RAG Perspective: An American Pro-Liberty Conservative: Miscellany: 6/17/14

Tuesday, June 17, 2014

Miscellany: 6/17/14

Quote of the Day

I like a man who grins when he fights.
Winston Churchill

Chart of the Day

Via Cato Institute

Image of the Day

Via LFC

Courtesy of the original artist via Independent Institute

Anti-Competitive Farm Product Cartels

From Greg Morin:

In Georgia we have our own special brand of state distorted virtue: the Vidalia® onion cartel. The state government has decided that these beautiful, delicious, sweet onions grown in and around Vidalia, Georgia are too valuable to the economic health of the People’s Republic of Georgia to allow the people who actually grow them to control how they are marketed and sold. And so came forth the Vidalia Onion Act of 1986.
Yes, our legislators pass laws about onions. It was only a few weeks ago that the state of Georgia fined a farmer who had the impudence to ship his crop of Vidalia® onions to market prior to the April 21 date set forth by the state agriculture commissioner.
Unseasonably warm weather has moved up and extended the growing season (thank you global warming!) Apparently Mother Nature forgot to read O.C.G.A 40-7-8.17 and thus produced ripe onion in open defiance of the law. Sadly, the state of Georgia is not alone in these sort of legal strictures on farming. Florida has its oranges, Idaho its potatoes and California its wines, raisins and avocados. Wait, avocados? Yes, California stipulates all avocados grown in the state must contain at least 8% fat. Or else.

Oh, no! My last avocado had only 7% fat. What will the People's Democratic Republic of California do?

By the way on the topic of the government intervention in the market, I'm not happy that SCOTUS ruled that POM Wonderful can sue Coke over the Lanham Act which allows competitors to file suit based on false or misleading marketing. This deals with Coke's Minute Maid Pomegranate Blueberry flavored fruit juice blend. POM markets premium pomegranate juice/blends. The fact is that no reasonable informed consumer would confuse the products; I'm speaking as a person whom sometimes posts in a nutrition blog and has been reading ingredient panels for years. The Minute Maid label says Pomegranate Blueberry flavored blend of 5 juices. If I say a product is flavored with sea salt, it doesn't imply the product is all or mostly sea salt. If I see 5 juices, it means that there are 3 other juices (apple, grape, and raspberry; the product is mostly the first 2 of these). The ingredient fineprint:

Coca-Cola’s “Pomegranate Blueberry” product contains only 0.3% pomegranate juice and 0.2% blueberry juice; it consists primarily of (less expensive and less desirable) apple and grape juices, which amount to over 99% of the juice.

A rule of thumb in reading labels is the ingredients are listed in descending percentage sequence. No doubt the big price difference would also tip off the consumer. I despise POM for filing this suit; note that SCOTUS did not conclude that Coke did violate the Lanham Act or that POM lost sales due to the Minute Maid product; Coke had won earlier battles that its labels were consistent with FDA policy. (Also note that Coke owns Odwalla, which markets its own premium juice products. I once did a short gig at Odwalla before it was acquired. One of the perks of the gig was that we got a supply of tokens we could use to exchange for company products.)

POM could simply have compared the relative proportions of fruit juices in its products vs. Coke's without trying to use the State as a competitive weapon. Now as a lower-carb dieter, I generally don't drink fruit juices anyway, but I'm pulling for Coke if and when this goes to trial.

America's Globally Uncompetitive Taxes

From lfb:

Pfizer, which is seeking to buy the British pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, might be motivated by jurisdictional arbitrage. Presumably the U.S.-based Pfizer perceives synergies and economies, but the acquisition also would allow Pfizer to move its headquarters to the United Kingdom, which employs a "territorial" tax system, with taxes collected only where the income is earned, in contrast to Washington's worldwide levy. The United States is one of the few countries to use worldwide corporate taxation -- claiming a cut of money earned everywhere, no matter how little a connection it has to this country.

End the Export-Import Bank

Be Really Careful of What You Wish For

Via CNS (HT Drudge Report)

From a financial newsletter:

After two years of huffing and puffing, the Federal Reserve has achieved its stated goal of 2% inflation.The Bureau of Labor Statistics is out this morning with the consumer price index. It registered a 0.4% increase in May, and a year-over-year increase of 2.1%. Even if you throw out food and energy (because they're "volatile," don't you know), it's still 1.9%. We can only imagine Fed governors doing their Snoopy dance as they begin two days of meetings today...Outside the Marriner Eccles Building, in the real world where you and I live, inflation as calculated by John Williams at Shadow Government Statistics is running 9.9% -- the highest annual increase since April 2012.

Facebook Corner

(Bastiat Institute). GM banana designed to slash African infant mortality enters human trials.
Whatever your opinion on the topic of genetically modified food, it's important to remember lobbying the central planners to legislate against the things you dislike isn't the best way to achieve your ends, though it might be the most often pursued. An easy thing to remember: Nobody knows what is best for everybody. Politicians think they do, but they don't. http://ow.ly/y8W6V
It's also not right to have the government protect your business model through patent law.
I don't think so. Obviously there are other dietary sources which contain vitamin A: various salad greens, carrots, dairy, eggs, certain nuts and fruits, oily fish, etc., and/or supplements. The issue has more to do with providing a form consistent with traditional diets, standard of living, etc. I don't see this as being anti-competitive except for the anti-GMO fearmongers, and the bottom line is that GMO products won't sell if the costs are too high for farmers.

(Economic Freedom). "Just as auto insurance covers a crash but not regular maintenance, so too should health insurance be used to cover only emergencies and major unexpected health incidents." Do you think health insurance should only be for emergencies?
For legitimate high-cost, low-risk health incidents/conditions.
First off by giving everyone insurance all you have done is create scarcity. Second the only way to really attack the high costs is to make more doctors and more affordable ways of treating patients. In the land of Rainbows and lolipops I bet you are a great guy but back in the real world I call that an outright lie. There is no free lunch-Some one pays in the end its to bad you seem to think the government can afford to pay anything without taping your own pocket.
Actually, the only way to really attack high costs is to restore a free market, get the government out of healthcare. You name it, whether it's anticompetitive medical professional cartels, dysfunctional tax policies that link health insurance to work or subsidize ordinary health expenses, obtrusive government paperwork and regulation, special interest benefit mandates, government price-fixing, unpaid for senior entitlements, etc.

But your overall comments are correct. Consumers don't have skin in the game and overuse artificially lower priced products and services, an artifact of government policy that exacerbates sector inflation. It makes no sense to add a bureaucratic markup for common expenses under the concept of insurance, e.g., where birth control is readily available at market prices.

(Lew Rockwell). "Because of the government’s foolish policy of foreign interventionism, the U.S. is faced with two equally stupid choices: either pour in resources to prop up an Iraqi government that is a close ally with Iran, or throw our support in with al-Qaida in Iraq (as we have done in Syria). I say we must follow a third choice: ally with the American people and spend not one more dollar or one more life attempting to re-make the Middle East. Haven’t we have already done enough damage?" says Ron Paul.
War is a business. They don't give a shit about the people, they want to keep Corporate profits artificially inflated.
No. I'm a noninterventionist, but this has more to do with a government bureaucracy which needs to sustain itself and remain relevant. Recall this was an issue in early America, the whole idea of a standing military; there is a sore temptation to make use of a military once it is available. Will the military-industrial complex profit from the activist agenda of the interventionists? Of course. But if the government didn't steal or print money to finance its agenda, the complex would wither away.

Can Animals Read? Irrational Government or Belief in...

Note: Snopes suggests that the lady in the video may have been a fake caller, but there was an actual letter to the editor from an Indiana resident to a similar effect. (He later suggested that it was tongue-in-cheek, but ended the interview "If they don't want to move that sign, maybe they could post another sign, kind of a warning to deer to look both ways before crossing the street," he said. Oh, yeah: that'll work...)