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Thursday, July 31, 2014

Miscellany: 7/31/14

Quote of the Day
People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. 
I don't believe in circumstances. 
The people who get on in this world are the people 
who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, 
if they can't find them, make them.
George Bernard Shaw

Tweet of the Day
Guest Post Comment

Why is Voices of Liberty promoting an article presenting a polemical self-congratulatory study of Statist healthcare "solutions"?

Here is a main exhibit for this piece:
Via Commonwealth Fund
Now debunking the Commonwealth Fund report comprehensively is beyond the scope of this post. But as a researcher, I'm immediately wary of cross-international comparisons and the nature of the underlying metrics, especially subjective/self-report measures; also, a measure often reflects and/or masks the developer's perspective, weightings, etc. I have not whiteboxed the Fund's methodology, but, for example, I would focus particularly incidents involving major medical incidents/conditions: suppose, for example, someone has a painful condition disrupting other activities like work or has been diagnosed with cancer. How soon is a person able to see a specialist, undergo a relevant operation/repair? Does the patient have access to the latest, greatest pharmaceutical drugs? What about access to the newest innovations in products and services, the quality of medical training, the existence of world-class medical facilities (e.g., the Mayo Clinic)? What about the cost/quality tradeoff? I suspect that America would rank very highly on a number of innovation, quality and accessibility measures, whereas not unlike Paul Krugman picks and chooses economic datapoints reflecting his perspective, the Commonwealth Fund picks and weighs its preferred practices accordingly.

Let me just point out a couple of related posts which raised relevant points about the Commonwealth Fund. This is from an AEI discussion of cross-country comparisons:
 The primary source of comparison data on health outcomes is the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) health system performance data and reports. This information is used to support broad criticisms of the US health care system and to compare it unfavorably with others, particularly the state-operated or state-controlled systems of Europe. Illustrations of such critiques include assessments by Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen and the Commonwealth Fund.
The OECD uses infant mortality, life expectancy, and premature death as measures of mortality in their report. One major concern is that the basic definitions of infant mortality are not consistent across countries...The combination of higher delivery costs because of greater NICU use and the unique way the United States counts live births could lead one to erroneously conclude that the United States is highly inefficient compared to other industrialized nations. Teenage mothers are more likely to have preterm, low-birth-weight babies.  The US rate of births for teenage mothers is very high—2.8 times that of Canada and 7.0 times that of Sweden and Japan... The OECD uses LE at birth [vs. higher age levels]... Premature mortality, which is determined by potential years of life lost (PYLL), is a useful measure if appropriately calculated, though it is also strongly influenced by infant mortality.In the OECD report, the maximum age at which to establish PYLL is seventy. Thus, the costs and success (or lack of success) of a health care system in extending life and the quality of life beyond age seventy are not reflected. 
I leave it to the reader to read the rest of the report. But note that there are cultural factors that factor in statistics which may not be factored for in findings. Take, for instance, the high rate of illegitimate births, roughly 40% in the US. Related infant mortality is NOT a reflection so much on healthcare available to unwed mothers as much as, say, the proportion of higher-risk pregnancies.  In addition, the US has a higher percentage of auto fatalities and homicides; these factors, once again, are extrinsic to healthcare delivery. Unless the Commonwealth Fund explicitly controls for extrinsic factors statistically, its comparisons are methodologically dubious at best.

Second, Kristian Niemietz for the Institute of Economics Affairs published a useful short critique of the Commonwealth Fund report; the author noted that a British publication was hyping results showing the UK rated top. A relevant excerpt:
The Guardian article refers to a study by the Commonwealth Fund (CF), which attempts to measure and rank the performance of healthcare systems in 11 developed countries, according to a range of criteria. What is unusual about the study is that it is mostly based on inputs and procedures, not outcomes. There is nothing wrong with that. The problem with health outcomes is that it is notoriously difficult to work out to what extent they are really attributable to the health system, and to what extent they are attributable to lifestyle, environmental or socioeconomic factors. Firstly, the study is built on a very specific idea of how healthcare ought to be delivered, and compares healthcare procedures as reported by doctors and patients to that benchmark. Secondly, some questions are designed to favour a single-payer, free-at-the-point-of-use system over systems that make greater use of insurance mechanisms or patient co-payments. Thirdly, and this may be a minor point, the CF study does not attempt to control for social desirability bias, which can be a problem when sentiments towards healthcare systems differ vastly across countries. Finally, while it is inevitable that the study design reflects value judgments, some judgments are more subjective than others. 
Third, here is a piece from the Adam Smith Institue (see blogroll). With respect to the hyped British national healthcare system, the opening paragraph from the executive summary says it all:
It is a common belief that tax funding is the only way to guarantee good healthcare for  all. And yet statistics show that, after 50 years of just such a policy, our National HealthService (NHS) actually delivers for UK citizens one of the poorest-quality health systems in the developed world. Like other tax-funded industries of the postwar era, it is  burdened by bureaucracy, politicisation, low wages, a lack of customer responsiveness,low rates of innovation, queuing, and mis-directed resources.
One of the most interesting soundbites from this piece is even though private healthcare in the UK has to compete against "free" public healthcare, many people still choose to pay for it. Why bypass the world's "best" healthcare one has already paid for with one's own taxes?
 It is hard for any private-sector provider to compete against an alternative that comes in at zero cost to the user. And yet it is an indictment of the NHS that despite the fact that the government alternative is “free”,many people still go private: indeed, private spending on healthcare is now over 15% of government spending.
Facebook Corner

(IPI). Should Chicago gas stations be forced to carry fuel with higher ethanol content? Several Chicago aldermen think so.
Earlier this week, the Chicago City Council’s Finance Committee considered an ordinance that would mandate all gas stations in the city to carry E15, a fuel consisting of 15% ethanol.
If consumers really wanted a product, government wouldn’t have to force them to buy it or businesses to sell it.
When even the high priest of environmental alarmism, Al Gore, admits ethanol policy has been a failure, these paternalistic ideologues continue their day-late, dollar-short agenda.

(IPI). Instead of reducing premiums by an average of $2,500 per family as promised, ObamaCare has increased what families have to pay for coverage.
And the trend is only going to get worse.
(I'm not republishing a lengthy, detailed thread between a "progressive" ObamaCare troll and IPI where the troll is accusing IPI of publishing bad statistics. I don't have the time or patience to debunk some rambling discourse by some Statist conspiracy theorist.)
What I'm hearing is a bunch of predictable crappy "progressive" excuses. What is incontrovertible is that "progressives" promised that further federal meddling in a sector already inflation-bound with nearly half of funding via redistributed dollars, dysfunctional policies which essentially don't vest the policyholder with "skin in the game", which confuse ordinary expenses with legitimate risk-sharing, which mandate non-major medical benefits, etc. would "bend the cost curve". This is absolute hubris, bullshit.

 I'm put off by this troll's whiny excuses that you can't blame Obama because this fetid piece of one party's legislative sausage making wasn't his ideal is knowingly crap. Obama didn't introduce his plan in either chamber because it would have been rejected, a major political defeat. So he, leading from behind as usual, cheered partisan proposals from the sidelines and waited for whatever the Senate Dems could cobble together. If he didn't like it, he could have vetoed it. And coming up with shabby legalistic sophist excuses like "he didn't promise $2500--he said up to $2500" doesn't convince anyone. The Dem rhetoric was always "if we eliminated profits and administrative costs, we can bring down costs." Tell me, did the government micromanage the high tech sector? PC costs have dropped steeply, even on a nominal vs real basis, over the past 3 decades precisely because it operated in a less regulated, more market-oriented system. In fact, economically-illiterate government policies like price-fixing provider charges, other regulatory mandates (e.g., reporting) do not save a penny in health costs but impose a heavy cost on providers and ultimately other healthcare consumers, and every study I've seen shows that newly insured patients dramatically increase usage of healthcare goods and services without a commensurate improvement in health outcomes. Redistribution of costs is little more than a shell game gimmick; you make overpriced insurance because of dysfunctional government policies below cost to some people at the expense of other people. Unlike this pretentious troll, even Econ 101 students know that you can increase demand for a good or service by cutting its price below cost, i.e., the new parasitic insured, but it's not a sustainable business model. This only works if you can impose their costs on other people, and the government is imposing these costs through unconstitutional mandates, at the point of a gun. That's exactly what IPI is pointing out; other people are finding out they are picking up more than their true risk-based costs. This isn't a question of whose numbers you use: it's an economic fact of life

 The status quo is unsustainable, particularly in a rapid aging population, where age correlates with cost. The only TRUE reform in healthcare would be to PRIVATIZE it. Reform the medical occupation cartels; eliminate anti-competitive state barriers to entry; enable cross-state pooling of risks and allow self-insuring of entities; allow universal marketing of bare-bones major medical plans; eliminate tax deductions for healthcare dollars, particularly for non-major medical expenses; eliminate barriers to innovation in the sector, including critical path FDA approvals for new meds; expedite immigration paths for healthcare professionals; devolve federal healthcare expenditures; rollback special-interest mandates, etc. I'm not claiming this list is comprehensive, but it's a good start. An unfettered free market, not fascist medicine, is the goal.

Political Cartoon
Courtesy of Dana Summers and US News
Musical Interlude: My Favorite Vocalists

Billy Joel, "You May Be Right"

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Wednesday, July 30, 2014

Miscellany: 7/30/14

Quote of the Day
If I had my life to live over again, 
I'd be a plumber.
Albert Einstein

Tweet of the Day
Image of the Day: The Liberty Caucus On Stage

Including  Congressmen Amash, Massie, Jones and Labrador via Emily Larson on Twitter
Via Bastiat Institute
Via Ron Paul
But Environmentists Say, "Without Government, Who Will Clean the Water, Air?"



LEGO Economics

I particularly enjoyed the Mises standup routine at the end... I'm such a geek, I understood all the jokes....



Facebook Corner

(Rand Paul). "In 2003, a Nebraska state trooper stopped Emiliano Gonzolez for speeding on Interstate 80 and found $124,700 inside a cooler on the back seat of the rented Ford Taurus he was driving. Gonzolez said the money was intended to buy a refrigerated truck for a produce business, but the cops figured all that cash must have something to do with illegal drugs.
Although there was not much evidence to support that theory, under federal forfeiture law the government managed to keep Gonzolez's money based on little more than a hunch. A bill introduced last week by Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., would make that sort of highway robbery harder to pull off."
READ about more about the FAIR Act below: 
The police have a vested interest. They use the feds to workaround due process in the state. It's unambiguously corrupt. What business is it of the police to question your carrying around money? It's your property. Since when is it proper to search a car on a speeding violation? Is there any reasonable basis for looking in a cooler? This is palpably unconstitutional and a classic example of legal plunder. Kudos to Rand Paul for a necessary first step to reform.

(IPI). In coming weeks, Walgreen Co. is expected to decide whether it will proceed with the purchase of a big European drugstore chain. That deal would enable Walgreen to relocate from north suburban Deerfield to Europe, where it would pay a lower tax rate. Walgreen is one of several prominent American companies laying plans to cut their tax bills by moving their headquarters abroad.
Hate to see them leave, but I understand with the high corporate tax rate. That being said, if they leave, they will lose my business.
Stop targeting Walgreen with this nonsense. Under a territorial system, Walgreen will still pay US taxes on American profits. What Walgreen gains is keeping Obama's hands off foreign operation profits on which foreign taxes have been paid. What the Legal-Plunderer-in-Chief has done is maintain noncompetitive progressive tax rates which deter foreign investment or American business expansion.

(Bastiat Institute). "We will stop companies from shipping our jobs overseas!"
Translation: They want capital controls.
"We will stop these foreign immigrants/goods/robots from undercutting our prices and putting us out of business!"
Translation: They want trade/migration barriers, and maybe a ban on automated checkout machines.
 "A totally privatized country would not have 'open borders' at all. If every piece of land in a country were owned by some person, group, or corporation, this would mean that no immigrant could enter there unless invited to enter and allowed to rent, or purchase, property. 

 A totally privatized country would be as 'closed' as the particular inhabitants and property owners desire. It seems clear, then, that the regime of open borders that exists de facto in the U.S. really amounts to a compulsory opening by the central state, the state in charge of all streets and public land areas, and does not genuinely reflect the wishes of the proprietors."

 -- Murray Rothbard, "Nations by Consent"
Oh God, another anti-immigrant using Milton Friedman's disgraceful rationalization. Personally, when our own President, an alleged Constitutional scholar, doesn't understand the Bill of Rights or Separation of Powers, why should I care that an immigrant knows our Constitution better than graduates of public education?

 As to the other using a Rothbard/Ron Paul type objection, more to the point, there would be two-way travel between countries. Whatever easements across private property would be negotiated. Obviously goods would flow both ways, and the road owners would be able to maximize return by encouraging traffic from both directions. Note that Rothbard changed his argument/side late in life; the younger Rothbard was correct.

(Mercatus Center). Is it time to stop obsessing about inequality?
I was 110% with Cowen until his very last statement that we need to liberalize immigration. In principle I support the concept of the free flow of labor, but when you have a welfare state--as we do here in the U.S.--then you can't have the free flow of labor. An adult non-student in the U.S. making $8/hour who is a legal immigrant is entitled to many different forms of welfare. The freedom of others stops when that person's freedom infringes on my right to my own labor.
Cowen is right on immigration; I think Milton Friedman's excuse of a welfare state is a sad inconsistency in his belief systems, and it provides morally abominable anti-immigrants a convenient cover. The fact is that immigration is a win-win policy.

 There are at least a couple of points I think Cowen should have emphasized that didn't get mentioned here. One is the lessening consumer inequality; moreover, liberalized trade facilitates a better standard of living, and cellphones and relatively inexpensive Internet services are affordable to most households. Second, I think he's vastly underestimating the high tech revolution There has been an explosion of software, including very functional freeware, and there's a vast availability of essentially free texts, encyclopedias, lectures, tutorials, specialty portals, etc. You can sell your goods across the world on a limited budget. New technology like 3D printers enable things like prosthetic devices as a fraction of the cost. And I'm a little disappointed Cowen didn't point out the economic drag of progressive policies and the need to embrace free market principles.

(Citizens Against Government Waste). The gross waste and mismanagement of taxpayer dollars overseas continues. Today's Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) Quarterly Report found that the U.S. and donors fund more than 60 percent of the Afghan national budget, while less than 20 percent of Afghanistan is expected to even be accessible to civilian U.S. oversight personnel by the end of the year.
Throughout the 30 reports issued by SIGAR this year, the programs and projects that were examined totaled nearly $18.2 billion - most of which included poor planning, shoddy construction, mechanical failures, and inadequate oversight.
We need a noninterventionist foreign policy and no more corrupt arrangements at taxpayer expense.

(Bastiat Institute). Corporatism is not capitalism.

This is GROSSLY EXAGGERATED. The fact is, only State has monopoly of force. I get a little tired of the leftist crackpots hatching some ludicrous conspiracy theories about Halliburton, the Koch brothers, and other retarded cliche talking points. Does it happen? Of course, like the Export-Import Bank, which by the way most progressives support. But let's not forgot the intrinsic corruption of politicians, e.g., earmarks, resistance to money-losing post offices or unnecessary military base closures, etc. You can point out such-and-such a factory supplying DoD with ammunition it doesn't want or need, but the politician gets political credit for bringing home the bacon. Let's focus on eliminating corruption by design through diminishing the authority and resources of the State.

(Mercatus Center). A not-so-happy fourth birthday for Dodd-Frank: http://bit.ly/1AA2uHw
'derivatives' is probably a form of ownership that should be made illegal.
Progressive trolls probably think derivatives are what they failed at in high school calculus. Warren Buffett, Obama's favorite billionaire, once called derivatives "financial weapons of mass destruction". A few years later, during the Obama regime, (3/01/13):
"Net income rose to $4.55 billion, or $2,757 a share, from $3.05 billion, or $1,846, a year earlier, Omaha, Nebraska-based Berkshire said today in a statement. Gains on derivatives surged to $1.4 billion from $163 million.
Buffett, 82, uses index put options to speculate on long- term gains in stock-market indexes in the U.S., Europe and Japan. Those bets added $2 billion to profit in the fourth quarter before taxes as Japan’s Nikkei 225 (NKY) Stock Average rallied."
Political Cartoon

Courtesy of Glenn McCoy via IPI
Musical Interlude: My Favorite Vocalists

Billy Joel, "Honesty"

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Tuesday, July 29, 2014

Miscellany: 7/29/14

Happy Blogiversary #6!



Quote of the Day
A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step.
Chinese Proverb

Tweet of the Day
Pro-Liberty Thought of the Day


Image of the Day


Chart of the Day
Via IPI
Via Mercatus Center
Hall of Shame: "Illegal Grilling" Leads to Pregnant Woman in a Chokehold
Photo: Stefan Jeremiah via New York Post 
An Education Guru Takes a Personal Shot At Former News Anchor, Now Education Reformer Campbell Brown

Some things just rub me the wrong way. I am not a fan of education historian/teacher union apologist Diane Ravitch. I came across this story via Reason (cf. FB Corner below), but this extract comes from NY Mag via the Brown-affiliated website:
Paul Farhi profiles Campbell Brown, the former CNN anchor turned education-reform activist, who is working to end strict teacher tenure protections. Naturally, this enrages teacher-union evangelist Diane Ravitch, who not only disagrees with Brown’s position, but expresses offense that anybody should listen to Brown at all:
“I have trouble with this issue because it’s so totally illogical,” says Diane Ravitch, an education historian. “It’s hard to understand why anyone thinks taking away teachers’ due-process rights will lead to great teachers in every classroom.”
As for Brown, Ravitch is dismissive: “She is a good media figure because of her looks, but she doesn’t seem to know or understand anything about teaching and why tenure matters ... I know it sounds sexist to say that she is pretty, but that makes her telegenic, even if what she has to say is total nonsense.”
Chait, the author of the piece I just excerpted, references another post published by his wife in not exactly a conservative/libertarian forum. Let  me excerpt a few points:
It is well documented that teachers are rarely dismissed. National estimates from the 2007-08 Schools and Staffing Survey conducted by the U.S. Department of Education find that school districts dismiss on average only 2.1 percent of teachers each year for poor performance.
A number of indicators suggest that the percent of teachers dismissed is relatively low compared to the percent who should be dismissed. Teachers and principals report in several national surveys that they believe there are ineffective teachers teaching in their schools. In a recent survey of a nationally representative sample of teachers conducted by Public Agenda and Learning Point Associates, 59 percent of teachers reported that there were a few teachers in their building who “fail to do a good job and are simply going through the motions” and 18 percent of teachers reported there were more than a few.
Similarly, the New Teacher Project conducted a recent study of evaluation practices in 12 districts entitled “The Widget Effect” and found that 81 percent of administrators and 58 percent of teachers reported there was a tenured teacher in their school who delivers poor instruction. Finally, a Public Agenda survey found that while overall, principals and superintendents were very satisfied with their teaching staff, more than 7 in 10 reported that making it easier to fire bad teachers, even those with tenure, would be a very effective method of improving teaching quality.
Researchers from the Brookings Institution conducted an analysis of data from the Los Angeles public schools and projected that dismissing the bottom quartile of novice teachers in the district after their first year based on value-added estimates would result in a net increase in student test scores gains of 1.2 percentage points annually across the district. This gain would be significant over time.
Researcher Eric Hanushek from Stanford University finds that removing the bottom 6 to 10 percent of teachers would lead to a gain in student achievement that is the equivalent of improving the performance of students in the United States to the level of Canada’s students (from 29th to 7th) on the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s Program for International Student Assessment in mathematics test over a 13-year period.
This condescending crap by Ravitch is inexcusable, not just for its unprofessional tone, but it's seems that Ravitch thinks that taxpayers and parents don't have a right to express an opinion because they aren't part of her self-designated educational elite. Well, Ms. Brown isn't nearly a radical reformer as I am; I'm a free market guy whom wants to privatize the market. I also know how to research and analyze empirical research; I'm unintimidated by the likes of Ravitch and I throw back twice as hard.

I was quite fearless as a young academic; during my dissertation process, I wrote to a MIS professor whom held an endowed chair in Florida about one of the most cited articles in the literature that he wrote (I found the results counterintuitive, although others didn't see an issue) and got a dismissive response. While at UWM, I decided to try a replication study and found his findings inconsistent with mine; I did a little writeup of my findings for a national DSI conference, one of my favorite papers although I didn't rewrite it for a journal. (I LOVE academic conferences and at cocktail parties used to introduce myself to people whose articles I had analyzed in doctoral seminars.) I knew him in passing from an ICIS conference we did while I was a PhD student in Houston and was hoping to see him there (nope). Now to explain, a lot of academic conferences have light audiences at presentations; you might typically  have just a handful of people present. For this paper, I found I had a full classroom; people loved my little paper, and they laughed when I told my dissertation anecdote. At the time, most of my research was more interdisciplinary (human factors was more of a fledging discipline in MIS), but I had taken on a classic article. To this day, it was one of my favorite moments in academia; these people didn't know this obscure junior researcher, but they came based strictly on the strength of the paper. There was a sense of validation from my peers, a Sally Field Oscar moment.

I'm not much of a movie buff, but there is a line I would give Ms. Ravitch: "Go ahead; make my day."

Gruber and the Halbig Kerfuffle

I've already tweeted twice on Gruber's disingenuity on this issue--in fact, on the first tweet, I started to write that Gruber was just another Massachusetts flip-flopper, but I ended up against the 140-character limit. I had speculated earlier: why did they want state exchanges in the first place? I speculated, among other things, that having to set up 50-plus exchanges would have been complex and politically risky, and they had in mind a Medicaid-like shared responsibility structure. Tying subsidies to the exchanges was the state's incentive to manage the exchange, the idea being that state leadership would have to answer why their taxpayers were having to subsidize other state exchanges and not getting their own fair share of the subsidies. I think the Dems miscalculated; they never expected the pushback and the need to create a federal exchange; I think the federal exchange was an implicit threat to marginalize state healthcare policy if the state didn't play along. I suspect with the federal exchange, they figured they would cross the bridge when they got to it; they probably figured it would be an easy sell to pass a legislative patch to states not getting their fair share of subsidies. I think many states, especially red ones, understood the political risks, including that of a federal exchange failing, particularly without the subsidies. The Obama Administration knew that the GOP-controlled House would demand significant changes in ObamaCare to bail out the federal exchange, and so they illegally issued an IRS ruling, pretending they could arbitrarily extend subsidies. Gruber no doubt realizes this is an Achilles heel to ObamaCare and has flip-flopped, pretending it was a "drafting error".  No, it wasn't--it was the federal government's incentive to get the states to share political risk. If federal exchanges had had subsidies all along, what incentive did the states have to host the exchanges? In short, the Dems miscalculated; what's more if and when the subsidies are declared illegal, the Dems face a backlash from middle-class policyholders whom will have to pay the full cost of overpriced insurance.



Facebook Corner

(Mercatus Center). (See above chart). Historically, as the relative minimum wage has risen, unemployment among young workers without high school diplomas has increased dramatically: http://bit.ly/1Auq7kN
The answer is lowering the dropout rate, and tying minimum wage to cost-of-living.
So many economically illiterate "progressive" trolls. The Idiocy is that some political whore decides to pick some number out of his ass and declares it a minimum/living wage. You can't push up demand for low-skilled workers; for much of the work on this level, you have limited ability to increase productivity, which might justify wage increases. Plus, a number of you confuse real with nominal wages; we need to look at sound money policies and trade liberalization to facilitate real wage increases, not with what the idiot populist politicians and the Fed are doing. All you do with minimum wages is make it harder for people whom could find a willing employer under that arbitrary line. In a more robust economy, demand for labor would rise, organically driving up wages without Statist counterproductive meddling in the economy. Something like 2% of jobs are minimum-wage jobs. None of the higher-paying jobs benefit from an arbitrary wage floor. During the Gilded Age, wages increased without government monopoly protections for unions, with large immigrations, and without dysfunctional government regulations getting in between a worker and a hiring manager.
(responding to a troll; I didn't reproduce his whole rant here because I didn't have the time and patience to debunk all of his nonsense. It was enough just to debunk his first.)
To the guy whom is trying to lecture people on how to read graphs: you're dead wrong, i.e., "As regular hourly wages fall, those with less education are statistically more likely to not have a job. " The plot is against the UNEMPLOYMENT rate, and it shows as you increase the minimum wage (i.e., relative to some higher average rate), unemployment increases. Alternatively, as you lower or eliminate the minimum wage, you lower unemployment, which is basically elementary supply and demand: as you lower the price of labor, there is more demand; when you increase wages, there's less employer demand, and you end up with surpluses of workers willing to work at said higher rate. In the real world, surpluses mean unemployment. What this suggests to anyone with a functioning brain, is what we should be doing to promote gainful employment by young and/or less educated labor is ELIMINATING the minimum wage. Why do the crony unionists favor restrictions on labor, e.g., bans on temporary foreign workers, minimum wages, higher occupation criteria (e.g., "certified" math/science teachers) is because they are trying to restrict the supply of workers to drive up compensation. For the unemployed, with friends like these, who needs enemies?

(Drudge Report). SURRENDER: BOEHNER RULES OUT IMPEACHMENT
Boehner is right: this empty threat of impeachment was just a ruse to galvanize their base and facilitate fundraising heading into a likely dismal mid-term election.

(Mercatus Center). As evidence proves time and again, policies that either raise the cost of hiring or reduce the incentive for work are counterproductive to fostering employment: http://bit.ly/1rWVhMz
govt provides jobs.
The government, through reckless meddling with economic liberty and anti-sound money monetary policy, is the biggest threat to jobs and prosperity.

(Reason). See Hall of Shame.
Don't cops have better things to do with their time than cracking down on foodies? Why grab her by the throat? Couldn't you just grab her grilling tong?

(Mercarus Center). The 2014 Annual Reports of the Social Security and Medicare Boards of Trustees released Monday. Here's what you need to know, from Mercatus scholar and Trustee Charles Blahous: http://bit.ly/1rCmhQw
Say NO to SSDI bailouts; time to tighten criteria. We need to radically reform, preferably privatize, retirement entitlements; at minimum, we need to convert these programs into means-tested, benefit-capped, eligibility-deferred programs, more in terms of poverty support, not to mention devolving federal healthcare programs to the state/local.

 We need to ignore trolls advocating legal plunder; we need public policy that eliminates moral hazard and vests people in retirement planning and savings, not to mention healthcare spending. We need honest accounting that explicitly recognizes over $80T in unsustainable unfunded entitlements and factors obligatory paydowns in the federal budget.

(Citizens Against Government Waste). Yesterday at CAGW's policy breakfast, FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai proposed four simple steps towards ending waste, fraud, and abuse in the Lifeline or "Obamaphone" program: 
1. Put the program on a budget. 
2. Reduce financial incentive for people to commit fraud. 
3. Empower states to release the program and have power over administering it. 
4. Review the size of the current Lifeline subsidy, and enforce proof of eligibility.
Commissioner Pai stated "Lifeline wasn’t designed to give people free phone service, but to provide low income consumers who genuinely need it a discount on phone service."
do you idiots even understand it has nothing to do with Obama? It was started a long time ago and is funded by TracPhone to get more minutes and customers.. sorry to put a bump in your happy road of hatting everything not lily white, but you are the dumbest, dullest, of the lot;. http://www.factcheck.org/2009/10/the-obama-phone/
When "progressive" trolls try to fact check, they should start with their own replies. The Lifeline discount program was started for landlines in the 1980's, funded by taxes on providers, typically passed onto consumers. Clinton expanded the program in the 1990's and in 2008 it was extended to cellphones. TracFone was merely one of the first vendors to service the program. However, the program under Obama had nearly doubled from 7.1M to 12.5M by 2012.
I'm pretty sure it's in the Constitution somewhere that entitles me to a free cell phone. Obama was a constitutional law professor.
No, even Obama knew that the Constitution does not establish positive rights,i.e., things government has to do on my behalf. It is funny sarcasm, though

(LFC). Do you live in Fall River? Whatever company that secured the contract to supply the city with bags just made out. These bags, like all government mandated purchases (Obamacare, car insurance, fire insurance in some areas, DUI classes, real estate contractors, etc), are made and performed in the private sector. And, like the aforementioned services, whatever companies that land the contract or official acknowledgment just made out because they don't have to use the market (and be regulated with competition) to sell their product. They have the law behind them threatening you to do something that totally lays aside your choice as a consumer. ‪#‎BecausePolitics‬ I hope this is boycotted and not one bag is ever purchased.

My folks were born there. Luckily they escaped before I was born--in the great state of Texas.

(Reason). Teachers unions think former CNN anchor Campbell Brown is too pretty to fight for firing lousy teachers in New York.
Tenure IS necessary to prevent cash-strapped school districts from firing more expensive, more experienced teachers in favor of less experienced, less expensive teachers. But tenure MUST be EARNED. No teacher should benefit from near-automatic tenure. 2 [Cali] or 3 [NY] years of employment is nowhere near enough time to accurately determine and permanently reward teaching efficacy. Especially when a decent system of evaluation has yet to be developed and implemented.
No, tenure is NOT. And I'm speaking as a former junior (untenured) professor. This is such a lame excuse--I bet you can't even name 5 unprotected superb teachers let go in favor of less experienced/expensive teachers. No administrator is going to lay off good performers, regardless of job tenure or salary; I could see a situation where people might share temporary pay cuts. NOBODY is owed a way of making a living. You earn it everyday. If you're good at what you do, there will be a market for your services. We need to break the corrupt hold of unions which generally oppose market-based compensation, argue unearned increases in compensation at taxpayer expense, and resist evaluation based on a student's incremental performance.

Political Cartoon

Courtesy of Chip Bok via Townhall

Musical Interlude: My Favorite Vocalists

Billy Joel, "Big Shot"

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Monday, July 28, 2014

Miscellany: 7/28/14


Quote of the Day
Behind an able man there are always other able men.
Chinese Proverb

The Centennial of the Start of One of the Most Tragic Events in World History: WWI
Courtesy of LFC
Sixth Year of Publication Ends With This Post

Tomorrow will be my sixth blogiversary. I'm maybe 2 weeks shy of publishing post #2100 (I've actually taken down a couple involving relatives). I did not start the blog with the idea of publishing daily (occasionally more with one-off posts, like my mock annual awards or standalone essays). My signature miscellany format started in 2009, although the style, features, and daily schedule evolved over time. Detailed readership statistics weren't available until around 2010; I haven't fully analyzed readership statistics year over year, but my readership seems to have increased steadily.

I don't think I'm even registering on many blogrolls, and I suspect that sooner or later most readers will find something I've written they disagree with strongly. An obvious current issue is immigration; I've always been pro-immigration; one of my best friends is a naturalized citizen from India, and I know what he had to put up with before he got his green card. What I didn't like about Obama's approach on the issue is that it was totally political (with his ally labor unions opposing things like temporary worker programs), with abuse of discretion in enforcing the law; so I initially had more of a rule of law perspective and questioned more the priorities within quotas than the quotas themselves. As I became more libertarian and philosophically consistent (influenced by more open borders classical liberals like Don Boudreaux) and studied the shameful evolution of immigration law, my views have hardened and are not popular with either side of the current debate. I don't have direct reader feedback, but it seemed everytime I posted a pro-immigration opinion, I would take a 50% or so hit on readership the following day. But really, I'm fine with people disagreeing with me, and yesterday's quote on Cicero on popularity vs. virtue is a reflection of my perspective.

It's also interesting to note how my perspective has changed over the years; looking back at 2007-8, I was pushing John McCain; it wasn't so much his neocon views (although I thought his long Congressional career easily trumped both Clinton and Obama's meager records). I thought he might be more of a bipartisan leader, I bought into his "straight talk" persona, he had paid his dues, and his tough 2000 loss of the nomination to Bush made him the most viable alternative to the Dems' predictable tactic as portraying any GOP nominee as a highly unpopular Bush third term.  I even briefly enjoyed how he completely swerved the media and Dems with his VP pick. I avoided criticizing McCain during the campaign; I halfway worried some Dem operative might quote my fledging blog to use against McCain, but I was shocked by his impulsiveness and other mistakes, e.g., the decision to suspend his campaign over TARP, his desire to postpone the first Presidential debate, why he contradicted his experience argument by picking Palin, his earlier quote about needing to be educated on economics, his failure to rebut blatantly false charges about being a radical deregulator, why he didn't openly oppose the unpopular TARP bill. He seemed to lapse into political spin vs. straight talk, and his "maverick" ticket concept seemed to be unprincipled at best. I thought one of the real low points was when the Obama campaign accused the McCain campagin of stealing a housing-related policy; you cannot try to out-Democrat a Democrat: people are going to buy the real deal. He badly needed to throw Bush under the bus, but he had gone out of his way during the primaries, pointing out he had the most pro-Bush voting record over the last session or two, in order to attract the loyal Bush base, something the Dems hung around his neck during the general election campaign. Then there was the resource issue while Obama had built a massive campaign warchest. The Dems carpetbombed purple states with ads while the McCain camp sat watching McCain's lead in Florida wither away without challenge. I do think once the economic tsunami hit, McCain was done. In an uncertain economic environment, the party of entitlements is always going to beat Mr. Greenshades. But I felt I myself could have run a better campaign than McCain, and I couldn't get elected as dogcatcher.

It's interesting to read some of the older material and realize how much my perspective has evolved. I am not an anti-government ideologue or a conspiracy theorist; in fact, I've been in the Navy, I was a state university professor, and I've worked as a contractor or consultant at various levels of government. I'm more of a profound skeptic or critic vs. opponent of the State. I don't think my values have changed, but there's been a paradigm shift: it's difficult to explain it. It had more to do with a more thoroughgoing challenging of assumptions: why, for instance, did other countries eliminate the evil of slavery without a horrific Civil War? Why was the government involved in individual benefits, not just for the poor, but the middle class? How have we piled up over $80T in unfunded entitlement liabilities? Why did we intervene in Afghanistan and Iraq, knowing existing sectarian or tribal issues, neither country a credible military threat to a major nuclear power? If high tech could bloom without industrial policy, why is the Fed necessary?

Yes, I think everyone wants to be liked and respected; I truly believe this is one of the better blogs on the Internet. It would be interesting to know why some posts draw more readers than others; I know my Mom likes some of the videos I embed, and a nephew likes the cartoons I select. (I hope people also stick around for my commentary/analyses.) No, I'm not an economist, but I'm well-informed and have a very readable style. Initially I never dreamed I would have enough material to span over 2000 posts. But then just a couple of months ago, I wasn't sure how I could/would use Twitter, and already I've racked up 73 tweets. You can probably fit my followers in a phone booth; I've already seen some of my followers fly away. Why? I'm not sure--maybe an implied pro-Rand Paul tweet? People not caring for my comedic one-liners? In any event, I don't know what will happen over the coming year; my business/travel schedule may not allow me to post daily. But I'll probably focus a little more on Elections 2014 and 2016; the first step will be seeing Justin Amash shrug off the US Chamber's fight to primary him a few days from now...

Pro-Liberty Thought of the Day



Image of the Day
Via Sonny Mooks on Being Classically Liberal
Chart of the Day
Via Cato Institute
Note the gains by no-income-tax states like TX and FL
Tweet of the Day
Hall of Shame: PA Lawmaker Edition

Courtesy  of Brad Bumsted | Tribune-Review via WSJ
Among the two dozen or so portraits of prominent Pennsylvania legislative leaders, including Benjamin Franklin, an assembly speaker before independence, are 4 whom were convicted on various corruption (use of state resources) or obstruction charges. The plaques were a compromise in lieu of taking down the portraits.

George Reisman, Labor Unions Are Anti-Labor: Thumbs UP!

There are a number of economists I enjoy reading: Don Boudreaux; Bob Murphy; Thomas Sowell; Tom DiLorenzo--and George Reisman. In fact, I have followed Reisman on Twitter and have favorited a couple of his Tweets.

This is a gem of a little piece. Reisman points out that unions don't achieve real gains by dog-chasing-its-tail inflation. Rather, it's increased productivity whereby widgets decrease in price relative to wages. More goods, lower prices increase real (inflation-adjusted) wages and the worker's standard of living. Reisman notes that attempts to manipulate wages, say, by expensive work rules and/or barriers to entry (e.g., licensing restrictions) do not increase the demand for labor (and note in a competitive labor market non-union employers will often meet or beat union wages); in fact, by limiting the supply of widgets and real wages, the demand for widgets and other job-supporting goods and services is diminished, not to mention other policies discouraging hiring, e.g., minimum wage and mandatory benefit mandates, other members of the labor pool find themselves priced out of the labor market.

Facebook Corner

(IPI). The high-rise at 500 N. Lake Shore Drive is the second-most expensive in the city, with rents for a one-bedroom apartment approaching $3,000 a month, well beyond the reach of most Chicago residents.
But that's not too much for the Chicago Housing Authority, which has used federal tax dollars to pick up most of the tab for four lucky residents in the year-old building...
Let's get this straight: there is taxpayer money for supervoucher rents in the private sector, but not for an alternative to failing public schools?

(Drudge Report). Laura Ingraham hints at running for office...
 I can't wait to see her get her ass kicked in the political arena.

(National Review). If homosexuals aren’t allowed to marry because they won’t produce children, should the same standards be upheld for heterosexual couples?
In mathematical terms, heterosexual intimacy is a necessary, but insufficient basis for procreation (e.g., sterility or post-menopause). There are social norms for procreation and social stability, and those are implemented through the institutions of marriage and family. I see the law as reflecting existing social norms

More Proposals

My niece is back from her honeymoon, and I think I'm going to put this series on hiatus for a while.









Be Really Careful of What You Wish For....



Political Cartoon

Courtesy of Eric Allie via Townhall
Musical Interlude: My Favorite Vocalists

Billy Joel, "My Life"

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Sunday, July 27, 2014

Miscellany: 7/27/14

Quote of the Day
Teachers open the door, 
but you must enter by yourself.
Chinese Proverb

Tweet of the Day
Chart of the Day
Via Reason
Chicago vs. median Chicago household income 71,020 via IPI
Pro-Liberty Thought of the Day

Via LFC
Image of the Day
Via Being Classically Liberal

Reason's version of a pro-liberty healthcare reform bumper sticker

Reason's suggestion of a new, more succinct healthcare reform bumper sticker
Cicero: A Model For Today's Pro-Liberty Champions?

Via Right Planet
I believe this is a paraphrase from Cicero's first oration against Cataline; the original context is: " I have always been of the disposition to think unpopularity earned by virtue and glory, not unpopularity." Cicero had been elected as one of two co-consuls, the shared highest office under the Roman Constitution. Cataline was a Roman senator whom sought to seize power by assassinating Cicero and co-consul Gaius Antonius Hybrida. Cicero managed to thwart the dictatorial ambition of Cataline to overturn the republic, but after his term expired, was less successful in resisting the rise of Julius Caesar and was killed resisting Mark Antony's subsequent rise to power. FEE's Lawrence Reed writes a more comprehensive essay on Cicero here.

In the interim Cicero wrote De Officiis, which would be the second book published (after the Bible).  I personally think Cicero does a good job of describing modern "progressives" here: "such generosity too often engenders a passion for plundering and misappropriating property, in order to supply the means for making large gifts. We may also observe that a great many people do many things that seem to be inspired more by a spirit of ostentation than by heart-felt kindness; for such people are not really generous but are rather influenced by a sort of ambition to make a show of being open-handed. Such a pose is nearer akin to hypocrisy than to generosity or moral goodness."

And this: "The man in an administrative office, however, must make it his first care that everyone shall have what belongs to him and that private citizens suffer no invasion of their property rights by act of the state...That speech deserves unqualified condemnation, for it favoured an equal distribution of property; and what more ruinous policy than that could be conceived? For the chief purpose in the establishment of constitutional state and municipal governments was that individual property rights might be secured. For, although it was by Nature's guidance that men were drawn together into cornmunities, it was in the hope of safeguarding their possessions that they sought the protection of cities."

Is there any doubt what Cicero would think of today's corrupt populist "progressive" political whores? Are we pro-liberty patriots tilting at windmills, helplessly watching America lapse into the equivalent of the Roman republic decay into a failing, corrupt fusion authoritarian/public welfare state?

More on Statistics Abuse

I tend to get into the weeds sometimes on applied statistics and research methodology. A few weeks back, I gently criticized IPI on a topic where they reported the mean (average) vs. the median income figure. A simple example will make the point: consider 3 annual pensions: $10K, $15K, $50K. The average is $25K, the median $15. The average is somewhat distorted by the large pension. Notice in the second chart above, IPI reported both figures. Did my comment influence them? Maybe not; they never acknowledged my comment. But it does give us more information. One thing this tells us is that there are some big pension numbers, probably former six-figure administrators. One of the pension reforms I've been advocating is capping pensions, not unlike social security, and/or means-testing.

Another point I've frequently mentioned are all these inequality studies that compute summary statistics at 2 points in time and draw inferences; these inferences are invalid, because there is typically movement among the quintiles. I know my income, for instance, went down during/after the 2000-2002 market correction. A lot of consulting companies went under, and perm recruiters were wary about hiring overqualified applicants they might lose as the economy improved. And my income initially fell after leaving academia (not that I was an overpaid professor; I probably ranked in the lower half for my discipline--I knew other UH grads whom got much better offers) and sharply rose by the end of the 1990's. I'm not saying I'm typical, but a number of people, say, within 15-20 years of retirement at the start of the 2008 tsunami, have struggled. (One of my feeds over the weekend looked at record SSDI claims.) The point is that summary statistics tend to wash out movements; you really need to look at longitudinal data--income shifts over time for the same people.

The reason I mention that is that Reason has a related piece on a study showing some alleviation in childhood obesity in the Philadelphia area. Is it paternalistic school menus or school physical education? Improvements in home exercise and diet? Differing mix of public school students? The timing or nature of measurements during the school year? A one-time statistical blip? I have not reviewed the specifics of the study, but what I do know of the study falls far short of proving the statistical significance of any factor, like school lunches; they aren't even tracking the same students.

The Difficulty of Selling a Free Market Message on Healthcare

There's a reason I embedded the two prospective Reason bumper stickers on healthcare reform. It's far easier to come up with a "progressive" sticker like "universal health care", "single-payer", etc. Of course, they don't have to go into details, which is the self-mocking first sticker which is a good summary of reforms, but it doesn't lend itself easily to rolling off the tip of one's tongue. Most of all will go into detail about how tax-advantaged healthcare had its birth during the wage-price control days of WWII where millions of American young men at war left a war economy shorthanded. We'll talk about how paperwork, deferred, below-market reimbursement for government health programs discourage providers, the inability of price lists to keep pace with individual market nuances, the incredible inefficiency of using insurance to cover out-of-pocket expenses or the corrupt influence of special-interest groups to socialize costs, say, of in-vitro fertilization, sex-change operations, etc.

I have a simple bumper sticker: PRIVATIZE THE HEALTHCARE SECTOR. The second bumper sticker also works (ie., INNOVATE). Why? You have government inertia everywhere: occupation cartels, interstate barriers of entry, sluggish drug approvals, arbitrary rules, e.g., 23andme's low-cost genetic testing; etc. I've had my fair share of battles with the government bureaucrats; for instance, at one agency, I was having to maintain 4 years of database archive logs, none usable over 90 days. In another case, I wanted to install Oracle's then new 10G App Server on a test server (the reason: Oracle eventually desupports older versions of its software), which did not affect the target installation process otherwise, but I was threatened if I installed it without the project manager's approval and she was on vacation. In an earlier post, I was on a project for a Chicago agency then implementing  version 10.7 of Oracle's ERP suite. I had a heated discussion, pointing out Oracle had already released 11.0.x, and if we installed 10.7, the agency would have to upgrade within 2 years; it made no sense. I was told to shut up, that the contract specified 10.7. (No doubt they wanted a Phase 2 contract...) Granted, these aren't healthcare examples, but I never got this sort of pushback at private-sector clients.

The problem is that you don't have the same incentives operating in the public sector. For instance, the FDA may be anal-retentive about approvals just in case there is some unexpected problem with an approved med, and they might get hauled in front of Congressional panels to be read the riot act. It's hard to count how many people may have saved if a med was approved earlier than later. You also aren't going to see the kinds of efficiency gains, say by implementing labor-saving technology, given various union-related considerations. I've mentioned in earlier posts how my UWM office overhead lights burned out, and it took several days before someone would do a 10-minute procedure. (Of course, union contracts prohibited me from changing my own lights.) I'm not saying CYA doesn't occur, say, in some large corporations, but it's pervasive throughout government.

Innovation just isn't possible with the current federal government. I think Obama made a past reference to something like 15 different offices dealing with salmon issues. You have turf battles, duplication of effort and resources, etc. That's why when someone says "single-payer", I have to roll my eyes; I mean it takes decades to drop obsolete taxes. You don't want government in charge of your healthcare. In the private sector you have the possibility of competition; in a single-payer system, the government is its own auditor, and there is no higher authority. What could go wrong with that?

By the way, check out the Reason link: there are about 3 webpages of suggested innovative reforms, starting with health status insurance, say, for example, if you develop a high-cost condition, i.e., dealing with the preexisting conditions problem.

Dance With His 11YO Daughter

I'm probably the only one whom hasn't seen this video of McKenzie Carey, whom has mitochondria, but God bless the unlimited love of a father for his baby girl.





More Proposals









Political Cartoon
Courtesy of the original artist via IPI
Courtesy of Eric Allie via Townhall
Musical Interlude: My Favorite Vocalists

Billy Joel, "The Stranger"

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