…in the Gulf. Well, duh. It helps a lot that Bush didn’t go out of his way to wreck the local economy with a senseless drilling ban based on fraudulent science.
Category Archives: Economics
Five Things We’ve Learned
We know that when it comes to the high life, Democrats believe in partying hardy, sending taxpayers every bill they can while living lives of luxury the rest of us can ill-afford. We know, too, that Democrats cheat on their taxes and wrangle government deals for their relatives with a feeling of entitlement that is sure to put the term “public servant” in disrepute for the next century. Thanks to the growth of government on the Lightworker’s watch, we have seen public employees now eclipse the earnings and benefits of private workers, with the only end in sight the fate of Greece.
Praise to the Lightworker and his fellow Democrats for teaching us these essential lessons, which reinforce our will to throw them all on the unemployment lines posthaste.
I’m hoping that in a few weeks, we’ll be taking them to school.
Economic Liberty
…James Madison, one of the chief architects of both the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights, echoed Coke’s words: “That is not a just government, nor is property secure under it, where arbitrary restrictions, exemptions, and monopolies deny to part of its citizens that free use of their faculties, and free choice of their occupations.” Similarly, Rep. John Bingham (R-Ohio), the author of the first section of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment, which applied the Bill of Rights and other unenumerated rights to the states, said that the 14th Amendment included “the liberty…to work in an honest calling and contribute by your toil in some sort to the support of your fellowmen, and to be secure in the enjoyment of the fruits of your toil.”
So what went wrong? According to Sandefur, the blame falls largely on the Progressives of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, who believed that government action should be the primary agent of all social change. To that end, the Progressives enacted a mountain of new legislation that touched on every aspect of human life, from workplace regulations and antitrust statutes to alcohol prohibition, racial segregation, and eugenics.
How “progressive.” Maybe we need a new amendment.
Egalitarian Policies
…that caused the economic disaster:
This does not strike me as a story about how income inequality caused the financial crisis. Rather, this is a story about how policies intended to reduce inequality had the unintended consequence of precipitating America’s worst economic slump since the Depression. It’s very important that we’re straight on what the story is, since different stories may have very different implications for policy. If the story is that the level of inequality itself—and not our ideas about or political reactions to it—indirectly caused the crisis, then we may think that narrowing the gap is a matter of urgent necessity. But if the story is that an ill-conceived political attempt to reduce inequality—and not the fact of inequality itself—led to apocalyptic economic devastation, then we may well conclude that it is better to refrain from equalising initiatives unless we are quite certain they will not backfire.
Darn those pesky unintended consequences.
Hyperinflation
What will it look like?
Oh, joy. With a bonus history of Chile.
If You Like Your Current Health Care
…you’re out of luck.
It was always an obvious lie, except to the rubes.
I’m still amused at Bill Clinton’s prediction of how popular this would be once it passed, and I continue to wonder if he really believed it, or was setting up the Messiah for failure, in anticipation of 2012.
The Unwelcome Economic Distortions
…of the government. When will people learn? The Tea Partiers get it, but they’re not a majority. Yet.
A Clunker Of A Program
Jason Kuznicki takes a look back at one of the economically stupidest and vicious things that the government did in the past two years (and that’s saying something, considering how much policy stupidity has abounded):
See how that works? You can’t get something for nothing. Cash for Clunkers turns out to have been a highly inefficient wealth-transfer program, that is, one that destroyed a bunch of wealth along the way. It gave wealth to those already relatively wealthy people who did the government’s bidding (that is, those who could afford to part with a used car and buy a new one). And now it’s taking wealth from those relatively poor people who need a used car today — in the form of higher prices.
Along the way, it destroyed hundreds of thousands of cars — that’s the real wealth these poor people don’t have access to anymore, because the scrapped cars aren’t a part of the economy.
And this is what passes for a successful government program.
And I had idiots here in my own comments section applauding it as being a “success” because so many people (willing to take handouts) participated in it. This is the same kind of warped thinking that declares a legislator “successful” if he passes lots of legislation, regardless of its quality, or how damaging to the Republic it is. I’m always amazed and amused at the morons who think that I should be impressed by the president, and approve of him more, because he managed to ram so much of his destructive agenda through.
Stupidity
Are we going to run out of helium due to an economically ignorant law? This could affect the cost of spaceflight operations. It would be ironic if we end up going to the moon not for He3, but He4.
It seems to me that if they really wanted to privatize the federal reserve, they should have sold it off to a private bidder, rather than selling the helium at an arbitrary rate.
The War That Broke Us
Not.
Just a reminder to people like the ignorant idiots in the Space Politics comments section as to why NASA’s budget is almost certainly going to take a whack from the coming Deficit Commission. It’s not the war, stupid. And note who was in charge of the Congress (and then the White House) when it skyrocketed. Note also that even with the dreaded “tax cuts,” it was declining, indicating that it wasn’t a revenue problem, or at least not one caused by the lower tax rates.