Miscellany: 4/11/15

Quote of the Day
There are two types of people in this world, good and bad. 
The good sleep better, 
but the bad seem to enjoy the waking hours much more.
Woody Allen

Chart of the Day: Anti-Competitive Crony Labor

Via IPI

Image of the Day

Via Alfred Martin on FB

Something wicked this way comes...

Via Independent Institute

Via Dollar Vigilante

Rand Paul: A New Vision For America



Hyperloop (Privately-Funded) vs. Boondoggle Supertrains



Facebook Corner

(The Hill). “The War on Drugs has created a culture of violence and puts police in an impossible situation,” Rand Paul said. “It has fostered tension in our inner cities. There is an undercurrent of unease in our country.
Rand Paul wants Amnesty. I will not Vote for him. Ted Cruz is against Amnesty. I will vote for Ted Cruz 2016
Cruz is a politician without balls, and his supporters are without balls. His populist schtick works only for people who don't deal with the real problems and difficult solutions. The anti-immigrants, like the contemptible OP, are a morally repulsive breed, unworthy of living in the "land of the free".

Via LFC

Labor is entitled to a fair market price for what it contributes to production. Labor didn't create that; someone saw or anticipated a market need, obtained the necessary capital and financing, devised and/or implemented necessary technology and work processes, deployed necessary infrastructure, and secured any necessary labor and resources. The business owners take on operational risk, including new competition/creative destruction, general or industry-specific economic conditions; employees are often paid before the employers taking on payment risk. If laborers think they are willing to take on market risk and are willing to risk the loss of all their capital, by all means join the competition and reap their "fair share" of profits.

(IPI). Illinois' prison population has grown 700% over the last 40 years, but overcrowding isn't a result of increasing criminality.
As the piece points out, we need to stop incarcerating people for petty or nonviolent offenses; building out the prison industrial complex may please the public employee unions and various vendors, but it unnecessarily raises the cost of government without improving public safety. We need to push back on the economic illiterate law and order populists pushing this tax-and-spend agenda. It's not just Illinois: the US has an incarceration rate that exceeds almost any other advanced economy, in the so-called "land of the free".
Try creating good paying jobs instead of fast food jobs.
Obama removed the 3% import tariff so all the jobs moved over seas. Bring back jobs by not voting for the socialist democratic machine. If you can. Most of you can't.
 If Obama cut tariffs, that would be the first intelligent thing he has done in his Presidency. Starting trade wars is a lose-lose proposition. What has hurt has been economically illiterate things like increasing regulations, employer mandates, increasing investment/income taxes, etc. We need more of a free market, not government manipulation of the economy by either left-wing or right-wing authoritarian nutjobs.
(separate comment)
To the OP, what is needed to grow jobs is a healthy growing economy--and, believe me, you can't even grow fast food jobs when median household incomes are stagnant--fast food purchases are one of the obvious ways to trim a household budget (says someone who still can't believe he recently spent $9 at Burger King for a combo meal). The way you grow the economy is not by growing wasteful government at the expense of the private economy or megalomaniac industrial policy decisions like stealing from the productive side of the economy to feed corrupt Green Energy cronies, funding money-losing infrastructure boondoggles or spending more on failing public schools. What we need are economically literate leaders who know how to minimize government spending and streamline existing government regulations.

Tax revenues in Illinois are up 22.5% over pre-recession highs, while 30 other states are collecting less tax revenue today than they were before the recession began.
The point is, these capital-eroding tax revenue schemes are unsustainable: that's why we continue to have a public pension crisis nearly 6 years into the "Obama recovery", sticky high unemployment/low labor force participation, state/local bond ratings are in the toilet, etc.: can you imagine how the state will remain afloat if and when (not whether) we slip into the next recession? The governor needs to use his veto to stop the economic damage being caused by the overspending Illinois legislature.


(Liberty.me). Sheldon Richman: "Where are libertarians likely go wrong when it comes to history? By and large, it’s in presenting American history as an essentially libertarian story."
I think Sheldon has made some good points, but let's point out in the good old days under the Articles of Confederation, we had states engaging in some of the same anti-liberty policies, e.g., tariffs between states. And even Jefferson didn't hold to his constitutional restraint in the Louisiana purchase. But let's not pretend that 1913 wasn't a Copernican-style revolution in the role of the federal government. I think Sheldon is engaging in an unnecessarily divisive fight with minarchists and constitutionalists; we all recognize that state or local governments can be just as tyrannical (look at restrictions on banking, like branch banking). What's really interesting is how the major parties have virtually exchanged major policies over the past 150 years.

Political Cartoon

Courtesy of Eric Allie via IPI

Courtesy of Gary Varvel via Townhall

Musical Interlude: My Favorite Vocalists

John Denver, "My Sweet Lady"