If you won't believe me, will you believe a Harvard professor?
Click the link below for an excellent short video.
LearnLiberty.org: Top 3 Common Myths of Capitalism
Monday, September 12, 2011
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Remembering 9/11: Capitalism under attack
Capitalism is not the same thing as large-scale heavy industry or tall, glorious skyscrapers. It is the everyday voluntary cooperation of free people in the marketplace; trade among friends, neighbors, suppliers and customers from the neighborhood to the world. Yet only capitalism in its most avanced form could produce the United States of America as we know it and everything that it has built, including one of capitalism's greatest testaments: the World Trade Center.
It is no random chance therefore that the fascist islamists chose to vent their rage on the twin towers. They represent everything that a backward, tribal, intolerant and ignorant mindset could hate: individual liberty, tolerance of differences, freedom of religion, interest understood as an exchange of different money values across time, equality of the sexes, private property and rule of law in the Western tradition.
The terrorists hate us for who and what we are. Capitalism works and offers hope to millions who flock to the shores of capitalist nations. Communism, fascism and fundamentalist islamic Sharia law offer only physical and mental prisons, torture chambers, privations and death to all but the most privileged elite.
The innocent victims of 9/11 died for living, and thereby defending, freedom and capitalism. Among the honors we give to them, let us continue to defend the same principles.
It is no random chance therefore that the fascist islamists chose to vent their rage on the twin towers. They represent everything that a backward, tribal, intolerant and ignorant mindset could hate: individual liberty, tolerance of differences, freedom of religion, interest understood as an exchange of different money values across time, equality of the sexes, private property and rule of law in the Western tradition.
The terrorists hate us for who and what we are. Capitalism works and offers hope to millions who flock to the shores of capitalist nations. Communism, fascism and fundamentalist islamic Sharia law offer only physical and mental prisons, torture chambers, privations and death to all but the most privileged elite.
The innocent victims of 9/11 died for living, and thereby defending, freedom and capitalism. Among the honors we give to them, let us continue to defend the same principles.
Friday, September 09, 2011
Top Articles
- Remembering 9/11: Capitalism under attack
The innocent victims of 9/11 died for living, and thereby defending, freedom and capitalism. Among the honors we give to them, let us continue to defend the same principles.
- Nothing To Do About Jobs
The one thing the government hasn't tried for at least 3 years is to get out of the way.
- Hispanic Voters, Immigration and the Republican Party
The Hard Right and Extreme Left both need to give way to the Sober Center
- A Well-Deserved Defeat for Leftism
The Left cannot admit that capitalism has lifted more people out of poverty than any other system.
- It's the Over-regulation, Stupid!
God help you if you don't do with your money what the Left thinks you ought.
- The Left’s Secret Debating Weapon: Shallowness
While the conservative assembles focused logic and facts, the Leftist sprays vacuous clichés in all directions.
- Is There Hope for Califrancia?
The Left kept California in 2010, so they own the bankruptcy.
- Republicans and the Immigration Trap
The next elections are too important to sacrifice over illegal gardeners.
- Environmental Hoaxes and Immigration
Human beings living under liberty and the rule of law are the ultimate resource.
- 121 Reasons to Reject Obama-Reid-PelosiCare
It's Unnecessary, it's destructive and it won't work.
- Bozo Peace Prize
The Nobel Peace committee humiliated the president. Does he know it?
- Public Billionaires vs. Private Millionaires
Why do politicians who command billions want us to envy and resent people who earn 1/20,000th as much?
- Illegal Immigration, 1806 -2006
The Homestead Act of 1862 demonstrates how law can eventually catch up with reality.
Thursday, September 08, 2011
Nothing To Do About Jobs
The one thing the government hasn't tried for at least 3 years is to get out of the way.
Now that President Obama’s hope-and-change green job-creating juggernaut has flatlined (with 0% job growth in August and downward revisions for prior months), a reasonable question to ask is, what can governments do now?
The answer is that perhaps they can do the one thing they haven’t tried in at least 3 years, if not more: nothing. That is, governments can minimize their footprint on the economy, lighten regulations, cut tax rates (permanently), stop threatening ‘millionaires and billionaires’, banks, oil companies, non-union workers and the private sector in general and basically get out of the way of the people who would otherwise be creating the jobs.
For the fact is, governments and politicians, no matter how wise or worthy, don’t create jobs, on net balance. Even big, established business corporations don’t do it; they’ve lost almost 3 million net jobs in the US over the past decade.
Real job creation is the role of startup entrepreneurs: businessmen and women, investors and speculators with an assist from venture capitalists and private insurance companies. That’s right, the people most reviled on the Left as undeserving rich, racist polluting exploiters are in fact the ones from whom all prosperity flows (prosperity that has to be created before it may be distributed). The pudding is that Obama, Reid, Pelosi, Frank, Dodd, Waters & Co. are at the top of their game in crushing and suppressing these fatcat scum of the Earth, and the logical and inevitable outcome has come to pass, among which the worst spike in black teen unemployment in a generation: 47%.
Entrepreneurs put together business projects on their own account, without subsidies, privileges or prejudice, hoping to enjoy profits (which arrive years or decades after everyone else, including workers, have been paid) but having no guarantee against losses for failing to provide the optimum mix of high-quality low-priced products and services and well-compensated JOBS most urgently needed in the marketplace. When they fail, entrepreneurs lose their own money, not yours and mine, and they don’t indenture our grandchildren.
All the undue laws, regulations, taxes, red tape, lawsuits, threats, monetary manipulations and hostility toward profits that governments slap on the private sector, can only have the effect of raising the cost and risk of hiring people to prohibitive heights, resulting in the unemployment that we are suffering.
By ‘undue’ is meant those interventions which do not derive from governments’ legitimate role of preventing and punishing murder, robbery, theft, fraud, assault, rape, persecution and/or conspiracy. Does it really take tens of thousands of pages of laws, hundreds of agencies and 8 million unionized public-sector employees to do that?
Entrepreneurship doesn’t need to take direction from government in order to do the right thing for the economy. Whether the subject is food, clothing, shelter, minerals, energy, clean air, medicine, university faculty parking spaces or JOBS, the same entrepreneurial cycle pattern emerges: Scarcity leads to rising market prices, which signal entrepreneurial opportunity; there’s money to be made (‘there’s gold in them thar hills!’). Investors and speculators advance their own savings to fund research and development to invent new ways to extract and produce more, to drill deeper under the ocean floor using only one tower where five had been required before, to design new industrial and technological processes, to genetically engineer seeds that multiply crop yields, to discover new life-prolonging and enhancing miracle drugs, etc. Many entrepreneurs fail, at their own expense (not the taxpayer’s) but others succeed, and the result is profits for them and abundant products and services at prices for you and I that are lower than before the ‘crisis’ that started the cycle.
The only force capable of stopping this virtuous cycle is… force: Prohibiting the market to function; controlling wages and/or prices so that signals and information about the true relative abundance and scarcity do not get transmitted properly; awarding contracts and employment positions based on political favoritism, nepotism or ethnic preferences rather than objective competence and qualifications; forbiding an aerospace company from opening a new plant in a right-to-work state because it doesn’t please the Big Labor bosses; barring the exploitation of available resources (EPA); destroying the U.S. IPO market via Sarbanes-Oxley; forcing taxpayers to prop up firms that have failed; failing to enforce the rule of law consistently and fairly; bringing criminal charges against oil companies over the death of a few birds while giving the windmill industry a free slaughter pass; paying people increasingly generous benefits for not working, out of the pockets of those that are; wasting taxpayer money on ‘bridges to nowhere’ on the ludicrous principle that government spending somehow multiplies economic benefits above what that same money would accomplish in private hands from which it was taken…and on and on. Instead of being the custodian of individual liberty and private property rights, government has metastasized into a giant job-killing machine.
The great economic revolutions that began in England in the late 18th and early 19th centuries and were carried forward in the United States in the 19th and 20th , were the result of liberty, of government permitting it to happen, not interfering, not doing what most governments to this day still do, which is to stomp on and crush any force or individual that competes with their power and status. The sooner we learn that lesson, the sooner the jobs engine will be revived.
To quote Rich Karlgaard of Forbes Magazine: “Entrepreneurs are not just a cute little sub sector of the American economy. They are the whole game”. Or Tim Kane of the Kaufman Foundation: “When it comes to U.S. job growth, start-up companies aren’t everything. They’re the only thing.” Government has a whole lot of nothing to do about it. May it get started right away.
Now that President Obama’s hope-and-change green job-creating juggernaut has flatlined (with 0% job growth in August and downward revisions for prior months), a reasonable question to ask is, what can governments do now?
The answer is that perhaps they can do the one thing they haven’t tried in at least 3 years, if not more: nothing. That is, governments can minimize their footprint on the economy, lighten regulations, cut tax rates (permanently), stop threatening ‘millionaires and billionaires’, banks, oil companies, non-union workers and the private sector in general and basically get out of the way of the people who would otherwise be creating the jobs.
For the fact is, governments and politicians, no matter how wise or worthy, don’t create jobs, on net balance. Even big, established business corporations don’t do it; they’ve lost almost 3 million net jobs in the US over the past decade.
Real job creation is the role of startup entrepreneurs: businessmen and women, investors and speculators with an assist from venture capitalists and private insurance companies. That’s right, the people most reviled on the Left as undeserving rich, racist polluting exploiters are in fact the ones from whom all prosperity flows (prosperity that has to be created before it may be distributed). The pudding is that Obama, Reid, Pelosi, Frank, Dodd, Waters & Co. are at the top of their game in crushing and suppressing these fatcat scum of the Earth, and the logical and inevitable outcome has come to pass, among which the worst spike in black teen unemployment in a generation: 47%.
Entrepreneurs put together business projects on their own account, without subsidies, privileges or prejudice, hoping to enjoy profits (which arrive years or decades after everyone else, including workers, have been paid) but having no guarantee against losses for failing to provide the optimum mix of high-quality low-priced products and services and well-compensated JOBS most urgently needed in the marketplace. When they fail, entrepreneurs lose their own money, not yours and mine, and they don’t indenture our grandchildren.
All the undue laws, regulations, taxes, red tape, lawsuits, threats, monetary manipulations and hostility toward profits that governments slap on the private sector, can only have the effect of raising the cost and risk of hiring people to prohibitive heights, resulting in the unemployment that we are suffering.
By ‘undue’ is meant those interventions which do not derive from governments’ legitimate role of preventing and punishing murder, robbery, theft, fraud, assault, rape, persecution and/or conspiracy. Does it really take tens of thousands of pages of laws, hundreds of agencies and 8 million unionized public-sector employees to do that?
Entrepreneurship doesn’t need to take direction from government in order to do the right thing for the economy. Whether the subject is food, clothing, shelter, minerals, energy, clean air, medicine, university faculty parking spaces or JOBS, the same entrepreneurial cycle pattern emerges: Scarcity leads to rising market prices, which signal entrepreneurial opportunity; there’s money to be made (‘there’s gold in them thar hills!’). Investors and speculators advance their own savings to fund research and development to invent new ways to extract and produce more, to drill deeper under the ocean floor using only one tower where five had been required before, to design new industrial and technological processes, to genetically engineer seeds that multiply crop yields, to discover new life-prolonging and enhancing miracle drugs, etc. Many entrepreneurs fail, at their own expense (not the taxpayer’s) but others succeed, and the result is profits for them and abundant products and services at prices for you and I that are lower than before the ‘crisis’ that started the cycle.
The only force capable of stopping this virtuous cycle is… force: Prohibiting the market to function; controlling wages and/or prices so that signals and information about the true relative abundance and scarcity do not get transmitted properly; awarding contracts and employment positions based on political favoritism, nepotism or ethnic preferences rather than objective competence and qualifications; forbiding an aerospace company from opening a new plant in a right-to-work state because it doesn’t please the Big Labor bosses; barring the exploitation of available resources (EPA); destroying the U.S. IPO market via Sarbanes-Oxley; forcing taxpayers to prop up firms that have failed; failing to enforce the rule of law consistently and fairly; bringing criminal charges against oil companies over the death of a few birds while giving the windmill industry a free slaughter pass; paying people increasingly generous benefits for not working, out of the pockets of those that are; wasting taxpayer money on ‘bridges to nowhere’ on the ludicrous principle that government spending somehow multiplies economic benefits above what that same money would accomplish in private hands from which it was taken…and on and on. Instead of being the custodian of individual liberty and private property rights, government has metastasized into a giant job-killing machine.
The great economic revolutions that began in England in the late 18th and early 19th centuries and were carried forward in the United States in the 19th and 20th , were the result of liberty, of government permitting it to happen, not interfering, not doing what most governments to this day still do, which is to stomp on and crush any force or individual that competes with their power and status. The sooner we learn that lesson, the sooner the jobs engine will be revived.
To quote Rich Karlgaard of Forbes Magazine: “Entrepreneurs are not just a cute little sub sector of the American economy. They are the whole game”. Or Tim Kane of the Kaufman Foundation: “When it comes to U.S. job growth, start-up companies aren’t everything. They’re the only thing.” Government has a whole lot of nothing to do about it. May it get started right away.
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Hispanic Voters, Immigration and the Republican Party
The Hard Right and Extreme Left both need to give way to the Sober Center
Two of the most miserable groups on the American political scene, especially in my beloved California, are Republicans on the one hand and Hispanic immigrants on the other; Republicans because in spite of the Tea Party wave sweeping the nation they face nearly insurmountable challenges (bordering on impotence and irrelevancy in California), and Hispanic immigrants because they can’t get their legal status normalized despite the power of their supposed friends in Washington DC. Caught in the crossfire are Hispanic American citizen voters and libertarian-minded Republicans who want the Tea Party movement to succeed in rolling back bloated government, ObamaCare, public employee union privileges and the rest, but favor a (classical-) liberal free-market approach to immigration policy.
There can be little room for compromise on restoring limited, constitutional government, low taxes, sane regulation, fiscal responsibility and with them renewed job growth and economic strength. But the immigration issue is one where the extremes must be reined in towards the center, for their own good and for the good of the country.
To the Republicans it must be repeated: There are 20 million Hispanic voters (US citizens, not talking about illegal aliens) in the US, and Hispanics are the single fastest-growing sector of the population, up 43 percent in the last decade. Republicans can’t win elections without gaining the hearts and minds of a substantial percentage of this diverse population. They will continue to fail if they appear hostile to Hispanic voters’ cousins.
Even so, to the undocumented immigrant population it must be told: You won’t succeed without Republican support at the national level. Notice that you got nowhere – and late – with Democrats when they had all the power in 2009 and 2010. Fortunately the most compelling arguments in favor of legal normalization are those that spring from the principles of free markets, limited government, individual responsibility, work ethic, familiy values, free trade and capitalism. These are (or should be) guiding principles of the Republican party. If you can embrace these and discard the false promises of socialistic welfare policies offered by the Democrats (the effects of which after all are what you fled from in Latin America) then you will find allies and solutions.
Unfortunately, much of the self-appointed political activist immigration reform movement elite are out for power for themselves first and tend to lean hard Left. For that reason, Republicans must make their appeals and outreach directly to the people at large rather than wasting too much effort trying to make nice with adversarial power brokers.
The Obama-Reid-Pelosi administration may have blundered fatally by ramming the government takeover of healthcare down the throats of the American people before they (the Democrats) had shored up support of the Hispanic voting bloc. Imagine if they had poured half as much energy into pushing the Dream Act or some other sweeping immigration reform in 2009. After the smoke from that battle had cleared, unlike healthcare the political body count likely would have emerged as a net gain for Democrats, who would then still have ammunition to spare to pass ObamaCare in 2010 with greater support left over for its defense in the aftermath. Instead they gave the flesh-and-blood people they had shed so many crocodile tears for the short stick while pouring all of their energy into a largely abstract goal of comprehensive health care ‘reform’ first. They ticked off not only their enemies but also their supposed friends.
This is a blunder upon which Republicans can and must capitalize. The Republican share of the Hispanic vote rose again in 2010 to 38% (in congressional races) from its low of ~20% in 2008. The question is whether Republicans can maintain the momentum or if they will do what they have been too good at in the past, which is to alienate people with emotional rants foaming at the mouth against illegal aliens, providing ample fuel for the Democat-Academia-Media machine to exploit.
Republicans opposed to compromise on immigration restrictions, border enforcement, amnesty etc. need to consider priorities. This country has serious problems, which were NOT caused by immigrants. Cap and Tax, Card Check, profligate ‘stimulus’ waste, too-big-to-fail bailouts, public employee union Ponzi-scheme pension liabilities and out-of-control administrative agencies like the EPA are greater threats than gardeners and house cleaners. The violence associated with narcotraffic is not an immigration issue; it is the radioactive fallout of the prohibition of substances that Americans demand and support with their dollars at a rate three times greater per capita than the nearest rival country. ObamaCare threatens to fundamentally alter the relationship between the federal government and the citizen in ways not seen since the Constitution was ratified.
These are the priority battles that must be fought without taking prisoners. Immigration calls for moderation and a sober, dispassionate look at the economic and social impact.
Two of the most miserable groups on the American political scene, especially in my beloved California, are Republicans on the one hand and Hispanic immigrants on the other; Republicans because in spite of the Tea Party wave sweeping the nation they face nearly insurmountable challenges (bordering on impotence and irrelevancy in California), and Hispanic immigrants because they can’t get their legal status normalized despite the power of their supposed friends in Washington DC. Caught in the crossfire are Hispanic American citizen voters and libertarian-minded Republicans who want the Tea Party movement to succeed in rolling back bloated government, ObamaCare, public employee union privileges and the rest, but favor a (classical-) liberal free-market approach to immigration policy.
There can be little room for compromise on restoring limited, constitutional government, low taxes, sane regulation, fiscal responsibility and with them renewed job growth and economic strength. But the immigration issue is one where the extremes must be reined in towards the center, for their own good and for the good of the country.
To the Republicans it must be repeated: There are 20 million Hispanic voters (US citizens, not talking about illegal aliens) in the US, and Hispanics are the single fastest-growing sector of the population, up 43 percent in the last decade. Republicans can’t win elections without gaining the hearts and minds of a substantial percentage of this diverse population. They will continue to fail if they appear hostile to Hispanic voters’ cousins.
Even so, to the undocumented immigrant population it must be told: You won’t succeed without Republican support at the national level. Notice that you got nowhere – and late – with Democrats when they had all the power in 2009 and 2010. Fortunately the most compelling arguments in favor of legal normalization are those that spring from the principles of free markets, limited government, individual responsibility, work ethic, familiy values, free trade and capitalism. These are (or should be) guiding principles of the Republican party. If you can embrace these and discard the false promises of socialistic welfare policies offered by the Democrats (the effects of which after all are what you fled from in Latin America) then you will find allies and solutions.
Unfortunately, much of the self-appointed political activist immigration reform movement elite are out for power for themselves first and tend to lean hard Left. For that reason, Republicans must make their appeals and outreach directly to the people at large rather than wasting too much effort trying to make nice with adversarial power brokers.
The Obama-Reid-Pelosi administration may have blundered fatally by ramming the government takeover of healthcare down the throats of the American people before they (the Democrats) had shored up support of the Hispanic voting bloc. Imagine if they had poured half as much energy into pushing the Dream Act or some other sweeping immigration reform in 2009. After the smoke from that battle had cleared, unlike healthcare the political body count likely would have emerged as a net gain for Democrats, who would then still have ammunition to spare to pass ObamaCare in 2010 with greater support left over for its defense in the aftermath. Instead they gave the flesh-and-blood people they had shed so many crocodile tears for the short stick while pouring all of their energy into a largely abstract goal of comprehensive health care ‘reform’ first. They ticked off not only their enemies but also their supposed friends.
This is a blunder upon which Republicans can and must capitalize. The Republican share of the Hispanic vote rose again in 2010 to 38% (in congressional races) from its low of ~20% in 2008. The question is whether Republicans can maintain the momentum or if they will do what they have been too good at in the past, which is to alienate people with emotional rants foaming at the mouth against illegal aliens, providing ample fuel for the Democat-Academia-Media machine to exploit.
Republicans opposed to compromise on immigration restrictions, border enforcement, amnesty etc. need to consider priorities. This country has serious problems, which were NOT caused by immigrants. Cap and Tax, Card Check, profligate ‘stimulus’ waste, too-big-to-fail bailouts, public employee union Ponzi-scheme pension liabilities and out-of-control administrative agencies like the EPA are greater threats than gardeners and house cleaners. The violence associated with narcotraffic is not an immigration issue; it is the radioactive fallout of the prohibition of substances that Americans demand and support with their dollars at a rate three times greater per capita than the nearest rival country. ObamaCare threatens to fundamentally alter the relationship between the federal government and the citizen in ways not seen since the Constitution was ratified.
These are the priority battles that must be fought without taking prisoners. Immigration calls for moderation and a sober, dispassionate look at the economic and social impact.
Thursday, December 09, 2010
The Left’s Secret Debating Weapon: Shallowness
While the conservative assembles focused logic and facts, the Leftist sprays vacuous clichés in all directions.
I’ve finally figured out the Left’s most effective not-so-secret weapon: shallowness. Their arguments are so empty that they invite reams of countervailing logic and facts. But in a live debate, who has time for that? So while the conservative is thoroughly dissecting and refuting the Leftist’s last empty assertion, the latter has moved on to his next shallow but emotionally triumphant point. The Leftist ‘wins’ the argument!
I have written 2 complete articles (The Madness of a Twisted Faith and It's the Over-Regulation, Stupid!) detailing just a few of the defects in the logic of The Nation editor Katrina vanden Heuvel’s article An Undeserved Win for the GOP, published in the Wall Street Journal on November 5. Having therefore lost the argument from the economy-of-words and emotional impact standpoints, let me attempt to redeem my failure by taking on her main points using fewer words than she.
“Conservatives in both parties who claim the vote represented an ideological shift to the right are plain wrong.”
It is Obama, Reid and Pelosi who misread the 2008 election as a mandate to shift hard Left.
“For 30 years, these Americans have seen their incomes stagnate as the top 1% accrued a staggering percentage of the nation's wealth.”
Incomes have not stagnated, but they would do a lot better if politicians would stop assaulting the people who create jobs.
“The absence of a clear explanation about how conservative policies have failed in the past and will continue to fail allowed a right-wing narrative of empty slogans to gain traction.”
Conservative policies didn’t fail; excessive government growth, spending and interference (including under the Bush administration) did. One man’s empty slogan is another’s simple truth.
“Mr. Obama abandoned his smart argument about building a new foundation for the economy, embracing deficit reduction instead. This only left voters confused about the White House's recovery plan.”
Agreed, Obama’s argument that the health care plan would cover 30 million more people while reducing the deficit was ludicrous. The only thing confusing was Obama’s ‘smart’ arguments.
“Going forward, Mr. Obama would be wise to lay out a bold plan to create jobs. He should take the advice of the more than 300 economists, including former Clinton labor secretary Robert Reich…”
Obama should allow jobs to be created by not punishing job-creators who succeed. He should take the advice of economists like Thomas Sowell, Milton Friedman and Adam Smith.
“The federal government could help by expanding existing federal loan guarantees by $300 billion”.
Artificial credit expansion distorts entire economies and engenders crises like the mortgage market meltdown.
“Meanwhile, excess cash reserves held by banks—now estimated at an unprecedented $1.1 trillion in Federal Reserve accounts—should be taxed an initial 1%-2%.”
Punishing people for managing their own resources in their own best interest solves nothing. The income tax also started small.
“Common ground … means investments in people and deteriorating infrastructure; ending a wasteful and futile war in Afghanistan; and enacting ethics and campaign finance reform that levels the playing field so ordinary Americans' voices aren't drowned out by covert political money.”
McCain-Feingold’s result was that ordinary American’s voices are more drowned out than ever. Throw Afghan women back to their burkas under the Taliban? If you want infrastructure, stop diverting fossil-fuel tax revenue to pet non-infrastructure projects.
“If this sensible agenda is met with Republican obstruction… Mr. Obama should channel Harry Truman and come out fighting against a know-nothing, do-nothing GOP.”
You mean the president who made no bones about his decision to nuke Hiroshima and Nagasaki, saving millions of American GI’s lives? OK.
“Common ground and common sense also demand that the president listen to and remobilize the base that is the heart of his party. An empowered Democratic electorate—the young, Latinos, African-Americans, single women, union folks—will be an effective counterweight to the assaults of the GOP and its corporate funders.”
Maybe the young, Latinos, etc. decided they don’t want to be mascots for the Democratic party and don’t believe the clichés about the GOP and ‘corporate funders’ anymore, for good reason.
“More than 20 million Americans are out of work or underemployed… They will not find [real solutions] with a GOP committed to slashing billions from key domestic programs even as they make tax cuts for the rich permanent.” The most-needed ‘domestic programs’ right now are private initiatives that create products, services, jobs and investment opportunities. It’s the Left that is stifling the productive sector of the economy.
“All of this presents an opportunity for Mr. Obama to show he stands with working people and the middle class.”
I couldn’t agree more.
I’ve finally figured out the Left’s most effective not-so-secret weapon: shallowness. Their arguments are so empty that they invite reams of countervailing logic and facts. But in a live debate, who has time for that? So while the conservative is thoroughly dissecting and refuting the Leftist’s last empty assertion, the latter has moved on to his next shallow but emotionally triumphant point. The Leftist ‘wins’ the argument!
I have written 2 complete articles (The Madness of a Twisted Faith and It's the Over-Regulation, Stupid!) detailing just a few of the defects in the logic of The Nation editor Katrina vanden Heuvel’s article An Undeserved Win for the GOP, published in the Wall Street Journal on November 5. Having therefore lost the argument from the economy-of-words and emotional impact standpoints, let me attempt to redeem my failure by taking on her main points using fewer words than she.
“Conservatives in both parties who claim the vote represented an ideological shift to the right are plain wrong.”
It is Obama, Reid and Pelosi who misread the 2008 election as a mandate to shift hard Left.
“For 30 years, these Americans have seen their incomes stagnate as the top 1% accrued a staggering percentage of the nation's wealth.”
Incomes have not stagnated, but they would do a lot better if politicians would stop assaulting the people who create jobs.
“The absence of a clear explanation about how conservative policies have failed in the past and will continue to fail allowed a right-wing narrative of empty slogans to gain traction.”
Conservative policies didn’t fail; excessive government growth, spending and interference (including under the Bush administration) did. One man’s empty slogan is another’s simple truth.
“Mr. Obama abandoned his smart argument about building a new foundation for the economy, embracing deficit reduction instead. This only left voters confused about the White House's recovery plan.”
Agreed, Obama’s argument that the health care plan would cover 30 million more people while reducing the deficit was ludicrous. The only thing confusing was Obama’s ‘smart’ arguments.
“Going forward, Mr. Obama would be wise to lay out a bold plan to create jobs. He should take the advice of the more than 300 economists, including former Clinton labor secretary Robert Reich…”
Obama should allow jobs to be created by not punishing job-creators who succeed. He should take the advice of economists like Thomas Sowell, Milton Friedman and Adam Smith.
“The federal government could help by expanding existing federal loan guarantees by $300 billion”.
Artificial credit expansion distorts entire economies and engenders crises like the mortgage market meltdown.
“Meanwhile, excess cash reserves held by banks—now estimated at an unprecedented $1.1 trillion in Federal Reserve accounts—should be taxed an initial 1%-2%.”
Punishing people for managing their own resources in their own best interest solves nothing. The income tax also started small.
“Common ground … means investments in people and deteriorating infrastructure; ending a wasteful and futile war in Afghanistan; and enacting ethics and campaign finance reform that levels the playing field so ordinary Americans' voices aren't drowned out by covert political money.”
McCain-Feingold’s result was that ordinary American’s voices are more drowned out than ever. Throw Afghan women back to their burkas under the Taliban? If you want infrastructure, stop diverting fossil-fuel tax revenue to pet non-infrastructure projects.
“If this sensible agenda is met with Republican obstruction… Mr. Obama should channel Harry Truman and come out fighting against a know-nothing, do-nothing GOP.”
You mean the president who made no bones about his decision to nuke Hiroshima and Nagasaki, saving millions of American GI’s lives? OK.
“Common ground and common sense also demand that the president listen to and remobilize the base that is the heart of his party. An empowered Democratic electorate—the young, Latinos, African-Americans, single women, union folks—will be an effective counterweight to the assaults of the GOP and its corporate funders.”
Maybe the young, Latinos, etc. decided they don’t want to be mascots for the Democratic party and don’t believe the clichés about the GOP and ‘corporate funders’ anymore, for good reason.
“More than 20 million Americans are out of work or underemployed… They will not find [real solutions] with a GOP committed to slashing billions from key domestic programs even as they make tax cuts for the rich permanent.” The most-needed ‘domestic programs’ right now are private initiatives that create products, services, jobs and investment opportunities. It’s the Left that is stifling the productive sector of the economy.
“All of this presents an opportunity for Mr. Obama to show he stands with working people and the middle class.”
I couldn’t agree more.
Friday, December 03, 2010
A Well-Deserved Defeat for Leftism, Part II: It's the Over-regulation, Stupid!
What does Katrina vanden Heuvel (editor of The Nation magazine) mean by ‘failing to place demands on [banks]’? Is she blind to the government's increasingly intrusive micromanagement of the last 30 years?
God help you if you don't do with your money what the Left thinks you ought.
Read the full article on Front Page Mag: http://frontpagemag.com/2010/12/03/it%E2%80%99s-the-over-regulation-stupid/
God help you if you don't do with your money what the Left thinks you ought.
Read the full article on Front Page Mag: http://frontpagemag.com/2010/12/03/it%E2%80%99s-the-over-regulation-stupid/
Sunday, November 21, 2010
A Well-Deserved Defeat for Leftism, Part I
Those of us who let our subscription to The Nation lapse 20 years ago would do well to read that magazine’s editor Katrina vanden Heuvel’s article ‘An Undeserved Win for the GOP’, published in the Wall Street Journal Friday, November 5. It’s a refreshing reminder of all of the economic illiteracy that the Left is capable of.
Read the full article at FrontPageMag.com.
Read the full article at FrontPageMag.com.
Friday, November 19, 2010
Bankruptcy: The Salvation of Califrancia
The bad news is that California is bankrupt. The good news is that California is bankrupt. More on this in a moment.
One of the great virtues of the capitalist free market is that the inevitable failures have a tendency to be revealed and resolved rapidly, before they metastasize into society-wide disasters. It is only with the intervention of government – imposing wage and price controls, propping up politically favored firms or classes of people at the expense of others, manipulating interest rates and even the value of the currency itself, forecasting revenue based on optimistic political methods – that the information signaling impending failure can be suppressed and distorted for so long as to allow problems grow orders of magnitude greater than they would otherwise have gotten before an inevitable collapse.
California’s total debt is somewhere around $78 billion (compared to an $87 billion budget), and the unfunded public employee pension liabilities reach above $500 billion. Now it turns out that this year’s deficit will be at least $6 billion greater than previously reported, over $25 billion. Some people are surprised by this. Other people understand that there are natural, immutable laws of economics that politicians cannot overrule any more than they can the physical laws of gravity.
The coming bankruptcy of California is inevitable as long as the Sacramento government machine continues to suppress the productive sector, raise tax rates, impose increasingly irrational regulatory burdens on unfavored businesses, protect state monopolies like education, and bind children, grandchildren, unborn fetuses, frozen embryos and gleams in their parents’ eyes to unsustainable (to say nothing of unconscionable) contracts of liability that they are not competent to read, much less sign.
So what can we – citizens without political power -- do? The worst-case scenario is that the inevitable day gets postponed so long that the compound increase in liabilities grows to a yet greater order of magnitude. Our task is to act to make the day of reckoning come as soon as it can, the sooner to resolve it with the least pain.
Productive citizens and residents should simply act in their own rational self-interest, seeking to pay the least taxes possible and avoid being subject to the most onerous regulations, taking care of their own families, churches, mosques and synagogues as best they can. Those who find opportunities beckoning beyond our borders should take them and move out, sooner rather than later.
A capital strike – physical, financial and intellectual – will accelerate the decline in tax revenue to Sacramento. The reflexive reaction of the political class, especially the current one-left-party regime, will be to double down on higher taxes and more micromanagement. If the voters still go along with the politicians, revenue will plummet again and the debt-to-assets ratio will become increasingly acute. Sooner or later, a critical mass of citizens and officials will be forced to recognize that a fundamental shift of direction is required.
The word bankruptcy invokes negative connotations. But in fact, bankruptcy is a brilliant invention of Western civilization, permitting debtors to get a second chance and creditors to be fairly compensated within the constraints of circumstances. The founders of the United States were wise to incorporate it into the Constitution (Article I, Section 8).
Consider the alternative: debtor’s prisons! And if you think that’s just a joke, look up Dubai; some supposedly modern and ‘capitalist’ countries don’t have bankruptcy laws, and indeed do incarcerate people who can’t pay their debts.
So let’s all get over our bankruptcy-phobia. It’s a golden opportunity to void out unsustainable promises and start over clean.
Bankruptcy can be avoided if our elected (and unelected) officials recognize the counter-productive nature of hiring unionized teachers at a rate faster than the growth of student enrollment, and promising unmatched defined-benefit pension plans to public employees without regard to portfolio performance.
But if bankruptcy must come, let it come before the entitlement culture turns us into France, where the youth unemployment rate among the children of immigrants is triple the already high general rate and unions paralyze the country and hold the citizens hostage at the mere suggestion that the retirement age be raised from 60 to 62.
There are many challenges to making this work, not the least of which is getting politicians to acknowledge that there’s a problem that politics-as-usual won’t fix, and then to act without prejudice (see: takeover of GM by the Obama Administration) to resolve it.
Put another way, California is not (yet) bankrupt, and that’s both the good and the bad news.
One of the great virtues of the capitalist free market is that the inevitable failures have a tendency to be revealed and resolved rapidly, before they metastasize into society-wide disasters. It is only with the intervention of government – imposing wage and price controls, propping up politically favored firms or classes of people at the expense of others, manipulating interest rates and even the value of the currency itself, forecasting revenue based on optimistic political methods – that the information signaling impending failure can be suppressed and distorted for so long as to allow problems grow orders of magnitude greater than they would otherwise have gotten before an inevitable collapse.
California’s total debt is somewhere around $78 billion (compared to an $87 billion budget), and the unfunded public employee pension liabilities reach above $500 billion. Now it turns out that this year’s deficit will be at least $6 billion greater than previously reported, over $25 billion. Some people are surprised by this. Other people understand that there are natural, immutable laws of economics that politicians cannot overrule any more than they can the physical laws of gravity.
The coming bankruptcy of California is inevitable as long as the Sacramento government machine continues to suppress the productive sector, raise tax rates, impose increasingly irrational regulatory burdens on unfavored businesses, protect state monopolies like education, and bind children, grandchildren, unborn fetuses, frozen embryos and gleams in their parents’ eyes to unsustainable (to say nothing of unconscionable) contracts of liability that they are not competent to read, much less sign.
So what can we – citizens without political power -- do? The worst-case scenario is that the inevitable day gets postponed so long that the compound increase in liabilities grows to a yet greater order of magnitude. Our task is to act to make the day of reckoning come as soon as it can, the sooner to resolve it with the least pain.
Productive citizens and residents should simply act in their own rational self-interest, seeking to pay the least taxes possible and avoid being subject to the most onerous regulations, taking care of their own families, churches, mosques and synagogues as best they can. Those who find opportunities beckoning beyond our borders should take them and move out, sooner rather than later.
A capital strike – physical, financial and intellectual – will accelerate the decline in tax revenue to Sacramento. The reflexive reaction of the political class, especially the current one-left-party regime, will be to double down on higher taxes and more micromanagement. If the voters still go along with the politicians, revenue will plummet again and the debt-to-assets ratio will become increasingly acute. Sooner or later, a critical mass of citizens and officials will be forced to recognize that a fundamental shift of direction is required.
The word bankruptcy invokes negative connotations. But in fact, bankruptcy is a brilliant invention of Western civilization, permitting debtors to get a second chance and creditors to be fairly compensated within the constraints of circumstances. The founders of the United States were wise to incorporate it into the Constitution (Article I, Section 8).
Consider the alternative: debtor’s prisons! And if you think that’s just a joke, look up Dubai; some supposedly modern and ‘capitalist’ countries don’t have bankruptcy laws, and indeed do incarcerate people who can’t pay their debts.
So let’s all get over our bankruptcy-phobia. It’s a golden opportunity to void out unsustainable promises and start over clean.
Bankruptcy can be avoided if our elected (and unelected) officials recognize the counter-productive nature of hiring unionized teachers at a rate faster than the growth of student enrollment, and promising unmatched defined-benefit pension plans to public employees without regard to portfolio performance.
But if bankruptcy must come, let it come before the entitlement culture turns us into France, where the youth unemployment rate among the children of immigrants is triple the already high general rate and unions paralyze the country and hold the citizens hostage at the mere suggestion that the retirement age be raised from 60 to 62.
There are many challenges to making this work, not the least of which is getting politicians to acknowledge that there’s a problem that politics-as-usual won’t fix, and then to act without prejudice (see: takeover of GM by the Obama Administration) to resolve it.
Put another way, California is not (yet) bankrupt, and that’s both the good and the bad news.
Tuesday, November 09, 2010
FPM: Is There Hope for Califrancia?
Democratic politicians in California may be breathing a sigh of relief, but it will be short-lived. Yes, they still have the power, but it is the illusory power of a Doctor Frankenstein over his monster. The Golden State is still bankrupt...
Read the full article at FrontPageMag.com.
Read the full article at FrontPageMag.com.
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