s tax hikes threaten to push US back into recession.

We have both Market Monetarists and Keynesian economists suggesting solution to the problem. This author wonders if the right questions are being asked to determine a proper course of action or have the economists decided on their preferred course of action and ignoring some underlying questions.

A really good article by Dr. Cowen on the what the resurgence of exports means for the US economy. Like all things it’s a mix of good news and bad. The good news is it will continue to strengthen the push for free-trade. The bad news……. “In the past decade, the flow of goods coming from U.S. factories has gone up by a third as capital has increasingly become a greater share of input over labor. In this regard, the recent experience with Germany’s export success is inspiring, but it is sobering, too. At the beginning of the last decade, Gerhard Schröder’s Social Democrat government decided to reform labor markets and revamp Germany’s export prowess. These policies succeeded beyond most expectations, but less well advertised is the fact that real wages in Germany’s export sectors have been stagnant or declining, depending on which measures are used.”

Here’s and excellent Austrian economic analysis of debt.

This is a pretty solid and brief little article on the role of Corporations in the total economy. There are a couple of points that would be very interesting to explore further. For example how much outsourcing is being done domestically to small mom-and-pop machining companies which face fewer regulations and have less overhead? It would also be interesting to see how much of foreign growth was due to the advantages reinvesting profits from overseas operations in the countries they were earned, rather than paying the higher U.S. tax rate when repatriating profits?

Dr. Boudreaux does a wonderful job of using the economics world view to call-out to President on  protectionism, cronyism and public subsidies in the same brief op-ed. The bottom line is, if solar panels are such a positive for the environment and consumers, why impose tariffs on ones imported from China? (And I adore the line, ““It takes remarkable cheek for Obama to insist that, while American “public investment” in green energy is virtuous, Chinese “public investment” in green energy is vile.”)

I would like to congratulate the citizens of Japan for the excellent – albeit rather timid- move by their government to reduce the Corporate tax rate to below that of U.S.  They were the final country where it behooved U.S. based companies to bring their profits home, rather than reinvest them in the country that they were made. The insidious tax policy of the U.S. government has created the perverse incentive for U.S. corporations with operations overseas to grow into multinationals where most of their growth occurs outside the U.S.

GENERAL INTEREST
An idea that’s time has come? I have to say I generally support State constraints on Federal power and really like this one in particular.

This article lays out what it will take for the GOP to win women voters this election cycle.

Here’s another government disincentive for marriage; this one under ObamaCare.

The general malaise of the Carter years seems to be back.

There’s a theory that a politician shouldn’t tell a little lie, because the facts will trip them up later. What they need to do is tell a really, really big lie, of such grand proportions that it’s hard to change the opinion that forms around it and it becomes hard to challenge the narrative, even when the truth becomes known (Social Security and the “Great Society” were just these kind of grand fictions). It looks like the Obama Administration’s narrative of the failed debt ceiling negotiations were just such a lie.
….and what is really interesting is the very Left-leaning Washington Post broke the story which shows that Obama would undermine national security and face a downgrade of U.S. debt rating for the purposes of reelection.

These are four possible decisions the Supreme Court could make on ObamaCare and what that would mean.

The social issues seem to be pulling down all the GOP candidates for President.

Here’s an example of the split in the GOP over Judicial elections.

A court decision that is another blow to judicial elections in MN.

This is a pretty good equality article.

I happen to agree with Van Jones on this one, Condi would be a great pick! Whether she’d agree, that’s another matter.

Enjoy,

Stephen Kallestad

Northfield