Somebody won the big Powerball lottery on a ticket sold in North Carolina. According to CNN, “A stack of $100 bills totaling $344.6 million would be taller than the 1,063-foot Eiffel Tower in Paris, the Powerball website says.” Ridiculous, I say. A stack of $100 bills totaling $344.6 Million would fall over long before it got that high. In case you won, and are wondering, taking that prize in $100 bills, before taxes would also weigh around 7,600 pounds, depending on how dirty the bills were.
President Trump says he’s going to impose tariffs on goods coming from Mexico if that country’s government doesn’t stop the illegal immigrants coming from Mexico to the US. As far as I know, right now the only country that spends a lot of effort and money trying to keep people from leaving is North Korea. Maybe China spends some effort to stem outflow too, but not nearly as much as North Korea. The last country to make a big deal of it was East Germany.
President Trump seems to think that tariffs imposed on Mexico and China are paid by those countries. No, they’re not. Maybe if we raise tariffs it costs some exporters in those countries some of their business, but companies that import their goods to the USA are the ones that pay the tariffs. Then, they pass the increased cost on to we the consumers. So, we’re the ones who pay.
Plus, tariffs are generally reciprocal. If you raise tariffs on my country, my country is very likely to raise tariffs on yours. That explains why China has raised tariffs on soybeans to the extent that Chinese importers have stopped buying soybeans from US farmers.
The first Democratic presidential debates of the 2020 campaign will be held toward the end of this month in Miami. How many candidates are there now? 23, I think. I’m not exactly sure a debate among 23 candidates (or whoever many of them wind up qualifying to take part), taking two days, will be scintillating.
In Great Britain, the contest for the next prime minister is on too, but will finish up a lot sooner. Unless I’ve lost count, there are only 11 candidates for that job. But Britain has about 20 percent of the US population, so that’s proportionally much worse. LBC, a British talk radio station, has a brilliant programming idea. One day each week, their afternoon-drive host is taking calls about the race. But he’s not asking callers who they support. He wants to know what they would do if they were prime minister.
ETA: I stand corrected. At last count there are 13 candidates for British prime minister.
So, what would you do if you were President?
