North Korea is finally turning to the free market? I don’t understand why. I was under the impression that the government was indifferent to starvation.
Category Archives: Economics
Advice For The Administration
…in which it has no interest: how to waive the Jones Act.
I’ve got a better idea, for which there will be even less appetite in this administration — repeal it. It’s a protectionist relic of the last century. Along with Davis-Bacon (which is also racist in intent). Not to mention the Wagner Act.
“Vladimir Obama”
They told me if I voted for John McCain, the special relationship with the Britain would deteriorate. Man, the Brits aren’t happy.
The vitriol has a xenophobic edge: witness the venomous references to “British Petroleum”, a name BP dropped in 1998 (just as well that it dispensed with the name Anglo-Iranian Oil Company even longer ago). Vilifying BP also gets in the way of identifying other culprits, one of which is the government. BP operates in one of the most regulated industries on earth with some of the most perverse rules, subsidies and incentives. Shoddy oversight clearly contributed to the spill, and an energy policy which reduced the demand for oil would do more to avert future environmental horrors than fierce retribution.
Mr Obama is not the socialist the right claims he is (see article). He went out of his way, meeting BP executives on June 16th, to insist that he has no interest in undermining the company’s financial stability. But his reaction is cementing business leaders’ impression that he is indifferent to their concerns. If he sees any impropriety in politicians ordering executives about, upstaging the courts and threatening confiscation, he has not said so. The collapse in BP’s share price suggests that he has convinced the markets that he is an American version of Vladimir Putin, willing to harry firms into doing his bidding.
Guess that relationship will have to be on hold until 2013.
[Updatea early afternoon]
Barack Obama, most unpopular man in Britain. Glad we have that “smart diplomacy.”
Europe’s Future?
The PIIGS who fell to earth.
The Democrat War On Science
Expect this to be a recurring theme. The latest incident:
Needless to say, there is something ugly and hypocritical about glorifying the absolute authority of scientists and sanctimoniously preening about your bravery in “restoring” that authority — and then ignoring the scientists when politically expedient.
But it is bordering on the grotesque to handpick scientists to give you an opinion and then lie about what they actually said and implement a policy they don’t endorse. (According to the Journal, the Interior Department has apologized to the scientists. But the administration refuses to publicly acknowledge it did anything wrong.)
Of course it does. Not just hypocrites, but incompetent ones, who are compounding the damage to the Gulf economy from the oil leak by wiping out the local oil industry. Oh, and speaking of incompetence, how about this?
Against Governor Jindal’s wishes the federal government blocked oil-sucking barges today because they needed to confirm that there were fire extinguishers and life vests on board and were having trouble contacting the owners.
We don’t have elections often enough.
Explaining Health Care Costs
The Next President?
First fix New Jersey, then…?
Sorry, It’s Not The Manhattan Project
…or Apollo. I suffered through the president’s speech so you don’t have to.
The most egregious part of it was when he compared energy independence to Apollo. Here’s my response from the campaign:
He’s never met a problem that, in his mind, the “full power of the government” can’t solve.
It’s an understandable appeal, but it betrays a certain lack of understanding of the problem to think that we will solve it with a crash federal program, at least if it’s one modelled on Apollo.
Putting a man on the moon was a remarkable achievement, but it was a straightforward well-defined engineering challenge, and a problem susceptible to having huge bales of money thrown at it, which is exactly how it was done. At its height, the Apollo program consumed four percent of the federal budget (NASA is currently much less than one percent, and has been for many years). Considering how much larger the federal budget is today, with the addition and growth of many federal programs over the past forty years makes the amount of money spent on the endeavor even more remarkable.
But most of the other problems for which people have pled for a solution, using Apollo as an example, were, and are, less amenable to being solved by a massive public expenditure. We may in fact cure cancer, and have made great strides over the past four decades in doing so, but it’s a different kind of problem, involving science and research on the most complex machine ever built — the human body. It isn’t a problem for which one can simply set a goal and time table and put the engineers to work on it, as Apollo was. Similarly, ending world hunger and achieving world peace are socio-political problems, not technological ones (though technology has made great strides in improving food production, which makes the problem easier to solve for governments that are competent and not corrupt). So most of the uses of the phrase never really made much sense, often being non sequiturs.
It’s important to understand that landing a man on the moon (or developing atomic weaponry as in the Manhattan Project — another example used by proponents of a new federal energy program) was a technological achievement. Achieving “energy independence,” or ending the use of fossil fuels, are economic ones. And the former is not necessarily even a desirable goal, if by that one means only getting energy from domestic sources. Energy is, and should remain, part of the global economy and trade system if we want to continue to keep prices as low as possible and continue to provide economic growth.
Nothing has changed. My commentary remains true today.
[Wednesday morning update]
If we can put a man on the moon, why can’t we stop the leak, Mr. President? That’s a much better Apollo analogy.
The IPCC “Consensus”
Yes, I know. I’m shocked, too.
If You Like Your Plan
You can keep it. Unless we don’t like your plan:
Internal White House documents reveal that 51% of employers may have to relinquish their current health care coverage by 2013 due to ObamaCare. That numbers soars to 66% for small-business employers.
Were people really stupid enough to believe his lies during the campaign?
On the plus side, “repeal the bill” will have a lot more resonance this fall.
[Sunday morning update]
The good news just keeps on coming:
This year Ms. Watts estimates that changes made in response to the health law will add an extra 2 to 3 percent in cost increases, pressuring employers to engage in even more cost-sharing with employees — whether through higher premiums, co-payments or other out-of-pocket costs.
Mr. Weaver also reports increased interest by employers in high-deductible insurance plans. “They’ve been effective in managing costs,” he said.
You know, someone just a little smarter than Nancy Pelosi (i.e., almost everyone) would have been able to figure out what was in the bill without having to pass it.