Archive for March, 2010

This is above and beyond funny.  Rep. Waxman, a champion of all things good and absurd, finds the recent accounting actions by large companies, with regard to writing up the cost of providing healthcare to their pensioners, “a matter of concern.”  He actually calls the act of abiding by the law and current accounting practices “assertions.”  I really feel like this is a shark jumping point in time, at least I hope.

“Man has a single basic choice: to think or not, and that is the gauge of his virtue. Moral perfection is an unbreached rationality–not the degree of your intelligence, but the full and relentless use of your mind, not the extent of your knowledge, but the acceptance of reason as an absolute.” – Ayn Rand

We have an issue in this country.  We think the wrong people are stupid.  Sarah Palin may be the best current example.  Watching the interviews with Katie Couric would give many the impression of stupidity, less so if you read the uncut transcripts.  (Editors are magicians, aren’t they?)  However, stupidity is a descriptor relative to some absolute.  So, what is she stupid at?  Managing a complex and inherently unstable federal system that dominates over 25% of the US economy?  Maybe it’s her inexperience in negotiating with terrorists?  Or maybe its her desire to exert her right to have an opinion on the act of abortion without getting into the legality of it?  Why are those adequate measures of intelligence?

I don’t want this post to become a discussion on Mrs. Palin’s intelligence but I use it as an example of a problem I see when people disparage her.  I feel comfortable saying that I have listened to more of Sarah Palin’s speeches and interviews than the typical person.  Even with that, I do not have the confidence in saying anything about her mental abilities.  And if I can’t, I dare say most can’t.  Honestly, at least.

Why is it that no questions were directed at her philosophy of governing?  I think she has a leg up over many in the current federal government system because of her beliefs that less government influence in our personal lives will lead us to a stronger nation.

NOTE:  Right after hitting the publish button on this post, I went to the WSJ Opinion page and saw an opinion piece by Norman Podhoretz.  Chills up and down my spine…  For a much better discussion on this topic, I would refer you to the WSJ article.

What seems to be lost on those that favor more and more federal government involvement in our daily lives is that it reduces the self correcting mechanism that our Founding Fathers set up.  The free movement between states was one of the big selling points for getting the states to actually want to form a union.  Why?  There were many reasons but the one that stood out to me was securing the right for people to leave an area once it became oppressive or unproductive and to set up a household somewhere else.  With a more federalist system, individuals have the ability to ‘pick up their chips and move to another table.’  Once we move to a system with a much stronger central government, the advantage to move is much less (at least relative to the cost).  States all start to look the same.  The self healing system that has made us a dynamic, resilient and strong economy is put at risk.

I am incredibly amazed at and frustrated by the last minute jockeying being done within the our House of Representatives.  The item keeping Mrs. Pelosi from getting her way is not the economic unsustainability issues or lasting system alterations that this intrusive bill will have on the US people.  It is the language of a few pages with regard to abortion.  Though I see how it may hold up votes, do they really think (other than the framework of allowing the government more power over our lives) that this bill’s individual items will hold the test of time?  No, I think they know it’s all about them getting their constituents to not vote them out when it comes time this fall.

What outcries will we hear when this bill is signed into law by Mr. Obama and then a new administration comes in and wants to use it to change the rules?  What if a new administration and Congress has a bent away from abortion?  Do you think they will just look at the current law and say “oh, well, guess we can’t change it since it’s law already?”  No.  They now have a framework to align to their whims.  One small amendment ( that would require a majority) could cut abortion from being a covered item within both government and private-based insurance, essentially eliminating abortion without even having to pass a law that forbids it.

This bill will produce a great increase in power, over private insurance plans, that allows the government to ‘deem’ what is allowed to be covered and what is not allowed to be covered.  Do you really want that?

Proponents see the headline that it will increase coverage and that it will cost us an extra $100b per year.  Many of them say “that’s okay, I’m willing to make that sacrifice so that I can help the downtrodden masses (these were words used on a FB thread that made me cringe).”  What is not in the headlines and requires you to read deeper into this abyss is the control you, as an individual, are giving up not only for yourself, but for all citizens.  The cost is not in the minor $100b per ear in added taxes, deficit, etc.  It’s in the willingness to give a little over 500 arbitrary people control over your daily actions.

Here’s a nice little article that worth reading.  I particularly like this part:

No-nonsense economist Peter Morici of the University of Maryland’s School of Business succinctly diagnoses the problem with the Obama economy: “To add jobs, businesses need customers and capital. No customers, no capital, no jobs.”

Capital formation, derived from profits and investment, are completely missing from the administration’s vocabulary and its economic policies. Democrats on Capitol Hill never utter these words, nor include incentives for them in their bills.

A friend just sent me this piece.  It’s one thing to talk about personal freedom and the need for individual responsibility from someone that was, in the eyes of many of my socialist-leaning friends, lucky or in the right spot at the right time.  It’s another to hear it from someone that lived within the government assistance programs.

All,

From yesterday’s WSJ.  You just can’t make this stuff up!

Former Enron adviser Paul Krugman takes note in his New York Times column of what he calls “the incredible gap that has opened up between the parties”:

Today, Democrats and Republicans live in different universes, both intellectually and morally.

“What Democrats believe,” he says “is what textbook economics says”:

But that’s not how Republicans see it. Here’s what Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona, the second-ranking Republican in the Senate, had to say when defending Mr. Bunning’s position (although not joining his blockade): unemployment relief “doesn’t create new jobs. In fact, if anything, continuing to pay people unemployment compensation is a disincentive for them to seek new work.”

Krugman scoffs: “To me, that’s a bizarre point of view–but then, I don’t live in Mr. Kyl’s universe.”

What does textbook economics have to say about this question? Here is a passage from a textbook called “Macroeconomics“:

Public policy designed to help workers who lose their jobs can lead to structural unemployment as an unintended side effect. . . . In other countries, particularly in Europe, benefits are more generous and last longer. The drawback to this generosity is that it reduces a worker’s incentive to quickly find a new job. Generous unemployment benefits in some European countries are widely believed to be one of the main causes of “Eurosclerosis,” the persistent high unemployment that affects a number of European countries.

So it turns out that what Krugman calls Sen. Kyl’s “bizarre point of view” is, in fact, textbook economics. The authors of that textbook are Paul Krugman and Robin Wells. Miss Wells is also known as Mrs. Paul Krugman.

I would highly recommend everyone watch this.  It’s 18 minutes that you may or may not have available but I think her message is important to the discussion on free markets versus central planning.

In the talk, she describes the idea that everyone has a genius inside of them rather than the current belief that few individuals are genius.  If you concur, then I think you would tend to the idea that control should be pushed as close to the individual, and that the freedom to act (within bounds) by the individual is the best way for us to solve the problems we face as a society.  Too many times I have people say that ‘if we had the right people in government’ or ‘if we could get 20 smart guys in a room’ we would be able to solve the toughest, most complex problems.

If you believe in the ideas she describes, you would not come to the conclusion that the toughest, most complex problems can be solved by the ideas of the few (no matter what our past and current administrations say).  You would need to recognize that the complexity of the problem demands the little bit of genius that resides in all of us.  And the best way to nurture that genius is not going to come from stifling it as big governments tend to do.