Compilation: MSM Gushes Over ‘Cuddly’ Tim Walz
Establishment media in lockstep unison disseminated new leftist talking points on Kamala Harris’ running mate Minn. Gov. Tim Walz, characterizing him as a “cuddly” dad figure who’s definitely not weird.
A new mega-compilation shows mainstream media apparatchiks gushing over Walz and conditioning their audiences to view him as their new best buddy – and despite putting tampons in boy’s bathrooms, he’s totally not weird.
The Lamestream media got their psyop talking points for Walz ? pic.twitter.com/grZXa3XjfZ
— Karli Bonne’ ?? (@KarluskaP) August 6, 2024
The video shows several media figures on CNN and other leftist outlets describing Walz as “cuddly,” with one media commentator claiming he has a “twinkle in his eye.”
Others have observed Dems are trying to paint Walz as someone “folksy” who possesses “big dad energy.”
Do Democrats issue journalists with talking points? Here’s another “big dad energy” puff piece on Walz. It also praises him for “sarcasm, booming aggression, sudden, sharp mockery” – the very qualities that make Trump obnoxious.
— John Robson (@thejohnrobson) August 7, 2024
https://t.co/8OaOJmckcY
Hey, did you know that Tim Walz has a “folksy demeanor?” pic.twitter.com/iThqf2gaVX
— David Harsanyi (@davidharsanyi) August 6, 2024
Democrats would like the public to forget they just orchestrated one of the greatest coups of all time by replacing Joe Biden with the unelected VP Kamala Harris, but soon the festering stench of their corrupt misdeeds is bound to boil to the surface.
Official White House Social Media: “Ban Assault Weapons, It’s Time”
The White House X account posted, “It’s time,” on Wednesday alongside an image reading, “Ban Assault Weapons.”
It’s time. pic.twitter.com/1ka7V2V77a
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) August 7, 2024
The alarming post was thrashed online, with commenters roasting the Biden-Harris White House for hoping to destroy the Second Amendment.
One X user pointed out the irony that Harris’ running mate Tim Walz drove tens of thousands of his constituents to buy “assault rifles” in response to the deadly BLM riots of 2020 that destroyed major Minnesota cities under his watch.
Ironically as Tim Walz cries about banning “assault weapons” you know what sold millions of ARs to first time buyers over the last few years? Them watching Minneapolis burn and realizing the idea the state would protect them was a sham. https://t.co/fIT3bVWnfF
— Larry Correia (@monsterhunter45) August 7, 2024
A Fed Rate Cut Will Not Solve Our Economic Problems
Last Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the unemployment rate had jumped to 4.3% in July. The pace at which unemployment is rising matches the speed often found in the early stages of a recession — an indicator known as the Sahm Rule. The triggering of the Sahm Rule sparked a panic in the stock market that only grew at the start of this week after other economies, especially in East Asia, experienced even sharper downturns.
Many establishment-friendly economists and political figures are dismissing concerns that the surge in unemployment and resulting scare on Wall Street represent a recession. However, some are clearly worried.
Senator Elizabeth Warren, for instance, used the jobs data to restate her argument that the Fed is waiting too long to cut rates. She said Fed Chair Jerome Powell “risks driving the economy into a ditch,” and that he “needs to cancel his summer vacation and cut rates now.”
Paul Krugman has been making the same point. Last Friday, he called the Fed’s reluctance to cut rates already “a big oopsie” that the central bank needs to reverse fast to “head off” a recession.
Although both couch their calls for rate cuts in language that suggests it may already be too late, there is still acceptance of the idea that the Fed can prevent a recession. All our monetary central planners must do is recognize the wisdom of Warren and Krugman and lower the interest rate by exactly half a percent in their next meeting, and the good times will continue.
In truth, if we’re ever going to see the end of these debilitating boom-bust cycles, what we need are not lower rates or higher rates. What we need are accurate interest rates.
Interest rates are prices. And so, like any other price, they are determined by people’s preferences. In this case, the factor in question is called time preference. Every human always prefers satisfaction in the present to the same exact satisfaction in the future. That is a fact central to the entire concept of human action. However, the extent to which we prefer present gratification over future satisfaction differs from person to person.
For some – mainly children – immediate gratification is highly preferred to delayed gratification, even when that delayed gratification is much larger. These people have a high time preference. Typically, as we become adults, we come to recognize that if we partially withhold from consumption, we can often bring about significantly more satisfaction by helping to produce more goods and services that can be consumed and/or traded in the future. Those who forgo a lot of instant gratification to pursue delayed gratification are said to have a low time preference.
A similar evolution happens on a civilizational scale. As Hans-Hermann Hoppe details in A Short History of Man, early humans lived nomadically because they were forced to move to a new area when the supply of food and other resources dried up. Adopting tools and hunting strategies allowed early humans to catch bigger game, but they still existed in a state of high time preference by our modern standards.
That remained essentially constant until the Neolithic Revolution around 11,500 years ago, when humans started to recognize that they could produce more food than they could hunt or gather if they grew crops and raised livestock. The adoption of these practices also led to institutions like private property and the family as a homogenous unit. And, before long, they freed up people to pursue trades unrelated to gathering food — like metalworking, architecture, and philosophy.
As human production expanded, more and more present needs could be met, leading to more investment in production for future consumption. Economies grew, civilizations developed, and time preferences fell. The next big acceleration came in the early 1800s with the Industrial Revolution. Advancements in energy made production significantly more efficient. The result is the developed world we have today. It’s important to recognize that the fall in time preference was not merely a symptom of the development of human civilization but a leading cause.
Interest rates are prices that serve as the closest proximation for a society’s time preference. They are the premiums charged for acquiring future money in the present. And, for almost all of human history, they have tracked nicely with the ten-thousand-year fall in time preference explained above, that is, until governments started artificially manipulating interest rates.
Thanks to central banking and the politicization of money, governments today control interest rates by expanding or restricting the supply of new money and credit entering the loan market. Like anything, an increase in the supply of loanable funds drives the interest rate — or price — down, and vice versa.
But there is a big difference between interest rates that are lowered by an increase in people’s willingness to save and invest in production and rates cut artificially by political authorities. The former frees up resources to be used in the new lines of production. The latter does not.
And, not only does an artificially-lowered interest rate trick producers into acting as if there are more resources available for production than there are — generating the boom-bust cycle we find ourselves in the middle of — it also incentivizes people to consume more than they otherwise would, because the rate of return for saving and investing is now lower.
This means that by artificially lowering interest rates, governments are reversing the progress made over the last ten thousand years as humans learned to use foresight and to value production over the easiest form of instant gratification. The hyper-consumerism and economic chaos that pervades our society is precisely what results when governments artificially lower interest rates — the very policy Warren and Krugman are desperately calling for the Fed to enact yet again.
If our economy is ever going to heal, interest rates must be brought back in line with people’s actual time preferences. Like any true price, a pure market interest rate won’t always be stable because reality isn’t always stable. But if we want to see an end to perpetual recessions and debt-fueled mass consumption, we need to stop listening to those who benefit from the current system of centrally-planned interest rates. We need a return to accurate interest rates, which have helped encourage and coordinate the production of a better future for thousands of years.
Economist Warns Warren Buffett Deliberately Triggered Stock Market Crash— Major Collapse Imminent
Israeli Soldiers Filmed Anally Raping Palestinian Hostage, Media Defends Heinous Act & Calls For State-Sanctioned Molestation!
Disturbing footage going viral worldwide shows the moment IDF soldiers raped a Palestinian detainee at the Sde Teiman detention facility while other Israeli fighters stood guard.
Nine Israeli soldiers were arrested for rape last month.
The individual who was molested allegedly suffered a “torn rectum, broken ribs and ruptured bowels.”
???? NEW: Newly released footage shows “the most moral” IDF using shields while r*ping a Palestinian at the Sde Teiman torture camp
— HOT SPOT (@HotSpotHotSpot) August 7, 2024
He was found hospitalized with injuries including a torn rectum, broken ribs, and ruptured bowels
Accusation ? Projection! pic.twitter.com/mVT84keTQ4
Despite the footage being released, military police clashed with soldiers when they entered the detention center to make arrests.
Jewish Terrorists attacking their own IDF after some of them got detained for gang raping Palestinian prisoners.
— Syrian Girl ?? (@Partisangirl) July 29, 2024
This is you ” Israel “.
This your real rape.
Non of it on Oct 7th. pic.twitter.com/MfoW9hsnX6
An Israeli media pundit named Yehuda Schlesinger told a panel he doesn’t “give a rat’s ass” about the IDF raping Palestinian hostages.
“The only problem for me here is that it’s not a regulated policy of the state to abuse the detainees… They deserve it, and it’s great revenge that we need to give them.”
He also claimed raping prisoners could “serve us a little more as a deterrent” and pushed the narrative that Hamas tied 30 Israeli women to trees, raped and killed them in the infamous October 7th attack.
There is no proof any of the women were molested during the October terrorist assault.
Schlesinger continued, “It’s just a shame we don’t do it in an institutionalized way, as part of regulations for torture of prisoners.”
???? After getting caught r*ping a Palestinian detainee, Israeli television is making the case that nothing is off the table and that the IDF should act with impunity
— HOT SPOT (@HotSpotHotSpot) August 7, 2024
“I don’t give a rat’s ass what they do to Hamas man” https://t.co/LNZUr70BBi pic.twitter.com/a8VcEzJeIT
Top American journalist Glenn Greenwald commented on the news segment via X, writing, “What this Israeli is actually arguing on mainstream Israeli television is that not only does he support anal rape on detainees as an appropriate form or revenge and torture, but that the only thing he laments is that the Israeli state isn’t using anal rape more systematically.”
What this Israeli is actually arguing on mainstream Israeli television is that not only does he support anal rape on detainees as an appropriate form or revenge and torture, but that the only thing he laments is that the Israeli state isn’t using anal rape more systematically. https://t.co/lXb0tDKV3i
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) August 7, 2024
United States State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said during a Wednesday news briefing there is no justification for the sexual assault of detainees.
The fact that many Israelis are defending the rape of their captured enemies highlights just how much hatred is embedded in the long-lasting Middle East feud.
Vance Trolls Kamala: Trump VP Lands on Same Tarmac as Harris, Takes Questions From Reporters Covering Her Arrival
Trump running mate J.D. Vance trolled Kamala Harris on Wednesday during a campaign stop in Wisconsin after landing on the same tarmac as the presumptive Democrat nominee and approaching reporters covering her arrival.
After landing in Eau Claire shortly after Harris arrived in Air Force Two, Vance was seen walking over to her plane to interact with a gaggle of reporters covering the vice president’s visit.
Just landed in Wisconsin and JD Vance and Kamala Harris’ plane are both here on the tarmac — he appears to be walking over… pic.twitter.com/zgHnfeQFJK
— Shelby Talcott (@ShelbyTalcott) August 7, 2024
pic goes hard ⚡️⚡️⚡️ pic.twitter.com/yXhCq0EkUE
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) August 7, 2024
Standing in front of Air Force Two with Kamala nowhere in sight, Vance told reporters they looked “lonely” because Harris hasn’t answered their questions since she was coronated as the Democrat presidential nominee 17 days ago.
“Hopefully it’s going to be my plane in a few months. I also thought you guys may get lonely, because the VP doesn’t answer questions from reporters, and hasn’t in 17 days,” he said.
Vance and Harris on the same tarmac in Eau Claire.
— James Stratton (@StrattonWISN) August 7, 2024
Vance comes over to cameras covering AF2 arrival…
“… hopefully it’s going to be my plane in a few months. I also thought you guys may get lonely, bc the VP doesn’t answer q’s from reporters…”
Vid: @WEAU13News pic.twitter.com/QhUS2MtEby
“Have they given you guys an explanation for why she won’t take questions from reporters?”
“No? Nobody? Ok, great. Well, I hope that she changes her mind because it’d be good for the American people and I think it’d be good for you all if she actually ran a real campaign instead of one from a basement with a teleprompter,” Vance quipped.
JD Vance trolling Kamala and taking questions at every stop is genius and he’s reached peak Rockstar status now! pic.twitter.com/P3rmX38bh6
— Karli Bonne’ ?? (@KarluskaP) August 7, 2024
Vance continued to field numerous questions from reporters, including mentioning that he reached out to Walz to congratulate him for receiving the Democrat VP nomination.
This is a masterclass in trolling by Trump’s VP pick.
Kamala: “you got something to say, say it to my face.”
— Bad Hombre (@joma_gc) August 7, 2024
JD Vance: “walks over to say it to her face.”
Kamala: *Hides in the plane restroom*
Harris and her new running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, are holding a rally in Eau Claire as part of their swing through key battleground states.
Vance is also set to deliver remarks Wednesday afternoon in the same city.
Watch Vance’s campaign event:
Watch the Harris-Walz campaign event:
China’s Competitiveness Is Driven By Low Taxation, Not By Industrial Policy
The West is getting increasingly worried about China’s export prowess as its companies are rapidly gaining market shares in green and high-tech industries.
Recently, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen accused China of industrial overcapacity and urged Europeans to respond jointly to the latter’s nonmarket practices. Allegedly, China is flooding international markets with cheap products of good quality primarily due to industrial subsidies. The U.S. and its allies are ramping up protectionist measures such as punitive tariffs, technology controls and a reinforcement of their own industrial policies. What if they are wrong and China is just providing better incentives to work, save and invest?
Is overcapacity boosting China’s EV exports?
Sales of Chinese electric vehicles in Europe soared to around 20% of the market in 2023 and are set to reach about one-quarter in 2024. Both the U.S. and EU slapped China’s EV exports with high tariffs, blaming China of industrial overcapacity. If true, this would mean that Chinese producers use dumping prices to sell excess output abroad. But this is not the case, as the price of an electric car has been about half in China than in the U.S. and Europe in 2023. Actually, Chinese EVs sell at vast price premiums on Western markets (Table 1) and are likely to enjoy healthy profit margins even after the new tariffs are introduced.
Table 1: EV models prices in selected markets
Source: EVMarketsReports.com.
It is also claimed that overcapacity in China’s EV sector has been unfairly fueled by industrial policy and generous subsidies. Analysts criticize China’s purchase subsidies (approved buyer’s rebate and sales tax exemption), but the U.S. and the EU have been more generous than China. Average EV purchase subsidies in China gradually decreased from about 2,300 euros to 1,300 euros between 2010 and 2022 and were eliminated in 2023. Total average support per vehicle has decreased to about $4,600 in 2023, which is less than the U.S. federal tax credit of $7,500 and incentives in European countries.
As a first mover, China has spent about $230 billion to boost the EV sector so far, according to analysts for the Center for Strategic and International Studies. However, China is phasing out subsidies, which declined substantially from over 40% of total sales to only 11.5% in 2023. At the same time, in order to catch up, the U.S. is planning to further ramp up its aid to the EV sector by an estimated $174 billion under the Inflation Reduction Act. Eventually, total Inflation Reduction Act subsidies could end up three times higher, with tax credits for EVs of up to $390 billion and direct subsidies of $130 billion. However, while China’s EV subsidies are constantly brought into the limelight, the Western ones are swept under the carpet.
How significant are industrial subsidies?
The same goes regarding public support for the entire industrial activity. A widely quoted CSIS study estimates China’s subsidies at about $248 billion or 1.7% of the gross domestic product in 2019, which is two to three times more than in key economies (Figure 1). Yet in nominal terms, subsidies of $84 billion (0.4% of GDP) are not trivial in the U.S. either. At $262 billion (1.7% of GDP) in the EU as a whole, industrial subsidies are almost at the same level as in China.
Figure 1: Industrial policy spending in key economies, 2019
Source: Center for Strategic and International Studies.
According to the CSIS study, the majority of aid instruments in China (direct subsidies and below-market credit) go to state-owned enterprises. Yet state-owned enterprises account for only about 10% of exports, which means that the direct contribution of industrial subsidies to China’s competitiveness is not the key determinant. Mainstream pundits seem to exaggerate both the size and role of Chinese subsidies in order to argue for more industrial policy in the West. Indeed, industrial policy is in fashion again worldwide, with a steep increase in industrial policy interventions in recent years. High-income countries, having more fiscal resources, are at the forefront of this trend. The Biden administration launched several onerous programs exceeding $2 trillion to revive green and high-tech manufacturing. In Europe, Mario Draghi wants to place more public investment and an EU “Industrial Deal” at the core of revitalizing productivity growth.
Is industrial policy the right move?
There are strong arguments against industrial policy such as the lack of market knowledge by bureaucratic decision-makers, the capture of decisions by special interest groups, and high seen and unseen costs, together with an underwhelming historical experience riddled with failures. However, these are now brushed aside, with claims that previous industrial policies were not well-targeted. China is being advertised as the “true example” of industrial policy, without a proper understanding of its specificities.
According to García-Herrero and Schindowski, China’s industrial policy differs from that of a market economy due to significant government interventions through the state-owned enterprises sector. Private companies have traditionally been disadvantaged relative to state-owned enterprises through arbitrary fees, fines and extortion as well as more expensive credit. Industrial policy is primarily a tool to alleviate this disadvantage and directs private capital to the government’s strategic objectives. Moreover, industrial policy has not benefited productivity growth as it fosters cronyism and pervasive ties between government officials and large enterprises to the detriment of more productive but not politically connected small and midsized enterprises. Other papers also emphasize that China’s experience with industrial policy is mixed at best, while massive state subsidies led to numerous failures.
At the same time, China manages to dominate not only the nascent global EV market, but the entire global clean tech manufacturing sector, including wind turbines, solar panels and car batteries. All these sectors have recently been under scrutiny for price dumping and subsidies, joining more traditional ones such as steel, aluminum and shipbuilding. According to recent research, China holds a dominant position for almost 600 products out of 5,000 in the global export markets, mainly in electronics, textiles/clothing, footwear and machinery. This is unparalleled by any other country. Once acquired, the dominant positions persisted over time, meaning that the industries remained highly competitive even after subsidies were discontinued. It is obvious that more fundamental factors are at play, rather than a huge scheme of industrial policy cross-subsidization as argued by mainstream pundits. With the share of labor compensation in GDP at about the same level as in the U.S., the case for social dumping appears feeble too.
Low taxes and fast capital accumulation are key
China has had an impressive economic performance since the acceleration of market-oriented reforms and World Trade Organization accession in 2001. Its economy accounts for a third of the global gross manufacturing production today, from less than 10% in 2003, and dominates numerous advanced technology sectors. This was possible due to rapid capital accumulation fueled by very high savings and investment ratios, the latter exceeding 40% of GDP for about two decades (compared to 25% of the GDP global average).
Some investments were potentially misallocated by the large state-owned enterprises sector, by industrial policy failures or in the real estate bubble. Yet the productive ones were sufficient to ensure a notable increase in the capital stock as reflected by the surge in automation and robot density, with China catching up with the U.S., Japan and Germany (Figure 2). Together with steady progress in innovation, where China has surpassed Japan and is gradually closing the gap with the EU, these investments reinforce high productivity growth and cheap exports of manufactured goods.
Figure 2: Robot density in 2016 and 2022
Source: International Federation of Robots.
This is primarily the result of a limited welfare state, with China allocating about 8% of GDP to social spending, a fraction of the level in the U.S. (20%) and Germany (25%). Although China has eradicated extreme poverty, it does not try to soak the rich and the middle class through high-income redistribution. Unlike in the West, the low tax burden and limited progressivity in its tax system encourage strong labor force participation, long working hours and high savings. The Chinese work around 2,170 hours on average per year (about 25% more than in the U.S. and 50% than in Germany).
Overall, China redistributes only about 28% of GDP in total government spending relative to a bloated 42% on average in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries and close to 50% of GDP in Western Europe. This explains China’s economic success and not the meager 0.5-1% of GDP it may spend more on industrial policy with doubtful results. Western economies have developed a predilection for the progressive taxation of incomes, penalizing the most entrepreneurial and hardworking members of society, reducing work incentives, and discouraging savings and investment. Even when industrial subsidies are lavishly provided, such as for the nascent car batteries sector, domestic producers still cannot compete with more nimble Asian competitors.
In conclusion, the industrial policy argument is just a smoke screen by socialist economists to cover up inefficiencies of the much-larger government redistribution in the West. The latter is used to subsidize not only companies, but also individuals, through a huge welfare system and broad range of public services. Even worse, a large chunk of public spending is financed by mounting debt and the printing press. Replicating China’s industrial policies will not help solve this huge problem but can even worsen it.
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