Reading, Understanding

 "A socialist is someone who has read Lenin and Marx. An anit-socialist is someone who understands Lenin and Marx." President Ronald Reagan

Where Socialism Works

 "Socialism only works in two places. Heaven where they don't need it and hell where they already have it." President Ronald Reagan

Do you believe in cooperation or coercion? It's that simple

"I won’t quibble over the word “free,” for my interlocutor didn’t mean these benisons of modern society cost nothing but that the cost isn’t borne by the user in the form of fees. He knows full well that we pay for them with taxes and borrowing. And it can be conceded that they’d provide strong if not necessarily compelling grounds to support socialism if it deserved credit for them.

"But does it? Does our impulse to help others start with a socialist impulse or any ideology? Or is the truth entirely different?" 

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/the-selfishness-at-the-heart-of-socialism

About That Socialist Thing

My great-grandfather wasn’t a wealthy man, but he was relatively well-to-do by the standard of his time. He lived in a small village on the east coast of China where everyone was related to everyone else. In an old photo, he looked handsome and scholarly. He hoped one day to become a government official. Unfortunately, the imperial court ceased to exist when rebels forced the last Qing emperor to abdicate in 1912. With no court to serve, he became a wheat farmer.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-socialism-meant-for-my-great-grandfather-11562526670?shareToken=st8a60527b976d400384c94f7871464814

All animals are equal but some are more equal than others ...

 More animal farm:

The media? It is a Ministry of Truth. Informers and readers beg the Great Leader to let drop his favorite flavor of ice cream or the details of the Oval Office makeover. There is no need for censorship: the media are the censors. Whatever sinister idea a paranoid politician has for muzzling journalists, reporters themselves have already trumped it. Pravda is their model. Who can be disinterested when there is a war to be fought for diversity and equity, against climate change and white supremacy?

https://amgreatness.com/2021/02/07/our-animal-farm/

Authoritarianism Has a Bunch of Names

Maoism was responsible for 50 million or more deaths, and Stalinism another 20 or 30 million, but I can’t think of a single important American novel or film depicting those holocausts. Offhand I can recall one American movie that seriously portrayed the inhumanity of collectivism — The Killing Fields, though one hopes there are at least some others I’ve forgotten. That movie is now 36 years old.

Somehow, I have to do better than feeling angry because people with different experiences feel differently than I do, even if they are stupid fuck ups. 

I remember 10 to 20 years ago when, following any discussion of a contentious issue someone had to pronounce how the solution was better education. Now days I realize that "education" as dictated by the government will always be part indoctrination, and for some reason, government school systems are not always loaded down with passionate libertarians who love liberty more than coercion - or can even tell the difference.  

Bernardino Death Spiral

"Yet on close examination, the city's decades-long journey from prosperous, middle-class community to bankrupt, crime-ridden, foreclosure-blighted basket case is straightforward - and alarmingly similar to the path traveled by many municipalities around America's largest state. San Bernardino succumbed to a vicious circle of self-interests among city workers, local politicians and state pension overseers.

"Little by little, over many years, the salaries and retirement benefits of San Bernardino's city workers - and especially its police and firemen - grew richer and richer, even as the city lost its major employers and gradually got poorer and poorer.

"Unions poured money into city council elections, and the city council poured money into union pay and pensions. The California Public Employees' Retirement System (Calpers), which manages pension plans for San Bernardino and many other cities, encouraged ever-sweeter benefits. Investment bankers sold clever bond deals to pay for them. Meanwhile, state law made it impossible to raise local property taxes and difficult to boost any other kind."

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/13/us-bernardino-bankrupt-idUSBRE8AC0HP20121113

The blue state model reaching it's predictable end - patronage in the name of social justice means collapse, just as with the Soviet Union.

Gifted Reporter

A few years ago, the Office of Management and Budget assessed federal dairy price support programs as part of a broad initiative to gauge the effectiveness of over 1,000 government programs. It found that the dairy program had not demonstrated results, has design flaws that limit its effectiveness, and distorts trade in a way that puts the U.S. in violation of World Trade Organization rules.

What action was taken as a result of this negative report? None, of course.

http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2012/11/19/cows_flee_california
_seeking_a_better_economic_climate_99994.html

Dude, making something this tragic sound so amusing is incredible. BZ!

Unequal Behavior Drives Inequality

But striking changes in family structure have also broadened income gaps and posed new barriers to upward mobility. College-educated Americans like the Faulkners are increasingly likely to marry one another, compounding their growing advantages in pay. Less-educated women like Ms. Schairer, who left college without finishing her degree, are growing less likely to marry at all, raising children on pinched paychecks that come in ones, not twos.


Estimates vary widely, but scholars have said that changes in marriage patterns - as opposed to changes in individual earnings - may account for as much as 40 percent of the growth in certain measures of inequality. Long a nation of economic extremes, the United States is also becoming a society of family haves and family have-nots, with marriage and its rewards evermore confined to the fortunate classes.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/us/two-classes-in-america-divided-by-i-do.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

Inequality - a justification for tyranny if I've ever seen one.  Who doesn't already know that people who make better choices, have more choices?

Spending

Interesting points about the Canadian brand of "hardheaded socialism."  Wonder why their pols can reel in their system but so many other nation's pols cannot?
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-15/hardheaded-socialism-makes-canada-richer-than-u-s-.html

We Just Need More Of What Already Doesn't Work

Everytime some statist starts singing the praises of government regulation, and how we could have avoided the housing melt down, for example, if the administration hadn't cut back on regulatory oversight and might, it think of incidents like this:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/apr/20/pruden-a-big-fortnight-for-big-spenders-at-the-gsa/print/

And this:
http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2012/04/20/fukushima-daiichi/?iid=SF_F_Lead

"Pull the other one."

"Let the Beatings Continue Until Morale Improves"

LeThe happiness movement would merely impose more intervention. It "boils down to having zealous politicians regulate the rest of us into their version of happiness," argues Marc De Vos of the Itinera Institute, a Belgian think tank.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2012/04/16/the_global_happiness_derby_113847.html

I've had enough of that sort of thing already, and I bet you have too.  Somebody please write their congressional delegation and let them know "enough already." 

Eyes Wide Open

Get ready for Greece like coverage of the next big western nation's national economic crisis - it has everything, including a state run economy, massive unemployment (over 51% for the Spainish "youth"), a seemingly bottomless housing bubble, and inept politicians (sorry for the redundancy) doing stuff like this:
Spanish private debt is 220% of GDP, dwarfing government debt, which is high and rising. So not only are banks being forced to raise capital and reduce their loan books, consumers and businesses are also overextended. The government wants to increase taxes or reduce spending by 17% to get the deficit down from over 8% to 5.5%, a combination that is not geared for growth.

€12.3 billion will be raised in new taxes, with €5.3 billion coming from corporations, and €2.5 billion is projected to come from a temporary amnesty on tax evasion (you've got to love the optimism). We have seen how such policies worked in Greece. They meant lower, not increased, revenues. Note that Britain also raised taxes on "the rich" and saw revenues fall in that category, not increase as projected.
Further, as we go along this year, watch for "breaking" news that off-balance-sheet guarantees by the Spanish government will be huge, adding multiples of 10% to total debt-to-GDP. Spain's admitted government debt is over 70% of GDP, which in comparison to other European countries is not all that bad. Except that is not the extent of the problem. There is regional debt, bank-guaranteed debt, sovereign guarantees, etc. that take it to roughly 85%.

Read more: http://www.minyanville.com/business-news/the-economy/articles/spain-economy-euro-debt-crisis-sovereign/4/2/2012/id/40185#ixzz1rvvD4aKv

My question is - what possible reason is there to believe that this won't be the fate of every democratically oriented nation?  Isn't this what politicians are good at - taking someone else's money and spending it to get re-elected?  "Who cares about the long term implications, I have to get elected so I can save this nation from (fill in the blank with the boogeyman you like best)."  The ultimate pretense is that people, any of us, are smart enough to "run" economies, health care or even systematic exploration of science. 

We aren't.  But we like to believe that we are, or that our elected representatives are. 

Crazy? I'll Have A Rack Of That, Please

It's funny to me when liberals/progressives get all upset at the absurd things that governments do and then - argue for more government. 
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/apr/05/uteruses-how-do-they-work

The "logic" is "government is great and we need more of, we just need it to be run by me and my cohort, who know how to make everything right."

And that's certainly believable, since it has happened so many times in the past ....

I don't know why I remain so convinced that government always has been and always will be characterized by incompetence and waste.

It's the government, not the political parties, stupid.

Hubris - Attempts to Act As A Deity

http://blog.independent.org/2012/02/22/this-man-was-almost-elected-president-of-the-united-states/
Al Gore, who came within a few hundred votes of being elected president in 2000, has designed a blueprint to overhaul capitalism to create a sustainable capitalism that will support lasting economic growth. He says that the way capitalism is now practiced does not “...incorporate sufficient regard for its impact on people, society and the planet.”

Perhaps I'm just mis-judging him because he's so well intentioned in his hubris.  Few things would frighten me more than the idea of Algore pulling all the strings.

He's right, however, in his assessment of how well capitalism is working.  With all of the mal-incentives provided to capitalists by government, there's no question that vast quantities of human capital are being wasted.  It could be much, much better.

Blue Model

In the heyday of the blue model, economists and social scientists assumed that from generation to generation Americans would live a life of incremental improvements. The details of life would keep getting better even as the broad outlines of society stayed the same. The advanced industrial democracies, of which the United States was the largest, wealthiest and strongest, had reached the apex of social achievement. It had, in other words, defined and was in the process of perfecting political and social “best practice.” America was what “developed” human society looked like and no more radical changes were in the offing. Amid the hubris that such conceptions encouraged, Professor (later Ambassador) Galbraith was moved to state, in 1952, that “most of the cheap and simple inventions have been made.”¹ If only the United States and its allies could best the Soviet Union and its counter-model, then indeed—as a later writer would put it—History would end in the philosophical sense that only one set of universally acknowledged best practices would be left standing.
Life isn’t this simple anymore. The blue social model is in the process of breaking down, and the chief question in American politics today is what should come next.
http://www.the-american-interest.com/article.cfm?piece=1183

As far as I'm concerned, this author is a must read.

There are several ugly truths that the country (and especially those states whose governments are bigger and bluer than the rest) must soon face. One concerns taxes. The debate today at the elite level is about whether the rich should pay more. Given the historic lows of marginal and capital gains tax rates, this is a debate of consequence for reasons having to do with fairness. But it distracts attention from a more fundamental political reality: Voters simply will not be taxed to cover the costs of blue government, and in most cases they will vote out of office anyone who suggests otherwise.² That, at base, is what the Tea Party movement is all about. Voters with insecure job tenure and, at best, defined-contribution rather than defined-benefit pensions simply refuse to pay higher taxes so that bureaucrats can enjoy lifetime tenure and secure pensions.

Euro Lesson

Since the global financial crisis of 2008, investors have focused on credit risk and rewarded Germany with low interest rates for its perceived frugality. But now markets will focus on currency risk. Inflation will accelerate and the euro may break up in a way that calls into question all euro-denominated obligations. This is the beginning of the end for the euro zone.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-28/the-euro-area-is-coming-to-an-end-peter-boone-and-simon-johnson.html

The premise of socialism is that smart people ("the elite" or the connected or the educated or the studious or whatever you might term those who hubristically think they can direct others and their assets to the benefit of all) could use the state's monopoly power on coercion solve problems.  The idea that something could be had for nothing - "we can reduce the pain and suffering of live just by doing some smart stuff by force that would never happen with coperation."

It seems that after a long experiment with that approach, there are two possible explanations for the results as statist nations face the same problem the world over (and in US state governments, and city governments, as well); the people who get elected either are not that smart except in terms of how to get elected; or, no one is smart enough to use coercion to direct that activities of others to the benefit of all. \

In my humble as ever view, which of these two options is correct does not matter, as either one points to a common solution; stop pretending (or dreaming) that humans with a lot of power are a help vice a hindrance.

How much more evidence would anyone need to know that coercion is not a viable alternative to cooperation?  Who could really think that what we're seeing now is better than cooperation?  Why do we insist that cooperative arrangements cannot better deal with the problem caused by human existence - genetic and environmental inequality leading to unequal outcomes - which means that some will do better than others?

Like the Greeks, we must accept that it is foolish for men to attempt the work of the gods, and especially so if we attempt to do god's work with government.

Cali to Business: Get Out! by Steven Malanga, City Journal Autumn 2011

http://www.city-journal.org/2011/21_4_california-businesses.html

Can the rest of us learn from Cali's buffoonery?

HT:  www.crossfit.com

Everyone Has A Purpose

Mr. Krugman is a Nobel-winning trade-policy academic economist who, over the past couple of decades, has gone increasingly to the liberal dark side, as evidenced in his columns in The New York Times. What seems to have driven him completely over the edge is a combination of Bush Derangement Syndrome and an evangelical desire to prove that Reaganomics was a failure. He criticizes Barack Obama for not going far enough. He hates Republicans with a passion and is Keynesian to the core. Thus he can only interpret the failure of government stimulus as evidence of “cowardice” or “lack of political will.”
http://opinion.financialpost.com/2011/06/28/peter-foster-the-demons-in-krugmanomics/

Krugman's raison d'etre:   making real economists look smart.

He doesn’t think consumers can be trusted to make the “right” choices any more, and has taken to the remarkably annoying habit of condemning free marketers as people who believe that people are always rational and markets perfect.
A remarkable compartmentalization is required to think that the people who can't make their own choices for themselves will instead choose wise, all knowing and all caring and uncorruptable politicians, who, out of the goodness of their hearts, will make far better choices for us than we would make for ourselves.

Nevermind that the supply of all knowing and all caring and uncorruptable politicians ran dry - about 10,000 years ago.

Really?  Humans are so flawed they cannot choose for themselves, so the Krugmanite elites will just choose for them?  Pull the other one ...

Easy Come, Easy Go

Or should we call this post "It's Only (Our Children's) Money"
In fact, the government’s classification of obligations such as interest payments as official and others, such as Social Security payments, as unofficial is a labeling game with no basis whatsoever in economic theory. It’s a strategy politicians have used for decades to disguise the true nature of our country’s indebtedness.
How big is the fiscal gap? By my own calculations using the CBO data, it now stands at $211 trillion -- a huge sum equaling 14 times the country’s economic output. To arrive at that figure, I assumed that annual noninterest spending, as well as taxes, would grow indefinitely by 2 percent a year beyond 2075, the point at which the CBO’s estimates end.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-06-29/stop-the-fiscal-war-against-our-children-now-laurence-kotlikoff.html