Category Archives: Business

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Technology and Society

Electric Cars

12 Comments

…are not a moon shot:

“What people overlook is that accomplishing ‘big picture’ programs like Apollo require accepting the concept of unlimited spending to achieve the mission,” says Ron Cogan, editor and publisher of the industry authority Green Car Journal and editor of GreenCar.com. “Current levels of unprecedented federal spending notwithstanding, electric cars are not an exclusive answer to future transportation challenges and consumers will not be willing to buy them at all costs.”

As I pointed out at the last Apollo anniversary, it’s time to stop using this economically ignorant analogy. And that means you, Mr. President. The only time that he ever talks about space is when he can use it as an excuse for one of his non-space economically nutty programs.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary

Cash, Or Credit?

9 Comments

Who gets cash and who gets IOUs in California. I’m shocked, shocked. I’m glad the state doesn’t owe me any money. I wonder how much the IOUs will be discounted for people who need the liquidity now?

[Update a few minutes later]

If they’re going to do this, instead of making some people more equal than others, wouldn’t the fair thing be to issue everyone a mix of cash and IOU in proportion to the amount that they’re short?

[Late morning update]

B of A says that it will accept the IOUs as warrants:

“To support our customers, while giving the state legislature additional time to pass a budget, we will accept California state-registered warrants — or IOUs — from existing customers and clients,” Charlotte-based BofA (NYSE:BAC) says in a written statement.

OK, so what are these things? What happens if the legislature doesn’t get its act together (and based on history, that’s the way to bet). Do they have an associated interest rate, or maturity date? What would a secondary market in them look like, and how would they be discounted? Suppose California just reneges on redeeming them? Does B of A (and Wells Fargo, and whoever else follows suit) then get made whole by TARP, thus bailing out the state of California via the US taxpayer through the back door (in more ways than one)?

What a mess.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary

Forget Church And State

15 Comments

Let’s have separation of the economy and state:

The government has no Constitutional, moral, or economic basis for controlling the economy. We seek to revoke its power to manipulate interest rates, debase the currency, manage the practice of medicine, restrict practical sources of energy, or rob Peter to pay for Paul’s house, financial institution, or automaker.

We identify government control of the economy as the cause of our current financial crisis, and argue that removing this cancer is the only solution.

Some will say that separation of economy and state is too radical a goal. To be sure, this goal will take time—and a roadmap—to reach. But it is the only valid destination. Where liberty is concerned, “moderation” is suicide. Patrick Henry did not say “Give me a small rollback in government or give me death.” He said: give me liberty. So should we.

Unfortunately, too many people don’t seem to want to be free, or responsible for their own lives.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

The Cost Of Cap And Trade

71 Comments

Bob Zubrin:

Burning one ton of coal produces about three tons of CO2. So a tax of $15 per ton of CO2 emitted is equivalent to a tax of $45/ton on coal. The price of Eastern anthracite coal runs in the neighborhood of $45/ton, so under the proposed system, such coal would be taxed at a rate of about 100 percent. The price of Western bituminous coal is currently about $12/ton. This coal would therefore be taxed at a rate of almost 400 percent. Coal provides half of America’s electricity, so such extraordinary imposts could easily double the electric bills paid by consumers and businesses across half the nation. In addition, many businesses, such as the metals and chemical industries, use a great deal of coal directly. By doubling or potentially even quadrupling the cost of their most basic feedstock, the cap-and-trade system’s indulgence fees could make many such businesses uncompetitive and ultimately throw millions of working men and women onto the unemployment lines.

It’s OK. Even if they have paychecks, they won’t be able to afford to eat any more, anyway, after the price of food skyrockets. And it will solve that pesky population problem in the third world.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Let’s Put The Government In Charge Of Health Care

5 Comments

Charles Murray (who by the way co-wrote one of the best histories of Apollo):

You want to know what a Medicare identification card is like? It is a little larger than the standard size for credit cards and driver’s licenses. (Of course. Couldn’t have the federal government make a card that will fit in a stack with all the other cards you use.) It has no magnetic strip. It is plain vanilla text and fonts—no security features whatsoever. It could be counterfeited by a sixth-grader with a scanner. It is made out of flimsy paper that would barely qualify for a really cheap business card. This, for Medicare benefits, for Pete’s sake. It’s pathetic.

Actually, it is shoddy and incompetent, as are so many things that the federal government does.

Let’s hope they’ll stick to making little cars.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

An Example Of How Lucky We Have It

30 Comments

The worst job they could come up with:

I’ve held my silence for long enough, but my true identity (for about 2 months) was the bird at Red Robin – Red, he really has a name. It was horrible, you could only be out in the restaurant getting poked and stepped on by little kids for 15-20 minutes at a time- at which point you would overheat and the staff would waddle you back to the huge meat freezer to cool off and start all over again. Perk: free steak fries and soda.

Boo. Hoo.

I don’t want to get into a Monty Python “we had to live in a cardboard box and get killed by our father every morning, and be grateful that we had the luxury of a box” sort of thing, but I’ve had worse jobs.

But I’m not going to bother to talk about them, because I know that at the worst, I lived in a paradise compared to many millions in the world. For example, consider the people who have to work in real sweat shops, where you don’t get a break every 15-20 minutes.

But even there, I don’t think it compares to a “job” in North Korea, where your job is to go out and find something to eat that will be worth the energy that it took you to find it — forget about whether or not it will feed your family.

These people have no conception of what bad jobs are. And the frightening thing is that they may find out before the reign of The One, who many of them voted for, is over, because he seems to think that state planning, as occurs in the extreme there, should reign over the market.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Social Commentary

Cultural Imperalism

3 Comments

How McDonalds conquered France:

In the battle for France, Jose Bové, the protester who vandalized a McDonald’s in 1999 and was then running for president, proved to be no match for Le Big Mac. The first round of the presidential election was held on April 22, and Bové finished an embarrassing tenth, garnering barely 1 percent of the total vote. By then, McDonald’s had eleven hundred restaurants in France, three hundred more than it had had when Bové gave new meaning to the term “drive-through.” The company was pulling in over a million people per day in France, and annual turnover was growing at twice the rate it was in the United States. Arresting as those numbers were, there was an even more astonishing data point: By 2007, France had become the second-most profitable market in the world for McDonald’s, surpassed only by the land that gave the world fast food. Against McDonald’s, Bové had lost in a landslide.

As Hitler discovered, it helps a lot to have Frenchmen on your side. It’s a very entertaining read.

[Via Veronique]

[Update a couple minutes later]

The best take, from Michael Goldfarb:

In the course of Donald Morrison’s review of Au Revoir to All That by Michael Steinberger, we learn that McDonald’s is the largest private employer in all of France, which is sort of like being the largest provider of health insurance in North Korea, but nonetheless, it feels like a major triumph for American culture and cuisine. I once ate at the McDonald’s right next to the Arc de Triomphe. My quarter pounder tasted like hegemony.

Even better than the smell of napalm in the morning.

[Via Mark Hemingway]

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society

Catastrophe Avoidance

2 Comments

…is not a one-sided threat. For those people who don’t understand discount rates, a graphical presentation.

This is a problem that just begs to have a regret analysis performed on it. Of course, we have a media that can’t even do simple division, so why would we expect them to understand net present value?

[Update on Tuesday morning]

It’s the economic growth, stupid:

Here are some other metrics. The percentage of the world’s population that is at risk for coastal flooding is well under 1% in the baseline, and is not projected to rise close to 1% in any scenario within the 95-year forecast. Malaria deaths have historically been in effect eliminated by societies that achieve several thousand dollars per year of per capita income — the key risk here is once again slower economic growth that keeps parts of the developing world poorer longer.

Again and again, we see the same pattern: At least for the next century, changes in human welfare, even on metrics that are not purely economic, are fundamentally driven by changes in economic development, not AGW damages. This is why it makes sense to be focused acutely on risks to economic growth when considering the overall effects of any emissions-mitigation program.

Most people who advocate nonsense like cap and trade are ignorant of the science, but even more are ignorant of economics, including the “scientists.”