Analytics

Saturday, July 26, 2014

Miscellany: 7/26/14

Quote of the Day
In shallow waters, shrimps make fools of dragons.
Chinese Proverb

Tweet of the Day
Image of the Day

Via Lawrence Reed
Via LFC
Via Being Classically Liberal
Via the Free State Project
A Matter of National Honor and Conscience



The VA Scandal and the Need For Accountability



Facebook Corner

Oh, I'm in a foul mood stomping "progressive" trolls. I just loathe people whom think they have a right to other people's property.

(Being Classically Liberal). M.P and I are writing a chapter in our book which debunks economic myths. We need some ideas so comment what myths you would like to see debunked. So far we have the myth that:
-Immigrants take American jobs
-Offshoring reduces american wages and employment
-Men get paid more than women for the same work
- Tax rates on the wealthy used to be over 90%
-Income inequality leads to slower economic growth and financial crises
-etc.
Give me some good ideas folks. Also, our book is over 200 pages now for those 
Just a few others. Some of the healthcare myths, e.g., that government is more efficient because of profits and economies of scale; that preventive healthcare pays for itself. Also, the robber baron and anti-trust myths. The myth that 2008 was a result of government deregulation. The Norwegian welfare state cured poverty myth. The school teachers are underpaid myth. The idea that the success of the 1990's was due to Clinton's economics policies, including his Goldilocks tax hike on the wealthy. But without government, who would build the roads?

(Indepedent Institute). Policy Fellow Robert Morris: "This summer, Americans remember that the right to vote was won at great cost, and rightly celebrate the victory. But the right to vote is useless unless voters choose to exercise it."
This opinion is pure crap. The issue in Cochran's dubious runoff victory is not whether African Americans had a right to cast a vote but whether the voters were eligible, which had nothing to do with race. The record shows that nearly twice as many blacks voted in the runoff, that those new voters were Democrats, many of whom voted in the Dem primary, and Cochran openly solicited black Democrat support. This is more a question of undermining the integrity of the election process, by a career politician.

(Downsizing the Federal Government). Who uses mass transit? Randal O'Toole explains. Should government be in the mass transit business in the first place?The government should not be subsidizing transit users. But no, the government is a monopoly and intrinsically incapable of operating a competitive business. Government should stick to its core mandate of protecting our unalienable rights of life, liberty and property.

(NR). Paul Ryan's Opening Bid.
Whereas a shift of the safety net in favor of the principle of Subsidiary is a promising start of reform, Paul Ryan still seems to have undue faith in a big federal government and the government's role in morally hazardous public policy. The first step is to promote the freedom of the private sector in addressing poverty; we also need to stop the dysfunctional war on drugs, privatize the educational system, eliminate employer mandates (including the minimum wage, payroll taxes, healthcare, etc.) and other anti-competitive policies (e.g., occupational licensing, food trucks, etc.)

(FEE). Should we end the Fed? Make sure to tune in to our next ‪#‎ArenaKO‬ debate this Tuesday, July 29 at 3:35pm ET featuring Bruce Rottman and Sean Mulholland.
YES!

(Cato Institute). "Global tax competition is intense and that U.S. tax reform is long overdue."
The Obama regime is corrupt and remains resistant to an increasingly standard territorial tax concept--it thinks it's entitled to a cut of business income in other countries which have already taxed said income. The US provides ZERO services for operations in other countries. We need to eliminate economically perverse progressive brackets, lower and simplify tax structures (and STOP trying to bribe the economy) and ideally put more emphasis on more efficient taxation methods (example: a VAT-like consumption tax).
Cut bloated management salaries - profit is good but greed is not.
My God, the corrupt Politics of Envy trolls in this thread. It's none of your business what other people are paid.
"FASCISM the merger of State and Corporate power" Mussolini.
Fascism is a State-dominated economy. You (including corporations) can have your private property, so long as we the State control it. Stop this crackpot nonsense; you "progressives" created the vicious cycle of corruption by empowering the State.

(FEE). In a free economy, wealth does not sit under the mattresses of the rich. Instead it gets used by productive people making our lives better.
How do you manage to attract the economically illiterate "progressive" trolls? These morally corrupt bastards whom never learned about the corrupt sins of coveting another neighbor's goods or theft from their parents or churches. Crackpot conspiracy theories about how thousands, even millions of businesses in the economy capture the government's plunder is just irrational nonsense. Of course, when the State has authority and stolen resources, it attracts some parasites; the obvious solution to such corruption is to diminish the State. But blaming the economy for the parasitic State puts the cart before the horse, and to give yet more authority and resources to the State generates a vicious cycle of corruption that idiotic "progressives" just don't get.

 The trolls are only interested in the disparity of wealth, period. There are examples of second-generation rich and/or successful whom independently were successful (arguably more so) on their own terms: Jane Fonda; Barry Bonds; Hank Williams, Jr.; Bill Gates; Warren Buffett; Donald Trump; Dewayne "the Rock" Johnson, etc. But the point is, that savings and investments of even the "idle rich" provide the capital for startups, public infrastructure, business expansion--not simply for their own benefit, but for all the consumers and users of said products and services. By one tally, Gates' Microsoft made over 10,000 employees millionaires, some of whom retired before 40; all employees were given options (interestingly, not Gates himself), even glorified gofers. I seem to recall Larry Ellison's secretary also retired early as a millionaire. This isn't much different than the heirs of the rich; they lucked into working for a fabulous 1990's success story. I don't see it as zero-sum; I see it as win-win. If a WalMart heir's wealth helps lower-income people stretch their dollars, it helps better their standard of living.

(LFC). Lets create some jobs. It would take a lot of paid labor to rebuild the bridges: Lets blow them up. That will yield the added bonus of stopping foreigners from stealing our jobs. And lets ban all labor-saving equipment that destroys jobs. And job production is great, but to really eliminate unemployment, we need fewer humans.
Your sarcasm may throw off some readers... Yes, Statist central planning of the economy is sheer hubris...

(Being Classically Liberal). (F) Limited-Government Conservatives and Libertarians aren't Social Conservatives. If you want government to enforce or exercise your beliefs on others, you're an authoritarian.

False. For example, a third of libertarians, like me, are pro-life. I'm guided by a Thomistic sense of tolerance; I don't believe that the State can compel virtue. I don't believe in prostitution or the use of recreational drugs. But short of things like murder and theft, I don't believe in intervention by the State. I do think social norms matter, but I think they should be addressed by family, church and community, not the State.

(Cato Institute). "Fed policy is not just ineffective; it is malignant. The main effect of Fed policy has been to create asset bubbles in financial markets, decoupling these from the underlying economy. As we learned painfully in the recent financial crisis, overheated asset markets are not a source of strength - they the source of future problems."
The recently past financial meltdown was not the result of Fed action or inaction. It was directly attributable to government interference in the housing market, which forced Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to buy substandard mortgages that in turn created the Sub-Prime Mortgage category. That root cause was exacerbated by realtors, mortgage brokers, real estate attorneys, and bond packagers who recognized this new opportunity to scam the market and get rich doing it. The Federal Reserve Bank played no role in this fiasco. Further, the Fed, under Ben Bernanke, who didn't do everything right, did a pretty good job of keeping the US and world economies out of a total collapse and death spiral. Place the blame where it belongs. On the Federal Government, not on the Federal Reserve Bank.

The expansion of credit results in the expansion of the money supply. An excessive increase in the money supply can cause inflation. Two things come to mind: 1. We have experienced zero inflation for an extended period and have been at a far greater risk of deflation, which is much, much worse; 2. If the Fed didn't buy all of that Treasury paper, somebody else would have--foreign investors, domestic investors, mutual funds, etc., etc., etc. Credit and the money supply would have expanded, irrespective of whether the Fed or somebody else bought the T-bonds and T-notes. The difference is that have a willing buyer in the Fed, we have all benefited by keeping interest rates lower than they would otherwise be. That's a good thing.
Do we really need to hear nonsense like the deflation bugaboo? During the nineteenth century, we had two deflationary declines of roughly 50%, a period during which the American economy saw robust expansion. (Only during the Depression years did we a correlation of deflation and a weak economy.) It was Fed easy money that boosted unsustainable domestic overcapacity, foreign purchases of American goods, and rampant speculation during the 1920's.

 Price-fixing, including the setting of interest rates, is an economically perverse, counterproductive policy which contributes significantly to capital investment uncertainty and has been correlated to an ongoing series of asset bubbles. To argue that Fed policy was not related to the housing meltdown is disingenuous; artificially low interest directly influences how much of a house you can buy for your budget, and the GSE duopoly gained market share because of their ability to acquire cheap Treasury funding. We have seen asset prices like Midwest farmland and stocks inflate despite tepid economic growth, more capital consumption (e.g., stock buybacks) than capital expansion, etc.

 Does fiscal policy matter? Of course. Almost anything the federal government touches turns to crap: housing, college loans, healthcare, foreign policy... It puts sector inflation on steroids. But, as Mises argued several decades ago, central planning is intrinsically flawed because of the lack of true market pricing to properly allocate scarce resources. The Fed only exacerbates the boom-bust cycle; thinking it can micromanage down cycles is pure hubris.

(IPI).  Perusing Gov. Pat Quinn's website, one can easily find calls for increasing Illinois’ minimum wage to $10 from $8.25.
But just a few clicks away is an application to work for the governor, full time: for free.
What do you expect from a good-for-nothing governor?
minimum wage will increase the cost of business which will then increase prices for consumers. Whether a business could survive this depends on their ability to adjust, but layoffs will be inevitable.
It depends on the local economy, nature of the competition, business cost structure, number of relevant workers and the amount of increase. Nationally, minimum wage jobs account for maybe 2% of jobs.

 Consider Williston, ND, the heart of the Bakken oil shale boom, with probably the lowest unemployment rate in the nation. Even WalMart had to increase its starting wage to $17/hour, obliterating the national minimum wage:

 "To counteract higher wages, franchise operators have pared down and priced up.

 At Hardee's, Munger uses labor-saving devices, like self-ordering kiosks and automated training systems to cut down on costs. He also eliminated a hostess program and a roast beef slicer position. Customers feel the pinch too—prices are about 20 to 30 percent higher in Williston than his average restaurant.

 Buffalo Wild Wings has adjusted its labor structure and become "very strict with inventory," Reichenberger said.

 McDonald's makes up for bigger labor costs with increased volume and higher prices.

 "A lot of McDonald's in the nation have a dollar menu," Kelley said. "Well, our dollar menu is $1.39.""

(FEE). Grocery stores are ‪#‎innovating‬ by taking unsold raw chickens nearing their expiration date and rotisserie-cooking them.
The original article doesn't refer to the WalMart/Sam's Club/Costco birds (see comments below--you don't have the volume of uncooked birds nearing their end of fresh sale life to accommodate the demand). I have to say, though, these are good deals, in my experience about $5 per smaller bird. When I went to my former Baltimore County Sam's Club, there was usually a line of 2 dozen or so shoppers waiting for the new birds. I just bought one yesterday at WalMart, a staple on my shopping list. I never understood why McDonald's didn't run with the concept when they bought Boston Market--McDonald's has had a harder time with its dinner crowd (I want something fuller than a sandwich for dinner). I thought lots of working parents could go through the drivethrough on their way home from work....

 There are variations on this concept--consider breads. I was into Ezekiel bread and Flatout breads at the time which my local Safeway seemed to sell on an irregular basis. And then one day I was in the frozen veggie aisle when I saw them on an adjoining shelf.

More Proposals





I didn't know the story behind this proposal, but Jam Sebastian, the young man, was recently diagnosed with serious stage lung cancer, and the young woman, his girlfriend Paolinne Michelle Liggayu, are a Youtube sensation known as Jamich. Michelle has stood by her man faithfully during his fight against cancer, and this proposal has a twist where she asks him to marry her, a great and noble love.



I LOVE the young woman's reaction here, just genuinely ebullient. Lucky man...



Political Cartoon
Courtesy of Steve Kelley via Townhall
Musical Interlude: My Favorite Vocalists

Billy Joel, "She's Always a Woman". It's hard to pick my favorites of Joel, whom is one of the great pop singer-songwriters of our time, in a small group (say, including Paul McCartney, Paul Simon and Elton John) but if I had to pick my top five: "Piano Man", this tune, "She's Got a Way", the irresistibly ebullient "Uptown Girl", and his cover of the Bob Dylan classic "To Make You Feel My Love".

Posted by at
Labels: , ,