Category Archives: Economics

Economics, Political Commentary

Getting Ready For The Immediate Future

8 Comments

I would suggest that anyone who wants to understand the path we’re on should read this classic book.

[Wednesday morning update]

Jonah Goldberg has some thoughts on “liberaltarianism,” and why it was always a pipe dream to think that the Democrats could pick up true libertarians. As Hayek makes clear, if we don’t defend the free market, the other freedoms will vanish as well.

[Update mid morning]

John Hood has further comments:

Cato’s own political analysis suggests that small-l libertarian voters were overwhelmingly Republican (like three-quarters) until 2006, when they became just a majority-Republican bloc. This seems primarily to be a consequence of disaffection with GOP spending profligacy, along with various other boneheaded policies and at least the conduct, if not the instigation, of the Iraq campaign. Republicans suffered when they lost these votes, some of which went to Dems and some of which simply went poof.

But that’s not the same as suggesting that there is at least as much of a natural affinity between libertarians and modern-day liberals as there is between libertarians and modern-day conservatives, if not more. This statement just isn’t true. The principles of liberty and virtue are certainly in tension within the broadly construed Right, but the principles of liberty and egalitarianism would be perpetually at war within a reconstructed Left. The current struggle against bailout/stimulus mania has been a clarifying moment, it seems to me. In the social-democrat future that the American Left wants, the private sphere must give way as costs are socialized and power is centralized. Virtually everything becomes the government’s business—including what you eat, drink, or smoke, not just where you bank.

Finally, Democratic flirtations with liberaltarianism were always about dividing their opponents and seizing power in Washington, not evidence of self-reflection about first principles or proof of interest in innovative applications. Don’t be so gullible, McFly.

I always thought it absurd for (example) Kos to claim he was a libertarian. And even more so for that moron Bill Maher.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Technology and Society

Dangerous For Your Health?

27 Comments

Yet another time bomb in the “stimulus” package, that won’t be debated:

One new bureaucracy, the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology, will monitor treatments to make sure your doctor is doing what the federal government deems appropriate and cost effective. The goal is to reduce costs and “guide” your doctor’s decisions (442, 446). These provisions in the stimulus bill are virtually identical to what Daschle prescribed in his 2008 book, “Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis.” According to Daschle, doctors have to give up autonomy and “learn to operate less like solo practitioners.”

The last entity that I want monitoring my health care is the federal government.

This bill is apparently chock-a-block with stuff like this, each and every one of which should be discussed, debated and if passed, passed on its own merits with its own bill, and has nothing to do with stimulus. This is quite possibly the worst piece of legislation in the nation’s history, and it’s being rushed through with almost no debate, discussion, or even knowledge of its contents by those voting for it. The Founders would weep.

If they vote for the conference product, I hope that Collins, Snowe and Specter all lose their next races, even if they’re replaced by Dems. At least they’ll be honest Dems.

[Early evening update]

(Democrat) Mickey Kaus explains how this bill will roll back, if not completely undo, welfare reform.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Avoiding Hoover

7 Comments

Jim Manzi has a good post on the real implications of this disaster wending its way all too quickly down Pennsylvania Avenue.

What I find most appalling about it are the perverse incentives and moral hazards that it sets up. Buy more house than you can afford? No problem, the taxpayers will prop you up and keep you in it. Spending more than revenue in your state capital? Don’t sweat it, we’ll just steal money from other states so you can keep it up.

It is punishing the prudent and rewarding the irresponsible. And when you set up a system like that, you’ll get a lot less of the former and a lot more of the latter behavior. At some point, Atlas will shrug. I don’t know how far off we are from it, though.

[Update a few minutes later]

Welcome to the Great American Handout.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

“Thugs Ransacking My House”

24 Comments

Well, Arnold Kling certainly isn’t mincing any words:

“I think about the stimulus as an economist but I feel it as a father. Barack Obama is destroying my daughters future. It is like sitting there watching my house ransacked by a gang of thugs. That’s how I feel, now back to how I think.”

As noted if you read the whole thing, this isn’t a “stimulus” plan. It’s a grow-government-and-make-us-all-increasingly-dependent-on-it plan. The welfare provision alone is proof of that.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

What Do You Think?

26 Comments

OK, so we have a bill that has passed both the House and the Senate, both of which are controlled by the Democrats. In both houses, they were rushed through with little debate, and in the House, it was almost entirely crafted by the Democratic leadership, without even significant input from the Blue Dogs, let alone the Republicans. It is hundreds of pages, and totals close to a trillion dollars (a mind-numbing number that may necessitate updating the old Dirksen quote) in new spending, paid for with money that the nation doesn’t have. It has many items in it that are not obviously aimed at stimulating the economy, but rather in advancing various social and political goals, but it’s hard to be sure because few have had the opportunity to even read, let alone comprehend the whole thing.

Now which is the more likely scenario?

A. It is the output of a sober, long-debated process that was totally focused on improving the American economy, carefully considering the potential unintended consequences of every item in the bill, with associated committee hearings and qualified witnesses, or

B. It is an overnight cut’n’paste concatenation of every item on pent-up Democrats’ wish lists going back to 1994, when they lost control of the Congress, because everyone wants to get a ride on the late-Christmas tree that is sure to go through via fearmongering by a popular new president.

Come on, folks. William of Ockham had just the tool for this conundrum.

I know where my money is.

Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Straw Men

61 Comments

I’m listening to the president, and on the verge of throwing something at the flat screen. I’m very tired of hearing him make the vague “argument” that we can’t get out of this situation with the “same failed policies of the past eight years.” This is apparently an argument against tax cuts in the “stimulus” bill, though it’s hard to know, because it’s vague. Why won’t some reporter ask him what in the hell he’s talking about? To actually put forth his supposed theory of how we got here, and what “failed policies” caused it? Because if he’s arguing that we’re in trouble because of tax rate cuts, that’s a ludicrous proposition. He seems desperate, and has fallen back on the only thing he seems to know how to do — campaign with vague and misleading rhetoric.

Charles Johnson has further commentary on these Obama strawmen.

[Update a few minutes later]

Some questions that the president should, but probably won’t be asked tonight.

[Update a few minutes later]

More thoughts from Victor Davis Hanson:

…things are upside down: The conservatives are mad that Bush over-spent, and suddenly when out of power want to restore fiscal sanity, while Obama says that the Bush borrowing brought on this mess and must be addressed by more borrowing. What is what? Conservatives suddenly are once again fiscal purists when out of power? Liberals blame Bush for reckless Keynesian spending and want to cure it by more of the same?

Few tell the truth: The conservatives should say ‘Mea culpa—our deficit spending and borrowing helped to get us into this mess, so we’ve seen the error of our ways, and want you liberals not to repeat our mistakes.’ And the liberals should say, ‘Bush on the budget was one of us in borrowing and spending and priming, so we can’t really trash the last eight years since we’re now advocating more of the same.’

Yes, few tell the truth. Including, foremost, the president.

[Update late morning]

“The worst bill since the 1930s.” An interview with economist Robert Barro.

[Evening update]

He’s doing the press conference now, and repeating the stupid, false history that we’ve done nothing in the past eight years except tax cuts. I want to throw a shoe at him.

[Bumped from this morning]

[Update a few minutes later]

He claims that he’s been “civil” and “respectable.” I don’t think that it’s either civil or respectable to set up strawman arguments based on a false history, and kick them down. And now he’s claiming that there are no earmarks in this package? Please.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

This Is Stimulus?

7 Comments

One of the (no doubt many) economic time bombs in the bill could force employers to extend COBRA for decades. What’s the problem?

The HR departments for large employers are looking at this provision with great alarm, as indicated in this policy brief. PricewaterhouseCoopers produced an analysis which pegs the ten-year cost of this provision at $39 billion to $65 billion just for those current COBRA-eligible workers age 55 to 64. The estimated costs would be even higher if the analysis assumed, as is reasonable, that many more workers would elect early retirement if they were assured of access to group-rated insurance.

What would employers do if faced with the costs of implementing this provision? It’s fairly predictable. They would hire fewer workers, and pay their current employees less. Not exactly “stimulus.”

Indeed, this is exactly the kind of complex provision which should be considered by Congress only after careful study and a hearing or two to avoid unintended consequences. Certainly it has no business on a bill purportedly aimed at promoting short-term job growth. Unfortunately, logic and reason may not be enough to prevail in the current mad-dash rush to “pass something.”

I suspect that most of the bill is like that. This is madness. The Founders would be appalled at what has happened to the Republic.