Tag Archives: Forbes

business news, national news

Trump looks more like a RINO

True-blue Republicans are fond of calling so-called GOP imposters as RINOs … or Republicans in Name Only.

Guess what. It appears that the president-elect of the United States is one of those RINOs.

Check this out: Donald J. Trump is kicking around an idea that would result in a 5 percent tariff on all goods imported into the United States of America.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2016/12/22/donald-trumps-seriously-bad-idea-a-5-tax-or-tariff-on-all-imports/#4c9ff2357216

Forbes.com calls it a “seriously bad idea.” Forbes, after all, is considered to be a mainstream Republican financial organ, yes?

It doesn’t like the notion of applying what’s historically been called “protectionist economic policy.” This is the kind of policy espoused by union movement leaders who seek artificial ways to protect U.S. jobs. Union workers historically have sided with, oh, Democratic politicians.

Now we hear that the president-elect, who ran for the nation’s highest office as a Republican Party nominee, considering a tariff on imported goods.

As Forbes writes: “To put it mildly this is not a good idea. For two rather important reasons. The first being that it’s not obvious that this would not be legal. The United States has a number of trade treaties in place and many of them will state that no such universal tariff will be possible. The second is that the idea itself is just not a good one. Why do we want to tax Americans more for the things they wish to purchase?”

That’s not a very free-market philosophy.

The president-elect — an apparently hard-core RINO — is making my head spin.

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Happy, sad places have common threads

Forbes Magazine has come up with a survey of the happiest and saddest countries on Earth.

Take a look at the list. You might discover something I noticed immediately after scanning the list and looking at the pictures associated with the link.

http://money.msn.com/investing/happiest-and-saddest-countries-2013-1

Happy places are prosperous and peaceful. Sad places are poverty stricken and ripped apart by war.

Look at the people in the pictures and you’ll notice something else. Close your eyes and think of the stereotypical Norwegian, who lives in the happiest country on the planet. Blond and blue-eyed, yes? The rest of the 10 happiest countries are populated by people with similar stereotypical features.

Now, look at the pictures of the 10 saddest countries. Chad is the No. 1 on the sad list. Where is Chad? In Africa. It is populated by people of color, as are virtually all the countries on the saddest places list.

I’m not sure what the Forbes study is meant to prove. To my eyes, the obvious conclusion I’m drawing is that worldwide peace and prosperity need to be distributed much more evenly.

Maybe someone will come up with a list of strategies to make that a reality.