Analytics

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"

Posted by at
Labels: , , ,