Category Archives: Economics

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

Who Are You Going To Believe?

37 Comments

The climate models, or the lying empirical evidence?

The new NASA Terra satellite data are consistent with long-term NOAA and NASA data indicating atmospheric humidity and cirrus clouds are not increasing in the manner predicted by alarmist computer models. The Terra satellite data also support data collected by NASA’s ERBS satellite showing far more longwave radiation (and thus, heat) escaped into space between 1985 and 1999 than alarmist computer models had predicted. Together, the NASA ERBS and Terra satellite data show that for 25 years and counting, carbon dioxide emissions have directly and indirectly trapped far less heat than alarmist computer models have predicted.

But let’s not let a little pesky science get in the way of social justice.

[Update a while later]

Gee, whaddaya know? A “climate researcher” who implied that our SUVs were drowning polar bears is being investigated for “integrity issues.”

It’s just the ninety percent of them who make the rest look bad.

[Update late afternoon]

Weep not for the polar bears: James Delingpole piles on.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

Time To Raise Taxes

26 Comments

…on the poor:

Distressingly, neither the president nor the Democrats offer any rigorous account of the optimal level of tax progressivity. Rather, the president seems to think that no matter how high the current marginal tax rates, the correct social policy is to move them upward. As such, he cannot explain why the top marginal tax rate for the rich should not approach 100 percent as they accumulate more and more wealth. After all, why not push the limits if efforts to redistribute wealth do not at some point impede its creation?

My view is the polar opposite of Obama’s. I believe, now more than ever, that the optimal level of progressivity in the system is zero, so that today’s marginal adjustments in taxes should increase taxes on those on the bottom half of the income distribution. To explain why, let us start with the premise that the defenders of any progressive tax have to give some principled account of the optimal degree of tax progressivity. They have to identify which of the infinite number of progressive tax schedules they embrace, and then explain why it is best.

They can’t. It’s all about “fairness,” not rationality or revenue. Or preventing the country from going into a tipping point of entitlement.

[Update a while later]

Are we having a Gettysburg moment in the long cold civil war?

If so, I hope that the Republicans continue to press their advantage, as Meade didn’t.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary

The “Adult In The Room”

27 Comments

…has blown up a bi-partisan plan. Because reelection is more important to him than saving the economy, or country.

[Update a few minutes later]

Our petulant and inept president.

It’s a bad combination. And I think that more and more people are starting to recognize it.

[Tuesday morning update]

Is Barack Obama a has been? I think he’s a never was, and people are finally starting to figure it out.

[Update a few minutes later]

Thoughts on the Obama plan:

As the president faced the nation on Monday evening, he knew his economic legacy was on the line. Historians will judge him for his economic stewardship.

The assessment will not be good. Going deep into his presidential term, he presides over a country that suffers from high unemployment, record home foreclosures, and a no-growth economy. But when the most pivotal issue of our decade emerged — a $16.8 trillion debt crisis — where was the “Obama plan”?

The sad truth is there is no Obama plan and there never has been a plan. The president gingerly approached the debt crisis as he has approached other issues: intellectually, coolly, passively, and with great detachment.

Bill Clinton never had a plan to balance the budget, either. It didn’t happen until the Republicans took over. But not having grown up a red-diaper baby, he was more ideologically flexible than Barack Obama.

[Update mid morning]

Remembering the golden age of Clinton. Accurately, unlike the Democrats who think that the boom was a result of tax increases.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary

Going Galt

4 Comments

The government’s war against business, energy and jobs continues:

I got a permit to open up an underground coal mine that would employ probably 125 people. They’d be paid wages from $50,000 to $150,000 a year. We would consume probably $50 million to $60 million in consumables a year, putting more men to work. And my only idea today is to go home. What’s the use? I don’t know. I mean, I see these guys — I see them with tears in their eyes — looking for work. And if there’s so much opposition to these guys making a living, I feel like there’s no need in me putting out the effort to provide work for them. So as I stood against the wall here today, basically what I’ve decided is not to open the mine. I’m just quitting. Thank you.

As some have already noted, for some people Atlas Shrugged is a cautionary tale, for others it’s a how-to manual.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Actually, there are parallels on other fronts as well:

“As federal criminal statutes have ballooned, it has become increasingly easy for Americans to end up on the wrong side of the law. Many of the new federal laws also set a lower bar for conviction than in the past: Prosecutors don’t necessarily need to show that the defendant had criminal intent. . . . The U.S. Constitution mentions three federal crimes by citizens: treason, piracy and counterfeiting. By the turn of the 20th century, the number of criminal statutes numbered in the dozens. Today, there are an estimated 4,500 crimes in federal statutes, according to a 2008 study by retired Louisiana State University law professor John Baker. There are also thousands of regulations that carry criminal penalties. Some laws are so complex, scholars debate whether they represent one offense, or scores of offenses. Counting them is impossible. The Justice Department spent two years trying in the 1980s, but produced only an estimate.” Yet we retain the fiction that everyone is supposed to know the law.

From the book: “There’s no way to rule innocent men… When there aren’t enough criminals, one declares so many things to be a crime… that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.”

We really are living it, and she really was prophetic.

[Update a few minutes later]

This seems related, somehow: the Anglosphere, before the lights went out.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Is The Left Right?

19 Comments

Claire Berlinski is suffering a little cognitive dissonance.

My brief response, without a lot of deep thought. I can’t speak for Europe, which never had anything resembling our Constitution and Bill of Rights, but I think that the biggest flaw of the Founders was in failing to recognize the apparently ductility of the Commerce Clause, which has basically rendered the 9th and 10th amendments moot. They also perhaps didn’t anticipate the degree to which the courts might come to aid and abet to that end. But at bottom, it is not a failure of freedom, but a failure to adhere to the original intent of the Constitution to limit government.