Recommended Reading – Tuesday, February 28th

Feb 28, 2012 by Jason

Supreme Court Puts The Final Nail In The Coffin of Religious Freedom (National Post)

“God speaks plainly; Supreme Court justices speak legalese. They’re different languages. If one looks for an innocent explanation of why the Ottawa Nine ruled as they did last Friday in S.L. v. Commission scolaire des Chênes, this may be it — though the real reasons are probably a little more complex or sinister.

Without blinking, the full court held that it’s okay for Quebec’s education minister to compel believers to describe God to their children, not as they see him, but as non-believers do. It does no injury to their Charter guarantee of religious freedom.

Hmm. What exactly is religious freedom, if it isn’t teaching God to your children as you see him? The justices didn’t say.”  (Click here for the rest of the article)

Have We Reached The Tipping Point on Abortion?  (MercatorNet)

“From 1917 to 1991, for more than 80 years, Russia was ruled by an ideology of oppression which paraded as a beacon of liberation. But within 40 years, the masquerade was over, even if the misery remained. Novels like Dr Zhivago, by Boris Pasternak; One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn; or Life and Fate, by Vasily Grossman, exposed the Soviet system for what it was, a band of thuggish mummified old toads lying to the people they governed. It took another 30 years to shake off Communism despots, but their ideology was dead.

Events last week suggest that we may have reached a similar tipping point with the ideology of abortion. Nearly 40 years ago Roe v. Wade pressed a button which opened the floodgates in the US and around the world. Now legalised abortion is being exposed as a republic of lies governed by another band of toads.” (Click here for the rest of the article)

The Perversion of Rights  (National Review)

“For most of the last five years, I’ve been battling Canada’s so-called “human rights” commissions, and similar thought police in Britain, Europe, and elsewhere. As I write this, I’m in Australia, to talk up the cause of free speech, which is, alas, endangered even in that great land. In that sense, the “latest hot topic” — the clash between Obama and American Catholics — is, in fact, a perfect distillation of the broader struggle in the West today. When it comes to human rights, I go back to 1215 and Magna Carta — or, to give it its full name, Magna CartaLibertatum. My italics: I don’t think they had them back in 1215. But they understood that “libertatum” is the word that matters. Back then, “human rights” were rights of humans, of individuals — and restraints upon the king: They’re the rights that matter: limitations upon kingly power. Eight centuries later, we have entirely inverted the principle: “Rights” are now gifts that a benign king graciously showers upon his subjects — the right to “free” health care, to affordable housing, the “right of access to a free placement service” (to quote the European Constitution’s “rights” for workers). The Democratic National Committee understands the new school of rights very well: In its recent video, Obama’s bureaucratic edict is upgraded into the “right to contraception coverage at no additional cost.” And, up against a “human right” as basic as that, how can such peripheral rights as freedom of conscience possibly compete?

The transformation of “human rights” from restraints upon state power into a pretext for state power is nicely encapsulated in the language of Article 14 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, which states that everyone has the right “to receive free compulsory education.” Got that? You have the human right to be forced to do something by the government.”  (Click here for the rest of the article)

Give Me Free Stuff  (Gods of the Copybook)

“The numbers here are indeed shocking. University tuition in la belle province is currently averaging about $2,200 a year. Much lower than in other provinces. Under the heartless cuts of the noted right-wing extremist Jean Charest, that figure threatens to rise to an astronomical $3,800 a year. These increases are set to be implemented over the next five years, so most of the current students will never pay the full $3,800.

This being a right-wing blog let’s do a small amount of math. Not too much. It’s early in the morning and Publius has to go work soon. Now the minimum wage in Quebec is $9.65 an hour. Not quite the princely $10.25 in Dalton’s McGuinty’s Ontario, but it’s something. So if we take $3,800 and divide by $9.65 we find the number 393.78. That would be the number of hours you would have to work at minimum wage to pay for a year’s tuition. That’s about 10 weeks working full time. Sure there are required deductions you need to factor in, but this is a rough estimate. Not a negligible sum, nor an extravagant one either. Universities tend to end their final exams in mid-May, starting up classes again in early September. That’s more than 10 weeks.

A disproportionate number of university students come from middle class homes. Many of those homes have two incomes, two cars, internet connections and flat screen TVs. University tuition is not means tested in Quebec and special bursaries are granted to those with low-incomes. Demanding cheap university tuition is essentially a bribe to middle class voters, charging them less than they can pay, while charging poor students perhaps more than they can afford”  (Click here for the rest of the article)

The ‘Fairness’ Fraud  (Thomas Sowell)

“During a recent Fox News Channel debate about the Obama administration’s tax policies, Democrat Bob Beckel raised the issue of “fairness.”

He pointed out that a child born to a poor woman in the Bronx enters the world with far worse prospects than a child born to an affluent couple in Connecticut.

No one can deny that. The relevant question, however, is: How does allowing politicians to take more money in taxes from successful people, to squander in ways that will improve their own reelection prospects, make anything more “fair” for others?

Even if additional tax revenue all went to poor single mothers — which it will not — the multiple problems of children raised by poor single mothers would not be cured by throwing money at them. Indeed, the skyrocketing of unwed motherhood began when government welfare programs began throwing money at teenage girls who got pregnant.

Children born and raised without fathers are a major problem to society and to themselves. There is nothing “fair” about increasing the number of such children.”  (Click here for the rest of the article)

Recommended Reading – Friday, February 24th

Feb 24, 2012 by Jason

The Deadliest Fries (Gods of the Copybook)

“More than nanny statism, or medical fascism, the War on French Fries is really a war on free will. In the above quote Dr Campbell defends regulating salt on the same grounds that governments impose speed limits. The term you are looking for is chutzpah. There is not the slightest equivalence, whatever the good doctor might say, between hurling two tons of metal and plastic down a road at high speed and quietly munching on poutine. The doctor is hoping you won’t notice that non sequiturbecause he’s wearing his magic white lab coat. Look at the stethoscope children! It’s shiny!

We see here a glimpse into the mind of Dr Campbell, as well as certain sub-regions of the bureaucratic and medical establishment. No longer is government’s role to protect you from what other people do to you, but what you do to yourself. Since spelling it out that way would smack of paternalism, the argument is instead twisted into the language of government protecting you from others. It is the job of state to defend its citizens from force, fraud and deep fried goodness.

Having attacked our right to keep government out of the kitchens and fast food joints of the nation, Dr Campbell proceeds to undermine the English language. Peace is war. Freedom is slavery. Me stuffing my face with chocolate is assault and battery on the part of the chocolate companies. Not content with these Orwellian distortions, Dr Campbell also demands that junk food be declared a pathogen.” (Click here for the rest of the article)

University students borrowing their way into unemployment (National Post)

“According to a recent survey of what jobs are in demand, and what students are studying in university, many, if not most, of today’s university students are spending good money — probably borrowed money at that — to get themselves a university degree that will prove essentially useless to them the instant they graduate.

…

During the Occupy Toronto movement, I met with a lot of young adults, who did not meet the typical stereotype of the left-leaning protester. Many told stories of having always followed the best advice of people they trusted — parents, teachers, guidance counsellors — only to find themselves overeducated, underexperienced, with no job prospects and mounting bills. They felt betrayed, and that was driving their anger. In that, they had a point. And just last week I spoke to a group of university students who will soon be graduating. They are realizing now that their arts degrees might not be enough to land a job, but they’re already paid for. Perhaps this explains the rising trendof Canadian college courses for a particular skill or trade being attended by students who have already paid for a university degree that gave them no competitive edge in the job market.” (Click here for the rest of the article)

Harper needs to end the special pension deal for government employees (Canadian Taxpayers Federation)

“taxpayers annually contribute $102.7 million to the pensions of MPs and Senators. This number dwarfs the mere $4.4 million paid in by the politicians themselves, a ratio of $23.30 in taxpayer funding for every $1 paid by the people who will receive the pensions.

Many backbench MPs defeated in last year’s election started collecting $33,000 in annual pension at age 55 for just seven years of service.

While not quite as generous as the politicians, even senior government bureaucrats have gotten in on the act. Taxpayers put $80 million into their pension plan in 2010, while senior bureaucrats contributed $11 million, a staggering $7.27 to $1 ratio.

When it comes to pensions, the best thing we can say about MPs, Senators and senior bureaucrats is that there aren’t too many of them: relatively speaking, they’re a small problem. Fattening up their pensions cost taxpayers less than $200 million annually. The pensions of the entire federal government payroll, on the other hand, are a big problem.

How big a problem? The federal public service pension plan had 561,395 members in 2010 – 317,088 active members and 179,670 retirees collecting pension. Newly retired government workers collected an average of $35,644 annually, retiring as early as 55. Total pension payments were $5 billion.” (Click here for the rest of the article)

 Children of the State (Human Events)

“It’s no coincidence that popular culture has come to venerate perpetual adolescence. Thirty-year-old students and forty-year-olds living in Mom’s attic have become more common. Relatively little outrage greeted ObamaCare’s declaration that 26-year-olds are officially “children.” Marriage and parenthood are under attack in countless ways. The great project to mainstream behavior earlier generations would have regarded as shameful is nearly complete. For that matter, shame itself has been largely abolished. We are endlessly told that feeling good is the highest virtue, while only uptight, repressed people would waste time feeling ashamed of themselves, for anything. We used to have a different word for such people: adults.

One of the defining characteristics of adults is their willingness to take responsibility for their children. We are the stewards of the future, which our children will inherit. But today’s kids are born with nearly fifty thousand dollars in debt strapped to their backs. We’ve run up debts they will never be able to repay. We’re on course to saddle them with a debt so huge that one hundred percent of their public money will be tied up merely financing the interest payments. That is not the behavior of an adult nation.

One thing can be said with certainty about childhood: it ends. The realities we have been persuaded to ignore are catching up with us. Confronted with a chart that showed our national debt skyrocketing to ludicrous heights by 2075, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner snorted that it might as well have included projections for the year 3000. House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan replied that there was no point in taking things any further, because “the economy, according to the CBO, shuts down in 2027 on this path.” That’s what it sounds like when an adult sternly reprimands a snot-nosed child. We will not survive another four years of “leadership” by snot-nosed children, suited only for the government of infants.” (Click here for the rest of the article)

Math Matters (Townhall.com)

“If one manages to graduate from high school without the rudiments of algebra, geometry and trigonometry, there are certain relatively high-paying careers probably off-limits for life — such as careers in architecture, chemistry, computer programming, engineering, medicine and certain technical fields. For example, one might meet all of the physical requirements to be a fighter pilot, but he’s grounded if he doesn’t have enough math to understand physics, aerodynamics and navigation. Mathematical ability helps provide the disciplined structure that helps people to think, speak and write more clearly. In general, mathematics is an excellent foundation and prerequisite for study in all areas of science and engineering.” (Click here for the rest of the article)

Recommended Reading – Tuesday, February 21st

Feb 21, 2012 by Jason

Give Keynes The Boot (National Post)

“Since the beginning of the economic crisis in 2007, Keynesianism is back into fashion. One of John Maynard Keynes’s central ideas is that when you find yourself in a crisis or a recession, the best solution is to increase government spending. Government spending will sustain overall demand, put everyone back to work and kick-start the economy. The New Democrats and the Liberals are strong proponents of this theory.

Even if you already have a high level of accumulated debt, it doesn’t matter. The solution to too much spending is more spending. The solution to high levels of debt is more debt.

There is something fundamentally wrong with that.” (Click here for the rest of the article)

Our One-Night Stand With Freedom (National Post)

“The world had a one-night stand with freedom. She came in the late 19th century and went in the early 20th. Even the citizens of semi-constitutional monarchies, such as Kaiser Wilhelm’s Germany, were freer in the pre-World War I era than the income- and consumption-taxed inhabitants of the European Union are today. They were certainly freer in terms of individual expression, enterprise and mobility than the photo-ID’d, hate-crime-muzzled, gun-registered, dog-tail-length-regulated, smoke-freed and body-searched citizens of the interventionist democracies are in our times, Canada included.

Examples? How many do you want? In the narcosis of “progress,” the liberal state clings to its dogmas, sacrileges, holy things and taboos. It guards them as jealously and enforces them as rigidly as the Taliban guards and enforces its version of Islam. Maybe it doesn’t enforce them as cruelly — maybe.

Exaggeration? You decide. In the year 1300, a period we call the Dark Ages, a pig was tried for blasphemy in France. In the year 2000, 200 years into the Age of Enlightenment, on the threshold of the 21st century, in the United States of America, the authorities charged a six-year-old boy with sexual harassment for kissing a six-year-old girl.” (Click here for the rest of the article)

The Welfare State and Freedom:  A Mismatch (National Review)

“For a while, the success of Scandinavian welfare states seemed to disprove the notion that high taxes, generous benefits, and a large public sector inevitably lead people down the road to serfdom. Indeed, by intellectuals such as Francis Fukuyama and celebrities such as Oprah Winfrey, Denmark has been hailed as a model state, successfully combining freedom and prosperity with “social justice.” But now, the combination of a debt crisis, an aging population addicted to public welfare benefits, one and a half decades of low growth rates, and increasing competition from countries in rapid development is revealing the dark underbelly of welfarism. As a result, the friendly compassionate face of the Danish state is increasingly being replaced with intrusive measures that were unthinkable just a decade ago. It is not an overstatement to say that the balance between the state and the individual has been shifted decisively in favor of the state. A few non-exhaustive examples may help illustrate how far down Hayek’s road Denmark has gone.

It was recently revealed that Danish tax authorities have demanded that travel agencies disclose the identities of customers who have spent more than $8,000 on vacations. This information is then compared with their tax returns in order to determine whether such vacations have been paid for with undeclared income. The Danish tax authorities also have the right to demand information from telecommunications companies about when, where, and how Danish citizens have used their mobile phones. Unlike the Danish Intelligence Services, the country’s tax authorities need no probable cause or court-ordered warrant to force the disclosure of such sensitive information. In other words, a suspected terrorist has more legal protection than the ordinary Danish taxpayer. This is far from an isolated example. Currently, 235 different laws and regulations allow various public authorities access to businesses and private homes without a warrant. Public authorities also have full and unhindered access to certain retirees’ financial information, and Danish pensioners have to inform their municipality when they leave the EU for more than three months as well as when they return.

While abroad, pensioners risk being spied on by Danish “control teams,” which operate in countries such as Thailand, Turkey, and Spain in order to investigate whether Danes abroad have undeclared assets. Danes should not be surprised if they are met at the airport by an employee of the Danish Pension Agency who demands to see their boarding card as well as their social-security number. Again, no probable cause, reasonable suspicion, or warrant is required. Meanwhile, the vast majority of Danish municipalities have set up hotlines or websites encouraging citizens to anonymously inform on their neighbors if they suspect them of receiving benefits to which they are not entitled.” (Click here for the rest of the article)

Economic Recovery Without the Pain of De-Leveraging (The Daily Reckoning)

“The origin of the word ‘carnival’ means ‘take out the meat.’ Christians are supposed to give up meat for the 40 days preceding the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ, from Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday. Fat Tuesday, or Mardi Gras, gives them a last chance to let loose…to eat and drink heartily…before the Lenten fast begins.

Pleasure is a greater temptation than pain, for most people. And the feast of Carnival was always much more agreeable than the abstinence and prayer of Lent that came after it. So it won’t surprise you, Dear Reader, that people have tended to enjoy the debauch of Mardi Gras and forget the penance altogether.

Everybody wants the resurrection; nobody wants the crucifixion. Everybody wants recovery; nobody wants de-leveraging. Everybody wants to be born, but nobody wants to die.

John Maynard Keynes should have noticed. His idea was that the feds would run surpluses in the fat years and deficits in the lean years. But it ran onto the jagged shoals of human nature…the same animal spirits that animated the crowds outside our window last night. It doesn’t take much self-discipline to run a deficit or to celebrate Carnival. Running a surplus…or fasting…is another matter. Carnival is easy. Lent is hard.”  (Click here for the rest of the article)

Second Thoughts on Old Age Security

Feb 20, 2012 by Jason

In 1960 the English version of Wilhelm Ropke’s ‘A Humane Economy’ was published. In that book he shared the following account to demonstrate the effect that the welfare state has on personal saving, or rather dissaving. In conversing with the manager of a local mining operation Ropke learned the following about one of the older mine workers:

“The old man had put aside a tidy sum for his and his wife’s old age, but suddenly he decided to blow it all on a luxury television set and other things. Surprised, the manager asked why he had suddenly changed his mind and was spending all his savings; the old miner replied that the welfare state was now taking care of him anyways and there was no reason why he should deny himself the immediate enjoyment of what he had set aside for his old age.”

If we consider the facts from the last 40 years or so, it seems that many in Canada have adopted the attitude of this miner living in 1960’s Germany – “why save for tomorrow when I can enjoy my earnings today…for the state will make sure I won’t be destitute in my old age.”

Recommended Reading – Thursday, February 16th

Feb 16, 2012 by Jason

Canadians Vote With Their Feet (Frontier Centre for Public Policy)  

“People move to make themselves better off and to offer a brighter future to their children. Thus is the world a giant social science experiment, in which competing social and political systems vie for the loyalty of their populations.

And while it may be fashionable to say that no society is better than another, where people are free to move, they make value judgments every day about the superiority and inferiority of societies and their institutions.

Those that promote human welfare and dignity, that enjoy the rule of law, legal equality, protect property and promote enterprise thrive compared to those where the powerful may exploit the weak without let or hindrance.

In this competition, Canada is a winner. We bring together in one place almost all the practices, beliefs and institutions that allow people to build a better life for themselves. The immigrants jostling at our door are voting for the superiority of Canada compared to their home countries.

It is not only countries that are in competition for people, however. Within Canada we are also running such a gigantic social science experiment. ” (Click here for the rest of the article)

Should We Regulate Sugar Like We Regulate Alcohol or Tobacco? (Art Carden)

‘The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary. -H.L. Mencken’

“Like a lot of people, I’m increasingly concerned about an expanding waistline and lifestyle-related illnesses. I want my kids to live long, happy, healthy lives, and I want them to develop good eating habits. Is regulating sugar the way we regulate alcohol and tobacco the right way to go about it? Some say yes. I say no. Read on to find out why.” (Click here for the rest of the article)

A Debate about Contraception Or Religious Freedom? No, a Debate about Economic Choice (Cato Institute)

“Lost in the uproar over the Obama administration’s requirement that religiously affiliated organizations provide employees with insurance that covers contraceptives, including some abortifacients, is the fact that this rule is simply one more symptom of the fundamental problem with Obamacare. That problem is not papered over by the administration’s latest “compromise.”

First, let’s be clear: This issue never had anything whatsoever to do with women’s health. There is nothing that prevents any woman who wants contraceptives from purchasing them. No one is threatening to take that right away, and no one should.

The debate does not even have anything to do with whether or not women can get insurance that covers contraceptives. Most insurance plans already do so, and when they don’t, women can purchase a rider that provides the additional coverage.

What this debate was really about is who pays for that coverage. And as much as some would like to obscure it, there is a difference between having the freedom to buy something for yourself and forcing someone else to pay for it.”  (Click here for the rest of the article)

Homeschooling and Educational Choice (Foundation for Economic Education)

“Several objections are raised against parents’ homeschooling their children. Perhaps the most frequent contention is that it robs the child of opportunities for proper socialization and therefore leaves them unprepared to interact with not only children their own age but also adults. Most homeschoolers, however, including ourselves, are involved regularly in myriad outside-the-home social situations. Church youth group activities, scouting, various sports leagues, and a variety of clubs offer sufficient opportunities for socialization. Experience reveals, in fact, that in many cases home-schooled children are actually better able to interrelate with their peers and older folk as well. Many support groups are available among homeschooling families to provide for social activities as well as for opportunities for public performances by the children. Our girls regularly take part in plays, recitations, and work demonstrations sponsored by the support group to which we belong.

Perhaps the second most frequently voiced objection to homeschooling is that untrained parents are not certified professional educators; therefore, they are incapable of adequately teaching their own children. Beside the fact that state certification has never been a guarantee of teaching ability or professional qualification, there is much that can be said to counter this charge. Not even the best classroom teacher, with from 15 to 30 or more students, can know any individual child as well as do his parents, let alone provide that child with the individual care and attention he often needs.

The homeschooling parent, on the other hand, has an almost ideal teacher-student ratio of from I:I to 1:5, thus permitting a great deal of individual attention. Former Secretary of Education William J. Bennett wrote in The Devaluing of America, “When serious teachers are asked the single most important improvement that could be made in education, they invariably say greater involvement and cooperation on the part of parents.” One could not ask for a higher degree of parental involvement than homeschooling provides for the child.”  (Click here for the rest of the article)

Recommended Reading – Tuesday, February 14th

Feb 14, 2012 by Jason

Waiting for a health-care crisis (Macdonald-Laurier Institute)

“The challenges facing our healthcare system are well known. Canada spends a lot, but doesn’t get a lot. Our health care spending is some 11.4 per cent of GDP; that ranks us sixth among the industrialized countries with universal health care. Yet Canada ranks poorly on many key measures, such as access to doctors and medical technologies such as MRIs. We also fare poorly on wait times for medically necessary surgeries and procedures compared to other industrial countries. Thus, contrary to a widespread misconception, health-care in Canada is not “underfunded,” but is rather “underperforming.”

The problem is daunting. Canadians, however, have supported difficult reforms in the recent past (such as balancing the budget and fixing the CPP in the ’90s) when political leaders have made a strong and reasoned case for them. The contentious and often emotional nature of debate regarding heath care means reform has so far eluded us. The hard reality, however, is that we cannot manage the costs of an aging population without fundamentally reforming – and improving – Canadian health care.” (Click here for the rest of the article)

Recommended Reading – Thursday, February 9th

Feb 9, 2012 by Jason

Why Does President Obama Dislike Freedom Of Conscience (Cato Institute)

“Authoritarian liberalism has taken over Obama administration policy. People must be forced to accept anything and everything in the name of tolerance. The only valid belief is no belief. Acting on one’s faith must be punished.

Such is the impact of the new Department of Health and Human Services ruling on birth control (as well as abortifacients, or “morning after” pills, and sterilization procedures). Even religious organizations must provide policies offering full coverage with no shared payment. Never mind if the people involved believe that contraception is morally wrong.” (Click here for the rest of the article)

Also Recommended:

The Real Trouble With the Birth Control Mandate

Obama and the Dictatorship of Relativism

The Gospel According to Obama

Global Warming Hysteria: Another Prediction Bites the Dust (Secondhand Smoke)

“Oh, this isn’t good.  Those Himalayan glaciers that were supposed to have disappeared by 2035 according to the IPCC (since retracted as nonsense), haven’t even shrunk in ten years.  From the Guardian story:

The world’s greatest snow-capped peaks, which run in a chain from the Himalayas to Tian Shan on the border of China and Kyrgyzstan, have lost no ice over the last decade, new research shows. The discovery has stunned scientists, who had believed that around 50bn tonnes of meltwater were being shed each year and not being replaced by new snowfall.

And another one (prediction) bites the dust.

Oh, and the Arctic melt ain’t what it was projected to be either, to the tune of 30% less than thought. From the U.S. News and World Report:

The team used data from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment satellite, which was launched as a joint project between NASA and Germany in 2002. The GRACE satellite measures gravity, which is related to mass, in 20 distinct regions worldwide. Wahr says that gives the team more accurate estimates, because previous teams had to measure ice loss at “a few easily accessible glaciers” and then extrapolate it to the 200,000 glaciers worldwide.

As projection after dire prediction has failed to materialize, the credibility of the sector continues to plummet, and for good reason.” (Click here for the rest of the article)

Related, and highly recommended – Understanding the Global Warming Debate

The Secret Agreement That Revolutionized China (Marginal Revolution)

” Farmers from 18 households in Xiaogang signed a secret life-and-death agreement ending collective farming with their thumbprints. (From Cowen and Tabarrok, Modern Principles: Macroeconomics)

The Great Leap Forward was a great leap backward – agricultural land was less productive in 1978 than it had been in 1949 when the communists took over.  In 1978, however, farmers in the village of Xiaogang held a secret meeting.  The farmers agreed to divide the communal land and assign it to individuals – each farmer had to produce a quota for the government but anything he or she produced in excess of the quota they would keep.  The agreement violated government policy and as a result the farmers also pledged that if any of them were to be killed or jailed the others would raise his or her children until the age of 18. [The actual agreement is shown at right.]

The change from collective property rights to something closer to private property rights had an immediate effect, investment, work effort and productivity increased.  “You can’t be lazy when you work for your family and yourself,” said one of the farmers.

Word of the secret agreement leaked out and local bureaucrats cut off Xiaogang from fertilizer, seeds and pesticides.  But amazingly, before Xiaogang could be stopped, farmers in other villages also began to abandon collective property. In Beijing, Mao Zedong was dead and a new set of rulers, seeing the productivity improvements, decided to let the experiment proceed.” (Click here for the rest of the article)

Data in New World Bank Report Shows That Large Public Sectors Reduce Economic Growth (Cato Institute)

“When Ronald Reagan said that big government undermined the economy, some people dismissed his comments because of his philosophical belief in liberty.

And when I discuss my work on the economic impact of government spending, I often get the same reaction.

This is why it’s important that a growing number of establishment outfits are slowly but surely coming around to the same point of view.

• The European Central Bank published a study showing “…a significant negative effect of the size of government on growth.”
• A study by two Harvard economists found that “large adjustments in fiscal policy, if based on well-targeted spending cuts, have often led to expansions.”
• The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development noted in recent research that welfare programs are economically destructive because they lure people into dependency because “net disposable income would increase despite putting in fewer hours.”
• A study from the International Monetary Fund concluded that “Cuts to pension and health entitlements had the most beneficial effect on economic growth.” (Click here for the rest of the article)

Recommended Reading – Tuesday, February 7th

Feb 7, 2012 by Jason

The State’s Protection Racket: George Jonas (National Post)

“When defending their monopoly to defend us, the authorities often shoot themselves in the foot. In Saturday’s National Post, Rex Murphy recalled the case of a shopkeeper in Toronto’s Chinatown who was charged with kidnapping for nabbing a shoplifter and holding him for the police. The story had a happy ending: The lawmen looked as foolish in court as they deserved to look, and the shopkeeper was acquitted.

Undaunted, though, the authorities press on. Currently, prosecutors are making fools of themselves over a citizen named Ian Thomson, whose warning shots scared away three men trying to firebomb his farm house near Port Colborne, Ont. He fired in the air; the assailants fled, and no one was hurt except the feelings of the authorities.

The householder, a licensed gun owner and firearms instructor, broke no law. Still, miffed by a citizen’s display of self-reliance, the wounded minions of the state hauled him into court for — guess what? — the unsafe storage of firearms.” (Click here for the rest of the article)

Why Personal Privacy is Now Public Enemy #1 (The Daily Reckoning)

“Mr. Allami was arrested last month while picking up his 7 year-old son from school in Quebec. During the next 24 hours, while he was being detained, a team of police officers (heroes/patriots/national treasures) stormed Mr. Allami’s home, telling his wife she was “married to a terrorist.” Meanwhile, Mr. Allami’s colleagues, who were on their way to a conference in the Big Apple were also detained at the US border for hours due to their “connection” with Mr. Allami.

And what had Mr. Allami done to deserve this, the swift hand of justice? The Canadian Press provides the shocking details of his master plan:

On Jan. 21, 2011, Allami sent a text message to colleagues urging them to “blow away” the competition at a trade show in New York City.

According to Mr. Allami’s lawsuit, “The treatment of the plaintiff and his wife was cavalier, illegal, aggressive, accusatory, and in violation of their most fundamental rights.” (Click here for the rest of the article)

Forfeiture Laws Threaten Property Rights (Frontier Centre for Public Policy)

“In Canada, as well as other jurisdictions, when it comes to criminal activity there are threats to property rights that are not immediately obvious. Civil asset forfeiture or non-conviction based forfeiture is a legal technique through which governments using the courts benefit from property supposedly used in unlawful activity. It is a civil proceeding executed through civil court, and is distinct from proceedings in the (federal) Criminal Code where at least a criminal conviction is required before one goes after property.

The central problem is that the standard of proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt in criminal processes does not apply in these cases. Civil forfeiture only requires a provincial government to prove that the asset was more likely than not, on a balance of probabilities, used or obtained through crime.

One B.C.-based criminal defense counsel wrote, “Civil forfeiture threatens to be employed in situations where the connection between the crime and the property is tenuous, disproportionate (meaning the asset is used only occasionally or in small part for the commission of crime), or where the state wants to get back at individuals it isn’t able to convict in a criminal court.” (Click here for the rest of the article)

“

Government intervention and rising house prices

Feb 4, 2012 by Jason

Last Wednesday (Jan.25th) an article was published in the Regina Leader Post discussing the issue of unaffordable housing in Saskatchewan.   The article pointed out that house prices, when measured as ratio of household earnings vs. the price of home, have increased significantly in the last 5...

Recommended Reading – Thursday, February 2nd 2012

Feb 2, 2012 by Jason

Ontario’s “pay more, get less” healthcare sytem (Fraser Institute)

“Facing a $16-billion deficit, the Ontario government announced it will stop funding a handful of medical services currently covered by the public health insurer. This should come as no surprise, as it has become the norm in Ontario as well as other Canadian provinces. This is because cost-containment strategies such as rationing access to medical services are intrinsic characteristics of single-payer health insurance.

When governments are faced with budget constraints – i.e. a huge provincial deficit – along with unsustainable growth in health spending, it doesn’t have many options. Consequently, since Ontarians are prohibited from purchasing private insurance for medically necessary services – the breadth of insured medical services is at the mercy of Ontario’s politicians.

It’s time to move away from this fragmented,  highly politicized, and centrally planned financing scheme, and allow Ontarians to take control of their own health care by removing the prohibition on private health insurance.” (Click here for the rest of the article)

How Much Does the Safety Net Help The Poor? (The Independent Institute)

“The right sees the poor as getting all and more than they deserve from big government, from the taxpayers, and so left-liberal complaints about the plight of the poor must be ignoring how much the government has already done to help those on the bottom rung. The left, on the other hand, has a different variation on the theme: The government must do more—much more—to help the poor (and middle class)—through more activity, more handouts, more regulations, more of a “safety net.”

Yet what’s most significant is what both sides have in common, the view that the government safety net does in fact help the very poor, that the poorest Americans have the most to gain from America’s welfare state, such as it is.

This has got to be the saddest misconception in all the talk about government poor programs. It is a mystery that it persists at all. If you consider the very poorest Americans—those without a place to live, for example—it seems odd to think the government has done so much to help them, when, as a matter of fact, they still do not have a place to live. It is a retreat from reality, and an obscene one at that, to speak of the “very poor” as the ones who have most benefited from America’s “social safety net” when, by definition, the very poor are the ones who have the least despite the decades and trillions spent on the war on poverty.

…

The point here isn’t that the government should spend more to help the poor. The point is that government “safety net” programs are hardly directed toward nor sufficiently help the “very poor.” And this would be consistent with the entire history of the human experience, where the poorest were categorically those with the least access to the spoils of government taxing and spending.” (Click here for the rest of the article)

The Speak Easy Economy (The Daily Reckoning)

“A report from ABC did some sleuthing on educational institutions all over Australia, where government demands that everyone sign up for public school or officially register as home schooling. The report estimates that 50,000 families completely ignore these rules. Some families don’t believe they should have to register. Others have discerned that there is more risk by going legal than schooling underground.

We all know of such cases. We know a person who bakes cheesecakes in her kitchen and sells them to friends — all while ignoring licenses, health regulations, mandates on oven size, zoning laws and all the rest. Her kids help her in exchange for a weekly allowance — an arrangement that looks a lot like child labor. We know of people who have one normal job but also a job on the side making jewelry, designing websites or tutoring. They prefer cash.

All these small anecdotes — and we know many of them — come from every place in the world, especially with the recession’s intense economic pressures. Faced with the choice of complying with government or making a decent life for themselves, people tend to choose the latter. So it is with hundreds of street vendors in San Francisco.” (Click here for the rest of the article)