The Press-Dispatch
Issue link: https://www.ifoldsflip.com/i/1422416
C-6 Wednesday, October 27, 2021 The Press-Dispatch OPINION Submit Letters to the Editor: Letters must be signed and received by noon on Mondays. Email: editor@pressdispatch.net or bring in a hard copy: 820 E. Poplar Street, Petersburg George Orwell's fictional dysto- pian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four is getting a lot of attention lately. Pub- lished in 1949, the story takes place in the not-too-distant future, "1984." By then the world is ruled by 'The Party.' Anyone who does not conform to their regime and its edicts are bru- tally purged. It uses the 'Thought Po- lice,' with its constant surveillance through two-way televisions, cam- eras, hidden microphones, and in- formants to keep control and people in line. Anyone who falls out of fa- vor with the Party becomes 'unper- sons.' They simply disappear with no evidence anywhere of their exis- tence. Do you think God gave Orwell a glimpse into the future? The year humans stepped foot on the moon was 1969. In 1900 peo- ple were riding horses. The Wright brothers and their airplane were three years away. Sixty-six years lat- er, men walked on the moon. What a spectacular technological human achievement. This was noth- ing short of fantastic. In all the hu- bris of 1969 came a cautionary song of previews to come. 'In the Year 2525' was a song warning of the dan- gers of technology. Written by Rick Evans, the song portrays a grim fu- ture in which its own devices destroy humanity. Do you think God gave Evans a glimpse into the future? Sound too farfetched? What does history and the Bible teach us? In the Biblical timeline of Gene- sis, from the sin of Adam until No- ah and the flood was approximately 1,600 years. It took only 1600 years for humans to get to the brink of ex- tinction. 'And God said to Noah, I have de- termined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence through them. Behold, I will destroy them with the earth' Gen 6:13. Peter said that God waited patient- ly while Noah built the ark, which saved eight souls. Noah warned ev- Progressives versus independent contractors Despite being a politician all his life, and never having worked in a blue-collar job, President Joe Biden declared, "I'm a union man," when he announced his presidential cam- paign at a Teamsters union hall in Pittsburgh in April 2019. What our president really loves is big government and political power, and there is no more reliable money trough for Democrats than unions. According to OpenSecrets, which tracks political spending, Biden's campaign received $27.5 million in contributions from unions, compared with $ 360,000 from unions that went to former President Donald Trump's campaign. So, it is no surprise that the pres- ident and his party are now unfurl- ing legislation aimed at protecting unions. It's called the PRO Act — Protecting the Right to Organize. The bill passed in the House, but with little prospect of it making it on its own in the evenly split Senate, Senate Democrats have buried it in the budget reconciliation bill that can pass with a simple majority and is not subject to filibuster. What certain unions want is to take the country in the opposite di- rection where it needs to go in this new era of global competition and technology-enabled freelancing. But other unions, like those that repre- sent truckers and journalists, are concerned about independent con- tractors being run out of their jobs. Among the various major pro- visions of the PRO Act is effective nationalization of California's AB5 law that passed in 2019. This law makes hiring independent contrac- tors much more difficult and speci- fies that contractors must be reclas- sified by businesses that hire them as employees, unless they meet spe- cific and rigorous standards allowing them to stay independent. The PRO Act takes direct aim at the powerful new technology-en- abled trend referred to as the "gig economy." These are freelancers and entrepreneurs of many different stripes who are buying into the flexi- bility of this new high-tech economy. But entrepreneurship and flexibil- ity are exactly what big-government politicians and certain special inter- est unions don't want. Proposition 22 passage in Novem- ber 2020 provided protection for app- based transportation and delivery firms, such as Uber, Lyft and Door- Dash, from AB5. But this still leaves many indepen- dent contractors subject to the law. This includes many truckers who are independent operators and are impacted by these onerous new re- quirements. Truckers are seeking relief through the courts, now principally through the California Trucking As- sociation moving its case to be heard in the Supreme Court. Meanwhile, truckers have gotten a court injunc- tion to hold up their need to submit to AB5 requirments. Another significant provision of the PRO Act would be the effective elimination of right-to-work laws that exist today in 27 states. Right-to-work laws enable workers in unionized workplaces that do not wish to join the union and pay dues to opt out. The PRO Act eliminates this option and forces all workers to pay union dues. Considerable academic research points to positive economic results in right-to-work states in the way of higher employment growth, high- er productivity, higher population growth and higher personal income growth compared with states with- out right-to-work laws. The Census Bureau reports annu- ally on net population outbound and inbound for every state. In the most recent report, 9 of the 10 states with the highest pop- ulation inbound were right-to-work states, and 8 of the 10 states with the highest population outbound were forced-unionization states. It is no accident that today, the number of American workers in unions is about half what it was 40 years ago. We are entering into new times. Sweeping change was already taking American Optimist There's so much negative news these days. I was glad to see that a new podcast, "American Optimist," features good things that are coming. It's hosted by Palantir founder and venture capitalist Joe Lonsdale. He in- terviews entrepreneurs like Sal Churi, who funds companies like Icon, which found a way to 3D print homes in just one day. The process is cool to watch. You can see it in my new video. Fast home-building is such a good thing for poor people who want an af- fordable house! Unfortunately, Chu- ri has to struggle to get past the gov- ernment's rigid zoning and safety reg- ulations. "It's actually impossible to do 3D printing of homes with modern tech- nology because government regula- tion is making it impossible," says Lonsdale. "That infuriates me," I tell him. "I keep seeing these wonderful new things we can't have ... because of reg- ulations that don't matter." "We'd probably have twice as big of an economy if we didn't have bad reg- ulations," he replies. If innovators finally do get past the regulators, we'll get lots of cool things. People predicted flying cars for years. Now it may actually happen because Lonsdale's friend Paul Scia- rra (Pinterest's co-founder) invested in Joby Aviation, which built a small helicopter that looks like a flying car. He hopes it will be used as an air taxi. "It's about 100 times quieter than a helicopter," says Lonsdale. "Goes about 200 miles on a charge — safer, much quieter. The idea is to use this as a commuting vehicle. I'm pretty excit- ed as we start to scale this out." Another Lonsdale friend is Elon Musk, whose Boring Company hopes to create faster ways to move traffic by building tunnels. But again, it's hard to get such new transportation past the bureaucrats' rules. Digging tunnels today actually often costs more and takes longer — even though construction equipment is much better! "The EPA is going to insist you do these studies that take four or five years," complains Lonsdale. "It's al- most like they delight in delaying you." Musk is the rare entrepreneur who triumphs over regulations — some- times by ignoring them. Thankfully, in new fields, like neu- rotechnology, innovators sometimes escape stupid rules because regula- tors don't understand what they're doing. Musk's company Neuralink invent- ed technology that may let us control things with our minds. Our Stossel T V video on Lonsdale includes a Neura- link video clip showing a monkey play- ing a video game just by ... thinking. Soon this technology will help par- alyzed people do new things. It may someday even help us communicate without speaking. We'll just ... think ... to each other. Lonsdale's podcast includes Rick Klausner, a scientist who founded Grail, which designed a blood test that detects 50 types of cancers. But it's not available to us yet because the Federal Trade Commission blocked a merger with the company that would be selling it. "This could be saving over 1,000 lives a month right now by detecting early cancers! " complains Lonsdale. He interviews Maureen Hillenmey- er, founder of Hexagon Bio, which turns fungi into drugs that fight can- cer. But of course, those drugs may need 10 years to get approval from the Food and Drug Administration. "It definitely does not need to be 10 years! " says Lonsdale. "Competition of ideas is very important. When I a.m. in charge of the federal government, I'm going to have the FDA compete against itself and have multiple com- peting agencies." Will he be in charge of the govern- ment? Probably not. Would competi- tion make bureaucrats less slow and sleepy? Probably yes. "We're living in one of the most ex- citing times," concludes Lonsdale. "The quality of life we have even during COVID is so much higher than anything humanity experienced, and it's only going to get better." I'm glad such optimists exist. John Stossel is author of "Give Me a Break: How I Exposed Hucksters, Cheats, and Scam Artists and Became the Scourge of the Liberal Media." Back in early 2016, when Lar- ry Kudlow and I suggested that then-presidential candidate Donald Trump propose a 20 percent busi- ness tax rate for U.S. companies (down from the highest in the world rate of 35 percent), he enthusiastical- ly endorsed this "America First" poli- cy — not because he loved corporate America but because he realized that as long as small and large American companies were paying the highest tax rates, jobs and factories would continue to move offshore. We argued that the biggest benefi- ciaries would be American workers who would have access to more jobs and higher wages. The liberal economists we debated on this disparaged the tax reform as "tax cuts for big corporations and the rich." They predicted that it wouldn't work. In 2017, the tax cuts passed with- out a single Democratic vote. Now we would have a real-life scientific experiment on supply-side econom- ics. Do lower tax rates generate more jobs and a better economy for all? The issue isn't just academic. Pres- ident Joe Biden's folks — the very same people who said the tax cuts wouldn't work — now want to largely repeal the Trump tax reductions. But here is what hap- pened: By the end of 2019, and right before the COVID-19 pandem- ic, the U.S. had argu- ably one of the most prosperous economies ever, especially for those at the bot- tom of the economic ladder and for minorities. Not only did unemploy- ment and poverty rates drop to near their lowest levels ever, but Black and Hispanic people saw the biggest in- come gains. I remember visiting Trump in the Oval Office and telling him that the tax cuts had worked better than any of us had predicted. He sat back and said in his usual grandiose fashion, "Not more than I predicted." In hind- sight, it seems clear that the tax cuts played a big role in cushioning the blow from the pandemic and the business shutdowns. But what about the tax cuts for the rich mantra from the Biden and Nan- cy Pelosi crowd? Wrong! The Congressional Budget Office just report- ed that federal corporate income tax receipts were up 75 percent this year to a record $ 370 billion. That brought total federal rev- enue to over $4 trillion, over 17 percent of gross domestic product for the first time in 20 years. We also have learned that the share of taxes paid by the richest 1 percent of people such as Mark Zuck- erberg, Bill Gates, LeBron James and Warren Buffett rose from 39 per- cent to almost 42 percent of the total. In other words, the rich paid more. The irrefutable conclusion is that the scientific experiment in how to grow an economy worked. Big time. Yet those on the left who are always Foreign policy is most effective when it strikes a balance between idealism and realism that gains the support of a majority of the Ameri- can people. When foreign policy be- comes either too idealistic or too "re- alistic," public support wanes. Consider A fghanistan. Today it stands as an embarrassing failure of U.S. policy. The more idealistic ele- ments of the mission there had been drastically scaled back since 2009. Yet even a decade later, the Ameri- can public still thought we were try- ing to build a liberal democratic so- ciety with a massive deployment of military force—a glaringly unreal- istic formula. An outstanding example of a suc- cessful U.S. policy is how President Ronald Reagan ended the Cold War. He embarked on a massive military buildup—including SDI, the Strate- gic Defense Initiative—which the Soviet Union could not match. It forced them to sue for peace. What, then, should our policy be toward the Republic of China on Tai- wan, a democracy, a long-time trad- ing partner, and a critical ally during World War II? In 1979, the U.S. offi- cially recognized Communist China and de-recognized the ROC. Since then, the United States has contin- ued to deal with both governments, albeit in different capacities. The policy was cod- ified with the Taiwan Relations Act, which pledges the Unit- ed States to preserve "extensive, close and friendly commercial and cultural contacts" with Taiwan. It also re- quires Washington to make weapons available to Taiwan that will enable it to "maintain a suf- ficient self-defense capability." The law also obligates the presi- dent to promptly inform Congress "of any threat to Taiwan's security or the social or economic system." Should that happen, he, together with Congress, decide upon an ap- propriate response. That moment may soon be upon us. The tension between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait has accelerated in recent weeks as Chinese Presi- dent Xi Jinping declared that reuni- fication must happen and will hap- pen. Although he added the word "peacefully" in his address, Mr. Xi subsequently approved extensive military ex- ercises near Taiwan, in- cluding the flight of 149 military aircraft into Tai- wanese airspace. In re- ply, Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen reiterated that Taiwan has no inter- est in being subsumed by Communist China. The looming Taiwan crisis presents the U.S. with the opportunity to follow a bal- anced policy of idealism and realism. On the idealistic side, Taiwan war- rants our backing because it is a vi- brant democracy. It was a stalwart ally during World War II, engaging an estimated one million Japanese troops who otherwise would have de- fended Japan in the event of a U.S. in- vasion. In addition, we should be con- cerned with the fate of the 24 million people of Taiwan if they should be- come vassals of China's expanding authoritarian regime. On the realistic side, the U.S. de- pends on Taiwan to supply two- Race for the Cure By Star Parker Give Me a Break John Stossel Continued on page 7 Continued on page 7 Eye on the Economy By Stephen Moore Taxing America first Heritage Viewpoint By Lee Edwards Points to Ponder By Rev. Curtis Bond U.S. must defend Taiwan's independence What does history and the Bible teach us? Continued on page 7 Continued on page 7 Court TEACH