The surest way to corrupt a youth is
to instruct him to hold in higher esteem
those who think alike
than those who think differently.
Nietzsche
Chart of the Day
Tweet of the Day
GAO: State legislatures need tax hikes or budget cuts up to 18% as Medicaid and employee/retiree costs outstrip GDP. http://t.co/3pfOU9BokS
— Ronald Guillemette (@raguillem) January 17, 2015
Image of the Day |
| Via Libertarian Catholic |
Education Reform and New York City
Refreshing to hear a former education administrator talk about not throwing good money after bad, closing down failed schools. I was mildly surprised the Reason interviewer didn't raise the hot button topic of Common Core. Not sure why she focused on the next President in the White House; I would expect a libertarian to talk about devolving authority back to state/local and/or education competition. Finally, when Klein talks about innovation, innovation flourishes in a vibrant free market, not some bureaucracy where it gets trapped in inertia.
On the First Jury Nullification
Facebook Corner
(Reason). Big, huge news on the civil asset forfeiture front!
Is Holder allowed to do this? I was hoping for the Congress to do civil asset forfeiture reform. Nevertheless, I am glad to see action of any type to end corrupt intergovernmental policies.
(continuation of a Libertarian Catholic thread)
I think this is irrelevant. We don't have freedom of speech to say things that won't offend, we have freedom of speech to say things that very well will offend. There is a very thin line between "don't offend" and "don't tell a truth I disagree with."
Utterly absurd. Hostile speech is by itself intolerant, aggressive and anti-social in nature; it is not intended to initiate dialog but to terminate. I'm not arguing for State controls on speech, but we have to recognize there is a moral and social context for speech and there are abuses of speech: for example, I cannot libel or slander you; I cannot engage in fraud, I cannot embellish my resume to a future employer, I cannot lie about my marital status to another woman, etc. Hostile speech seems to be a straightforward violation of some version of the non-aggression principle.
Fair enough. So what is the rightful remedy to illegitimate speech?
Social isolation.
(Mises Institute). Pat Barron: "The lesson is clear. If Switzerland can retake control of its money, so can any eurozone nation. The process may take longer, as the country reissues its own currency and re-denominates its bank accounts in local currency terms, but it can be done. Already there are reports that the Danish central bank is contemplating abandoning its currency peg of approximately 7.5 krone per euro. If the sky does not fall on Switzerland and Denmark, other nations may follow. Does anyone know how to say deutsche mark?" http://mises.org/…/patrick-barron-switzerland-leaves-europe…
This is a load of nonsense, sorry. Hello from Switzerland. We've never been a member, it was "just" a peg.
No, by maintaining a peg, the Swiss central bank subordinated its policy to whatever the ECB has done to devalue the euro. Pegs are relativist, not absolute monetary policy. So, I think the author is correct conceptually speaking.
There's a mistake: Switzerland has not maintained the 1.2 ratio, it simply has not let this ratio go UNDER 1.2, without opposing if the market produced a greater ratio. So it's not correct to say that Switzerland was in the monetary Union, please don't use Ludwig von Mises' name for such trivial assertions.
False. This is a straightforward application of supply and demand. The Swiss peg was maintained by buying euros/selling francs; that's because the Swiss worried that a declining euro would hurt its European exports--that's how come the Swiss have ended up with tons of euros on their balance sheet. In essence, they had subcontracted monetary policy to the ECB, because the ECB has been cutting interest rates and buying financial assets; the end result is the ECB has been de facto devaluing the euro, and the Swiss, by maintaining a peg, were essentially forced to devalue the franc. So, no, the Swiss central bank does not answer to the ECB, but the peg essentially made it part of the monetary union. As for arguing that the Swiss would welcome a stronger euro, which would make its products cheaper to European markets, of course. That is why they set a floor on the exchange rate in the first place.
If it were PEGGED, there would always have been the 1.2 ratio, whereas the ratio has also been greater most of the time
This is a state of denial. Over 3 years, the HIGHEST the ratio has been is 1.25. Since mid-August, the high point was 1.21, and for almost all of 2012 it was essentially at the peg. As for minor fluctuations, I would need to see the Swiss bank balances over that period. If you are correct, they would not have added to euro reserves. But the fact the currency jumped about 30% when the currency was allowed to float and the fact the central bank is carrying tons of euros undermines your point.
(The Mackinac Center for Public Policy). Senate Majority Leader Arlan Meekhoff, R-West Olive, said today that the Michigan Legislature will seek to repeal the state’s costly prevailing wage law. This policy change would save taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars per year. http://www.mackinac.org/20906
Not so much. This appears to be another boondoggle and attack upon middle class wages. Yep keep on taking, the economy that will be left will no longer be able to support anyone.
This is clear corruption of a privileged class enabled by Democratic political whores. The idea is that taxpayers should not have to pay above market rates, which is a drag on the Michigan economy. The only ones who benefit from the status quo are the parasites.
(IPI). From The Huffington Post: Many states have been underfunding the annual requirement for pensions in order to allegedly "balance" the state budgets over the past few years.
And those budget gimmicks are a cause for concern.
The pension funds, were intentionally underfunded by state government. The unions have no control over how government spends its money. Pensions don't always go broke. Many are doing just fine, like NYC, San Antonio and others. Unions are the last bastion of the middle class, in this country. Without them, we would all be working for Wal Mart wages and benefits.
I see one of the resident fascist trolls is still around spouting his delusional bullshit; as with all fascists, he is math-challenged. I don't know how many times I've repeated it on IPI threads, THE PROBLEM IS THE OUTFLOWS. THEY ARE UNSUSTAINABLE. You retards don't get the math; you pay on average for 20 months of benefits; even if states match, that's another 20 months. There's not an investment officer this side of Bernie Madoff that multiplies these funds to 30 or more years of retirement: you're dreaming. You have scores, even hundreds of people eligible for high 5-figure or 6-figure pensions. It's unsustainable; the pension funds should never have assumed a 7 or 8% return--which is unrealistic. The few private companies assume half that rate--what does a lower rate mean? You have to kick in more money. So even ignoring pension holiday contributions, the state and employers were grossly underfunding promises (while corrupt Democrat political whores kept adding sweeteners to spike pensions, etc.) Here's reality: future taxpayers aren't going to make it up. Push the city or state to bankruptcy, the retirement obligations are going to get a haircut.
(separate comment)
One more thing for the fascist crony unionist troll: no, with "friends" like unions, who needs enemies? Consider Larry Summers (you know, an economist who worked for both Clinton and Obama):
"Another cause of long-term unemployment is unionization. High union wages that exceed the competitive market rate are likely to cause job losses in the unionized sector of the economy. Also, those who lose high-wage union jobs are often reluctant to accept alternative low-wage employment. Between 1970 and 1985, for example, a state with a 20 percent unionization rate, approximately the average for the fifty states and the District of Columbia, experienced an unemployment rate that was 1.2 percentage points higher than that of a hypothetical state that had no unions. To put this in perspective, 1.2 percentage points is about 60 percent of the increase in normal unemployment between 1970 and 1985."
And from Tom Woods:
"In a study published jointly in late 2002 by the National Legal and Policy Center and the John M. Olin Institute for Employment Practice and Policy, economists Richard Vedder and Lowell Gallaway of Ohio University calculated that labor unions have cost the American economy a whopping $50 trillion over the past 50 years alone....That is not a misprint. "The deadweight economic losses are not one-shot impacts on the economy," the study explains. "What our simulations reveal is the powerful effect of the compounding over more than half a century of what appears at first to be small annual effects." Not surprisingly, the study did find that unionized labor earned wages 15 percent higher than those of their nonunion counterparts, but it also found that wages in general suffered dramatically as a result of an economy that is 30 to 40 percent smaller than it would have been in the absence of labor unionism."
In other words, freeloading unionist, you gained outsized compensation at the expense of others in the economy. No wonder union ranks continue to thin out, now about 7%.
Political Cartoon
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| Courtesy of Chip Bok via Reason |
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| Courtesy of Lisa Benson via Townhall |
Céline Dion, "Because You Loved Me". Just a side note: Glenn Campbell's final single release "I'm Not Going to Miss You" from the recent movie of his farewell tour "I'll Be Me" has been nominated for an Oscar. Please, God: at least one Grammy or Oscar, hopefully all 3 nominations.
