Top "Libertarian Jew" Blog Entries of 2024 and Reflecting on the Politics of 2024

No matter how many years pass, I can say that there has never been a dull moment in the wonderful world of politics. That is especially true during a presidential election as crazy as this one. Upon it being apparent to the entire nation during a presidential debate that President Biden was not mentally fit to run for a second term, Vice President Kamala Harris stepped in at the eleventh hour to run for office. Rather than showing she could appease the center, she decided to go to the Left of Biden with such policy recommendations as price controls on groceries, a corporate tax hike, Medicare expansion to long-term care, a tax on unrealized capital gains, and payment assistance for first-time homebuyers. 

Barring the criminal court cases that Trump was fighting this year, Trump did not fare much better in recommending crazy policy ideas: mass deportation, a credit card interest rate cap, excessive tariffs, a tax exemption on overtime, removing the SALT deduction cap, and subsidizing in-vitro fertilization. Since Trump won the election, how Trump wants to direct public policy matters way more than how Harris would have ran the White House. 

Although economy tends to dominate in an election cycle, I found myself covering the culture war a fair bit this year. Social conservatives were on the warpath about online pornography (see here and here). Another disappointment for social conservatives is that same-sex marriage did not harm the fabric of society. If anything, a meta-study from the RAND Corporation shows that allowing for same-sex marriage strengthened the institution of marriage. 

It was not only the social conservatives I scrutinized, but also the Woke Left. Abandoning free speech and opining that exercise is fascism was shocking and blog-worthy. Covering a meta-study showing that "systemic racism" does not exist in U.S. criminal sentencing was also a great day because it shows we are getting closer to a more perfect union, in spite of woke people going on about the unfalsifiable concept of "systemic racism."  I also had a blast covering Matt Walsh's documentary Am I Racist because his documentary hilariously exposed the pernicious and divisive practice of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, or DEI (see here and here). In that vein, a study from Rutgers University showed how mainstream, modern-day DEI initiatives increase hostility, racial tensions, and Left-leaning authoritarianism. 

Another election topic was covered on my blog: transgender activist extremism. It was not only male-to-female transgender individuals competing in women's sports that got people riled up during the election cycle. There were studies about gender affirming "care," whether it was the Cass Review that showed it is nowhere near as safe as proponents purported or a Dutch study showing that most adolescents grow out of gender dysphoria by adulthood without any medical or psychological intervention. This bad news could explain why England rightfully banned puberty blockers for minors. And then there was a two-part series I wrote about why the lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) community should divorce from the transgender activists (see here and here). One thing I can say with cautious optimism is that the American people are fed up with woke ideology. While there is still a ways to go in reversing the woke damage done to American culture, I would surmise that we already reached peak wokeness. 

Israel has not only been fighting a military battle in Gaza, but a public relations battle across the world. I would have thought that Hamas attacking Israel on October 7, 2023 would have garnered global sympathy for Israel being attacked in such a brutal matter. At least that is what would have happened if it were almost any other country. Instead, October 7 ushered a spike in anti-Semitism we have not witnessed since shortly before World War II. I have written on Israel more times that I would care to, if nothing else to refute the slander slung at Israel. Gaza is not an open-air prison (see here and here). Fatality numbers coming out of Gaza were false and exaggerated. I ended up writing a three-parter about how Palestine needs to stop playing the victim and take responsibility for the mess in the Middle East (see here, here, and here). I illustrated how the pro-Palestine side would like to become the horrific things they falsely accuse Israel of doing. I specifically had to detail the accusations of settler colonizer (see here and here) and genocide (see here and here).

Not all was bad news. I enjoyed covering Argentinean President Javier Milei completing his first year in office. Given the Peronist protectionism, economic repression, and government largesse he had to face, he has had quite the successful first year by reducing inflation and poverty, removing regulations, lowering housing prices, and ending a recession. If Milei is allowed to successfully implement his liberalization of the Argentinean market, Argentina's economy can experience the prowess it once had before Peronism got its claws on the economy and suffocated it with regulations, taxes, and government bureaucracy. The optimism I have with Milei is that he will be successful and that success will inspire other world leaders to choose freedom over coercion and a market-based economy over government largesse. If Milei could have that spillover effect for 2025, I would say that would be a great improvement over 2024. Regardless of what happens, I look forward to see what 2025 has in store for all of us. 

Life Lessons from Not Using the Menorah Light for Personal Benefit

After I lit my candles for the first night of Chanukah yesterday, I sat here to begin writing this blog as I admire the beauty of lighting the menorah candles. Considering that Chanukah is considered a minor holiday on the Jewish calendar, you would think I would run out of Chanukah topics to write about, but here we are. I meditate on the light itself and ask myself about a particular bit of Jewish law related to lighting the menorah. Based on a conversation between the Rabbis in the Talmud (Shabbat 21a-b), the consensus is that we are not to derive personal benefit from the light of the menorah. After reading a Chanukah insight from Aish HaTorah, I had to ask myself why and delve into the topic. 

I think a major reason is that not everything in life is meant for our personal, physical gain. This reinforces the notion that the world does not revolve around us. In Pirkei Avot (1:14), it says "If I'm not for myself, who will be," but also says "If I am only for myself, what am I?" Part of why we publicize lighting the menorah is because we are meant to bring light to the world. We are meant to inspire other people because the Jews as a people have historically been in that darkness. The menorah is the testimony of the resilience and triumph of a continuous tradition spanning over more than three millennia. In Tractate Shabbat, the Rabbis emphasize that the menorah is about commemorating the miracle that took place, not personal benefit. 

This segues into the idea of boundaries. There is a place and a time for physical benefit and other moments for spiritual benefit. We ought to value spiritual growth as an ends unto itself, to have it elevate the soul and guide us.  It also teaches us to be in the moment and focus on the miracle of Chanukah instead of ancillary benefits or multitasking. We are constantly on the move. Taking a moment to stop from the hustle and bustle to appreciate the dancing flames can lift us up. Given the major motif of thanksgiving in Chanukah, it gives us a time to stop and be thankful and think about our own personal miracles in life. That gratitude gives us a chance to pull ourselves out of whatever darkness we might be feeling in the moment and bask in the light.  

In short, this particular piece of Jewish law is meant to be a sacred beacon to inculcate hope and gratitude, inspire us to elevate ourselves and others one day at a time, and to better connect us to the divine and the world around us. 

Why Amnesty International Accusing Israel of Genocide Is Pure Rubbish (Pt. II)

On October 7, 2023, Israeli citizens are attacked by Hamas. These terrorists committed heinous acts against civilians, whether that is rape, torture, kidnapping, murder, or decapitation. There are still hostages in Gaza to this day. In addition to Hamas and Hezbollah having lobbed hundreds of rockets into Israel since then, the anti-Israel crowd lobs several false accusations at Israel: apartheid state, occupier, settler colonizer. The most egregious of these accusations is that of Israel trying to commit genocide. A couple of weeks ago, Amnesty International released a 296-report accusing Israel of just that. 

I already wrote Part I in response to that accusation. First, I pointed out the legal definition of genocide and Israel's actions do not constitute genocide. Amnesty International is so flustered that they tried to change the definition to make Israel out to be the bad guy. As a side note, the Irish government is similarly frustrated. Don't like the current legal definition? The Irish government is so anti-Semitic that it is actually trying to appeal to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to make the definition exceptionally broad. 

Second, I pointed out the historical context in which Israel has been and continues to share a border with Arab entities that are hellbent on wiping out the world's only Jewish state. Last time I checked, that would constitute genocidal intent. Third, I reminded us all that Israel is under such scrutiny that it would have been nigh impossible to hide a genocide for all these years. The fact that the Gazan population has historically been growing and has continued to grow in spite of this war refutes the genocide accusation. In case you need more reasons as to why Israel is not committing genocide, read below. 

Israel has a multiethnic, multi-religious population. While Israel is the only Jewish state on the planet, it is home to Jews, Christians, Druze, and also 1.8 million Muslims. Far from being an apartheid state, Muslim Arabs have equal rights under Israeli law and there are Muslims who hold positions of power and influence in Israel. The sort of diversity that allows Muslims to coexist with Jews in Israel could not be a reality under a regime intent on wiping out Muslim Arabs. 

Israel has tried for "land for peace" multiple times. In 2005, the Israeli Defense Forces unilaterally withdrew from Gaza and had no physical presence in Gaza until Hamas attacked on October 7. The fact that Israel has tried to peacefully coexist with Muslims in bordering territories to no avail is not the behavior of a genocidal regime. Genocidal regimes do not offer "land for peace." They simply try to wipe out the targeted demographic without caring what the rest of the world think, much like Hitler, Hutu militias in Rwanda, or the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia did. 

The Israeli Defense Force's actions reflect desire to minimize civilian harm. Israel clearly has the military capability to destroy Gaza. Instead of killing citizens for the sake of killing them and wiping out Gaza, the IDF has taken extraordinary measures to minimize civilian harm. The Israeli army sends Arabic-language warnings prior to striking terrorist infrastructures and legitimate military targets. No other military in human history has given the other side a heads-up because it means losing element of surprise. At the beginning of the war, Israel delayed its ground operation to give civilians time to evacuate. The IDF also facilitates humanitarian corridors, aid deliveries, and evacuation zones to Gazan citizens. For Amnesty International, this is all part of some complex, diabolical plot to commit genocide. It is so convoluted of a conspiracy theory that it would make Q-Anon members blush.  

In contrast to Amnesty International's conspiratorial views, these are all signs that a reasonable person would accept to indicate that Israel is not committing genocide. Reasonable people in this instance would include major military experts. According to John Spencer, who is the Chair of Urban Warfare Studies at West Point, Israel has implemented more precautions than any army in history, including the United States in Afghanistan and Iraq. These measures include precision guided munitions (PGM), using satellite imagery and scanning mobile phones to collect pre-strike intelligence, and pre-strike warnings. 

An amicus curiae brief filed at the International Criminal Court by 11 senior military officers from seven NATO member countries similarly did NOT believe that the "actual operational practice in any way corroborates accusation of policies...to intentionally attack civilians." You can also read this research paper from the Naval War College Review on how Israel has a history of minimizing civilian harm in addition to the IDF's documentation of its efforts. 

The remaining points to refute Amnesty International's nonsense will be covered in Part III.

TCJA Income Tax Extension Debate Reminds Us Tax Cuts Generally Do Not Pay for Themselves

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) has been the single largest example of U.S. tax reform in the 21st century. Part of this Act was lowering the individual income tax. I bring this up because many of the tax provisions in the TCJA are set to expire in 2025, including that of lower income taxes. One of the major Republican talking points for the TCJA was that the tax cuts would pay for themselves, even though every major analysis at the time concluded it would add to the deficit, including that from the Right-leaning Tax Foundation. To paraphrase Milton Friedman, there is no such thing as a free lunch; there are only tradeoffs.  

What would have the Republicans think that cutting taxes would increase revenue to the point where the revenues from expanded economic activity spurred by the tax cuts would cover 100 percent of the revenue that would have otherwise been gained by the higher tax rate? This argument is based on the Laffer Curve, which postulates that there is an optimal tax rate that maximizes tax revenue. As the Curve shows (see below), there is a point where taxes end up being so high that they disincentivize economic activity, thereby reducing government revenue. In this model, there is a scenario in which cutting taxes can actually increase government revenue. 

Last week, Right-leaning think-tank Manhattan Institute released an issue brief entitled Correcting the Top 10 Tax Myths. The first myth they address is "Tax Cuts Pay for Themselves." They find this myth so problematic that Manhattan Institute labels it "the most common and harmful conservative tax fallacy." Why? Because it is sold as a free lunch that will come at zero cost. 

While well-designed tax cuts can boost savings, investment, and overall economic development, it is a whole different claim to assert that the economic feedback revenues will generate 100 percent of the static revenue loss of the tax cut. With regards to the TCJA individual tax cuts, a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report released earlier this month concluded that extending the individual income tax cuts would be outweighed by more government debt. The bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) confirmed this conclusion in its analysis of the TCJA individual tax extensions that all major analyses of the tax extensions would not pay for themselves. Why is this happening? 

• Yes, near-term demand and incentive to work would increase. However, the increased debt would eventually crowd out and reduce investment, thereby limiting the economic benefits (CRFB). 
• In its report, the Manhattan Institute brings up another valid point about tax rates. The peak on the Laffer Curve for income tax is somewhere between 55 and 73 percent, which is well above current rates. 
• To quote the Manhattan Institute (MI), "For a tax cut to pay for itself, tax revenues would have to match that would have been raised even without the tax cut." Once adjusting for inflation, MI found that 2018-24 revenue came in $665 billion below the levels projected by the CBO before the TCJA. 
• The CBO projected in 2018 that the TCJA would create $2 trillion in debt over 10 years. Per CRFB calculations, actual income and corporate tax revenues since 2017 have remained close to the CBO's projections. 
• While TCJA managed to pay for a modest portion of itself, it is nowhere the 100 percent to say that "TCJA paid for itself."  
• This 2017 report from CRFB entitled Tax Cuts Don't Pay for Themselves provides great insight.
• There would need to $5-6 dollars of economic growth for every dollar in tax cuts to make the tax cut self-financing.
• The Tax Foundation would have the most optimistic assumptions in its forecasting. In 2017, the Tax Foundation estimated in a report covering tax code reform alternatives that a 10-percent across-the-board income tax cut would pay for an eighth of the cost. As for a 10-point cut in the corporate tax, the economic dynamism would pay for three-fifths of its cost. 
• The tax cuts of 1981 and 2001/2003 resulted in lower cyclically-adjusted revenue, which is to say that past major tax cuts in the past half-century have not resulted in increased tax revenue. 

The Cato Institute refutes with two points. One is that when you factor in extending the business tax cuts in addition to the individual income tax cuts, then the GDP growth is larger. Conversely, the CRFB brings up that the business taxes would relatively do more to boost the economy, but not enough for the all the tax cuts in the TCJA to be self-financing. However, a separate CBO analysis shows that extending the 100 percent bonus depreciation and reversal of R&D amortization could offset the drag of the income tax cut extension. This would suggest a point I brought up in 2017, which is that tax reform needs to be more comprehensive than treating tax cuts as if they were the silver bullet that can solve all fiscal woes.  

Second, the Cato Institute brings up that the federal debt is a policy choice. That much I agree with because it is the ballooning spending that is exacerbating the U.S.' debt issues. The problem is that neither the U.S. Congress nor President-Elect Trump have the political will to want to cut government largesse in a way Argentinean President Javier Milei has successfully done in his first year in office. If there were corresponding spending cuts to help offset the tax cuts, I would be the first to advocate for the extensions. 

On its fifth anniversary, I concluded that the TCJA caused more good than harm. But as I said earlier, we have to factor in tradeoffs. Cutting taxes can increase economic growth. As a report from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas shows, a one percent cut in income taxes in the TCJA resulted in GDP growth of 1.5 percent and job growth of 1.2 percent (Kumar, 2023). Is the increased federal debt worth the economic growth? Is it worth people being able to keep more of their hard earned money instead of having it go to government coffers? Can we pass other policies to make the fiscal impact less harmful when U.S. debt is climbing, as I mentioned two paragraphs ago? 

I believe in lower taxes, but I also strongly believe that there needs to be significantly lower government spending. With a lack of fiscal discipline in the U.S. federal government, I have to agree with the libertarian Reason Magazine and its conclusion that cutting taxes without reducing spending is bad news for the national debt. Since increasing federal debt has significant spillover effects for the American people, I question whether the U.S. government could adequately offset the fiscal costs of extending the income tax cuts. 

President Javier Milei Improved Argentina in His First Year as Planet's First Libertarian President

As much as I love Argentina culturally, its economy has been ruined by nearly eight decades of Peronist government largesse, including gargantuan government redistribution programs, protectionism, an exceptionally interventionist monetary policy in which the central bank printed money like it grew on trees, and general disregard for property rights (not to mention the civil rights abuses throughout Argentina's modern history, especially in the 1970s). Argentinians were so dissatisfied with the rampant inflation, eroding purchasing power, and pervasive poverty that in 2023, they elected the first self-identifying libertarian head of state, Javier Milei. It is more than Milei's eccentric personality, which included waving a chainsaw at political rallies promising how he was going to cut government spending. Milei had an established career as an economist, author, and professor prior to becoming President. 

This week commemorates the one-year anniversary that he assumed his role as head of state for Argentina. So-called conventional wisdom predicted that Milei's "shock therapy" would make matters worse for Argentina. While I was thrilled to see a libertarian head of state that could potentially be an inspiration to other world leaders to cut back on regulations, taxation, and government spending, I knew he had to contend with a lot. Plus, Argentina had been ranked as a repressed economy by Heritage Foundations' Economic Freedom Index prior to Milei's election. It turns out that in spite of the political and economic obstacles he had to face, Milei had a successful first year. 

• Within the first few months, he was able to cut enough government spending where Argentina had a budget surplus for the first time in over a decade. Milei has continued to generate a budget in subsequent months (IARAF). When you compare Milei's surpluses to previous deficits, the difference is astounding. It is even more so when you consider that Argentina has spent the last 113 out of 123 years running up deficits. 

 

• Milei's elimination of rent control was so effective that it lowered housing prices while expanding the housing supply. 
• Milei has also passed a daily average of 1.8 deregulations since he entered office, which is significant because Argentina is one of the most regulated countries on the planet and its economic growth is thus stifled by regulations. This does not even include trimming the government from 19 ministries to nine ministries. 
• In October 2024, monthly inflation dropped to 2.7 percent, which was about 30 percent a year ago. While that level of inflation seems unfathomable for the Western world, monthly inflation in Argentina has not been this low since November 2021, according to government officials at the Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Censos (INDEC). For a country that has gone through literal hyperinflation, this is a great accomplishment. 

• Argentina's central bank, Banco Central de la República Argentina (BCRA), has lowered the interest rate from 133 percent in December 2023 to 33 percent in December 2024. While this is still among the highest in the world, this move on BCRA's part will lower costs of borrowing money ought to increase investment, consumer spending, and job creation. 
•  Fitch Ratings upgraded Argentina's credit rating to "CCC" last month because of an ability to pay foreign-currency bond payments without issue. 
• Argentina's Emerging Market Bond Index (EMBI), which is JPMorgan's index for measuring debt risk, dropped to a five-year low in October. 
• December 16, 2024 Addendum: I had to add this because this milestone made me excited: Argentina's economy exited a severe recession in the third quarter of this year. 
• If Gallup polling that came out this week is indicative of anything, it is that Argentineans are more hopeful of the state of the economy. 

Postscript. Not everything has been smooth sailing for Milei. In addition to such political obstacles as trade unions and Peronist politicians who prefer the status quo, there has been an increase of the poverty rate, which has reached over 50 percent under Milei. This could very well be part of the short-term pain the Argentineans have to endure to untangle the disaster of Peronist economic policy. If the calculations from the Universidad Católica Argentina are correct, then the poverty in Argentina is already decreasing (see below). [1/11/25 Addendum: Poverty in Argentina in the fourth quarter fell to to 36.8 percent].

Whether the citizens of Argentina can hang on long enough will have sway over the political feasibility over Milei's plans for the second year. Hopefully for Argentina, Trump's political affinity with Milei could accelerate negotiations with the International Monetary Fund and result in a more generous support package, thereby making the short-term poverty spike more tolerable.

That being said, I think it has been a good first year for Argentina. Milei inherited rampant government debt, a high poverty rate, and an annual inflation rate exceeding 200 percent. Milei is getting a handle on government spending, which was one of his major campaign promises. Improved monetary and fiscal policy have lowered inflation, at least by standards in recent Argentinean history. In spite of the increased poverty, wages are beginning to rebound and Milei still remains popular in Argentina. 

Would I like to see Milei do something about dollarization or capital controls? Yes. Furthermore, it is also true that Argentina's tariff rates and overall taxation rate remain high, not to mention Milei being unable to privatize any of the state-owned businesses. It will be more difficult for Milei to achieve his plans for Argentina to become an economic powerhouse once more if he does not address some of these fundamentals soon. But I also know that Rome was not built in a day and that we should not make perfect the enemy of good. I think that if Milei is able to stay on course, 2025 will look even better for Argentina than 2024. If successful, he can provide a mighty case study for how much of a positive impact deregulation, lower taxes, and less government can have on millions of lives. 

¡Viva la libertad, carajo!

Why Amnesty International Accusing Israel of Genocide Is Pure Rubbish (Pt. I)

October 7, 2023 was a horrific day not only for the state of Israel, but the entire Jewish world. It was the day that Hamas terrorists entered Israel to kidnap, torture, murder, and decapitate civilians. These brutes did not hide their barbarism; they posted it on social media. You would think that any decent human being would speak out against such atrocities. Instead, anti-Semitism exploded worldwide in a way we have not seen since Nazi Germany. Hating on Jews in the guise of anti-Semitism has become en vogue, especially on the Far Left. There have been a litany of fallacious attacks on the credibility of Israel. 

One such recent attack was Amnesty International (AI) releasing a 296-page report accusing Israel of genocide. Sadly, mainstream media outlets published it as if it were fact because it comes from a "human rights" organization. The report is nearly 300 pages long, so I am not going to sit here and refute the report point-by-point. It helps that I refuted this accusation of genocide last year. What I am going to do instead is provide a list of reasons why Amnesty International's charges are bogus so that you, the reader, have a concise list at the ready.

Israel does not have the intent or objective to commit genocide. From the beginning of the current war, the Israeli government has made it clear that aside from achieving the goal of rescuing the hostages, its target is not the Palestinian people, but eliminating the terrorist organization Hamas. On the occasion when an Israeli official made a callous remark, such as using nuclear weapons against Gazans, they were summarily disciplined. 

As I explained last year, for the action to be considered genocide under international law, there needs to be intent to destroy the group as a group. That means genocide accusers would need to prove "Israel is killing Gazan civilians intentionally and simply because they're Palestinian, rather than as an unfortunate consequence of Israel's efforts to legally exercise its right of self-defense against Hamas." None of these genocide accusers can prove that Israel is willfully targeting civilians, which is the standard used in international law. AI is so frustrated that it cannot meet the standard laid out in the Genocide Convention of 1948 that it has the following to say in its report (AI, p. 101): 

"...rulings on inferring intent can be read extremely narrowly, in a manner that would potentially preclude a state from having genocidal intent alongside one or more additional motives or goals in relation to the conduct of its military operations. As outlined below, Amnesty International considers this an overly cramped interpretation of international jurisprudence and one that would effectively preclude a finding of genocide in the context of an armed conflict." 

In other words, AI knows that it does not have a legal leg to stand on when accusing Israel of genocide, particularly with proving intent beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law. Former President of the International Court of Justice Joan Donoghue confirmed that the Court decided Israel's war against Gaza could not plausibly be considered genocide. That has not stopped AI from using this report as a guise to create its own definition of genocide to make Israel look like the bad guy. But let us continue with the exploration of the plausibility behind the genocide argument. 

Israel has been and continues to be surrounded by Arab entities that want to wipe out Israel. AI states in its report (p. 202) that historical context is important. Let us examine that context for a moment. The Arab world's animus towards Israel predates the settlements or the Six-Day War of 1967. What happened in 1948 when Israel declared its independence? Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon pounced on Israel in the hopes of eliminating the nascent Jewish state. This has been an ongoing pattern since 1948: Arabs attack Israel with the hopes of eliminating Israel; Israel fights back; Israel subsequently wins the war; Arabs play victim; Rinse and repeat. 

The latest war in Gaza is no exception. Since 1988, Hamas has been clear on its genocidal intent of wiping out the Zionist state (see original Hamas charter here). Israel had unilaterally withdrawn from Gaza in 2005. The only reason Israel implemented an economic blockade, which by the way the United Nations declared as legitimate self-defense, was to prevent an attack like October 7 from happening. But Israel was only able to hold off such carnage off for so long. Hamas carried out a mass attack with genocidal intent on October 7, 2023. This pogrom, which was the worst attack on Jews since World War II, is what instigated this current war. What is worst that Hamas leadership stated that it would like to carry out attacks similar to October 7 again until Hamas completes its goal of wiping the Jewish state off the map. Historically speaking, genocidal regimes have made their genocidal intents crystal clear. Hamas is no exception.  

Given the genocidal threat to Israel's very existence, Israel is well within its right to eliminate Hamas and use military force to target military installations and players. As I detailed a couple of weeks ago, part of what makes this moral inversion more distasteful is that it is the Arab side that has projected its most perverse desires onto Israel, whether that is ethnic cleansing, colonization, and apartheid. Sadly, genocide is not an exception to that list. AI does not bother to examine Palestine's genocidal intent with a 300-page report. It opines that the only reasonable inference is that Israel's actions constitute genocide (AI, p. 204-5) when in fact Israel is acting in self-defense to ensure that Hamas never repeats the butchery it unleashed on October 7, 2023.

Israel is under great international scrutiny. The international community applies mythical double standards to Israel that it would not dare apply to other nation-states. Israel's actions are under a microscope. There have been 12 military conflicts between Israel and Hamas since 2005. There is no plausible way that anyone could hide a genocide that long, especially under such scrutiny. That brings me to my next point....

The Gazan population has been growing. To reiterate, if there were an actual genocide taking place in Gaza, Israel could not hide it. You would be able to tell from population statistics whether genocide were taking place. Looking at data from the United Nations and World Bank, the population of West Bank and Gaza has been growing since the 1950s. More recently, the CIA calculated that since the October 7 pogrom, the population in Gaza has grown over 2 percent. Even the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics has acknowledged that the number of Palestinians has grown by ninefold since 1948. 

Whether it was the Holocaust, the Rwandan genocide, or the Armenian genocide, or the Cambodian genocide carried out by the Khmer Rouge, one constant in genocides is that there is notable population decline of the target demographic. Part of genocide is systematically wiping out a group of people. The sheer ruthlessness and efficiency of genocide attributes to its abhorrence. Yet no such population decline among the Gazans is happening here, which would imply no genocide in Gaza. 

Do not worry. There are more arguments to come in Part II. 

Obamacare Still Hasn't Delivered On Its Promises: Quelle Surprise!

While President-Elect Trump's stance on tariffs and immigration remain unambiguous, Trump's viewpoint on the Affordable Care Act (ACA), colloquially known as Obamacare, is more tenuous. In November 2023, Trump wrote on his social platform Truth Social that "we should not give up" on repealing Obamacare. In the 2023 presidential debate last September, he said that he has concepts of an idea to replace Obamacare, but "until then, I'd run it as good as it can be run." This is in contrast to his first term where he tried to repeal it but failed. Repealing Obamacare did not even make its way into the official 2024 Republican platform. 

Given that healthcare accounted for 17.3 percent of the U.S. GDP, I think Obamacare is absolutely something worth considering. As this October 2024 report from the Paragon Health Institute illustrates, at least a dozen significant Obamacare-related promises were broken. Here are a few broken promises to make the point more salient:

The ACA would create savings of $2,500 per family. This ended up being such a large faux pas of Obama's that FactCheck.org called this promise one of "Obama's Whoppers." It turns out that average premiums increased from $232 in 2013 to $476 in 2017, according to HHS' Office of the Assistance Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE). This ASPE finding is similar to that of a March 2021 Heritage Foundation report that found that the average premium increased by 129 percent from 2013 to 2019. 

It should not be a surprise that a demand-side subsidy would drive up healthcare costs: it's Econ 101. Obamacare made healthcare costly when it first started. Even now, about half of Americans have difficulty paying for healthcare (KFF). Not exactly what I would call affordable. 

The ACA would save lives. Obama promised that it would reduce injuries in addition to saving lives. Democrats touting ACA were citing a Harvard study (Wilper et al., 2009) saying that 45,000 excess deaths were caused by lack of insurance. Given that there were 2.6 million annual deaths at the time, a reduction of 45,000 excess deaths would have resulted in an increased average lifespan of 0.4 years. 

The life expectancy decreased by 0.3 years from 2014 to 2017, which is a net difference of 0.7 years of what it would have been had the Harvard study been accurate. Average life expectancy increased slightly in 2019, only to drop again due to the pandemic. Average life expectancy went from 78.3 years to 77.4 years in 2023 (World Bank). This promise became so obviously and patently false I wrote a separate piece on this myth in July 2017. And if that were not enough, life expectancy worsened for the states that adopted the ACA Medicaid expansion versus those that did not (Blase and Balat, 2020). 

 

The ACA would increase economic growth. Obama's chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors, Jason Furman, promised that the ACA would create "healthier, more productive workers," "reduced 'job lock'", and "better macroeconomic performance." A research paper from the Journal of Human Resources found that the ACA "increased low-hours, involuntary part-time employment by 500,000-700,000 workers in retail, accommodations, and food services (Dillinder et al., 2020). The authors contributed this trend to the ACA's penalty to large employers who did not want to provide insurance being incentivized to reduce employment and shift full-time workers to part-time workers. The Congressional Budget Office recognized this disincentive in its 2014 report.

The employer mandate would collect a ton of revenue for the government. The Congressional Budget Office and Internal Revenue Service was predicting all this revenue. The White House's Council of Economic Advisors concluded that 11 years after the ACA passed, only 1 percent of what was projected was actually collected. 

If you like your plan, you can keep it. This was a promise made by Obama in 2009 since he believed that the ACA would not take away anyone's plan. This one ended up being such a bold-faced lie that Politifact called it the Lie of the Year in 2013 since at least 7 million consumers saw their plans disappear.

The ACA would decrease emergency room use. Obama's logic on this promise was that taxpayers were subsidizing the uninsured because a lack of insurance was incentivizing them to seek healthcare only when the situation became dire enough to use an emergency room. 

I will look at this from the angle of Medicaid expansion since the ACA expanded Medicaid enrollment by 16 million more than the Congressional Budget Office initially calculated (Butler, 2016). The Brookings Institution concluded that the ACA's Medicaid expansion increased emergency room visits by 20 percent, primarily due to emergency room visits that could have been treated outside the emergency department (Garthwaite et al., 2020). Scholars from the University of Iowa similarly found that Medicaid expansion in California as a result of ACA increased emergency room use and cost (Ellis and Esson, 2018).

Postscript. Not much good has changed about the ACA since I wrote my scathing piece in 2017 on 15 reasons why we should dislike Obamacare. If anything, repealing the main cost-containing provisions, the Cadillac tax and the health insurance tax, since the creation of the ACA made matters worse. The false promises of Obamacare resulted in higher healthcare costs, increased deficit spending, and significant disruptions to insurance coverage and healthcare access. 

The ACA did little, if anything, to improve healthcare in this country, as is illustrated by this September 2024 report from the Paragon Health Institute on how the ACA reduced healthcare quality. Meanwhile, the ACA guaranteed that health insurance companies are guaranteed profits. We do need something to reform healthcare in the United States. Building an extra room on an already rickety house does not help anyone. It simply means reforming healthcare becomes that much more difficult when policy decision-makers reach that painful fork in the road, much like they eventually will with Social Security. Whether the Trump 47 administration is up for the task remains to be seen. But if the first Trump term is indicative of anything, we are likely to see more of a preservation of the status quo than we are reforms of any significance. 

The U.S. Political Left Is Neither Liberal Nor Progressive: What to Call the Political Left?

A trend I have noticed over time and has been particularly notable during since the pandemic is that the political Left in the United States has been veering further and further to the Left. It got me thinking of how the Left has self-identified. Two terms that the Left has used in recent political history to describe itself are liberal and progressive. By examining the etymology of these words along with how the U.S. political Left has evolved, we will see that it does not make sense to use either of these terms. 

The word "liberal" comes from the Latin liber, which means free(man). A secondary meaning in premodern times pertained to being generous. The word liberal first became used in a political context in the 1770s. Adam Smith used "liberal" for the term to describe a market-based economy based on free trade, voluntarism, and mutually beneficial exchange. Classical liberalism advocated for the free market, laissez-faire economics (including property rights), civil liberties, limited government, and political and economic freedoms. In the United States, classical liberalism is most commonly associated with someone who is "fiscally conservative and socially liberal," or a libertarian. 

Using the word "liberal" suggests that the U.S. political Left cares about people being free. There are some issues for which the Left cares about freedom, such as abortion, same-sex marriage, and marijuana. However, as I pointed out when criticizing the usage of the label "pro-choice," their application of pro-choice is quite inconsistent. They are more likely to be against freedom when it comes to owning a firearm or appliances and vehicles it deems harmful to its crusade against climate change. It surely does not apply when they advocate for high rates of taxation and do not allow for citizens to be free to do what they want with their money. 

The Left has also been veering away from freedom of speech. Per Pew Research survey data, Democrats are much more likely to want to use the government to restrict what it perceives as misinformation, or in other words, increased support for censorship. As I illustrated last week, those who adhere to the framework of DEI initiatives are more likely to be authoritarian and want to punish those disagree with their ideology. Wanting to cancel those with alternative views and embracing cancel culture is not exactly one of tolerance. Then there is the Left's obsession with collective rights over individual rights, which is another radical departure from classical liberalism. And then there's trying to pack the Supreme Court or getting rid of the Electoral College because it doesn't work in the Democrats' favor. 

The word progress comes from the Latin progressus, an advance. This comes from the verb progredi (pro, which means forward; and gradi, which means to walk). The Left conveniently takes on this label because it suggests that their platform means that we as a society move forward. When you examine much of their policy prescriptions, it is anything but. 

I do not want to paint with such a broad stroke because people on the Left exist on a political spectrum, much like those of other political persuasions. However, on an economic level, there has been a greater call for more tax and spend. Kamala Harris called for eliminating the fossil fuels and private health insurance markets. There are very few politicians on the Left that are concerned with addressing the U.S. federal debt or shrinking the overall size of government. The inflation during the Biden Administration and diminishing the purchasing power of everyday Americans is not progress. 

Then there is the cultural aspect, which has become more identity-obsessed and zero-sum for the Left. Regarding DEI and race relations, abandoning colorblindness and obsessing over race to the point where "anti-racism" is its own racism is setting race relations back at least half a century, if not more. For the political Left, diversity is only skin-deep. Then I would argue that the political Left has learned something from the political Right, which is using fear as a weapon. They did it with COVID when advocating for lockdowns, face mask mandates, and school closures. They have done so with climate change. Calling Trump a fascist was also Harris' closing argument during the last presidential election, thereby stoking the fear of an authoritarian dystopia if Trump were elected. 

I feel like I can go on and on, but much of what constitutes as the mainstream U.S. political Left's agenda in neither liberating nor is it progress. If the terms liberal or progressive are inadequate, what should we call those who are on the Left? I generally refer to the entity as the "political Left" in attempts to cover anyone who is "left of center," regardless if they are woke or not. There is the term "leftist." On the one hand, the Right has pejoratively used the term "leftist." On the other hand, the same could be said about the term "liberal" starting in the 1970s. It might not be as endearing to the Left, but at least it is a more objective term. That would also mean that we would need to call those on the right "Rightists" because how much of the status quo are they actually trying to conserve these days? After all, the Spanish language makes this distinction with the terms izquierdista and derechista. 

Realistically, I would not expect this to catch on because the Left prefers the terms that put them in a more positive light. While I do not expect a linguistic shift in U.S. political discourse, I write this to illustrate the importance of how political labels can be used to deceive more than accurately describe.