Biden's Overdraft Fee Cap Would Harm the Consumers It Was Meant to Protect

As the election cycle commences, one would think that President Biden would be occupied with urgent matters. This is why I am perplexed by what his administration proposed. A couple of weeks ago, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) announced a rule proposal that would close a loophole on bank overdraft fees. Yet it makes sense as an election move. While inflation is not what it was in 2021-22, inflation is still on the minds of the American people since consumer prices have not decreased to pre-2020 levels. The Biden administration attacking bank overdraft fees could be seen Biden fighting against price increases. Biden went as far as calling overdraft fees exploitation. Calling a policy exploitation is nothing new. It is a saying that has been made against sweatshops, donating one's organs for pay, price gouging, and privatized fisheries. Karl Marx believed that success was inherently exploitative. As nice of a sound byte as it makes, Biden's critique sidesteps the purpose of overdraft fees and basic economics.

An overdraft takes place when there are insufficient funds in an account to cover a payment or withdrawal. It is the extension of credit from the bank to the customer. The interest for this loan typically comes in the form of a one-time fee per overdraft. As I have brought up before, banks are financial institutions, which means their business literally is money. The fee helps a bank cover the payments that would otherwise be rejected. What would happen if an overdraft fee cap were to be imposed? 

First, we should ask what the purpose of overdraft fees. Yes, the overdraft fee provides the bank with a source of income. However, the primary function of overdraft fees is to lower and offset the risks of lending. Overdraft fees provide an incentive to not spend more than you have, much like late fees on credit cards provide an incentive to pay credit card bills on time. 

This is because instead of simply charging the fee on an ad hoc basis, it could mean shutting down the services completely, especially for those banking at smaller banks. A research paper from the New York Federal Reserve had the following to say (Dlugosz et al., 2023): "When constrained by fee caps, banks reduce overdraft coverage and deposit supply, causing more returned checks and a decline in account ownership among low-income households (p. 22)." This is not a call for exorbitant fees per se, but showing what happens when fee caps are imposed. What the research does show is that fee caps hamper financial inclusion for the people these caps are meant to help rather than enhance it. Even Biden's acting Comptroller of the Currency Michael Hsu warned that "limiting overdrafts may limit the financial capacity for those who need it the most."

We should ask ourselves what the alternative is if the banks get hit with an overdraft fee cap. Much like with what employers doing with minimum wage laws, banks can find a workaround to circumvent the fee cap. The banks could increase other fees. Banks could also remove such offerings as low-cost checking accounts or travel rewards. As previously mentioned, removing an option such as low-cost checking accounts could lead to more unbanked individuals. Why? 

An overdraft fee cap is an example of a price control, which is something that proponents readily admit. I have talked about price controls before, whether it is consumer loan interest rate caps, rent control, drug pricing, price gouging, or fixed exchange rates. A price control below the equilibrium point, much like an overdraft fee cap, creates a shortage because the demand exceeds the supply. The shortage exists because some banks do not have the luxury of reducing or eliminating their overdraft fees. 

The Left-leaning Brookings Institution points out that it is smaller banks in particular that make the bulk of their profits from their overdraft fees (Klein, 2021). This leads to a valid point that the Cleveland Reserve Bank brings up in its research on the unbanked (Boel and Zimmerman, 2022). While overdraft fees exclude some from the system, the overdraft fees also provide the revenue stream to make low-balance accounts more profitable. This is all the more so for smaller banks. Banks are more incentivized to open accounts for a wider range of customers, including low-income households, when they have this revenue stream. It would explain how overdraft fees help lead to greater financial inclusion of lower-income households on net. 

Much like it is with landlords, it is politically expedient to malign banks, regardless of what they have actually done. What needs to be recognized is that banks are for-profit entities. If they continue to operate at a loss, they cannot stay in business. Banks thus have to make decisions as to whether it is worth it to have smaller accounts with smaller overdraft fees. Some of them decide it is not worth it, hence the shortage that price controls cause. At best, an overdraft fee cap is asking customers with stable finances to subsidize higher-risk customers. At worst, such a shortage can drive low-income households to such sub-optimal options as payday loans, pawn shops, loan sharks, or taking out a second mortgage on their home. This unfortunate phenomenon has been observed with consumer loan interest caps.

These arguments also need to consider the market trend of overdraft fees. Overdraft fees have been on the decline, from $30.9 billion in 2008 to $12.1 billion in 2023. With the rhetoric on the Far Left, you would think that banks only care about greed and lining their pockets by exploiting the working man more and more. So why the historical decline in overdraft fees? 

To quote the St. Louis Federal Reserve, "Competition, from other banks and nonbank providers such as fintech firms, arguably have affected overdraft practices more than anything else." This competitive pressure can incentivize banks to restructure how it approaches these fees. There have been multiple banks that have either eliminated or reduced their overdraft fees without government intervention, including Bank of America, BMO Harris, Capital One, Citibank, and PNC Bank. The bank Vero allows for up to $50 in overdraft and automatically takes that loaned money back when the customer adds more funds to their account.

As long as fraud is not occurring and people can freely opt into overdraft protection or other banking services, we do not need Biden's latest proposed rule when a competitive marketplace is already reducing overdraft fees. The most probable outcome of such a policy would be limiting the supply of financial services to lower-income households. An overdraft fee cap will only hurt the people it is supposed to help, which is a pattern with economic policies on the Left. Consumers should not have to suffer simply because the President wants to score political points in an election year.

Some Inconvenient Truths In Response to the "Gaza Is an Open-Air Prison" Argument (Part I)

As the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza continues, the pro-Palestinian side naïvely advocates for a ceasefire thinking it will end the fighting in the Middle East when it will do nothing of the kind. Since Israel militarily responded to Hamas attacking, kidnapping, torturing, raping, murdering, and decapitating hundreds of Israeli civilians, pro-Palestinian activists have been on the warpath to make Israel look bad. It fallaciously lobs the accusation of Israel committing genocide, which has become especially en vogue since October 7. Other such untrue accusations as occupier, colonizer, and apartheid state have been part of the verbal arsenal of the pro-Palestinian side for some time now. 

An article from the Right-of-center Wall Street Journal, of all places, made another claim earlier this week: Gaza is an open-air prison. The premise of this argument is that the citizens of Gaza have such restrictions in movement, whether physical or economic, that Gaza de facto acts as one large prison. What this language invokes is the image of Israel acting as a warden oppressing Gazans. This argument is nothing new; it has been made by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the Left-leaning Slate, amongst others, over the years. The Gaza Strip was not always riddled with poverty, unemployment, and corrupt terrorists running the government the way it is now. How did we get here? 

The current version of fence between Israel and Gaza was built in 2002 and fortified in 2005 after the IDF's unilateral withdrawal from Gaza. In 2007, Israel imposed an economic blockade. Why a blockade? In early 2006, Hamas defeated its political rival, Fatah, in political elections. In June 2007, Hamas took over Gaza. Shortly thereafter, Hamas started attacking Israel. Hamas has not been what we would call friendly towards Israel. Since its founding in 1988, Hamas has called for the destruction of Israel and indeed all Jews. Since 1993, Hamas has employed suicide bombings against Israel. As for launching rockets, Hamas has been at it since 2001. And let's not forget the violent and death that came with the First and Second Intifadas. With that level of animus, it is understandable that Israel would impose a blockade and a border wall on its borders with the Gaza Strip to protect its citizens.

This leads to the first inconvenient truth: The purpose of the border fence and blockade is not to keep civilians locked in Gaza or to enforce "collective punishment" out of vindictiveness, but rather to prevent terrorists from entering Israel's borders and wreaking havoc. Hamas has posed a militaristic threat since it took over Gaza in 2007. This level of national security would be a basic precaution that any country with an antagonistic neighbor who is hellbent on wiping out one's entire citizenry would take. The United Nations, which has typically been antagonistic towards Israel, accepted in its Palmer Report that Israel's blockade exists for legitimate self-defense purposes (UN, p. 40).

This brings us to the second inconvenient truth: In 2005, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) unilaterally withdrew from Gaza, which means the accusation of Israel being an occupying force in Gaza loses any merit. Before the IDF left Gaza in 2005, American Jewish donors gave Gaza 1,000 greenhouses valued at $14 million. These greenhouses were producing millions of dollars of revenue in flowers and agricultural products. What did Gazans do? Shortly after the IDF disengaging from Gaza, Gazan citizens destroyed the greenhouses. This was before Hamas was ever in charge of governing over the Gazan people or before Israel imposed a blockade. 

Yet another inconvenient truth: Hamas has been running the show for well the better part of two decades, not Israel. Gazans voted Hamas into power in 2006. As the governing entity of Gaza, Hamas is the one responsible for the day-to-day well-being of Gazans, not Israel. Hamas could have taken that international aid it received from various countries and international organizations to build schools, hospitals, and infrastructure to provide amenities for its people. What has Hamas decided to do instead? It has mainly invested in rockets and building tunnels to attack Israel, meanwhile grinding everyday Gazans into a state of poverty when it is not using its citizens as human shields. Hamas continues to bombard Israel with rocket attacks to this day. Hamas leaders, who have a net worth of $11 billion, are living the high-life in Qatar while its people suffer. Ultimately, Gazans had two choices after the IDF's disengagement from Gaza: build a prosperous economy or use that newly found freedom to attack Israel because hating Jews is a bigger priority than living peacefully. The Gazans opted for the latter. The fact that was the choice they made is not Israel's fault. 

Here is an inconvenient truth that has to do with some basic geography. Israel is not the only country that shares a border with Gaza. Egypt also shares a border with Gaza. There has been a border wall on the Egypt-Gaza border for the better part of two decades. While it is convenient for the pro-Palestinian side to blame Israel, the reality is that the Egyptian government completes the enclosure. Why does Egypt make the choice to not let Gazans cross into Egypt? For a very similar reason that Israel does.

In January 2008, Hamas demolished the border wall that previously between Gaza and Egypt. Shortly after, Egypt started building a steel wall with the help of the United States. The concern was that Hamas would team up with the Muslim Brotherhood, which would have destabilized Egypt. Much like with Israel, Egypt realizes that securing one's land borders is a standard part of national security. Even now, most pro-Palestinian advocates have not even thought to ask why Egypt or other Arab nations are not helping out their Arab brothers and sisters in their hour of need. 

Non-rhetorically, that would be a combination of not being able to absorb the influx of refugees along with the instability that would come with allowing Hamas terrorists and sympathizers into the country. While I do not disagree with Egypt's or Jordan's decision to deny Palestinian refugees access to their countries, it does mean that the indecision of the Arab nations has been contributing and continues to contribute to the plight of Gazans. Yet you do not hear for the pro-Palestinian side accusing Egypt of committing genocide or being an apartheid state. The pro-Palestine puts all the onus on Israel while ignoring the fact that Arab nations (Egypt in particular) also place restrictions on Palestinians entering their countries. 

In the next Part, I will discuss additional inconvenient truths that undermine the "Gaza is an open-air prison" argument.

Mandated Gender-Neutral Toy Aisles Is Another Instance of California's Woke Virtue-Signaling

California started off the New Year with a mandate for retail stores selling toys or childcare items to have gender-neutral aisles. This mandate stems from a 2021 California law stating that any retailer with a physical presence in California and 500 employees is to maintain "a gender-neutral section or area to be labeled at the discretion of the retailer." Retail stores that fail to comply pay $250 for the first infraction and $500 for subsequent infractions. The idea behind this law is to allow children to express themselves without being hindered by traditional gender norms. That might sound congenial, but here are some issues:

• Retail stores are attuned to the supply and demand of its customers. Retail stores not need such a mandate to tell them that California is a Left-of-center state in which there has been an increased demand for gender-neutral consumer goods. Target dropped its gender-specific sections in 2015, and other such stores as Toys 'R Us followed suit. Even toymaker Hasbro removed the "Mr." from its Potato Head line. 
• You would think California has bigger problems to contend with, such as crime (including shoplifting in retail stores), homelessness, preventing dangerous wildfires, a population exodus, or its budget deficit. 
• To properly enforce this law, the State of California would need to hire someone to regularly inspect toy stores to make sure they are compliant with this law. If the law is unenforceable, it ends up being superfluous virtue-signaling at best. At worst, enforcement is a waste of taxpayer dollars that needlessly punishes retailers. 
• Why does the government feel the need to mandate how businesses display and market their merchandise? Such decisions should be left to business owners. 

As I already brought up, there are more pressing matters in the world than gender-neutral toy aisles. I wrote a piece seven years ago as to whether toys should be gender-specific or gender-neutral.  If parents want to buy gender-neutral toys for their children, they should be allowed to do so. The same goes for those who want to buy gender-specific toys for their children. It is partially the absurdity of the law that prompted me to write this blog entry on a solution in search of a problem. After all, satire website Babylon Bee called it before California legislators proposed the bill. What concerns me is not the overall influence this bill will have on the lives of Californians. It is setting an eery precedent and a tone that signals to woke lawmakers that they can feel entitled to manage every aspect of private commerce to their liking. I do not want to live in a world that encroaches on private businesses in such a fashion. Legislators should think twice before imposing their values onto customers and businesses in such a fashion.

Fauci Admits Social Distancing Rules Were Likely Not Based on Data: Another Erosion of Trust in Public Health Officials

Dr. Anthony Fauci made the spotlight again as he sat in front of a closed-door congressional subcommittee last week for questioning on the pandemic response. Fauci made some interesting admissions during his latest testimony. He gave credence to the theory that COVID was engineered and accidentally released from a lab in Wuhan. He conceded that the COVID vaccine mandates that he personally advised likely increased vaccine hesitancy. There was one more interesting admission from Fauci during his testimony. Fauci professed that the six-foot social distancing rule was likely not based on data, and that the social distancing rule "just sort of happened." 

According to Fauci's emails that were released by the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), Fauci stated in early March 2020 that the purpose of social distancing was "not geared to wait for a vaccine." For Fauci, the goal of social distancing was to "prevent a single person who is infected to readily spread to others." In other words, Fauci had a draconian, zero-Covid approach to pandemic policy. To even attempt such a policy would either require a vaccine or mandatory human separation into perpetuity. 

He ran an untested, far-flung theory and had enough clout to thrust it onto the American people, which is ironic coming from the man who said "attacks on me are attacks on science." The six-foot recommendation affected recommendations for capacity limits in establishments, face masks in certain jurisdictions (e.g., Washington, DC; Los Angeles), influenced the decision to implement lockdowns, and was the single largest barrier for re-opening public schools. We had epidemiological knowledge and pandemic recommendations prior to the pandemic that lockdowns were not going to work. As for the six-foot social distancing rule (not to mention school closures), we had evidence early on in the pandemic that the recommendation was not based on science. The following is from the leading medical journal The BMJ in August 2020:

Rigid safe distancing rules are an oversimplification based on outdated science...SARS-CoV-2 transmission [is based on] multiple variables: indoors and outdoors (and, for the former, level of ventilation), room occupancy (low or high), time spent tighter (short or long), vocalization (silent, speaking, shouting, or singing, and masking (yes or no). 

What was Fauci doing in August 2020? He was still recommending social distancing of six feet, which was contrary to the science laid out in The BMJ article. Fauci did not fare better as the pandemic proceeded. In November 2020, Fauci recommended social distancing even after getting a vaccine. This is the same Fauci that said in late 2021 that he wanted us to wear masks on airplanes indefinitely, even though best evidence has since shown that face masks are ineffective in slowing down COVID transmission.  

Why should we care about Fauci's social distancing recommendation now that the pandemic is over? It is more than a key health official said over 100 times in a single congressional testimony last week that he "did not recall" pertinent information, which is Beltway-speak for covering his tracks. Fauci got a number of key facets wrong during the pandemic, including face masks, herd immunity, lockdowns, school closures, vaccines being able to stop COVID transmission, and now social distancing. 

What makes this worse is that the problem goes beyond a single risk-averse octogenarian. As I pointed out last year, former CDC Director Rochelle Walensky did not care about the science of face masks, as well as having been off-base on outdoor COVID transmission, the threat of breakthrough cases, and lockdowns. The Biden Administration also ignored the science on natural immunity. 

Why Fauci's testimony is so important after the pandemic is because it shows the systemic failures that not only caused considerable harm to millions of Americans, but have led to the rot within public health agencies. The establishment chose fear and extreme risk-aversion over science and changing their advice as new findings came along. Dissenting opinions were vilified and often suppressed during the pandemic, even though the so-called "conspiracy theorists" were by and large correct. It is little surprise that such politics have rightfully resulted in diminished trust of public health officials.  

While it is a step in the right direction that Fauci recognizes the lack of science behind the six-foot rule, we need to ask how we got here and what lessons are to be learned. In the likelihood of a future pandemic, our response must be based on facts and actual science. Otherwise, history will repeat itself and cause immeasurable harm in the name of "Science."

Meta-Analysis Shows That "Systemic Racism" Does Not Really Exist In U.S. Criminal Sentencing

Today is Martin Luther King Day. It is hard not to think about the man and the legend. MLK had to face Jim Crow laws, which de jure forced racial segregation between black and white people. MLK was arrested 29 times, including the so-called "crime" of  sitting at a lunch counter with white people. Even after the Civil War, the justice system treated African-Americans unfairly in more ways than one. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a turning point for civil liberties, which included overturning the Jim Crow laws. I would not expect changes for racial attitudes to happen overnight, but it has been about six decades since the Civil Rights Act. I have to wonder if the criminal justice system has improved since then. 

If you listen to the Far Left, the answer to that question is a resounding "No!" Their thesis is that systemic racism is epidemic in the criminal justice system, and as such, is rotten to its core because of how it treats racial minorities. For advocates of this theory, the fact that the overtly racist laws by and large no longer existing does not matter. Those arguing that systemic racism exists either argue that it comes in form of there being implicit bias within the system or that institutional factors result in systemic racial disparities in the judicial system. In spite of removing de jure racism, proponents argue that the system de facto remains racist and White supremacist.

Part of my issue of the "systemic racism" argument is with the framing. Racism depends too much on intent and belief, which is an issue because the vast majority of criminal justice laws being scrutinized are not de jure or explicitly racist. It assumes that any disparity is prima facie discrimination or racism, a concept that I refuted last year. The other issue with framing is that "systemic" is too vague of a term to describe anything meaningful. As African-American linguist and Columbia University professor John McWhorter points out, "this usage of 'systemic racism' is more rhetorical bludgeon than a simple term of reference."

My bigger contention is the fact that the argument violates the logical fallacy of begging the question, which is an argument in which the premise assumes the truth of the conclusion. In the context of critical race theory and the "systemic racism" argument, it means that those who question the theory are "systematically deceived" because they are not "in the know":

If someone begs the question and foreswears any counter-evidence, then the idea becomes unfalsifiable. This is irrational. Every challenge to one's viewpoint can then be dismissed a priori...When a claim is taken to be impervious to criticism, it loses rationality given its irrefutable dogmatism. 

I know that people on the Far Left like to argue that logic or objective, linear thinking are part of "white culture" or "white supremacy." It means that their arguments about systemic discrimination cannot be criticized.....or so they think. I value logic, facts, and rationale over emotion grasping towards one's preconceived notions, especially when talking about public policy. That means I am going to scrutinize the theory, especially when it has major implications for criminal justice policy. 

We should be asking ourselves here whether the facts line up with a story about systemic racism or not. This is exactly what two scholars from Stetson University did when they published their meta-analysis last month on the topic of race, class, and criminal adjudication (Ferguson and Smith, 2023). These scholars examined 51 studies that have been published on the topic since 2005. Their main finding was that "neither class nor race biases for criminal adjudications for either violent or property crimes could be reliably detected." The exception noted in the meta-analysis was drug crimes, which is significant because drug crimes often have strict sentencing. Even then, the effect sizes were very small (i.e., 1.6-1.8% of the variance in criminal adjudication).  

I am not here to say that discrimination is nonexistent in the criminal justice system. There are other aspects to consider, such as arrest rates, innocence rates, or rates at which certain people are stopped by police officers. Conversely, sentencing is a major aspect of the criminal justice system because it determines how badly one is ultimately punished for committing a crime. 

The near absence of sentencing bias in terms of class and race are surprising given what "conventional wisdom" is on the topic. Yet it makes sense why I have not seen people clamoring to laud these findings. Much like with climate change or COVID, it would not make for good news if something is not in crisis mode. For the Far Left, it means losing control over the political narrative. I talked about this concept a couple of weeks ago when covering how growing income inequality has not really been a thing in the past six decades.  

If the criminal justice system is not in the disarray that the "systemic racism" crowd is purporting, it means they have less political power. This is more than having an arguably cynical view about political power, although I honestly would call it "being realistic." As the authors of the study also point out, such a view is detrimental to society because reduces public confidence, creates more social discord, and reduces community cooperation with criminal justice authorities, all of which erode the criminal justice system and have the potential to increase crime. Plus, it perpetuates our post-truth world when political narratives matter than reality.

This is not to say that reforms could be made, a topic which I have written in past pieces. On the whole, I am frankly relieved at the finding in these studies. Mitigating and ultimately eliminating racial bias should be something every free, democratic society should aspire towards. For me, it is marvelous that the United States is, in at least one aspect, becoming a more perfect union. I hope that we as a society can continue towards this trend in a more neutral, impartial criminal justice system. 

Maine to Show How Partial Prostitution Decriminalization Will Give the Shaft to All Parties Involved

Although I aspire to keep apprised of everything going on in the world, the truth is that it is not possible. There is only so much time and effort one can dedicate to current events. Sometimes current events do not come up on my radar until later. That is how I felt when I read an article from Reason Magazine entitled Maine's Bad Prostitution Law Could Be Coming Soon to Your State. Prior to reading it, I did not know that Maine enacted a law to partially decriminalize prostitution or that in July 2023, it was the first state to do so.  

Maine adopted what is referred to as the Nordic [Criminal] Model. Why is it referred to as the Nordic Model? Because Sweden was the first to adopt it in 1999. Norway and Iceland later adopted the model in 2009. Essentially, the Nordic model is an approach that criminalizes prostitution customers but not sex workers. The idea behind this approach is that punishing the clients will reduce demand for sexual services. I take multiple issues with this legal approach to sexual activity. 

The first is that it makes the paternalistic assumption that all sex workers are victims and are incapable of consenting to sexual activity, whereas clients are exploitative and unscrupulous. Instead of empowering sex workers (most of whom are women), such an approach infantilizes them. This is not to minimize the prevalence of human trafficking or child prostitution, both of which are ethically problematic due to their coercive nature. It does, however, exclude and ignore the reality that there are consenting adults that are willing to pay for sex or willing to get paid to have sex. After all, there is a reason why prostitution has been referred to as the "world's oldest profession." Sex is a highly pleasurable act, and as such, there is an understandably high demand for sexual services.

Under the Nordic Model, it is clear that the client gets punished because the client is still de jure punished for paying for sex. By not legally punishing sex workers, it seems like the Nordic model helps sex workers. However, that is far from being the case. The fact that purchasers of sexual services are punished still keeps the market an underground market. This means that most of the aspects of criminalizing prostitution remain intact. While some find criminalization acceptable, I do not and I have not since I wrote a piece on legalizing prostitution in 2013. The Nordic Model presents a few issues for sex workers:

1. While proponents state protecting sex workers as a benefit of the Nordic Model, the Nordic Model exists to reduce demand for prostitution and ultimately eliminate the demand for commercial sex services. Tangentially, this reasoning falters considering that the Nordic model does not reduce the demand for sexual services (Kington and Thomas, 2018) because again, people really like sex. But let's get back to the crux of the issue here. Sure, the sex workers do not get sent to jail for being sex workers under the Nordic Model. For those who rely on that revenue to pay their bills, that provides little comfort for sex workers because fewer clients means less income for them. Plus, this means accepting worse work in the sex trade, which brings me to my next point...

2. The clientele under the Nordic Model is reduced to those who are willing to break the law, which increases the likelihood of high-risk and/or violent encounters. This is not mere conjecture. A 2023 study from the University of Chicago shows that prostitution legalization lowers rape rates, whereas criminalization, notably under the Nordic Model, proliferates sexual violence (Gao and Petrova, 2023).

3. Under decriminalization, it is still illegal for sex workers to work together and provide mutual assistance, to work in safe locations, or the employ people to help keep them safe. Plus, clients will be more reluctant to undergo screening processes prior to having sex.  This means that sex workers cannot take basic measures to help ensure their occupational safety, as was the case in the Canada case study (McDermid et al., 2022). A report from the London School of Economics found not only did the Nordic Model make clients more dangerous for sex workers, but also that sex workers were more likely to face eviction or deportation (Vuolajärvi, 2022). By keeping prostitution in the underground market, it makes it more difficult for sex workers to gain a sense of empowerment. 

4. According to a study from Reframe Health + Justice Consulting (D'Adamo, 2021), the impact on sex workers from implementation of the Nordic Model included the following: shifting power balances to favor clients, increases in violence and stigma towards sex workers, decrease in income, increased use of substances, and decrease in health outcomes (e.g., increased stress and fatigue). A report from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) similarly found that the Nordic model increased stigma and discrimination of sex workers while reducing health services (ACLU, 2020, p. 10).

Postscript. Endangering sex workers and lowering their quality of life is not exactly a ringing endorsement of the Nordic Model. Aside from sex workers and clients, this Model also screws over law enforcement. Why? Because they are spending time and resources to police private, consensual sex acts. This argument is all the more important considering that Maine, much like the rest of the United States, has endured police shortages since the pandemic. Last year, the towns of Limestone and Dixfield, Maine had to shut down its police stations due to shortages. The police could be pursuing actual crimes instead of victimless ones. 

Conflating consensual adult behavior with exploitation is a direct assault on bodily autonomy specifically and freedom generally. To respect sex workers and their profession, we need to fully decriminalize sex work and treat it as if it were any other economic service. Only then will we take the right step in civil liberties as far as sex work is concerned. 

Israel Should Not and Probably Will Not Accept a Ceasefire: January 2024 Edition

It has been about three months of fighting in Gaza since Hamas attacked Israeli civilians on October 7. Needless to say, there has been a growing voice of disapproval towards the Israeli counteroffensive in response to Hamas' carnage from October 7, 2023. Last month, a large majority in the United Nations General Assembly voted in favor of a ceasefire. A month later, there is still no ceasefire. That would explain why King Abdullah II of Jordan is pressing U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken for a ceasefire, even in spite of the fact that this is very same King has refused to accept Gazan refugees. 

The premise of the call for a ceasefire is to stop the rising death toll, the continued displacement of Gazans, and to allow for humanitarian aid in Gaza. While that sounds all well and good, there are a number of reasons to be against the idea of a ceasefire. 

1) Past history tells us that ceasefires do not work. Ceasefires have been attempted multiple times between Hamas and Israel. If a ceasefire were a lasting mechanism to bring peace, we would have seen positive results by now. At best, a ceasefire has been an exceptionally temporary concession. At worst, it does nothing to induce peace talks, which is true given the number of ceasefires since the last attempted peace talks took place in 2013. During the last Gaza War in 2014, what did Hamas do? Violate the ceasefire. The same with 2008. What about April 2007? It broke the truce by firing rockets. Hamas' October 7 attack was a violation of a ceasefire. 

Does anyone else notice a pattern here? Shortly after agreeing to a ceasefire, Hamas breaks the ceasefire. And when Israel decides to retaliate, the Palestinian side blames Israel. Blaming Israel only makes sense if you erroneously view Palestine as the personification of being oppressed and as such a blameless victim that kidnapping, raping, torturing, murdering, and decapitating Israeli civilians is acceptable. This also forgets the inconvenient fact that the Israeli Defense Forces unilaterally withdrew from Gaza in 2005, which is to say that the real oppressor in Gaza is Hamas, not Israel.  

2) If Hamas were given a ceasefire, what would Hamas most likely do? Regroup and rearm. That has been the modus operandi of Hamas, as is illustrated by Hamas doing so in 2009, 2012, 2014, 2019, and 2021. A ceasefire would only be an opportunity for Hamas to replenish its arsenal, rebuild its tunnels, and reorganize its troops. A ceasefire would not bring lasting peace to the Middle East. A ceasefire would serve to lengthen the fighting. If anything, emboldening Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran with a ceasefire would help ensure a more violent future in that region of the world.

3) A ceasefire ignores that Hamas only wants one thing: the destruction of Israel. Hamas has made its genocidal intents clear. The fact that Palestinian survey data show that most Gazans do not have moral qualms with Hamas' raison d'être or with killing Jews is indeed problematic for those calling for a ceasefire. Plus, Hamas is so hellbent on destroying Israel that it does not care about the wellbeing of Gazans. Otherwise, why would Hamas use its citizens as human shields and launch military operations from civilian sites, thereby maximizing civilian casualties? Hamas has an established history of brutality. If the events on October 7 demonstrate anything, it is that they are more resolute on wiping out the Jewish state than they have been before. Israel is under no obligation to stop firing at an enemy that has made it abundantly clear of its intent. 

4) Why this war is not like the others. In previous conflicts, the goals were to contain Hamas and maximize Israel's regional deterrence. That is because prior to October 7, Hamas was viewed as a second-tier threat. The October 7 attack has shaken Israelis' sense of security to its core. Israelis are still reeling from the horrid attack. To call the October 7 attacks "another 9-11" is a woeful understatement. While Israeli citizens are dealing with political polarization, they are united on at least one topic: the destruction of Hamas. In this war, Israel's goals are to eradicate Hamas, bring the remaining hostages home, and defend its land. Since these goals will take more effort, a ceasefire will squander the military advantages that the IDF has, which the Israeli government cannot tolerate. 

5) Pressuring Israel with a ceasefire could backfire. This point cannot be stated enough. International calls for a ceasefire go beyond being tone-deaf given the context of the region. Calls for ceasefire increase the pressure to destroy Hamas "while it still can." This increased pressure means that the IDF will not be able to complete a slower, more thorough campaign. When a country faces an increasingly existential threat, it is less likely to use restraint. Rather than end the fighting, a ceasefire would very likely increase the magnitude of civilian deaths. Even if the ceasefire were successful, it would probably result in greater fortification of Israel's border with Gaza, as well as restricting humanitarian aid to Gaza. In either case, the calls for a ceasefire do not serve the citizens of Gaza well. 

Postscript. The premise behind a ceasefire is a political framework to secure a more peaceful future. A ceasefire implies that fighting will end and that postwar planning and reconstruction could take place. There are times in history where Muslims co-existed with Jews. Even in 2024, Israel is a nation with 1.7 million Muslims. As already pointed out, most Palestinians are unwilling to live side-by-side with an Israeli neighbor. It is not only Palestinian reluctance that is an issue with regards to a ceasefire. 

Since October 7, eradicating Hamas has become a more essential goal for Israeli national security that has broad support across the Israeli political spectrum, which says something given how much Israelis and Jews disagree on a multitude of other topics. The purpose of a ceasefire is to cease firing of weapons. It is literally in the name of the peace mechanism. Until the threat to Israeli civilians no longer exists, how do you expect Israel to agree to a ceasefire? 

Implementing a ceasefire would be one-sided. The "Ceasefire Now" crowd is not calling for Hamas to lay down its weapons or to release hostages. Nor is this same crowd calling for Hamas to stop withholding humanitarian aid or to stop oppressing its citizens in a totalitarian fashion. It is a call for Israel to lay down its arms and subject itself to other attacks akin to October 7. Israel cannot and will not abide by total capitulation. It would only be a short pause that would only buy time for Hamas to rearm and carry out the fighting. While the ceasefire comes with good intentions from many calling for a ceasefire, the current conditions between Gaza and Israel cannot precipitate a viable ceasefire. While it would not solve everything, destroying Hamas would be a first necessary step to help ensure peace in the long-run. 

Deregulation Hasn't Really Been a Road Taken for Argentina, But Milei's Efforts to Do So Are the Right Path

Even before Javier Milei was elected, numerous media outlets have vilified Milei. At the Financial Times, he is a radical right-winger. For the Left-leaning organization Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), Milei is deemed "really as extreme as you get in right-wing libertarian ideas." One article in Forbes designated him a destroyer. France 24 labels him an "anarcho-capitalist." After reading these articles, it would not shock me if these journalists read my blog and similarly lobbed ad hominem attacks at me. 

It is not like Milei is an uneducated idiot. Milei was an economics professor for 20 years and wrote more than 50 academic papers. He was also a chief economist at Máxima AFJP and a senior economist at HSBC Argentina. His style and delivery are more Trump-esque in nature, as is illustrated by Milei using a chainsaw to illustrate how he would cut inflation if elected. However, his policy views widely diverge from Trump. Trump is a nationalist and protectionist who limited immigration and free trade during his four years in office. Milei is a minarchist (i.e., advocates for minimal government) while being influenced by the Austrian school of economics. He certainly has no love for Argentina's central bank. 

Last week, Milei sent an omnibus law to the National Congress of Argentina entitled Bases y puntos de partida para la libertad de argentinos (Translation: Basic Law and Starting Points for the Freedom of Argentinians). Admittedly, I have not read the bill yet, but you can view the 183-page bill here if you want to read it. What I can gather is that it entails much deregulation, ranging from the airlines industry and protectionist measures of industries to end price controls and the prohibition on exports. A plurality of these regulations were implemented under the dictator Juan Carlos Ongangía, which says a lot.

The truth of the matter is that Argentina's economy is in disarray, something which I wrote about in 2014 and 2019. The Heritage Foundation's Index of Economic Freedom has Argentina ranked 144 out of 176. Aside from the political interference and poorly functioning judicial system, Argentina ranks so low because it has lots of fiscal spending, price controls, capital controls, and has other regulations to discourage entrepreneurship. 

The Cato Institute's Human Freedom Index is no less flattering. This Index looks at both personal freedom and economic freedom. At least for personal freedom, Argentina ranks 38 out of 165, although it would be nice to see improvement in rule of law. This finding on personal freedom lines up with Freedom House's Freedom of the World Index, which fortunately ranks Argentina as "Free" in terms of political and civil liberties. As for economic freedom, we see below that Cato Institute's Index ranks Argentina as one of the most regulated countries in the world. 

As the adage goes, "desperate times call for desperate measures." Milei was right to declare a decree of necessity and urgency (Decreto de necesidad y urgencia, DNU) on December 20, 2023. Years of regulations, increased government spending, and printing pesos as if money grew on trees has caught up with Argentina. My theory is that mainstream media outlets are so keen on lambasting Milei because his election and pending reforms undermine the idea that "government knows what is best." 

I doubt that I would agree with literally every single one of Milei's proposals. As ideologically similar as I am to him, it is not possible to agree with someone on everything. As happy as I am that Argentina has elected a libertarian president, I am not going to automatically agree with simply because it is Milei's proposal. I will base any policy analysis on the merits of the argument or policy itself, much like I already have with Milei's proposal to dollarize Argentina or being perplexed as to why Milei would raise taxes on grain. I will say that based on what I have seen, Milei is by and large on the right path. 

With opposition controlling the majority of the Argentinian Congress, it begs the question of how likely Milei's reforms will pass. However, if successful, I would wager that freer trade, fewer regulations, and less profligate government spending will help make Argentina the economic powerhouse that it once was prior to Juan Perón.

New Robust Research Shows That Hysteria About Rising Income Inequality Is Unfounded

When people find out that a firmly held belief they have is false, there is this grieving process, ranging from denial to sadness to anger. At least for me, I prefer to adhere to sound research methodology, logic, reason, and facts. That way, if new information or evidence comes along that challenges previously conceived notions, it is less of a shock to my worldview and I do not deal with such a grieving process because I do not believe that personal is political. I do my utmost separate the political arguments from the person. For those who believe that the personal is political, this grieving process can rattle one's cage. 

Take income inequality for example. CNN tells us that income inequality is snowballing. Washington Post posits that income inequality harms everyone, including the rich. The famous economist (or infamous, depending on your point of view) Thomas Piketty popularized the narrative that the rich made of like bandits because, according to their research, the top 1 percent's share of income increased from 8 percent in the 1980s to 27 percent in 2021. Even the centrist Council on Foreign Relations depicts income inequality as "one of the defining challenges of this century." 

All we hear about is how income inequality has continued to rise in recent decades and how awful it has been. What would you think if it turns out that income inequality has barely budged in the past sixty years? It would run counter to so much of what we have heard, especially since the Occupy Wall Street movement in the 2010s. 

A study published in the Journal of Political Economy last month scrutinizes the narrative and turns it on its head (Auten and Splinter, 2023). The authors of this study are far from being lightweights in tax policy. Gerald Auten has been an economist at the U.S. Treasury for nearly four decades. David Splinter is a senior economist at the Joint Committee on Taxation. 

Why do I prefer this analysis over the likes of Thomas Piketty? In short, it better contextualizes what is going on and measures it more accurately. In terms of context, Auten and Splinter take into account the reforms from the Tax Reform Act of 1986. This Act lowered the statutory rates and broadened the tax base. The higher statutory tax rates created incentives to shelter income inside corporations. Without these adjustments, top income shares from the 1960s are understated (p. 3).

Auten and Splinter also accounted for decline in marriage rates. Why is this important? To quote the authors, "This increased the total number of tax units, thereby increasing the number of high-income tax units in the top one percent. This differential decline in marriage rates overstates top income shares in recent years (ibid)." 

In addition to making these adjustments, the authors sensibly accounted for two other factors. One is that they adjust for post-tax income. Pre-tax income tells a certain story, but post-tax tells a more practical story since post-tax income is what one de facto earns and takes home. The second adjustment is with regards to including government transfers. Whether it is welfare benefits for low-income households or tax breaks for high-income households, these funds need to be factored in to determine actual purchasing power. 

When the authors factored in all of these adjustments, the picture surrounding income inequality looks quite different. What we see with the share of income for the top 1 percent is much more modest than Piketty depicts. 

It is not only the Top 1 percent that are faring better, but also individuals in lower income brackets. The authors looked at the data by quintile. One key trend is that income shares for the middle and lowest quintiles did not change. The second more notable change is that income [in 2019 dollars] went up for those in the lower quintile (p. 26).

It should be no surprise that Piketty and his colleagues take issue with the findings from Auten and Splinter. I am also not surprised that Splinter was able to refute the flaws in Piketty's response, especially since Piketty did not address most of Auten and Splinter's criticisms of Piketty et al. in the first place. Furthermore, I remember analyzing a Harvard study from 2014 showing that single-mother households had significantly more impact on income mobility than income inequality. 

This is more than academic sparring or quibbling over methodological differences. The findings from Auten and Splinter have real-world implications. Forget for a moment that income has increased for lower-income households after adjusting for inflation. After all, measures of income inequality or wealth inequality do not tell us about the well-being of poor people, as this 2018 Cato Institute report on wealth inequality reminds us or as I brought up in 2014 when scrutinizing the Gini coefficient. 

What does it mean that income inequality has stayed by and large stable over the past 60 years? I am sure it has similar implications to finding out that climate change is not a crisis or that COVID-19 would not have been so much worse had we not implemented lockdowns. It means that the narrative of "the super-rich continue to get richer at the expense of the poor" is a falsehood. It means that the political Left cannot propagate the politics of envy by focusing on relative gains (as opposed to everyone getting a bigger piece of the pie) or dividing people into the haves versus the have-nots. It means that such policy recommendations as the wealth tax or a global minimum tax lose justification. Ultimately, it means that the political Left loses power. I will conclude today's piece with concluding thoughts from the Financial Times:

One conclusion is that methodology matters in such research. A more profound one is that if income inequality has not risen, we have been asking the wrong questions about U.S. society. Instead of asking how to curb the power of the super-rich, perhaps there are better questions. For example, why has a rise in redistribution been so ineffective in solving the U.S. societal ills? And do we want so much of redistribution to be undertaken through healthcare rather than providing poorer households with more money?