Approval Ratings

It is necessary to distinguish between approval ratings and net approval ratings. The former simply measures approximately what proportion of the electorate approve of someone or something; the latter measures the proportion who approve minus the proportion who disapprove.

President Trump’s approval rating was recently measured by Emerson College Polling at 48%, and his net approval rating at plus 6. This reveals that around 10% of the electorate are neutral. If there were no neutrals in the USA, Trump’s net popularity rating could be as low as minus 4. In other words, he is probably not supported by the majority of the voters, though that is within the polling margin of error.

President Zelensky’s approval rating currently stands at 57%. If there were no neutrals in Ukraine, that would give him a net approval rating of plus 14. For his net approval rating to be plus 4 under these same circumstances, he would have a minimum approval rating of 52%. In other words, he would still be supported by the majority of the population.

Of course, it is quite tricky to hold an election when your country is one fifth occupied by an invading enemy, (where any expression of support for Kyiv can have fatal consequences), six and a half million refugees have fled the country, a couple of million have been internally displaced, and innumerable children have been kidnapped and taken to Russia.

For the purposes of comparison, The current UK government’s net approval rating has never been higher than minus 2 and is currently minus 54.

UPDATE: Numerous new polls were commissioned for the completion of Trump's first month. All four of the ones I've seen confirm that his net approval rating is in minus numbers.

Alexei Navalny - Patriot

Alexei Navalny died in an Arctic prison one year ago. Everyone knows the word ‘died’ is a euphemism.

His crimes? Telling the truth. Opposing Putin. Surviving an assassination attempt by the FSB. And latterly, opposing the invasion of Ukraine.

Having the nerve to go back to Russia just when the kleptocracy thought they had got rid of him.

The question even his supporters, let alone his enemies, repeatedly asked of him was “Why did you come back?” On the face of it, it looks like stupidity. He knew he would be arrested. The only issue was, would he be arrested openly at the airport or more quietly?

He struggled to make people understand. He had run for political office. He had toured the country promising to tell the people the truth. His example had encouraged others to make a stand for freedom and democracy. They had been persecuted and imprisoned like him. The bulk of those who supported him were not in a position to leave the country.

But most importantly, he had promised never to desert the people. There ought to be one politician in Russia who did not lie.

And so Navalny went back. And he was imprisoned. And every month a new fraudulent charge was brought against him and new sentences were handed down. He actually found it amusing that he could be accused of committing serious crimes while in solitary confinement. His persecutors could not break him. As long as he lived, his mere existence was a testimony against the regime.

He accepted that the dictatorship would probably kill him. He thought his death would speak louder than his life. In his autobiography, “Patriot”, the last entry in his prison diary was dated January 17th, 2024. In it, he still held fast to a simple philosophy. One day Russia would be free. One day the crooks and thieves would be gone, and his countrymen could breathe free air and flourish in peace.

We all owe it to Alexei Navalny’s memory to hold fast to that same philosophy. Even when the night is darkest and the power of the barbarians seems unstoppable.

Speak truth to power. Always.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/PATRIOT

The Return of Appeasement

At what point should we expect US citizens to start singing “Buddy can you spare a dime” or dancing cheek to cheek?

Do I hear any takers for my Packard 745 or my Buick Marquette?

How about my dad’s old trilby or my grandfather’s fedora?

Forgive me for asking, but it appears the 1930s are back with a vengeance on the western shore of the Atlantic.

We began with tariffs, which, as I already noted, did a fantastic job of ushering in The Great Depression and shutting down large chunks of the world’s economy.

Now it seems we have resurrected Appeasement, the peace at any price policy which gave such encouragement to Nazism and Fascism, resulting in more land grabs and eventually the Second World War. Neville Chamberlain? Ha! Stand aside, loser. You may have invented the idea of excluding the victim from the peace talks, but you wait until you see me carve up the victim and hand over a fifth of their country without even a by your leave. You ain’t seen nothing yet.

Hey, all you dictators out there! Just invade your neighbouring peaceful state, commit innumerable war crimes, and then come and talk to POTUS about how you can keep your ill-gotten gains, take time to replace your expended arms and ammunition, and get ready for your next aggression! Because everybody wants peace, right? And making peace is so easy if you give the aggressor everything he wants before the negotiations even start.

You know what? We’ll forget that you and the US both guaranteed the sanctity of your neighbour’s borders thirty years ago. We’ll just take your word for it that you have no more territorial claims. I mean, we know you broke your word twice already in that time, but we’re willing to let bygones be bygones. We’re going to trust you if you promise not to do it again.

And don’t worry about being an indicted war criminal, because we don’t recognise the court that indicted you. Hell, I don’t recognise the courts that indicted me. So we don’t even recognise our own courts let alone international ones.

And don’t worry about our European, Japanese and Taiwanese allies. Who cares what they think? If they want defending, then they should pay 5% of their national income to defend themselves. Like we do. Or don’t? One or the other, I forget which. And we have to defend on two fronts, not just one.

Just oblige me by not moving into the rest of Ukraine before I finish my term, huh? Don’t make me look bad, the way Adolf did to Neville.

Tariffs 2

I am afraid that DJT did not read my little article last week about tariffs. And that’s after me deliberately not entitling it “Economics for the economically illiterate.” I didn’t want to be provocative, you see.

I understand that the executive orders instituting the new US tariffs also contain anti-retaliation clauses. In other words, if the US tariffs are answered by corresponding tariffs against US exports, which is the usual, almost instinctive, reaction, The US will raise tariffs again in retaliation for the retaliation.

Welcome back to 1930, folks. Only, please remember that the last time the world travelled this road, it didn’t work out so well.

Tariffs

I am struggling to understand the sudden enthusiasm in the USA for the introduction of tariffs.

 
Tariffs are essentially a sales tax. It so happens that these sales taxes apply only to goods supplied to the US by other countries, but that does not alter their fundamental nature; a sales tax is a sales tax.

 
When you apply a sales tax to any product, its price rises. It may be that the supplier is able to absorb a portion of the new tax by reducing his profit margin, thus avoiding the need to pass the whole tax on to the consumer, but it will be a rarity for the price to the consumer not to rise at all. If the consumer goes on buying a product that has been subjected to a sales tax, then the consumer spends more on that product. In other words, price rises resulting from tariffs are paid by those who continue to consume imported goods.

These continuing consumers, therefore, must divert a portion of their spending that would have gone on other products to paying the higher price of the imported product. If that alternative expenditure would have been on domestic products, then the expenditure of those consumers on domestic products will fall, and the incomes of those who produce these domestic products will necessarily also fall.

Of course, some consumers will be deterred by the higher price from purchasing the imported good. The volume of imports will probably fall. This means the foreign suppliers of imported goods will have less income with which to purchase US goods and American exports will accordingly fall, along with the income of American workers who produce those exports.

There remains a question of whether domestic production will rise to replace the reduced imports. Domestic production that was able to compete at the previous import price would presumably already be doing so. Domestic production that is now able to compete at the new import price, but was not able to compete at the old import price, is probably going to avail itself of the diverted demand, but, by definition, only at a price that is higher than the old import price. So again, it is the consumer who pays, only he pays extra to a domestic producer rather than paying a tax to his government.

It has long been an accepted economic principle that more trade is generally good, in the sense of raising incomes all round, and that less trade is bad. Trade wars impoverish everybody in the world.
Protectionism may be justified when a foreign country’s government is breaking WTO rules by unfairly subsidising its exports, but if the foreign country simply happens to be better at producing a particular product than you are, then it makes sense to divert the domestic resources currently deployed to producing inefficiently into producing something else efficiently. That way trade will continue to increase and everybody benefits.

I acknowledge that the above outline may be seen as Economics 101 by those who know something about economics. I also acknowledge that I have glossed over problems of transition and restructuring.
However, this explanation was inspired by a vox pop interview in the US, in which a gentleman firmly asserted that tariffs on Chinese goods would be paid by the Chinese government. Oh, yes. And the only thing stopping pigs flying in the USA is that porcine aviation is prohibited by US law.

Be careful with extremist terms

Insofar as Fascism is defined as a totalitarian state apparatus which brooks no dissent or alternative viewpoints, it seems from my side of the ocean that The USA has been in such a condition for many years. What else is a politically-correct cancel culture? Monochromatic approaches to complex political issues, demanding yes / no answers when questions require nuanced judgements, intolerance of any stance which diverges from one's own - all this is the furniture of Fascism, simply going under the name of anti-Fascism.

Any society that is so far polarised as to view a democratic change of administration as an existential threat is already being destroyed from within, and the process needs no assistance from external enemies. Governments of any stripe are seldom good in themselves; they are usually no more than necessary evils, required to save mankind from the darker sides of our own natures. Mostly, democratic governments achieve this modest goal. Other polities frequently don't.