Choose a job you love, and you will never work a day in your life.
Confucius
Autumn Leaves
A business trip to Pittsburgh today provide a nice multi-colored patchwork of forests along the way, reminding me of one of the first standards we covered in high school choir...
Free the Education Market....
America, We Have a Mandatory Spending Problem!
Fascist Populism: Where Raising Taxes By Stealing Other People's Money Is "Fair"
Whereas some ballot initiatives this fall target limiting the government's ability to tax and spend people's income:
- In Georgia, voters will consider Amendment A, which would change the state constitution to prevent lawmakers from increasing the state’s income tax above the six percent rate now in effect.
- In Tennessee, voters will consider Amendment 3, which would change the state’s constitution to prevent lawmakers from imposing a tax on wage income.
- In North Dakota, voters will consider Measure 2, which would prevent the state or local governments from imposing mortgage taxes or any sales or transfer taxes on real estate.
- In Massachusetts, voters will consider Question 1, which would eliminate the requirement that the state’s gas tax be adjusted annually for inflation.
- In Berkeley, Calif., voters will consider Measure D, which would impose a one cent a fluid-ounce tax on distributors of soda, energy drinks, and sweetened teas.
- In San Francisco, Calif., voters will consider Measure E, which would impose a two-cent an ounce tax on sugar-sweetened beverages.
- In Nevada, voters will consider Question 3, which would impose a two percent “margin tax” on Nevada businesses with revenues of more than $1 million a year. The proceeds of the tax would be dedicated to fund the state’s public schools.
- In Illinois, voters will consider a “millionaire tax increase for education” question, which tests support for an additional 3 percent tax on those with income of more than $1 million a year.
My maternal Uncle Roger is a very sharp, able debater, but he hates to repeat himself once he's made his point. There's a part of me that wants to overwhelm my opponent with "shock and awe", there's no fun in being ambushed by a group of fanatics, whether it's a wolf pack of low-carb Atkins diet fundamentalists, "progressive" trolls, a 9/11 truther group dominating a Christian libertarian group, or in the latest, an AnCap Facebook group, basically daring anyone to criticize the orthodoxy of Austrian School Economics.
Basically a few Facebook groups, some of which I occasionally select topics or images, are anarcho-capitalists--basically they argue even minimal State functions can be preferably handled by the private sector, and minarchists (small government types like myself) are hypocrites, that giving the Statists a small government foothold is unprincipled, like being a little bit pregnant. For most libertarians, the Austrian School economists include Mises, Hayek, and Rothbard. (The former two are more in the minarchist camp, and the latter in the AnCap group). Prominent libertarians embracing the Austrian School include Ron Paul and Tom Woods, the latter a minarchist turned AnCap.
In a sense I should have known better than to poke a bear when an AnCap basically dared anyone to challenge the supremacy of Austrian School Economics. Additional context: Austrian School Economics is driven mostly by a set of axioms and unlike Keynesian and monetarian economists, generally doesn't look at empirical, behavioral economics.
I printed a comment in yesterday's FB Corner over how the Austrians ignore empirical evidence at their own risk and relevance. The AnCap crowd went apeshit and started spamming my thread. I'm not going to copy and paste the thread, some of which involved disrespectful personal attacks, but I questioned the scientific basis of Austrian theory that does not extend itself to empirical validation and I raised Godel's incompletenessness theorems to argue axiomatic systems are intrinsically flawed. The Austrian trolls tried to draw me into arcane discussions about Austrian concepts, which is like playing an opponent on his home turf. Marginal Revolution's Bryan Caplan wrote a well-known essay why he is not Austrian (he goes beyond my empirical objections), and I referred the group to Caplan's critique, which again I knew would make the Austrians go apeshit. I told them (like my Uncle Roger might), that I had had my say and was done with it. I did get a few readers liking my comments in enemy territory, one saying it was a good debate. At one point, I was attracting a comment every 3 minutes or so. I knew I wasn't going to convert the Austrian fundamentalists (nor did I even resort to arguments pointing out Mises had advised an Austrian leader during the Depression, later assassinated by Hitler, on economic recovery which, relatively speaking, didn't go well), but I wanted to simply debunk the idea that classical liberals/libertarians had to accept an Austrian perspective.
(IPI). “Divvy Bikes are headed to the suburbs of Evanston and Oak Park after Gov. Pat Quinn on Sunday reversed course and approved a $3 million state grant to expand the bike-sharing service.
…Taxpayers in the three cities will foot the bill for an additional $750,000, bringing Divvy bikes to the suburbs for the first time.
If Divvy-bike sharing was a credible enterprise, the free market system, if not squeezed out by political whores, would provide it without putting taxpayer money at risk.
(IPI). Since the Great Recession ended, Illinois is the only state in the Midwest to have more people end up on food stamps than in a job.
Every other state in the Midwest has had more job creation than food-stamp enrollment.
In Indiana, for example, there have been nearly three new jobs for each new food-stamp enrollee.
One suggestion: make food stamps redeemable only for Michelle Obama school lunches...
(Judge Andrew Napolitano). Fourth Amendment overlooked in Seattle http://goo.gl/Y491Iv
The next thing you know, they'll be fining you for lining your birdcage with political flyers from King County politicians...
Proposals
Political Cartoon
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| Courtesy of Gary Varvel via Townhall |
Barry Manilow, "The Old Songs". One of my favorites...
