Follow The Golden State Road

How can the socialists ignore the obvious?  Where socialism is tried, and to the extent that it is tried, it fails.
http://www.newgeography.com/content/002415-the-golden-state-is-crumbling
There is little chance that the jobs lost in these fields will ever be recovered under the current regime. As decent blue-collar and midlevel jobs disappear, California has gone from a rate of inequality about the national average in 1970, to among the most unequal in terms of income. The supposed solution to this—Gov. Jerry Brown's promise of 500,000 "green jobs"—is being shown for what it really is, the kind of fantasy you tell young children so they will go to sleep.

They are in love with coercion, they have the pretense of knowledge which feeds their fatal conceit, and they are not offended by their own instinct to tyranny.  I hope they are getting what they deserve.

Sowell On Williams About Government And Intentions

These writers, and the topic one reveals in this short article, describe the root of what makes the last 80 years of liberal interventionism in our government a crying shame of hubris, oppression, and human suffering.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2011/04/26/race_and_economics_109659.html

"Some might find it puzzling that during times of gross racial discrimination, black unemployment was lower and blacks were more active in the labor force than they are today."

The author makes a compelling case that the entitlement programs have, despite their intentions to the contrary, done more to hurt black skinned people than did systemic, government sponsored, illegal, unconstitutional, racial discrimination. 

I cannot write much about race issues.  My grandparents were farmers, merchants and business men.  Their parents were too.  They lived in southern central Alabama.  My private school education was paid for by my parents, as were theirs.  My father's medical school bills were paid by the US Navy.  Everyone involved in these transactions earned what they got.  If I wasn't a great student, I did the work, went to class, and struggled every quarter to be a better student.  I was able to leverage the education my parents gave me to enter a career path that would have been closed to many due to circumstances as out of their control as I was of my good fortune. 

In short, what I am, and where I am in the world, is a mix of incredible good fortune and my being just savvy enough to make something out of my jackpot.  I am not ashamed of drawing the jackpot, and apologize to no one.  I do not believe anyone else has fared more poorly because of whatever success I have had.  I believe in what Steven Covey describes as the abundance mentality - there is more than enough possibility for success for every person to get a share - in theory. 

So I tread lightly because I know there are people with an ENTIRELY different experience than mine.  What troubles me, though, is the idea that these groups of people, identifiable by race, gender or ostensibly some other genetically identifiable characteristic, are doing badly despite government force used on their behalf. 

What I see, what these authors highlight so well, is that these groups of "disadvantaged" people are doing well BECAUSE of the (presumably well intentioned) government force used on their behalf.

We are presented with the horror of tyranny used with good intentions which causes vast, unintended harm in all directions.  Even those who believe heart and soul that the monopoly on coercive force held by the government should be used to "do good" should be frightened by even the possibility that this is true.

But What If We All Really, Really, Really Want It To Work?

Regulations proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency would destroy hundreds of thousands of jobs in the coal and electric power industries, and send electric bills soaring.

Mr. Obama's efforts to force Detroit to build electric cars consumers don't want (think a Chevette with a Cadillac price tag) may cost 220,000 jobs in the auto industry.

Our economically illiterate president prattles on about "green jobs." But so-called "renewables" require massive government subsidies to produce little energy. Studies in Spain, Britain and Italy indicate each subsidized "green" job costs, respectively, 2.2, 3.7 and 4.8 jobs in the private sector.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2011/08/22/al_gore_goes_on_a_tirade_111039.html

His Pomposity Is Impressive

Maybe it's possible to raise the level of the discussion. One way is to see that the level of the solution isn't found on the same as the level of the problem. Obama has taken that view as his long-term strategy. His position is that acrimonious divisions in government, the problem, can't be solved by being even more acrimonious. His call for compromise, balance and a reasoned approach to our difficult challenges is a sane adult's way of rising above the level of the problem.
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2011/08/15/obama_strategy_may_work.DTL#ixzz1VDm8ixWs

This poor fool doesn't have the slightest idea what the problem is, he writes like he thinks that if we just execute government with more skill, more courage, more cooperation, less conflict, we can "get it right."  Sure, and one day we'll also extract, as the saying goes, "sunbeams from cucumbers."  Why does this man believe so strongly in the government's monopoly on coercive power as the road to our well being?  Why wouldn't he embrace cooperation among free people instead? 

Enlightenment, liberty, cooperation, responsibility and accountability - this is the reasonable, adult path.  His instinct to tyranny, his fatal conceit, cloud his thinking.

Now that Congress is finished displaying its one unquestionable skill — conniving at ideological extortion, with the household budgets of millions of Americans hanging in the balance — the time has come to calculate the damage done to U.S. fiscal policy by the debt ceiling deal reached this week.

The toll can be measured in several categories. One is the way the debate elevated deficit panic, an entirely fabricated issue in terms of today's policy necessities, to legitimacy. Another is how even within its own fantasy universe the agreement targets spending that isn't a significant problem in the federal budget, while ignoring the chief driver of deficit growth: healthcare costs.

The outstanding irony of the entire debate is that, despite the participants' declared intention not to merely "kick the can down the road," that's what they've done.

http://www.latimes.com/health/healthcare/la-fi-hiltzik-20110803,0,2472202,print.column

I love the writer's style, even if I disagree with his assumptions (but of course he's right on the money regarding budget cost drivers).  I am amused that he continues to place his faith in the same buffoons - that he so capably lampoons - to run health care and to run a retirement system and to do all the other things which would be above the heads of any mortal.  I guess if we just keep electing people we'll eventually get the right bunch that is good enough, smart enough, and selfless enough to do the right things for the right reasons and make it all wonderful for the rest of us (in other words he's still suffering from the fatal conceit).  Too bad he's unwilling to examine all the ways our government has made our health care system to unnecessarily costly.

If It Quacks Like A Duck ...

Admittedly, I despise McDonald’s, sugar, HFCS, and the processed food nation that America has become thanks to the government’s coercive campaigns such as the dietary guidelines and food pyramids; the quasi-governmental, propaganda-ridden organizations such as the American Dietetic Association and the American Heart Association; and the criminal gangs known as the USDA and the FDA. However, to think that the establishment of another gigantic and interventionist bureaucracy can drastically alter behavior through oppressive intervention machinations borders on a mental disorder. Behavior meddling on the part of the monopolists of violence – government – has never worked throughout history, and that isn’t something that is going to change because the Waffen-SS sends out its marching orders on sugar.
I like Lustig as a scientist and as a brilliant proponent of the facts who can shred the myths and lies of conventional wisdom as presented by the Big Food interests and their government lackeys, but knowing that he is a raging proponent of rigorous despotism to deter disapproved behaviors puts him on the side of the regime’s iron-fisted War on Obesity. The only honorable and peaceful strategy for changing eating behavior is to shape and influence food choice through education and the application of free market principles to make wholesome products available to those who desire to buy them.


... it probably is a duck ... or a "raging proponent of rigorous despotism."  Lustig should stop quacking.  He's smart but no where near smart enough to run things for the rest of us.

The Dangers of Not Understanding Keynes

The author seems not to understand that the key point of "stimulus" spending is that there is a presumption of a "multiplier" - in other words, Keynesians believe that for every dollar the government spends, there's an amount of activity stimulated equal to a multiple of the government dollars spent.  While the Keynesians believe their research shows a "multiple", the effect has not ever and cannot ever be proved.

In short, they gambled 800 billion on their assumption of a multiplier.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/the-dangers-of-being-wrong-on-keynes/2011/07/18/gIQAIuGYMI_story.html

The author, sounding patient and sycophantic in his worship of the oh so wise Keynes, writes:

Keynes — and others who later elaborated on his work, like Hyman Minsky — taught us that although markets are usually self-correcting, they occasionally enter destructive feedback loops in which a shock to, say, the financial system scares business and consumers so badly that they hoard money, which worsens the damage to the system, which further persuades other economic players to hoard, and so on and so forth.  In that situation, the role of the government is to break the cycle. 

This bit of pap may or may not be true, we don't actually know how free market economies work because we've only had small ones in recent times, but it assumes that the Fed and massively influential economy distorting practices by the US government are not to blame for the "destructive feedback loops" such as the one we've seen since 2007 or so.  In short, the present circumstance is at least as likely to be the result of the negative unintended consequences of prior government interventions as it is a cyclical result of a free market's "destructive feedback loops."  In fact, there's simply no reason to believe that our present difficulties are anything but the result of government interventions.

What Keynes taught us is that, when faced with the perception of responsibility for making a depression ravaged economy work, Keynes and most other politicians will happily endorse a model which justifies their choice to spend other people's money "for their own good."  It is political Darwinism at its finest.

The Author's argument is, in effect, "Keynes might have been right."  My dog might have been right, too, and there's equal evidence supporting either theoretician.  I wonder if, were he alive at this juncture, even Keynes wouldn't have realized his theory does not hold water.

The author cites C. Romer's defense of the lack of impact of the 800 billion dollar "stimulus", in which she claims she just underestimated the seriousness of the recession, and the 800 billion dollars wasn't "enough".  Oh, and there's also the problem that we just don't keep enough "shovel ready" programs on hold, waiting for a downturn in the economy, so we can spend our way back out (but we should).

As I read this part, the word nincompoop came to mind.  The author's argument has now become:  "Because Keynes might have been right, we should be ready to spend a much larger amount of money next time on a stimulus - to see if he really was right.  We'll probably know how much money to spend on the stimulus next time, because we missed it so badly this time."

To whom does the author think he is writing?  We didn't all stop learning after our public school education.

Even if the Keynesian multiplier is real, no one "knows" how large it is, and no one knows how much of it will be required to provide an adequate stimulus given that no knows how bad any given recession is, or how long it will last, or ... anything that would amount to more than the pretense of knowledge about how to massage an economy back to health.  The entire Keynesian concept - that an economy is like a football team that just needs a few coaching pointers to perform correctly - is such a joke it's difficult to believe anyone fell for it.

Here's the sad part - there's just no way a politician can do what he/she should - nothing, following the dictum "first do no harm" - when there's a recession on.  The imperative to act is dominating - every President knows they must make it look as thought they know what they are doing, as thought they have the answers, and they must act - even if none of these things are true.  They must act as if they have the fatal conceit even if they are smart enough to know better.

Fatal Conceit, Hubris, What's In A Name?

So the Greeks pointed to the hubris required for a man to act as though he were a god as the ultimate sin.  How is this different from Hayek's "The Fatal Conceit"? 

This author has plenty of both.  First, he understands the "real" causes of the economic crisis.  How?  He possesses the special knowledge of which authorities to which he can appeal for a complete explanation. 
The report of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission detailed the recklessness of the financial industry and the abject failures of policymakers and regulators that brought our economy to its knees in 2008.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-real-causes-of-the-economic-crisis-theyre-history/2011/06/27/AG2nK4pH_story.html

He can see inequality, and knows it for a sure sign of bad things to come.  He can tell that anyone wins, somebody had to be losing; and the winners surely played unfairly to win.  He trusts himself (and politicians he approves of) to carefully, and justly, untainted by human failings, balance out the inequality. 
prosecuting financial wrongdoing to deter future malfeasance; vigorously enforcing financial reforms to rein in excessive risk; and rooting out Wall Street’s conflicts of interests, abysmal governance and badly flawed compensation incentives.
With the help of the author and his chosen elected representatives and their regulatory appointees, we can legislate and regulate ourselves into financial nirvanna in which the "little guys and gals" who, under the current cruel system, are underemployed and trailing badly in the race to earn and keep the most money, would live in milk and honey forever. 

With his and his peers' accumulated wisdom, we could get on with:
...the urgent task of putting people back to work and creating real wealth for America’s future. Over the past decade, we squandered trillions of dollars on rampant speculation rather than on making investments — in technology, infrastructure, clean energy and education — that increase our productivity and economic strength. The financial sector’s share of corporate profits climbed from 15 percent in 1980 to 33 percent by the early 2000s, while financial-sector debt soared from $3 trillion in 1978 to $36 trillion by 2007. With tens of millions still unemployed, isn’t it time to shift from an economy based on money making money to an economy based on money creating jobs and genuine prosperity? (emphasis mine-PFE)

Because surely it is within the reach of gods like the author, and heretofore all to human politicians, to simply legislate and regulate better so that we can right the wrongs and cure the ills and make everything work hunky dory ... like the Europeans have done so deftly lo these many years. 

Dang, why didn't I think of that.

Fight Fires With Fans. Really Big Ones.

The Arizona law’s fate actually was sealed in 1791, when the First Amendment was ratified; 220 years later, one wonders: When will people eager to empower government to regulate speech about itself abandon the fiction that political money can be regulated without regulating political speech?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-supreme-court-win-for-political-speech-and-political-money/2011/06/28/AGVX0mpH_story.html

Compare with this author's misguided take:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/high-court-deals-public-campaign-financing-a-heavy-blow/2011/06/28/AGDiIrpH_story.html

These types of laws are like trying to fight fires by using cooling fans. 

There's a reason people spend ooodles of money to win elections - governments have too much power, Federal, State and Local governments are not limited strongly enough to prevent the corruptions that result from excessive power. 

Therefore - people are willing to spend whatever it takes, in money and life energy, in order to gain control over that power.  POWER COMMANDS A POWER STRUGGLE.

It is oft said and still true - power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Limited government brings a reduced motive for gaining and keeping office.  If you can't use government to oppress your competitors (as is the purpose of unions), you won't give people money to run.  If you can use government to oppress your competitors (unions and any number of examples), you'll spend whatever you can to get a "favorably disposed" candidate in office. 

Those who dream of big government orchestrations of nirvanna either ignore or can't see this plain truth.

Unintended Consequences? What Could Go Wrong?

The theory for ACOs, as they're known, is that hospitals, primary-care doctors and specialists will work more efficiently in teams, like at the Mayo Clinic and other top U.S. hospitals. ACOs are meant to fix health care's too-many-cooks predicament. The average senior on Medicare sees two physicians and five specialists, 13 on average for those with chronic illnesses. Most likely, those doctors aren't coordinating patient care.
This fragmentation is largely an artifact of Medicare's price control regime: The classic case study is Duke University Hospital, which cut the costs of treating congestive heart failure by 40% but then dumped the integration program because it lost money under Medicare's fee schedule.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304520804576343410729769144.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop#printMode

The smartest person in the world couldn't figure this out.  But that won't stop those who think they are the smartest, most progressive, most compassionate, from trying, due to the fatal conceit and the instinct to tyranny.  Next historical reference - the goose that lays the golden egg is slowing being murdered by these absurd interventions by the State into the affairs of would be, should be, free folk.

What If We Tried Cooperation?

The former Governor outlined a national approach like the one he ran on in 2008. Its core virtue is that it would equalize the tax treatment of health insurance, ending the destructive federal bias for employer-provided insurance over the individual market and encouraging a consumer market for competitive insurance and more efficient medicine. Health economists across the political spectrum have recognized this distortion for decades.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703864204576319312743766234.html

This would be a powerful step forward, unfortunately, even those generally in favor of liberty don't realize how powerful and empowering it would be.  Cancel the absurd tax treatment of employer provided health care and remove health care coverage mandates, and you could significantly reduce the cost of health care without using ANY coercive government force.

Instinct to Tyranny

How many pieces of political opinion or commentary amount to just an expression of this meme:

"Give me control of everything and I'll solve everyone's problem."  

In other words, how many bits of the political blah blah are simple expressions of the instinct to tyranny?

We've all been soaked in statism so long, most folks don't realize when they are advocating that someone take their liberty via legislation, or hoping that someone do so.  Most are not even aware that liberty is in opposition to legislation.

http://www.engadget.com/2011/04/18/the-ipad-is-taking-away-american-jobs-jesse-jackson-juniors-sa/
This video is a reasonable example.  The speaker will solve the problem of lost jobs, he's smart enough to fix it, just let him have control.