Quote of the Day
Love may not make the world go round, but I must admit that it makes the ride worthwhile.Sean Connery
Chart of the Day: The "Land of the Free"
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| Via William House |
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| Via David Wilcox Inspired by Jeff Tucker Post |
Really, lecturing your customers on how they can help you minimize their marginal costs? PLEASE. If I want a lecture on hanging up bath towels, I'll go home for a visit. Now, personally, I don't put unused complimentary items in my suitcase, and if I stay multiple nights, I'll probably reuse the first bar of soap, even if the soap has been replenished. I rarely use all the available clean towels, washcloths, etc. I may reuse a towel if it's dry, and, like at home, I don't leave used towels on the floor.
Are hotels going to be like the ones in Venezuela, bring your own toilet paper? What's next, bring your own towels and sheets? As for showing me how "green" you are...
Chart of the Day: Capitalism is the Antidote to War
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| Via Vox |
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| Via Peter Schiff |
Facebook Corner
(Overlawyered). "Don’t count on donuts, frozen pizza, coffee creamers, or canned cinnamon rolls to go on tasting the same — and don’t count on the federal government to respect your choices in the matter."
To put this petty tyranny into perspective, according to CDC, the average American consumes about 1.3 grams a day--less than 1% of energy a day. They also point out "Trans fat intake has significantly decreased in the US as a result of efforts to increase awareness of its health effects, Nutrition Facts label changes, industry efforts to voluntarily reformulate foods, and some state and local governments’ restriction of its use in restaurants and other food service outlets." In spite of an ongoing, voluntary trend that has reduced consumption of artificial trans fats to essentially innocuous levels for most people, the Statists want to impose significant costs on the economy to eliminate fairly modest consumption? It makes no sense.
There are few libertarians and fewer food scientists. I'm both. This is nonsense. No one will ever miss trans fats. Trans fats are flat out poison to your arteries. They need to go.
"Poison"? Absurd. Natural trans fats or artificial? I find it implausible you are a libertarian. It's one thing to inform the public of issues with artificial trans fats, another to participate in over-the-top fear-mongering and regulatory overreach. How many times have we heard Emily Litella say "Never mind..." to government pronouncements on salt, dietary cholesterol, and saccharin, among other things?
Should the feds allow companies to go on making insulation from asbestos? Im far from a health nut, but some things are just common sense.
For one thing, just as in the case of saccharin, salt, and dietary cholesterol, the government gets things wrong. If you think the food companies are selling asbestos, simple: don't buy their products. But let other consumers make their own choices. Don't be a nanny!
(FEE). Healthcare is important, but we cannot pretend that it is a right.
Yes, a single payer system will create different incentives than a free market, perhaps like actually negotiating with pharmaceutical companies so Americans wouldn't have to pay over twice as much for the same drugs.
It's bad enough there's someone actually economically illiterate enough to believe in an anti-competitive single-payer system, but then there are those who should know better who buy into the propaganda: "a single-payer is better than what we have". Government is the problem, not part of the solution. Mises pointed out the intrinsic folly of socialist systems nearly a century ago. Without a pricing mechanism operating in a freer market, you end up with massive government failures. As one discussant mentions above, more people die because of delays in FDA approvals than are "saved" by bureaucratic inertia demanding "extra" safeguards. If a company were to introduce a harmful med, it would be catastrophic for the business. I mean, do we really need to point out the failures in the government-run VA hospital system? The fact that government, even before ObamaCare, was spending half the dollars in the healthcare system and does that through economically retarded price lists? And private sector plans are de facto cross-subsidizing money-losing Medicaid and Medicare patients to the point that providers are increasingly unwilling to take on more government program patients? We have the inevitable outcomes of universal programs--bureaucratic inertia and resistance to change/innovation, and rationing/waitlists, etc.
truth about healthcare is that there aren't enough doctors to go around, so either you pay to get quality healthcare, or you wait in line. That's just how it is.
Well, there are, once again, public policy problems associated with that issue. Study the history of the medical cartel. The solution is, of course, a general free market in healthcare.
What we pay for healthcare is highway robbery. It's completely unnecessary to have to pay these amounts. All we're doing is buying yet another third home for some CEO somewhere.
Stop blaming the companies when the growth in healthcare expenditures is clearly linked to government intervention. (There's also a correlation between price and quality.)
Do you also use the same rhetoric to bash the single-payer fire fighting service? Are those workers bound by some freedom-crushing servitude?
I should have figured some public union troll would want to use a public monopoly on firefighting to justify his Statist views. (He's got an obsolete notion of how privatization works. ) "According to a 2012 study conducted by market research firm IBISWorld, there are 256 private firefighting companies in the United States — a number that’s expected to grow to more than 320 by 2017. At the same time, the number of firefighters employed by private companies will increase from 16,880 to 27,206....Privatization of firefighting saves most state and municipal governments between 10 and 40 percent, according to a 2012 study by Ibis World, “Private Firefighting Studies In the U.S.”" In fact, a prominent Chicago suburb is looking to outsource its fire department, impacted by, among other things, an unsustainable pension obligation.
Political Humor
Political Cartoon
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| Courtesy of Michael Ramirez via Patriot Post |
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| Courtesy of Chip Bok via Townhall |
Cat Stevens, "Bad Brakes"
