Thursday, July 14, 2022
‘Christian Nationalism’ is woven deep into America’s fabric
‘Christian Nationalism’ is woven deep into America’s fabric: A few days ago, I encountered for the first time an alarming term in the MSM and blogosphere: “Christian Nationalism” The reason I find it alarming is its enormous potential for controversy and chaos. Obviously “Christian Nationalis...
Biden's mind-blowing Holocaust blunders recall a history of dumb remarks about Israel
Biden's mind-blowing Holocaust blunders recall a history of dumb remarks about Israel: President Biden just landed at Israel's Ben-Gurion Airport. I don't know what jetlag does to anti-vampires like Brandon, who have to go to bed before the sun goes down, but his opening speech on the tarmac at Ben-Gurion Airport was...
Englewood Sun eEdition Article
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Thursday, July 14, 2022| Biden's gas-station attack was embarrassing For Joe Biden, the buck stops with small independent business owners trying to make ends meet. Over the holiday weekend, the president slammed gas stations for the purported sin of not passing along declining oil prices to motorists. Biden took to Twitter to urge "the companies running gas stations and setting prices at the pump" to heed his message: "Bring down the price you are charging at the pump to reflect the cost you're paying for the product." Yes, sir, whatever you say, Mr. President! The United States Oil and Gas Association mockingly recommended that the intern who posted the tweet should sign up for Econ 101, but it's worse than that. Biden has hit the gas stations before on the same grounds. It's hard to know where the economic illiteracy ends and the shameless demagoguery begins. Regardless, it's another indication that the president's approach to inflation is to cast about for scapegoats and villains, no matter how implausible. So-called jawboning, or stern rhetoric directed at industries to get them to bend to the presidential will is nothing new. The most famous example is from John F. Kennedy, who blasted U.S. Steel for raising prices in 1962. JFK's tack was questionable, but at least he was targeting an enormously influential industry that had breached an agreement to hold the line on prices brokered by his administration. Biden, by contrast, is going after the proverbial Liberty Gas Station and Uni-Mart down on Route 134 started by an immigrant couple hoping to send their children to college for the first time. These small-time entrepreneurs have done nothing wrong, except remain in business at a time when the president's anti-oiland- gas policy has backfired spectacularly. As the business newsletter The Hustle explains, the majority of owners operate a single gas station, either as a branded location of a big famous company or on their own. Given that there are more than 100,000 gas stations in the United States, many clustered at the same busy intersections in direct competition with one another, a proprietor hardly has monopoly power to determine prices. Indeed, when Biden says gas stations set prices, he's technically correct in the sense that they post the prices on their iconic signs down to the tenth of a cent. They aren't doing it arbitrarily, though. They all know that if they set a price not justified by broader market forces, customers will simply drive down the street to a more reasonably priced station. Selling gas usually isn't the most lucrative part of the business, either. Gas stations make a very small margin on fuel, with the cost of crude and refining, along with transport and taxes, accounting for almost all of the price at the pump. Stations earn a much higher margin on their sales of drinks and foodstuffs. Biden would be on more solid ground urging gas stations to cut consumers a break on the price of soda and Doritos. Biden maintains that the stations should reduce gas prices since it's a time of "war and global peril." This appeal might make sense if Biden were browbeating gas stations located in Ukraine or Russia. But the U.S. is not at war, and business owners are under no obligation to sell their product at cost or below because Vladimir Putin is trying to dismember Ukraine. Counterintuitively, gas stations tend to be more profitable when prices are declining rather than rising, so they are unlikely simply as a business matter to be engaged in the pricing conspiracy that Biden alleges. Although President Biden considers them worthy of a good kicking, gas stations aren't a growth proposition. The number of stations has markedly declined in recent decades, and the rise of electric cars is putting more pressure on the business model. At least they are actually doing their job in difficult circumstances. The same can't be said of the president. Rich Lowry is on Twitter @RichLowry.  RICH LOWRY National Review |
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Tuesday, July 5, 2022
The Wall Street Journal Digital Replica Article
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| REVIEW & OUTLOOK Bidenomics 101 Business leaders have chalked up President Biden's attacks on oil companies to political cynicism, but maybe they're too generous. His tweet over the weekend ordering gas stations to lower prices betrayed a willful ignorance about the private economy. " My message to the companies running gas stations and setting prices at the pump is simple: this is a time of war and global peril," Mr. Biden tweeted Saturday. "Bring down the price you are charging at the pump to reflect the cost you're paying for the product. And do it now." Had Donald Trump issued such a command as President, the left would have cried "authoritarian." It's embarrassing for the leader of the free world to sound like he's channeling Hugo Chávez. A Chinese state media flack praised Mr. Biden's tweet: "Now US President finally realized that capitalism is all about exploitation. He didn't believe this before." Or maybe he did, and nobody wanted to believe it. You'd think that the President's Ivy League-educated economic advisers would have informed him that large refiners own fewer than 5% of all gas stations in America. More than 60% are operated by an individual or family that owns a single store, and the rest are independently owned chains or grocery stores that sell fuel. Many license brands from refiners. Refiners largely exited the retail business in the 2000s because of thin profit margins. The Energy Information Administration says distribution and marketing made up about 5% of the price of gasoline in May, or about 22 cents a gallon. This covers the cost of freight, labor, utilities, real estate and credit-card fees (which can average more than 10 cents a gallon). Most gas stations make a few cents a gallon in profit and stay in business mainly by selling food and cigarettes. The National Association of Convenience Stores says its members are struggling amid high gas prices because customers are making fewer stops and buying less. More than a quarter of gas stations have closed since the 1990s because they couldn't make the economics work. If retailers were to sell fuel at cost, most would go out of business. Perhaps those owned by large refiners would survive, but they'd be accused of predatory pricing by Mr. Biden's antitrust cops. The President's economic ignorance isn't a one-off. In recent months he has accused oil and gas companies of price gouging and demanded The President doesn't seem to know anything about markets. that they increase production even while his Administration threatens to put them out of business. Mr. Biden doesn't understand that businesses make long-term decisions based on demand expectations and policy signals. Jeff Bezos called the President's weekend tweet "either straight ahead misdirection or a deep misunderstanding of basic market dynamics." They aren't mutually exclusive. Asked about the tweet on Fox News Sunday, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said that "anybody that knows President Biden knows he's plain spoken and he tells exactly what he's thinking in terms that everybody can understand," adding that "we obviously take great exception of the idea that this is somehow misdirection." That isn't reassuring.   |
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