Category Archives: Economics

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

Big-Government Morality

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Thoughts from Timothy Dalrymple:

One of the great difficulties of this issue, for Christians, is that the morality of spending and debt has been so thoroughly demagogued that it’s impossible to advocate cuts in government spending without being accused of hatred for the poor and needy. A group calling itself the “Circle of Protection” recently promoted a statement on “Why We Need to Protect Programs for the Poor.” But we don’t need to protect the programs. We need to protect the poor. Indeed, sometimes we need to protect the poor from the programs. Too many anti-poverty programs are beneficial for the politicians that pass them, and veritable boondoggles for the government bureaucracy that administers them, but they actually serve to rob the poor of their dignity and their initiative, they undermine the family structures that help the poor build prosperous lives, and ultimately mire the poor in poverty for generations. Does anyone actually believe that the welfare state has served the poor well?

It is immoral to ignore the needs of the least of these. But it’s also immoral to ’serve’ the poor in ways that only make more people poor, and trap them in poverty longer. And it’s immoral to amass a mountain of debt that we will pass on to later generations. I even believe it’s immoral to feed the government’s spending addiction. Since our political elites have demonstrated such remarkably poor stewardship over our common resources, it would be foolish and wrong to give them more resources to waste. What we need our political leaders committed to prudence and thrift, to wise and far-sighted stewardship, and to spurring a free and thriving economy that will encourage the poor and all Americans to seize their human dignity as creatures made in the image of God, to be fruitful and take initiative and express their talents and creativity.

Fat chance of that. Not enough opportunities for graft.

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

Real Monopoly

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Support the campaign:

Why, when the game was first released in the 1930s, did people all over the world make an almost cooperative decision to drop the auction? (A decision that is especially puzzling given that it makes for a worse game).

Well I puzzled over this for a long time until my friend Becky – who along with her husband Darrell is something of a board games geek – supplied what I’m pretty sure is the answer. We, gamers as we are, might think a game featuring lots of inter-player shafting is superior to one without. But Monopoly is, and always was, played not by gamers, but by families; and inter-player shafting is liable to cause all sorts of upset.

This is actually frustrating, because (if I remember my history correctly) the game was originally intended to help teach about capitalism and free markets. By crippling the game in this way, it makes it much more about luck, which feeds into the notion that winners must “help out” the losers, because they have no control over their fates, thus feeding into the socialist impulse. That is, to use Dick Gephardt’s unfortunate phrase of a few years back about “life’s lottery,” it encourages fatalism and wealth redistribution, instead of initiative.

In any event, even if the real thing isn’t great for family and friends, gamers at least should play it seriously.

[Via Geek Press]

Economics, Philosophy, Political Commentary

The Real Story Of The Debt-Limit Fight

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It’s not about a Tea-Party Victory, but the death of the socialist left:

Most pundits are crediting this U-turn to the political muscle of the Tea Party and it’s true that President Obama would never have agreed to this deal if the Tea Party Republicans in the House of Representatives hadn’t engaged in the brinkmanship of the past few weeks. But to focus on the Tea Party is to ignore the tectonic political shift that’s taken place, not just in America but across Europe. The majority of citizens in nearly all the world’s most developed countries simply aren’t prepared to tolerate the degree of borrowing required to sustain generous welfare programmes any longer.

Let’s hope, though socialism is driven by innate human traits, primarily laziness and envy (and to be fair, misplaced compassion), so it will always rear its ugly head as long as we remain human.

[Update a while later]

Was this Obama’s “read my lips” moment?

And so we have the best of both worlds politically: a deal that leaves the Tea Party unsatisfied and therefore fired up for the next battles and election cycle, and a demoralized liberal base that can’t come to grips with the fact that socialism is over because we’ve run out of other people’s money…

Is it almost the end of the beginning?

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

Who Are You Going To Believe?

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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.