Recommended Reading – Wednesday, September 20th

Sep 19, 2012 by Jason

Downside: After the Returns Stop Diminishing (The Daily Reckoning)

“Economists, as we have mentioned, are not able to measure quality, only quantity. They cannot distinguish a ton of steel used in a battleship from the same quantity rolled out and pressed into automobiles. They cannot tell the difference between a man who is growing wheat from one who is distributing propaganda leaflets.

But from an employment point of view, the Nazi war economy was rarely surpassed. Unemployment went down after 1933…and kept going down for the next 12 years. When the end came, Germany not only had zero unemployed workers. It had an unemployment rate that had gone deeply negative, with millions more people holding jobs than there were people in the German workforce.

How did it achieve this amazing result? Not by increasing the number of real jobs. It did it be reducing the labor force, not only in Germany, but throughout Europe.”  (Click here to read more)

The Truth Behind the Romney “Gaffe” (Laissez Faire Today)

“Cover the kids’ ears! Hide their eyes! Shuffle the weak and frail from the room! A politician running for president has uttered a heresy that brings into question the holy grail of democratic politics. Romney has failed to pretend as if the country is one big happy family that uses our glorious voting system to discover ever better ways of governing ourselves.

Which is to say that Romney made a gaffe.

You know the definition of a political gaffe: inadvertent and unscripted truth. That’s what the supposed scandal of Romney’s off-the-cuff comments amounts to. He told potential donors an unvarnished truth that everyone knows but which is not part of the official civic creed of the land of the free:

“There are 47% of the people who will vote for the president, no matter what… All right, there are 47% who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what…These are people who pay no income tax.”  (Click here to read more)

 Is President Obama’s Depression Coming Our Way? (Cato Institute)

“Barack Obama began his presidency talking about a “New New Deal,” referring of course to his hero Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s policies during the Great Depression. Those policies had the unintended effect of prolonging double-digit unemployment, principally by making it more expensive and difficult for employers to hire people. Whenever something becomes more expensive and difficult, there’s likely to be less of it. In this case, private sector jobs.

Now Obama is presiding over the worst economic recovery since the Great Depression, and if he’s elected for another term, this official “recovery” — with incomes falling faster than during the 2008-2009 recession — could turn into a crushing depression.”  (Click here to read more)

Academic Dishonesty (Walter Williams)

“Many of the nation’s colleges and universities have become cesspools of indoctrination, intolerance, academic dishonesty and an “enlightened” form of racism. This is a decades-old trend. In a 1991 speech, Yale President Benno Schmidt warned: “The most serious problems of freedom of expression in our society today exist on our campuses. The assumption seems to be that the purpose of education is to induce correct opinion rather than to search for wisdom and to liberate the mind.”

Unfortunately, parents, taxpayers and donors have little knowledge of the extent of the dishonesty and indoctrination. There are several clues for telling whether there’s academic dishonesty and indoctrination. One is to see whether a college spends millions for diversity and multiculturalism centers and hires directors of diversity and inclusion, managers of diversity recruitment, associate deans for diversity, and vice presidents of diversity. See whether colleges spend money to indoctrinate incoming freshmen with programs such as “The Tunnel of Oppression,” in which, among other things, students call one another vile racial and sexual names in order to develop “oppression awareness.” (Click here to read more)

Recommended Reading – Thursday, September 6th

Sep 6, 2012 by Jason

The Terrifying New Normal (Victor Davis Hanson)

“I’ve witnessed two of the most radical developments in my lifetime the last four years — changes far greater than those brought on by the massive new increases in the national debt, the soaring gas costs, the radical decrease in average family income, the insolvent Medicare and Social Security trajectories, or the flat housing market.

One is the fact of less than 1% interest rates on most savings (well below the rate of inflation), and the other is an epidemic of 20-something unemployment. All that is the new normal.”  (Click here to read more)

Why Government Health Care Raises Costs (Thomas Sowell)

“Insurance is all about risk. Yet neither insurance companies nor their policy-holders can do anything about one of the biggest risks — namely, interference by politicians, to turn insurance into something other than a device to deal with risk.

By passing laws to force insurance companies to cover things that have nothing to do with risk, politicians force up the cost of insurance.

Annual checkups, for example, are known in advance to take place once a year. Foreseeable events are not a risk. Annual checkups are no cheaper when they are covered by an insurance policy. On the contrary, they are one of many things that are more expensive when they are covered by an insurance policy.

All the paperwork, record-keeping and other things that go with having any medical procedure covered by insurance have to be paid for, in addition to the cost of the medical procedure itself.

If automobile insurance covered the cost of oil changes or the purchase of gasoline, then both oil changes and gasoline would have to cost more, to cover the additional bureaucratic work involved.”  (Click here to read more)

Freeing The Doctor (The Independent Institute)

“Of all the people in the healthcare system, none is more central than the physician. As I explain in my book Priceless: Curing the Healthcare Crisis, fundamental reform that lowers costs, raises quality, and improves access to care is almost inconceivable without physicians leading and directing the changes. Yet of all the actors in modern healthcare, none are more trapped than our nation’s doctors. Let’s consider just a few of the ways your doctor is constrained, unlike any other professional.

Sometime in the early part of the last century, all the other professionals in our society—lawyers, accountants, architects, engineers, and so on—discovered the telephone. It’s a handy device. Ideal for communicating with clients. Yet, telephone consultations are not on Medicare’s list of about 7,500 tasks it pays physicians to perform. (At least, it’s not there in a way that makes telephone consultations practical.) Private insurance tends to pay the way Medicare pays. So do most employers.

Sometime toward the end of the last century, all the other professionals discovered email. In some ways, it’s even better than the phone. But reading and responding to emails doesn’t make Medicare’s list in a practical way, either.
…
The ability to consult with doctors by phone or email could be a boon to chronic care. Face-to-face meetings with physicians would be less frequent, especially if patients learned how to monitor their own conditions and manage their own care.”  (Click here to read more)

Recommended Reading – Tuesday, August 7th

Aug 7, 2012 by Jason

Obamacare:  The Road To Repeal Starts in The States  (Cato Institute)

“States that have refused to implement the Obama health law have already blocked $80 billion of its new deficit spending. If more states follow suit, they can block the other $1.6 trillion and force Congress to repeal the law.

The law relies on states to implement two of its most essential pieces: health-insurance “exchanges” and a vast expansion of Medicaid. Exchanges are government agencies through which the law channels $800 billion to private health-insurance companies.”  (Click here to read more)

Sports Versus Politics (Thomas Sowell)

“Milton Friedman once pointed out, “A system established largely to prevent bank panics produced the most severe banking panic in American history.” Many other examples could be cited where government intervention made a bad situation worse.

But most discussions of the role of government never even reach the point of looking for empirical evidence. Today, for example, there is much gnashing of teeth in the media because Democrats and Republicans can’t seem to get together to create a bipartisan plan for government intervention to solve our current economic problems.

Those who cry out that the government should “do something” never even ask for data on what has actually happened when the government did something, compared to what actually happened when the government did nothing. That could be a very enlightening trip through the archives.”  (Click here to read more)

Tiffany’s And The Problem of Security (Whiskey and Gunpowder)

“After Sept. 11, the American system of government became crazy obsessed with security. The implementation has not only been brutal and contrary to human liberty; it has completely lacked creativity. Instead of real security, we get what’s called “security theater,” and at the expense of the customer, who feels the brunt of all the new impositions.

It was the stupidest decision ever to nationalize airport security after Sept. 11, for doing so guaranteed this result. Security is too important to be left to government. What does the cause of security have to learn from the private sector? Plenty.

I was just at a Tiffany jewelry store. If you know these places, you know that they have a serious security issue to deal with. What is the total value of the inventory? It’s a guess. It’s in the many millions, maybe tens of millions. And it’s all on display, out in the open, in a store that lives off its reputation for high-end products.

…

A security problem? I would say so! They have to protect against stupid criminals with guns and bags, but also real-life versions of brilliant criminals such as the legendary jewel thieves we meet in James Bond and Mission Impossible. This is serious business.” (Click here to read more)

All Canadians Should Be Able To Buy Private Health Insurance  (Frontier Centre For Public Policy)

“When Tommy Douglas established Canada’s first government-run health program in Saskatchewan, he did not ban private health care. A recent Ipsos Reid poll found that 76 per cent of Canadians support the right to buy private health insurance for all forms of medically necessary treatment, including cancer care and heart surgery. Extending the Chaoulli judgment to Alberta would push Canada toward adopting the superior policies of Asia and Europe. Extending it across the country would secure the right to life, liberty and security of the person for all Canadians.”  (Click here to read more)

Abundance vs. Scarcity (Mises Institute)

“Which is best for man and for society, abundance or scarcity? What! you exclaim, can that be a question? Has anyone ever asserted, or is it possible to maintain, that at the foundation of human well-being?

Yes, this has been asserted, and is maintained every day; and I do not hesitate to affirm that the theory of scarcity is the most popular by far. It is the life of conversation, of the newspapers, of books, and of political oratory; and, strange as it may seem, it is certain that political economy will have fulfilled its practical mission when it has established beyond question, and widely disseminated, this very simple proposition: “The wealth of men consists in the abundance of commodities.”  (Click here to read more)

Recommended Reading – Thursday, August 2nd

Aug 2, 2012 by Jason

How Times Have Changed (Walter Williams)

“Having been born in 1936 has allowed me to witness both societal progress and retrogression. High on the list of things made better in our society are the great gains in civil liberties and economic opportunities, especially for racial minorities and women. People who are now deemed poor have a level of material wealth that would have been a pipe dream to yesteryear’s poor. But despite the fact that today’s Americans have achieved an unprecedented level of prosperity, we have become spiritually and morally impoverished compared with our ancestors.

Years ago, spending beyond one’s means was considered a character defect. Today not only do people spend beyond their means but also there are companies that advertise on radio and TV to eliminate or reduce your credit card and mortgage debt. Students saddled with college loans have called for student loan forgiveness. Yesterday’s Americans would have viewed it as morally corrupt and reprehensible to accumulate debt and then seek to avoid paying it. It’s nothing less than theft. What’s worse is there’s little condemnation of it by the rest of us.”  (Click here to read more)

Counsel of Despair?  (The Independent Institute)

“If the government props up unprofitable firms with bailouts and cheap loans and subsidizes unemployed workers with extended unemployment-insurance benefits and other income supports, it only obstructs and delays the necessary restructuring of the economy’s resource allocation. Although it may appear to be relieving people’s pain—and, indeed, it is doing so for those fortunate enough to receive booty at the public’s expense—it is only ensuring that by falsifying the price and profit signals that tell economic actors how to act most rationally in the society’s long-term benefit, it is preserving an economically irrational allocation of resources and thereby planting a time bomb that will explode later in the form of an even worse bust.

Thus, what seems to be governmental “compassion” is scarcely true compassion, but only a spurious assistance to some at the present expense of others and, ultimately, to the detriment of almost everyone. The true counselors of despair are those who insist that the government act even though the government cannot act constructively and its actions will, at best, only produce short-term improvement in the patient’s symptoms while ensuring that in the long term, he will fall victim to an even more painful malady. If the patent is bleeding, it is scarcely compassionate to attach government leeches so that he loses blood even more rapidly. The true counselors of despair are those who hope against hope—and historical experience—that the government can and will act constructively.”  (Click here to read more)

Who Are The 1 Percent (Thomas Sowell)

“It was either Adolf Hitler or his propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, who said that the people will believe any lie, if it is big enough and told often enough, loudly enough. Although the Nazis were defeated in World War II, this part of their philosophy survives triumphantly to this day among politicians, and never more so than during election years.

Perhaps the biggest lie of this election year, and the one likely to be repeated the most often, is that the income of “the rich” is going up, while other people’s incomes are going down.”  (Click here to read more)

Taxes and Beer

Jul 27, 2012 by Jason

From Casey Research’s ‘Daily  Dispatch‘

Suppose that every day, ten men go out for a beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100.

If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:

The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.

The fifth would pay $1.00

The sixth would pay $3.00

The seventh would pay $7.00

The eighth would pay $12.00

The ninth would pay $18.00

The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.00

So that’s what they decided to do. The men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day the owner threw them a curve.

“Since you are all such good customers,” he said, “I’m going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20.00.”

Drinks for the ten men now cost just $80.00.

The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes, so the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free. But what about the other six men – the paying customers? How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get their “fair share?”

They realized that $20.00 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody’s share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer. So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man’s bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay.

And so:

The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings).

The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33% savings).

The seventh now paid $5 instead of $7 (28% savings).

The eighth now paid $9 instead of 12 (25% savings).

The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% savings).

The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings).

Each of the six was better off than before! And the first four continued to drink for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings.

“I only got a dollar out of the $20″ declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man, “But he got $10!”

“Yeah, that’s right,” shouted the seventh man. “Why should he get $10 back when I got only two? The wealthy get all the breaks!”

“Wait a minute,” yelled the first four men in unison. “We didn’t I get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!”

The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.

The next night the tenth man didn’t show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn’t have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!

And that, boys and girls, journalists and college professors, is how our tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore. In fact, they might start drinking overseas where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.

For those who understand, no explanation is needed.

For those who do not understand, no explanation is possible.

Recommended Reading – Tuesday, June 16th

Jun 26, 2012 by Jason

Good People  (Whiskey and Gunpowder)

“What does it mean to be a “good person”?

One hears the term fairly often. So and so is a good person. Or the plural – they’re good people. But what ismeant is rarely defined. It is accepted that we’re all talking about the same thing – but if you look at it a little bit, very often we’re not. Because many of us seem to have a view of goodness that is completely at odds with the concept of goodness as defined by others.

The liberal Democrat, for example, thinks of himself as a good person because he expresses concern for others, typically those less well-off than others. He wants to “help” – but his goodness (as he defines it) does not manifest itself via himself personally helping those he believes are in need. He does not invite the homeless into his home (or even his garage). He invites them into your home.

He does not “give” of his own time – or money. Rather, he demands that others be made to “give” of theirs. Which of course does not strike him as oxymoronic – let alone vicious. This good person will not feel bad about demanding that some be enslaved for the benefit of others – so long as the former are “deserving” (as defined by the good person) and the latter are “paying their fair share” (again, as defined by the good person).”  (Click here to read more)

Prudence is a Virtue (Fraser Institute)

“Back when my paternal grandparents were alive, they lived with thrift as their constant companion and spent little more than necessary, splurging only on others.

Every spring, my grandmother would can a plethora of fruits and vegetables from her Okanagan garden. In anticipation, she saved every plastic bag for use in canning. As a kid, I thought it odd behaviour. But of course, I had no knowledge then of the shortages she, her siblings and parents endured in the Soviet Union in the 1920s before they emigrated to Canada.

More generally, beyond their initial mortgage, I don’t think my grandparents ever bought anything on credit. They would have been surprised by the recent tendency to borrow money against one’s home equity to finance renovations or vacations. They and much of their generation aimed to pay their mortgage off as soon as possible and to stay out of unnecessary debt.”  (Click here to read more)

 A Political Glossary (Thomas Sowell)

“”Since this is an election year, we can expect to hear a lot of words — and the meaning of those words is not always clear. So it may be helpful to have a glossary of political terms.

One of the most versatile terms in the political vocabulary is “fairness.” It has been used over a vast range of issues, from “fair trade” laws to the Fair Labor Standards Act. And recently we have heard that the rich don’t pay their “fair share” of taxes.

ome of us may want to see a definition of what is “fair.” But a concrete definition would destroy the versatility of the word, which is what makes it so useful politically.

If you said, for example, that 46.7 percent of their income — or any other number — is the “fair share” of their income that the rich should have to pay in taxes, then once they paid that amount, there would be no basis for politicians to come back to them for more — and “more” is what “fair share” means in practice.

Life in general has never been even close to fair, so the pretense that the government can make it fair is a valuable and inexhaustible asset to politicians who want to expand government.” (Click here to read more…and click here for Part II and here for Part III)

When Your Credit Card Stops Working (The Daily Reckoning)

“In a late, degenerate system — whether it is socialism, capitalism, or whatever — half the population tries to live at the expense of the other half. In America today, they succeed. More than half the people get money from the government.

The other half is forced to spend much of its time trying to keep the zombies at bay. They hire tax accountants to help them avoid taxes. They hire estate lawyers to try to get their wealth to their heirs rather than to the zombies’ heirs. They move from a high tax state to a low-tax state. They dodge. They duck.”  (Click here to read more)