Frisco_Slug_Esq
On Strike!
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Politics and the US Economy
- Thread starter RightField
- Start date
RightField
Literotica Guru
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Yes, I know, reducing the amount of money the government takes out of the private sector is a recipe for long term growth, but it's going painful for a few years before it translates into growth. The money that has been wasted on liberal fantasies over the past few years has to be paid back and only then, can it be turned to productive pursuits. It will take a few years of pain before we get back on the good path and those years will be difficult. The further we postpone this change in direction, the worse it will be when we finally decide to make the change too...time-is-a-wasting.
Frisco_Slug_Esq
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And the whole time, all we'll hear about is the failure of Capitalism, how it is built on the backs of the poor, how it excludes the middle-class and how the rich don't pay their "fair" share...
__________________
It is popular today to blame capitalism for everything that displeases. Indeed, who is still aware of what he would have to forego if there were no "capitalism?" When great dreams do not come true, capitalism is charged immediately. This may be a proper procedure for party politics, but in Scientific discussion, it should be avoided.
Ludwig von Mises
A Critique of Interventionalism (1929)
If you ask your government to treat everyone "fairly," the only way it can ever accomplish that task is to treat someone "unfairly."
A_J, the Stupid
J
JAMESBJOHNSON
Guest
Capitalism is the middle-class.
Frisco_Slug_Esq
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Indeed...
A lesson that will be hard-learned in China.
J
JAMESBJOHNSON
Guest
Too late. We're bankrupt and owned by China. Dont think China doesnt remind Obama about the mischief theyre capable of, using our money to do it.
When the Grim Reaper finishes sharpening his blade the ball will open. Its 1860 in America, again.
Frisco_Slug_Esq
On Strike!
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They said the same thing about the ROC, Japan and S. Korea...
RightField
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Squashing Small Business Without Really Trying
By Bill Frezza
I was recently invited down to Washington DC to represent the venture capital industry at a Small Business Administration Office of Advocacy gripe session. At issue were the unintended consequences of an obscure corner of the Sarbanes Oxley Act known as 409(A). Bureaucratic weirdness and utter futility are the best words that come to mind.
At the meeting or attending by speakerphone were a smattering of small business advocates, a cheerful fella from the SBA, and a few sullen representatives from Treasury and the IRS who were nonetheless treated with great deference. I was the only person that didn't already know everybody. The small business advocates weren't sure what a venture capitalist was doing there but were happy to make common cause.
A word about what brought us together.
Back when Enron and WorldCom were considered large scandals Congress belched out a whopper called Sarbox, otherwise known as the lawyers and accountants full employment act. One trick Enron perps used to rob powerless, distant and uninvolved shareholders was gorging on deferred compensation. 409(A) created a labyrinth of rules tied to draconian tax penalties that would sting any corporate executive trying to repeat such shenanigans.
But venture capital backed startups don't have powerless, distant and uninvolved shareholders. We not only hold preferred stock but sit on the board and usually run the compensation committee. And startups don't offer deferred compensation. They incentivize employees and executives with stock options. These are both illiquid and not worth the paper they're printed on unless and until the company achieves enough success to generate a positive exit.
You'd be correct in observing that 409(A) doesn't solve any problems that actually exist in closely held private companies. Yet because Congress didn't explicitly exempt such companies they have to follow the same rules as IBM and Shell Oil.
When my turn came to speak I pointed out that in our rarefied community 409(A) is an affliction akin to a persistent toenail fungus. It is neither debilitating nor curable, thought it can be neutralized with a combination of cash and institutionalized corruption. I described exactly how the corruption worked and that it generally cost each of our portfolio companies between $5,000 and $15,000 a year. This money fuels a professional protection racket that spits out fanciful valuation reports designed to shield employees from getting nailed with 409(A) penalties in the unlikely event that their stock options ever turn out to be worth something.
Bottom line, I opined, 409(A) is a tax on entrepreneurship except it is paid to lawyers, accountants, and unemployed investment bankers instead of to the government. No discussion ensued. Everyone just looked at me with the unspoken words, "You think you have problems?"
That's when I learned about the misery waiting to be inflicted on owners and employees of workaday small businesses like your dry cleaner, plumber, or even your family doctor. In all too many cases the 400 pages of Treasury regulations that define 409(A) can be a dagger pointed at their hearts. Like characters in a Kafka novel, most of the victims will never know about these nightmarishly complex rules until they are hauled in for a dreaded audit and find out that the money tied up in their business that they were counting on for retirement just went poof.
A representative from the Small Business Council of America laid out a parade of horribles in a whitepaper you can find on their website. Something as simple as paying out a retiring partner his share of accounts receivable - no small sum in many businesses - can trigger taxes and penalties far in excess of the payout. In some cases an employee can owe tax, interest, and penalties on tens of thousands of dollars of deemed income that is never even received!
All agreed this was surely not intended by the law's authors. Yet how to fix it? The Treasury and IRS officials indicated that they don't make the laws, they just enforce them. If you want to change the statute go talk to Congress.
One sentence exempting privately held companies from 409(A) would do the trick, but that's not how Washington works. Constituencies have to be assembled. Congressmen have to be greased. But how does one solicit baksheesh from small businesses to fix a law that they don't even know they are breaking? In today's climate the Congressional Budget Office also has to score any change revenue neutral. This could be tricky since the IRS could theoretically hire enough auditors to generate any given level of fines.
I suggested latching on to President Obama's promise to eliminate useless and stupid regulations but no one believed something this arcane would garner support. Since journalists don't have the attention span to understand much less describe the issue, how about trotting out a few colorful and sympathetic victims? They took that under advisement but weren't sure the media would ever portray a successful businessman as sympathetic. The only thing this group was sure of is that they would meet again. And again. And again.
Making it just another day in the belly of the beast.
By Bill Frezza
I was recently invited down to Washington DC to represent the venture capital industry at a Small Business Administration Office of Advocacy gripe session. At issue were the unintended consequences of an obscure corner of the Sarbanes Oxley Act known as 409(A). Bureaucratic weirdness and utter futility are the best words that come to mind.
At the meeting or attending by speakerphone were a smattering of small business advocates, a cheerful fella from the SBA, and a few sullen representatives from Treasury and the IRS who were nonetheless treated with great deference. I was the only person that didn't already know everybody. The small business advocates weren't sure what a venture capitalist was doing there but were happy to make common cause.
A word about what brought us together.
Back when Enron and WorldCom were considered large scandals Congress belched out a whopper called Sarbox, otherwise known as the lawyers and accountants full employment act. One trick Enron perps used to rob powerless, distant and uninvolved shareholders was gorging on deferred compensation. 409(A) created a labyrinth of rules tied to draconian tax penalties that would sting any corporate executive trying to repeat such shenanigans.
But venture capital backed startups don't have powerless, distant and uninvolved shareholders. We not only hold preferred stock but sit on the board and usually run the compensation committee. And startups don't offer deferred compensation. They incentivize employees and executives with stock options. These are both illiquid and not worth the paper they're printed on unless and until the company achieves enough success to generate a positive exit.
You'd be correct in observing that 409(A) doesn't solve any problems that actually exist in closely held private companies. Yet because Congress didn't explicitly exempt such companies they have to follow the same rules as IBM and Shell Oil.
When my turn came to speak I pointed out that in our rarefied community 409(A) is an affliction akin to a persistent toenail fungus. It is neither debilitating nor curable, thought it can be neutralized with a combination of cash and institutionalized corruption. I described exactly how the corruption worked and that it generally cost each of our portfolio companies between $5,000 and $15,000 a year. This money fuels a professional protection racket that spits out fanciful valuation reports designed to shield employees from getting nailed with 409(A) penalties in the unlikely event that their stock options ever turn out to be worth something.
Bottom line, I opined, 409(A) is a tax on entrepreneurship except it is paid to lawyers, accountants, and unemployed investment bankers instead of to the government. No discussion ensued. Everyone just looked at me with the unspoken words, "You think you have problems?"
That's when I learned about the misery waiting to be inflicted on owners and employees of workaday small businesses like your dry cleaner, plumber, or even your family doctor. In all too many cases the 400 pages of Treasury regulations that define 409(A) can be a dagger pointed at their hearts. Like characters in a Kafka novel, most of the victims will never know about these nightmarishly complex rules until they are hauled in for a dreaded audit and find out that the money tied up in their business that they were counting on for retirement just went poof.
A representative from the Small Business Council of America laid out a parade of horribles in a whitepaper you can find on their website. Something as simple as paying out a retiring partner his share of accounts receivable - no small sum in many businesses - can trigger taxes and penalties far in excess of the payout. In some cases an employee can owe tax, interest, and penalties on tens of thousands of dollars of deemed income that is never even received!
All agreed this was surely not intended by the law's authors. Yet how to fix it? The Treasury and IRS officials indicated that they don't make the laws, they just enforce them. If you want to change the statute go talk to Congress.
One sentence exempting privately held companies from 409(A) would do the trick, but that's not how Washington works. Constituencies have to be assembled. Congressmen have to be greased. But how does one solicit baksheesh from small businesses to fix a law that they don't even know they are breaking? In today's climate the Congressional Budget Office also has to score any change revenue neutral. This could be tricky since the IRS could theoretically hire enough auditors to generate any given level of fines.
I suggested latching on to President Obama's promise to eliminate useless and stupid regulations but no one believed something this arcane would garner support. Since journalists don't have the attention span to understand much less describe the issue, how about trotting out a few colorful and sympathetic victims? They took that under advisement but weren't sure the media would ever portray a successful businessman as sympathetic. The only thing this group was sure of is that they would meet again. And again. And again.
Making it just another day in the belly of the beast.
RightField
Literotica Guru
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High Speed to Insolvency
Why liberals love trains.
George Will 3/1/11.
Generations hence, when the river of time has worn this presidency’s importance to a small, smooth pebble in the stream of history, people will still marvel that its defining trait was a mania for high-speed rail projects. This disorder illuminates the progressive mind.
Remarkably widespread derision has greeted the Obama administration’s damn-the-arithmetic-full-speed-ahead proposal to spend $53 billion more (after the $8 billion in stimulus money and $2.4 billion in enticements to 23 states) in the next six years pursuant to the president’s loopy goal of giving “80 percent of Americans access to high-speed rail.” “Access” and “high-speed” to be defined later.
Criticism of this optional and irrational spending—meaning: borrowing —during a deficit crisis has been withering. Only an administration blinkered by ideology would persist.
Florida’s new Republican governor, Rick Scott, has joined Ohio’s (John Kasich) and Wisconsin’s (Scott Walker) in rejecting federal incentives—more than $2 billion in Florida’s case—to begin a high-speed rail project. Florida’s 84-mile line, which would have run parallel to Interstate 4, would have connected Tampa and Orlando. One preposterous projection was that it would attract 3 million passengers a year—almost as many as ride Amtrak’s Acela in the densely populated Boston–New York–Washington corridor.
The three governors want to spare their states from paying the much larger sums likely to be required for construction-cost overruns and operating subsidies when ridership projections prove to be delusional. Kasich and Walker, who were elected promising to stop the nonsense, asked Washington for permission to use the high-speed-rail money for more pressing transportation needs than a train running along Interstate 71 between Cleveland and Cincinnati, or a train parallel to Interstate 94 between Milwaukee and Madison. Washington, disdaining the decisions of Ohio and Wisconsin voters, replied that it will find states that will waste the money.
California will. Although prostrate from its own profligacy, it will sink tens of billions of its own taxpayers’ money in the 616-mile San Francisco–to–San Diego line. Supposedly 39 million people will eagerly pay much more than an airfare in order to travel slower. Between 2008 and 2009, the projected cost increased from $33 billion to $42.6 billion.
Randal O’Toole of the Cato Institute notes that high-speed rail connects big-city downtowns, where only 7 percent of Americans work and 1 percent live. “The average intercity auto trip today uses less energy per passenger mile than the average Amtrak train.” And high speed will not displace enough cars to measurably reduce congestion. The Washington Post says China’s fast trains are priced beyond ordinary workers’ budgets, and that France, like Japan, has only one profitable line.
So why is America’s “win the future” administration so fixated on railroads, a technology that was the future two centuries ago? Because progressivism’s aim is the modification of (other people’s) behavior.
Forever seeking Archimedean levers for prying the world in directions they prefer, progressives say they embrace high-speed rail for many reasons—to improve the climate, increase competitiveness, enhance national security, reduce congestion, and rationalize land use. The length of the list of reasons, and the flimsiness of each, points to this conclusion: the real reason for progressives’ passion for trains is their goal of diminishing Americans’ individualism in order to make them more amenable to collectivism.
To progressives, the best thing about railroads is that people riding them are not in automobiles, which are subversive of the deference on which progressivism depends. Automobiles go hither and yon, wherever and whenever the driver desires, without timetables. Automobiles encourage people to think they—unsupervised, untutored, and unscripted—are masters of their fates. The automobile encourages people in delusions of adequacy, which make them resistant to government by experts who know what choices people should make.
Time was, the progressive cry was “Workers of the world unite!” or “Power to the people!” Now it is less resonant: “All aboard!”
Why liberals love trains.
George Will 3/1/11.
Generations hence, when the river of time has worn this presidency’s importance to a small, smooth pebble in the stream of history, people will still marvel that its defining trait was a mania for high-speed rail projects. This disorder illuminates the progressive mind.
Remarkably widespread derision has greeted the Obama administration’s damn-the-arithmetic-full-speed-ahead proposal to spend $53 billion more (after the $8 billion in stimulus money and $2.4 billion in enticements to 23 states) in the next six years pursuant to the president’s loopy goal of giving “80 percent of Americans access to high-speed rail.” “Access” and “high-speed” to be defined later.
Criticism of this optional and irrational spending—meaning: borrowing —during a deficit crisis has been withering. Only an administration blinkered by ideology would persist.
Florida’s new Republican governor, Rick Scott, has joined Ohio’s (John Kasich) and Wisconsin’s (Scott Walker) in rejecting federal incentives—more than $2 billion in Florida’s case—to begin a high-speed rail project. Florida’s 84-mile line, which would have run parallel to Interstate 4, would have connected Tampa and Orlando. One preposterous projection was that it would attract 3 million passengers a year—almost as many as ride Amtrak’s Acela in the densely populated Boston–New York–Washington corridor.
The three governors want to spare their states from paying the much larger sums likely to be required for construction-cost overruns and operating subsidies when ridership projections prove to be delusional. Kasich and Walker, who were elected promising to stop the nonsense, asked Washington for permission to use the high-speed-rail money for more pressing transportation needs than a train running along Interstate 71 between Cleveland and Cincinnati, or a train parallel to Interstate 94 between Milwaukee and Madison. Washington, disdaining the decisions of Ohio and Wisconsin voters, replied that it will find states that will waste the money.
California will. Although prostrate from its own profligacy, it will sink tens of billions of its own taxpayers’ money in the 616-mile San Francisco–to–San Diego line. Supposedly 39 million people will eagerly pay much more than an airfare in order to travel slower. Between 2008 and 2009, the projected cost increased from $33 billion to $42.6 billion.
Randal O’Toole of the Cato Institute notes that high-speed rail connects big-city downtowns, where only 7 percent of Americans work and 1 percent live. “The average intercity auto trip today uses less energy per passenger mile than the average Amtrak train.” And high speed will not displace enough cars to measurably reduce congestion. The Washington Post says China’s fast trains are priced beyond ordinary workers’ budgets, and that France, like Japan, has only one profitable line.
So why is America’s “win the future” administration so fixated on railroads, a technology that was the future two centuries ago? Because progressivism’s aim is the modification of (other people’s) behavior.
Forever seeking Archimedean levers for prying the world in directions they prefer, progressives say they embrace high-speed rail for many reasons—to improve the climate, increase competitiveness, enhance national security, reduce congestion, and rationalize land use. The length of the list of reasons, and the flimsiness of each, points to this conclusion: the real reason for progressives’ passion for trains is their goal of diminishing Americans’ individualism in order to make them more amenable to collectivism.
To progressives, the best thing about railroads is that people riding them are not in automobiles, which are subversive of the deference on which progressivism depends. Automobiles go hither and yon, wherever and whenever the driver desires, without timetables. Automobiles encourage people to think they—unsupervised, untutored, and unscripted—are masters of their fates. The automobile encourages people in delusions of adequacy, which make them resistant to government by experts who know what choices people should make.
Time was, the progressive cry was “Workers of the world unite!” or “Power to the people!” Now it is less resonant: “All aboard!”
koalabear
~Armed and Fuzzy~
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- 101,964
But what about all those union jobs building the useless rail!
RightField
Literotica Guru
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- 9,361
'Tiresome Squabbles of Discontented Affluence'
By Tony Blankley
In the same weeks that are seeing the Middle East (with all its oil and geopolitical significance) begin to transform itself into we know not what, important economists are predicting that, if current trends continue, not only China, but India also will within a generation have larger economies than ours. And, of course, with strong economies almost inevitably come equivalently strong military capacities.
So as we enter the great deficit and debt fights of this budget season both in Washington and the states, the question that enters my mind is: Will the people of the United States be content to merely settle down and become a relatively affluent, second-level satellite to a great Chinese colossus? Are we Americans prepared to play Britain to a post-WWII America? And is it likely that China is prepared to be so benign a giant as we have been -- and are?
Assuming that most Americans are adamantly not willing to roll over into a national economic fetal position, then certain implications, certain actions must follow from our intent to remain on our hind legs, strong right arms uplifted to the world. And it begins with the current deficit fight.
First, and most obviously, we actually have to have this fight. It is economically naive to believe that we can continue to be the world's strongest, largest economy if we don't soon get our fiscal books in order. Moreover, huge and painful as that task will be, it will not assure our economic strength -- it is merely one of several necessary preconditions to such economic health.
It also is naive to believe it possible for about $10 trillion to be taken out of anticipated federal budgets (and perhaps a trillion or more dollars out of the 50 state budgets) over the next decade without beneficiaries of such spending not organizing to defend their pots of gold. We see a first example of this in Wisconsin, where the public employee unions are going beyond both law and decency in their furious effort to keep a grip on their bounty.
It is not enough that we get our deficits and debt down -- it centrally matters how we do it. This agonizing national civic task either can be: 1) merely the "tiresome squabbles of discontented affluence" (economic historian Adam Tooze's phrase describing post-war Western European politics); or 2) a new birth of economic greatness. For those who don't want to assume a national economic fetal position, this budget fight must lead to the latter.
President Lincoln in January 1863 transformed the Civil War from merely an attempt to hold the union together (a good and important thing) into "a new birth of freedom" with his Emancipation Proclamation. By expressing the national intent to free the African-American slaves, he directly connected the war with our first (incomplete) birth of freedom -- the Revolutionary War. It may not be a coincidence that within ten years of that "new birth of freedom", America became the largest economy in the world -- a condition we have maintained to this day.
So today, we must not only fight the war to bring the deficit and debt under control; we must do so in a way that strengthens our economy vis-a-vis China and the other aggressive economies (Brazil, India, etc.).
Fundamentally, that means not only reducing our spending, but doing so in a way that increases the proportion of government money and policies going to capital investment, and reducing the amount that subsidizes operating costs. It not only means reducing anticipated spending on Medicare and Medicaid, but probably means getting more of the precious dollars to improve the health of our soon-to-be-productive children, even if it means spending fewer tax dollars on the end-of-life care of elderly people.
Justice, fairness and equity (despite the desirability of gaining such objectives) cannot be the primary guides to spending decisions. The guide must be: What makes our economy more competitive; what increases American manufacturing, mining, commercial construction and intellectual property value; what increases our domestic energy production; what puts the most productive tools in the hands of our children; what trains our children to economically compete and defeat the able children around the world; and what is needed to keep us militarily strong enough to protect our interests?
By way of example on the latter point, last week, our storied sixth naval fleet that for 65 years has maintained the Mediterranean Sea as an American lake, could not muster a single destroyer, frigate or other modest naval ship to save a few hundred Americans stranded in Libya. The State Department had to rent a ferry that was not seaworthy to do the job. The whole world is watching -- and drawing its cruel conclusions. And you can be assured that China, too, is watching.
If you doubt it, read the excellent book review in this week's Weekly Standard of Yoshihara & Holmes groundbreaking new scholarly book "Red Star Over the Pacific: China's Rise and the Challenge to U.S. Maritime Strategy."
Before we conclude that the defense budget "must take its fair share" of cuts, we should understand that it is not the Pentagon that will be hurt -- it is 300 million Americans and our economy that is threatened by a weak military and Navy that cannot protect our interests. Where cuts can be made because of inefficiencies, such as in procurements -- excellent.
But whether it is in education (where unionized workforce rules protect the destructive work of the worst 10 percent of teachers) or health care, or military spending -- the watchword for budget cuts should be what is best for America's continued and expanding economic greatness -- whatever its short-term consequences
By Tony Blankley
In the same weeks that are seeing the Middle East (with all its oil and geopolitical significance) begin to transform itself into we know not what, important economists are predicting that, if current trends continue, not only China, but India also will within a generation have larger economies than ours. And, of course, with strong economies almost inevitably come equivalently strong military capacities.
So as we enter the great deficit and debt fights of this budget season both in Washington and the states, the question that enters my mind is: Will the people of the United States be content to merely settle down and become a relatively affluent, second-level satellite to a great Chinese colossus? Are we Americans prepared to play Britain to a post-WWII America? And is it likely that China is prepared to be so benign a giant as we have been -- and are?
Assuming that most Americans are adamantly not willing to roll over into a national economic fetal position, then certain implications, certain actions must follow from our intent to remain on our hind legs, strong right arms uplifted to the world. And it begins with the current deficit fight.
First, and most obviously, we actually have to have this fight. It is economically naive to believe that we can continue to be the world's strongest, largest economy if we don't soon get our fiscal books in order. Moreover, huge and painful as that task will be, it will not assure our economic strength -- it is merely one of several necessary preconditions to such economic health.
It also is naive to believe it possible for about $10 trillion to be taken out of anticipated federal budgets (and perhaps a trillion or more dollars out of the 50 state budgets) over the next decade without beneficiaries of such spending not organizing to defend their pots of gold. We see a first example of this in Wisconsin, where the public employee unions are going beyond both law and decency in their furious effort to keep a grip on their bounty.
It is not enough that we get our deficits and debt down -- it centrally matters how we do it. This agonizing national civic task either can be: 1) merely the "tiresome squabbles of discontented affluence" (economic historian Adam Tooze's phrase describing post-war Western European politics); or 2) a new birth of economic greatness. For those who don't want to assume a national economic fetal position, this budget fight must lead to the latter.
President Lincoln in January 1863 transformed the Civil War from merely an attempt to hold the union together (a good and important thing) into "a new birth of freedom" with his Emancipation Proclamation. By expressing the national intent to free the African-American slaves, he directly connected the war with our first (incomplete) birth of freedom -- the Revolutionary War. It may not be a coincidence that within ten years of that "new birth of freedom", America became the largest economy in the world -- a condition we have maintained to this day.
So today, we must not only fight the war to bring the deficit and debt under control; we must do so in a way that strengthens our economy vis-a-vis China and the other aggressive economies (Brazil, India, etc.).
Fundamentally, that means not only reducing our spending, but doing so in a way that increases the proportion of government money and policies going to capital investment, and reducing the amount that subsidizes operating costs. It not only means reducing anticipated spending on Medicare and Medicaid, but probably means getting more of the precious dollars to improve the health of our soon-to-be-productive children, even if it means spending fewer tax dollars on the end-of-life care of elderly people.
Justice, fairness and equity (despite the desirability of gaining such objectives) cannot be the primary guides to spending decisions. The guide must be: What makes our economy more competitive; what increases American manufacturing, mining, commercial construction and intellectual property value; what increases our domestic energy production; what puts the most productive tools in the hands of our children; what trains our children to economically compete and defeat the able children around the world; and what is needed to keep us militarily strong enough to protect our interests?
By way of example on the latter point, last week, our storied sixth naval fleet that for 65 years has maintained the Mediterranean Sea as an American lake, could not muster a single destroyer, frigate or other modest naval ship to save a few hundred Americans stranded in Libya. The State Department had to rent a ferry that was not seaworthy to do the job. The whole world is watching -- and drawing its cruel conclusions. And you can be assured that China, too, is watching.
If you doubt it, read the excellent book review in this week's Weekly Standard of Yoshihara & Holmes groundbreaking new scholarly book "Red Star Over the Pacific: China's Rise and the Challenge to U.S. Maritime Strategy."
Before we conclude that the defense budget "must take its fair share" of cuts, we should understand that it is not the Pentagon that will be hurt -- it is 300 million Americans and our economy that is threatened by a weak military and Navy that cannot protect our interests. Where cuts can be made because of inefficiencies, such as in procurements -- excellent.
But whether it is in education (where unionized workforce rules protect the destructive work of the worst 10 percent of teachers) or health care, or military spending -- the watchword for budget cuts should be what is best for America's continued and expanding economic greatness -- whatever its short-term consequences
RightField
Literotica Guru
- Joined
- Jun 30, 2003
- Posts
- 9,361
Debt, the Economy & Government 'Investments'
By David Harsanyi
Did you know that those in the federal government -- the folks who brought you $1.6 trillion of yearly deficits, brought you $14 trillion of debt and make Elmo a reality -- offer Americans 56 separate programs to help them better understand their finances? Where will these citizens go for sage advice if Washington shuts down?
With all the hand-wringing and self-defeating talk from Republicans about the political cost of allowing the federal government to shut down for a couple of weeks, there is a missed opportunity. What better way to illustrate just how little taxpayers get back on their "investments"? And what a great time to demolish the myth that even modest cuts would detrimentally affect most Americans.
Alas, it looks as if the Senate and House will agree to federal spending cuts of only $4 billion to avert a government shutdown for two more weeks. Republicans initially asked for $61 billion in spending cuts for the remainder of the year -- in real terms, a pittance -- which, according to many Democrats, would destroy a brittle economic recovery and kill thousands of jobs.
If you believe that stimulus spending creates productive, self-sustaining jobs, I suspect you're forced to believe that a lack of stimulus spending destroys those jobs. Democrats are relying heavily on the claim by Moody's Analytics' chief economist that 400,000 fewer jobs would be created (and saved?) by the end of 2011 -- and 700,000 fewer jobs by the end of 2012 -- if Congress were to cut $61 billion. Now, the Moody's forecast has been battered by a number of economists, and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, a fan of stimulative efforts, dismissed those numbers, as well.
Who knows? Laymen like me can only rely on one scientific truth when it comes to economic forecasts: They're always wrong, except when by some fluke they're right. But it is tough to accept the idea that cutting back less than 1 percent of the debt-heavy budget could be detrimental to the economy. And according to a new Government Accountability Office report, there are hundreds of billions in bloated and duplicative programs Congress could cut before even having to take on entitlements, defense spending or any supposedly invaluable programs.
The report found there were 18 federal food and nutrition assistance programs, costing taxpayers $62.5 billion in 2008. There was not one study to find out whether any of it was effective. The Wall Street Journal reported there are 82 federal programs to improve teacher quality. Silly, because according to unions, there is not one identifiably ineffective teacher in the entire country.
According to the GAO report, there are some 80 different economic development programs, which have probably created more jobs for bureaucrats manning the programs than they have private-sector jobs.
There are 15 different agencies overseeing food safety. Even though conservatives are pro-salmonella, food producers already have the greatest incentive of all to give us safe food, namely preserving their success and existence. So can't these programs, typically irrelevant and expensive, be at the very least streamlined?
When, as Democrats contend, cutting a single-digit percentage of the budget becomes an abdication of our duty, how can we ever get to $61 billion in spending cuts, much less a balanced budget? If half the government believes that creating debt is an economic stimulant, what are the chances of our ever dealing with national debt?
Any spending cut that does not involve defense (which should be on the table) induces Democrats to lament the inconceivable and imagined personal and economic toll Americans will suffer. The truth is that those who view nearly all government spending as not only a moral obligation but also economically advantageous don't really want to cut a penny.
By David Harsanyi
Did you know that those in the federal government -- the folks who brought you $1.6 trillion of yearly deficits, brought you $14 trillion of debt and make Elmo a reality -- offer Americans 56 separate programs to help them better understand their finances? Where will these citizens go for sage advice if Washington shuts down?
With all the hand-wringing and self-defeating talk from Republicans about the political cost of allowing the federal government to shut down for a couple of weeks, there is a missed opportunity. What better way to illustrate just how little taxpayers get back on their "investments"? And what a great time to demolish the myth that even modest cuts would detrimentally affect most Americans.
Alas, it looks as if the Senate and House will agree to federal spending cuts of only $4 billion to avert a government shutdown for two more weeks. Republicans initially asked for $61 billion in spending cuts for the remainder of the year -- in real terms, a pittance -- which, according to many Democrats, would destroy a brittle economic recovery and kill thousands of jobs.
If you believe that stimulus spending creates productive, self-sustaining jobs, I suspect you're forced to believe that a lack of stimulus spending destroys those jobs. Democrats are relying heavily on the claim by Moody's Analytics' chief economist that 400,000 fewer jobs would be created (and saved?) by the end of 2011 -- and 700,000 fewer jobs by the end of 2012 -- if Congress were to cut $61 billion. Now, the Moody's forecast has been battered by a number of economists, and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, a fan of stimulative efforts, dismissed those numbers, as well.
Who knows? Laymen like me can only rely on one scientific truth when it comes to economic forecasts: They're always wrong, except when by some fluke they're right. But it is tough to accept the idea that cutting back less than 1 percent of the debt-heavy budget could be detrimental to the economy. And according to a new Government Accountability Office report, there are hundreds of billions in bloated and duplicative programs Congress could cut before even having to take on entitlements, defense spending or any supposedly invaluable programs.
The report found there were 18 federal food and nutrition assistance programs, costing taxpayers $62.5 billion in 2008. There was not one study to find out whether any of it was effective. The Wall Street Journal reported there are 82 federal programs to improve teacher quality. Silly, because according to unions, there is not one identifiably ineffective teacher in the entire country.
According to the GAO report, there are some 80 different economic development programs, which have probably created more jobs for bureaucrats manning the programs than they have private-sector jobs.
There are 15 different agencies overseeing food safety. Even though conservatives are pro-salmonella, food producers already have the greatest incentive of all to give us safe food, namely preserving their success and existence. So can't these programs, typically irrelevant and expensive, be at the very least streamlined?
When, as Democrats contend, cutting a single-digit percentage of the budget becomes an abdication of our duty, how can we ever get to $61 billion in spending cuts, much less a balanced budget? If half the government believes that creating debt is an economic stimulant, what are the chances of our ever dealing with national debt?
Any spending cut that does not involve defense (which should be on the table) induces Democrats to lament the inconceivable and imagined personal and economic toll Americans will suffer. The truth is that those who view nearly all government spending as not only a moral obligation but also economically advantageous don't really want to cut a penny.
RightField
Literotica Guru
- Joined
- Jun 30, 2003
- Posts
- 9,361
Fantasies From Obama & the Environmental Lobby
By John Stossel
3/9/11 Creators Syndicate
Anyone who understands basic economics already knows that President Obama's $2.3 billion green-jobs initiative was snake oil. Now, thanks to Kenneth P. Green, we have statistics as well as theory to prove it.
In a new article, "The Myth of Green Energy Jobs: The European Experience," the environmental scientist and a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute writes, "Green programs in Spain destroyed 2.2 jobs for every green job created, while the capital needed for one green job in Italy could create almost five jobs in the general economy."
Ironically, Obama boasts his initiative "will help close the clean-energy gap between America and other nations." But Green says, "(C)ountries are cutting these programs because they realize they aren't sustainable and they are obscenely expensive."
Obama claims that if we "invest" more, "the transition to clean energy has the potential to grow our economy and create millions of jobs -- but only if we accelerate that transition."
What could make more sense? A little push from the smart politicians and -- voila! -- we can have an abundance of new good-paying jobs and a cleaner, sustainable environment. It's the ultimate twofer.
Except it's an illusion, as economic logic demonstrates.
"It is well understood, among economists, that governments do not 'create' jobs," Green writes. "The willingness of entrepreneurs to invest their capital, paired with consumer demand for goods and services, does that. All the government can do is subsidize some industries while jacking up costs for others. In the green case, it is destroying jobs in the conventional energy sector -- and most likely in other industrial sectors -- through taxes and subsidies to new green companies that will use taxpayer dollars to undercut the competition. The subsidized jobs 'created' are, by definition, less efficient uses of capital than market-created jobs."
Green is using good, solid economic thinking. Many years ago, Henry Hazlitt wrote in his bestseller, "Economics in One Lesson," "The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups."
In judging any government initiative, such as Obama's green-jobs plan, you can't look just at the credit side of ledger because the government is unable to give without first taking away.
Worse than that: Inevitably, more is taken away -- destroyed -- than is given because the government substitutes force and taxation for consent and free exchange. Instead of a process driven by consumer preferences, we get one imposed by politicians' grand social designs. It's what F.A. Hayek called "the fatal conceit."
So we shouldn't be surprised that green-jobs programs make energy more expensive. "(F)orcing green energy on the market (is) much, much more expensive," Green said. "Using Spain as a model, when you do the math, you realize that creating 3 million new green jobs could cost $2.25 trillion."
Of course, many people who push "green jobs" want the price of energy to rise so we'll use less. If the environmental lobby wants Americans to be poorer, it ought to come clean about that.
The advocates of such programs don't just misunderstand economics. They have lapsed into a pre-economic mentality. Rulers once believed they could do whatever they wanted, subject only to the physical laws of nature. If things didn't work out as planned, it was because the people had failed to cooperate. But as economist Ludwig von Mises wrote, once economics emerged as an intellectual discipline, "it was learned that in the social realm too there is something operative which power and force are unable to alter and to which they must adjust themselves if they hope to achieve success ... ."
That "something" is inescapable economic forces like the law of supply and demand.
Green is right when he says, "Central planners in the United States trying to promote green industry will fare no better (than Europe) at creating jobs or stimulating the economy."
By John Stossel
3/9/11 Creators Syndicate
Anyone who understands basic economics already knows that President Obama's $2.3 billion green-jobs initiative was snake oil. Now, thanks to Kenneth P. Green, we have statistics as well as theory to prove it.
In a new article, "The Myth of Green Energy Jobs: The European Experience," the environmental scientist and a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute writes, "Green programs in Spain destroyed 2.2 jobs for every green job created, while the capital needed for one green job in Italy could create almost five jobs in the general economy."
Ironically, Obama boasts his initiative "will help close the clean-energy gap between America and other nations." But Green says, "(C)ountries are cutting these programs because they realize they aren't sustainable and they are obscenely expensive."
Obama claims that if we "invest" more, "the transition to clean energy has the potential to grow our economy and create millions of jobs -- but only if we accelerate that transition."
What could make more sense? A little push from the smart politicians and -- voila! -- we can have an abundance of new good-paying jobs and a cleaner, sustainable environment. It's the ultimate twofer.
Except it's an illusion, as economic logic demonstrates.
"It is well understood, among economists, that governments do not 'create' jobs," Green writes. "The willingness of entrepreneurs to invest their capital, paired with consumer demand for goods and services, does that. All the government can do is subsidize some industries while jacking up costs for others. In the green case, it is destroying jobs in the conventional energy sector -- and most likely in other industrial sectors -- through taxes and subsidies to new green companies that will use taxpayer dollars to undercut the competition. The subsidized jobs 'created' are, by definition, less efficient uses of capital than market-created jobs."
Green is using good, solid economic thinking. Many years ago, Henry Hazlitt wrote in his bestseller, "Economics in One Lesson," "The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups."
In judging any government initiative, such as Obama's green-jobs plan, you can't look just at the credit side of ledger because the government is unable to give without first taking away.
Worse than that: Inevitably, more is taken away -- destroyed -- than is given because the government substitutes force and taxation for consent and free exchange. Instead of a process driven by consumer preferences, we get one imposed by politicians' grand social designs. It's what F.A. Hayek called "the fatal conceit."
So we shouldn't be surprised that green-jobs programs make energy more expensive. "(F)orcing green energy on the market (is) much, much more expensive," Green said. "Using Spain as a model, when you do the math, you realize that creating 3 million new green jobs could cost $2.25 trillion."
Of course, many people who push "green jobs" want the price of energy to rise so we'll use less. If the environmental lobby wants Americans to be poorer, it ought to come clean about that.
The advocates of such programs don't just misunderstand economics. They have lapsed into a pre-economic mentality. Rulers once believed they could do whatever they wanted, subject only to the physical laws of nature. If things didn't work out as planned, it was because the people had failed to cooperate. But as economist Ludwig von Mises wrote, once economics emerged as an intellectual discipline, "it was learned that in the social realm too there is something operative which power and force are unable to alter and to which they must adjust themselves if they hope to achieve success ... ."
That "something" is inescapable economic forces like the law of supply and demand.
Green is right when he says, "Central planners in the United States trying to promote green industry will fare no better (than Europe) at creating jobs or stimulating the economy."
Frisco_Slug_Esq
On Strike!
- Joined
- May 4, 2009
- Posts
- 45,618
Yeah, the myth of the multiplier...
__________________
“There is one good thing about Marx: he was not a Keynesian.”
Murray Rothbard
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/261636/zandinomics-michael-tanner
__________________
“There is one good thing about Marx: he was not a Keynesian.”
Murray Rothbard
RightField
Literotica Guru
- Joined
- Jun 30, 2003
- Posts
- 9,361
A Letter to America
Americans deserve better than the European model that Barack Obama is trying to implement
By DANIEL HANNAN
On a U.S. talk-radio show recently, I was asked what I thought about the notion that Barack Obama had been born in Kenya. "Pah!" I replied (or words to that effect). "Your president was plainly born in Brussels."
American conservatives have struggled to press President Obama's policies into a meaningful narrative. Is he a socialist? No, at least not in the sense of wanting the state to own key industries. Is he a straightforward New Deal big spender, in the model of FDR and LBJ? Not exactly.
Americans understandably seek to define their president in American terms. But looking across from my side of the Atlantic, there is a much simpler explanation. President Obama wants to Europeanize the U.S. All right, he wouldn't put it in those terms, partly because the electorate wouldn't wear it and partly because he sees himself as less Eurocentric than any of his 43 predecessors.
My guess is that if anything, Obama would verbalize his ideology using the same vocabulary that Eurocrats do. He would say he wants a fairer America, a more tolerant America, a less arrogant America, a more engaged America. When you prize away the cliché, what these phrases amount to are higher taxes, less patriotism, a bigger role for state bureaucracies and a transfer of sovereignty to global institutions.
He is not pursuing a set of random initiatives lashed arbitrarily together, but a program of comprehensive Europeanization: European health care, European welfare, European carbon taxes, European day care, European college education, even a European foreign policy, based on engagement with supranational technocracies, nuclear disarmament and a reluctance to deploy forces overseas.
No previous president has offered such uncritical support for European integration. On his very first trip to Europe as president, Obama declared, "In my view, there is no Old Europe or New Europe. There is a united Europe." Having silkily dispensed with the old Rumsfeldian idea that the U.S. should deal with EU states as individual nations, he went on to dismiss the euroskeptic majorities in most European countries: "I believe in a strong Europe, and a strong European Union, and my administration is committed to doing everything we can to support you."
It's hardly surprising that Obama should be such an enthusiast for a European superstate: He is building his own version at home. I don't doubt the sincerity of those Americans who want to copy the European model. A few may be snobs who wear their euro-enthusiasm as a badge of sophistication. But most genuinely believe that making their country less American and more like the rest of the world would make it more comfortable and peaceable.
All right, growth would be slower, but the quality of life might improve. All right, taxes would be higher, but workers need no longer fear sickness or unemployment. All right, the U.S. would no longer be the world's superpower, but perhaps that would make it more popular. Is a European future truly so terrible?
Yes. Take it from me, my friends. I have been an elected member of the European Parliament for 11 years. I have seen firsthand what the European political model means. I inhabit your future—or at least the future toward which your current rulers seem intent on taking you. Before you follow us, let me tell you about it.
The critical difference between the American and European unions has to do with the location of power. The U.S. was founded on what we might loosely call the Jeffersonian ideal: the notion that decisions should be taken as closely as possible to the people they affect. The EU, by contrast, was based on precisely the opposite ideal. Article One of its foundational treaty commits its nations to establish "an ever-closer union."
From that distinction, much follows. The U.S. has evolved a series of unique institutions designed to limit the power of the state: recall mechanisms, ballot initiatives, balanced budget rules, open primaries, localism, states' rights, term limits, the direct election of public officials, from the sheriff to the school board. The EU, by contrast, has placed supreme power in the hands of 27 unelected Commissioners, who have been made deliberately invulnerable to public opinion.
The will of the people is generally seen by Eurocrats as an obstacle to overcome, not a reason to change direction. When France, the Netherlands and Ireland voted against the European Constitution, the referendum results were swatted aside and the document adopted regardless. For, in Brussels, the ruling doctrine—that the nation-state must be transcended—is seen as more important than freedom, democracy or the rule of law.
This doctrine has had several malign consequences. For example, it has made the assimilation of immigrants far more difficult. Whereas the U.S. is based around the idea that anyone who buys into American values can become American, the EU clings to the notion that national identities are anachronistic and dangerous. Unsurprisingly, some newcomers, finding their adopted countries scorned, have turned to other, less apologetic identities. Hint to my American friends: If you go around the world apologizing for everything, you make it harder for immigrants to want to belong.
The single worst aspect of Europeanization, however, is its impact on the economy. Many Americans, and many Europeans, have a collective memory of how Europe managed to combine economic growth with social justice. Didn't Western Europe do tremendously well after World War II? Wasn't its success associated with something called "Rhineland capitalism" or "the social market"?
Like most folk memories, the idea of a European economic miracle has some basis in fact. Between 1945 and 1974, Western Europe did indeed outperform the U.S. And in retrospect, we can see why. Europe happened to enjoy perfect conditions for rapid growth. Infrastructure had been destroyed during the war, but an educated, industrious and disciplined work force remained. On top of which, Europe received a massive external stimulus. Thirteen billion dollars were disbursed through the Marshall Plan between 1948 and 1952, on top of the $12 billion already given by the U.S. in aid since the end of the war.
In the circumstances, it would have been extraordinary had Europe not prospered. Human nature being what it is, however, few European leaders attributed their success to the fact that they were recovering from an artificial low, still less to external assistance.
They convinced themselves, rather, that they were responsible for their countries' growth rates. Their genius, they thought, lay in having hit upon a European "third way" between the excesses of American capitalism and the totalitarianism of Soviet communism.
They believed in markets, but regulated markets. Instead of the industrial strife that they had experienced before the war, they would establish a tripartite system in which employers, labor unions and government officials worked together. Instead of seesawing between Left and Right, they would have consensual coalition governments in which both Christian Democrats and Social Democrats accepted the broad framework of a mixed market. Instead of competition between states, they would pursue political and economic integration.
We can now see where that road leads: to burgeoning bureaucracy, more spending, higher taxes, slower growth and rising unemployment. But an entire political class has grown up believing not just in the economic superiority of euro-corporatism but in its moral superiority. After all, if the American system were better—if people and businesses could thrive without government supervision—there would be less need for politicians. As Upton Sinclair once observed, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it."
Nonetheless, the economic data are pitilessly clear. For the past 40 years, Europeans have fallen further and further behind Americans in their standard of living. In 1974, Western Europe, defined as the 15 members of the EU prior to the admission of the former communist countries in 2004, accounted for 36% of world GDP. Today that figure is 26%. In 2020 it will be 15%. In the same period, the U.S. share of world GDP has remained, and is forecast to remain, fairly steady at around 26%.
At the same time, Europe has become accustomed to a high level of structural unemployment. Indeed, if we exclude the United Kingdom, the EU failed to produce a single net private-sector job between 1980 and 1992. Only now, as the U.S. applies a European-style economic strategy based on fiscal stimulus, nationalization, bailouts, quantitative easing and the regulation of private-sector remuneration, has the rate of unemployment in the U.S. leaped to European levels.
Why is a European politician urging America to avoid Europeanization? Well, I'm not European; I'm British. My country is linked to the U.S., and to the wider Anglosphere, by ties of history and geography, commerce and law, blood and speech.
As a Briton, I see the American republic as a repository of our traditional freedoms. The doctrines rooted in the common law, in the Magna Carta, and in the Bill of Rights found their fullest and most sublime expression in the old courthouse of Philadelphia. Britain, as a result of its unhappy membership in the European Union, has now surrendered a large part of its birthright. But our freedoms live on in America.
Which brings me to my country's present tragedy. The fears that the American patriot leaders had about a Hanoverian tyranny were, in retrospect, exaggerated. The United Kingdom did not develop into an absolutist state. Power continued to pass from the Crown to the House of Commons.
Until now. Nearly two and a half centuries after the Declaration of Independence, the grievances it adumbrated are belatedly coming true—but in Britain, rather than in North America. Colossal sums are being commandeered by the government in order to fund bailouts and nationalizations without any proper parliamentary authorization. Legislation happens increasingly through what are called standing orders, a device that allows ministers to make laws without parliamentary consent—often for the purpose of implementing EU standards. Elections have been drained of purpose, and turnout is falling.
How aptly the British people might today apply the ringing phrases of the Declaration of Independence against their own rulers, who have "combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws."
Throughout my career in politics, I have campaigned to apply Jeffersonian democracy to British political conditions, to recover those British freedoms that have flourished more happily in America than in their native soil, to repatriate our revolution. So you can imagine how I feel when I see the U.S. making the same mistakes that Britain has made: expanding its government, regulating private commerce, centralizing its jurisdiction, breaking the link between taxation and representation, abandoning its sovereignty.
You deserve better, cousins. And we expect better.
Mr. Hannan is a member of the European Parliament.
Americans deserve better than the European model that Barack Obama is trying to implement
By DANIEL HANNAN
On a U.S. talk-radio show recently, I was asked what I thought about the notion that Barack Obama had been born in Kenya. "Pah!" I replied (or words to that effect). "Your president was plainly born in Brussels."
American conservatives have struggled to press President Obama's policies into a meaningful narrative. Is he a socialist? No, at least not in the sense of wanting the state to own key industries. Is he a straightforward New Deal big spender, in the model of FDR and LBJ? Not exactly.
Americans understandably seek to define their president in American terms. But looking across from my side of the Atlantic, there is a much simpler explanation. President Obama wants to Europeanize the U.S. All right, he wouldn't put it in those terms, partly because the electorate wouldn't wear it and partly because he sees himself as less Eurocentric than any of his 43 predecessors.
My guess is that if anything, Obama would verbalize his ideology using the same vocabulary that Eurocrats do. He would say he wants a fairer America, a more tolerant America, a less arrogant America, a more engaged America. When you prize away the cliché, what these phrases amount to are higher taxes, less patriotism, a bigger role for state bureaucracies and a transfer of sovereignty to global institutions.
He is not pursuing a set of random initiatives lashed arbitrarily together, but a program of comprehensive Europeanization: European health care, European welfare, European carbon taxes, European day care, European college education, even a European foreign policy, based on engagement with supranational technocracies, nuclear disarmament and a reluctance to deploy forces overseas.
No previous president has offered such uncritical support for European integration. On his very first trip to Europe as president, Obama declared, "In my view, there is no Old Europe or New Europe. There is a united Europe." Having silkily dispensed with the old Rumsfeldian idea that the U.S. should deal with EU states as individual nations, he went on to dismiss the euroskeptic majorities in most European countries: "I believe in a strong Europe, and a strong European Union, and my administration is committed to doing everything we can to support you."
It's hardly surprising that Obama should be such an enthusiast for a European superstate: He is building his own version at home. I don't doubt the sincerity of those Americans who want to copy the European model. A few may be snobs who wear their euro-enthusiasm as a badge of sophistication. But most genuinely believe that making their country less American and more like the rest of the world would make it more comfortable and peaceable.
All right, growth would be slower, but the quality of life might improve. All right, taxes would be higher, but workers need no longer fear sickness or unemployment. All right, the U.S. would no longer be the world's superpower, but perhaps that would make it more popular. Is a European future truly so terrible?
Yes. Take it from me, my friends. I have been an elected member of the European Parliament for 11 years. I have seen firsthand what the European political model means. I inhabit your future—or at least the future toward which your current rulers seem intent on taking you. Before you follow us, let me tell you about it.
The critical difference between the American and European unions has to do with the location of power. The U.S. was founded on what we might loosely call the Jeffersonian ideal: the notion that decisions should be taken as closely as possible to the people they affect. The EU, by contrast, was based on precisely the opposite ideal. Article One of its foundational treaty commits its nations to establish "an ever-closer union."
From that distinction, much follows. The U.S. has evolved a series of unique institutions designed to limit the power of the state: recall mechanisms, ballot initiatives, balanced budget rules, open primaries, localism, states' rights, term limits, the direct election of public officials, from the sheriff to the school board. The EU, by contrast, has placed supreme power in the hands of 27 unelected Commissioners, who have been made deliberately invulnerable to public opinion.
The will of the people is generally seen by Eurocrats as an obstacle to overcome, not a reason to change direction. When France, the Netherlands and Ireland voted against the European Constitution, the referendum results were swatted aside and the document adopted regardless. For, in Brussels, the ruling doctrine—that the nation-state must be transcended—is seen as more important than freedom, democracy or the rule of law.
This doctrine has had several malign consequences. For example, it has made the assimilation of immigrants far more difficult. Whereas the U.S. is based around the idea that anyone who buys into American values can become American, the EU clings to the notion that national identities are anachronistic and dangerous. Unsurprisingly, some newcomers, finding their adopted countries scorned, have turned to other, less apologetic identities. Hint to my American friends: If you go around the world apologizing for everything, you make it harder for immigrants to want to belong.
The single worst aspect of Europeanization, however, is its impact on the economy. Many Americans, and many Europeans, have a collective memory of how Europe managed to combine economic growth with social justice. Didn't Western Europe do tremendously well after World War II? Wasn't its success associated with something called "Rhineland capitalism" or "the social market"?
Like most folk memories, the idea of a European economic miracle has some basis in fact. Between 1945 and 1974, Western Europe did indeed outperform the U.S. And in retrospect, we can see why. Europe happened to enjoy perfect conditions for rapid growth. Infrastructure had been destroyed during the war, but an educated, industrious and disciplined work force remained. On top of which, Europe received a massive external stimulus. Thirteen billion dollars were disbursed through the Marshall Plan between 1948 and 1952, on top of the $12 billion already given by the U.S. in aid since the end of the war.
In the circumstances, it would have been extraordinary had Europe not prospered. Human nature being what it is, however, few European leaders attributed their success to the fact that they were recovering from an artificial low, still less to external assistance.
They convinced themselves, rather, that they were responsible for their countries' growth rates. Their genius, they thought, lay in having hit upon a European "third way" between the excesses of American capitalism and the totalitarianism of Soviet communism.
They believed in markets, but regulated markets. Instead of the industrial strife that they had experienced before the war, they would establish a tripartite system in which employers, labor unions and government officials worked together. Instead of seesawing between Left and Right, they would have consensual coalition governments in which both Christian Democrats and Social Democrats accepted the broad framework of a mixed market. Instead of competition between states, they would pursue political and economic integration.
We can now see where that road leads: to burgeoning bureaucracy, more spending, higher taxes, slower growth and rising unemployment. But an entire political class has grown up believing not just in the economic superiority of euro-corporatism but in its moral superiority. After all, if the American system were better—if people and businesses could thrive without government supervision—there would be less need for politicians. As Upton Sinclair once observed, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it."
Nonetheless, the economic data are pitilessly clear. For the past 40 years, Europeans have fallen further and further behind Americans in their standard of living. In 1974, Western Europe, defined as the 15 members of the EU prior to the admission of the former communist countries in 2004, accounted for 36% of world GDP. Today that figure is 26%. In 2020 it will be 15%. In the same period, the U.S. share of world GDP has remained, and is forecast to remain, fairly steady at around 26%.
At the same time, Europe has become accustomed to a high level of structural unemployment. Indeed, if we exclude the United Kingdom, the EU failed to produce a single net private-sector job between 1980 and 1992. Only now, as the U.S. applies a European-style economic strategy based on fiscal stimulus, nationalization, bailouts, quantitative easing and the regulation of private-sector remuneration, has the rate of unemployment in the U.S. leaped to European levels.
Why is a European politician urging America to avoid Europeanization? Well, I'm not European; I'm British. My country is linked to the U.S., and to the wider Anglosphere, by ties of history and geography, commerce and law, blood and speech.
As a Briton, I see the American republic as a repository of our traditional freedoms. The doctrines rooted in the common law, in the Magna Carta, and in the Bill of Rights found their fullest and most sublime expression in the old courthouse of Philadelphia. Britain, as a result of its unhappy membership in the European Union, has now surrendered a large part of its birthright. But our freedoms live on in America.
Which brings me to my country's present tragedy. The fears that the American patriot leaders had about a Hanoverian tyranny were, in retrospect, exaggerated. The United Kingdom did not develop into an absolutist state. Power continued to pass from the Crown to the House of Commons.
Until now. Nearly two and a half centuries after the Declaration of Independence, the grievances it adumbrated are belatedly coming true—but in Britain, rather than in North America. Colossal sums are being commandeered by the government in order to fund bailouts and nationalizations without any proper parliamentary authorization. Legislation happens increasingly through what are called standing orders, a device that allows ministers to make laws without parliamentary consent—often for the purpose of implementing EU standards. Elections have been drained of purpose, and turnout is falling.
How aptly the British people might today apply the ringing phrases of the Declaration of Independence against their own rulers, who have "combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws."
Throughout my career in politics, I have campaigned to apply Jeffersonian democracy to British political conditions, to recover those British freedoms that have flourished more happily in America than in their native soil, to repatriate our revolution. So you can imagine how I feel when I see the U.S. making the same mistakes that Britain has made: expanding its government, regulating private commerce, centralizing its jurisdiction, breaking the link between taxation and representation, abandoning its sovereignty.
You deserve better, cousins. And we expect better.
Mr. Hannan is a member of the European Parliament.
RightField
Literotica Guru
- Joined
- Jun 30, 2003
- Posts
- 9,361
Cowboy poetry subsidies. It was hilarious that Harry Reid stood in front of Congress this week in a period of severe government overruns and a $1.6T deficit that is causing our nation huge financial problems and tried to describe the Republicans efforts to trim the budget and "mean-spirited" because they want to cut back on cowboy poetry party subsidies in his home district. Is there any better way to illustrate the insanity of the democrat leadership than this real-life example of fantasy over reality in his arguments to preserve "cowboy poetry" subsidies?
March 12, 2011 4:00 A.M.
Cowboy Subsidies
In Harry Reid’s world, the cowboy embodies dependency without end.
How mean-spirited are House Republicans? So mean-spirited that they would end federally funded cowboy poetry! Last Tuesday, Harry Reid, the majority leader, took to the Senate floor to thunder that this town ain’t big enough for both him and the Mean-Spirited Kid (John Boehner).
“The mean-spirited bill, HR 1 . . . eliminates the National Endowment of the Humanities, National Endowment of the Arts,” said Senator Reid. “These programs create jobs. The National Endowment of the Humanities is the reason we have in northern Nevada every January a cowboy-poetry festival. Had that program not been around, the tens of thousands of people who come there every year would not exist.”
“Tens of thousands” would “not exist”? There can’t be that many cowboy poets, can there? Oh, c’mon, don’t be naïve. Where there are taxpayer-funded cowboy poets, there must surely be cowboy-poetry festival administrators, and a Bureau of Cowboy-Poetry Festival Licensing, and cowboy-poetry festival administration grant-writers, and a Department of Cowboy Poetry Festival Administration Grant Application Processing, and Professors of Cowboy-Poetry Festival Educational Workshop Management at dozens of American colleges credentialing thousands of cowboy-poetry festival workshop coordinating majors every year.
It all adds up. In western railroad halts where the Last Chance Saloon shuttered in 1893, dusty one-horse towns are now glittering one-grant towns, where elderly hoochie-koochie dancers are being retrained to lead rewarding lives as inspectors from the Agency of Cowboy-Poetry Festival Handicapped-Access Compliance. Used to be a man could ride the range for days on end under lonesome skies with nuthin’ on the horizon ’cept a withered mesquite and a clump of sagebrush, but now all you see are clouds of dust and all you hear’s the mighty roar of thundering hooves as every gnarled ol’ wrangler in the territory races for the last hitching post outside creative-writing class.
Well, it’s easy to mock, and in the hours after Senator Reid’s effusions many of us on the Internet did. I liked Mary Katherine Ham’s channeling of Ted Kennedy: “John Boehner’s America is a land in which cowboys would be forced into back-alley poetry recitations.” Funny — although, being an example of private-sector non-government-funded wordsmithing, it obviously doesn’t “create jobs.”
But what’s more difficult to figure out is why everyone doesn’t mock — and why Senator Reid (and presumably senior flunkies in the bloated emir-sized retinues that now attend our “citizen-legislators”) thought this would be a persuasive line of argument. This year, the NEA will be giving $50,000 toward the exhibition “Ranchlines: Verses And Visions Of The Rural West” in Elko.
What’s the big deal? It’s 50 grand, a couple of saddlebags in small bills. Not a large sum. But then when you’re Harry Reid staggering around in your trillion-gallon hat, it’s all small potatoes, isn’t it?
He and too many other Americans seem to be living their version of the old line: If you owe the bank a thousand dollars, you have a problem; if you owe the bank a million dollars, the bank has a problem. America owes the world $14 trillion, so the world has a problem.
And, if it’s the world’s problem, why bother our pretty little heads about it? I’m struck by the number of times I’ve been blithely assured by insiders in D.C. and elsewhere that “it’s not in China’s interest” to yank the rug out from under America: We don’t need to do anything drastic, because they won’t do anything drastic. I’m not so sure I could claim with any degree of confidence to know what China considered to be in its interest. But we have the planet’s most lavishly funded intelligence agency, so they’re bound to be on top of it, aren’t they?
By Mark Steyn.
March 12, 2011 4:00 A.M.
Cowboy Subsidies
In Harry Reid’s world, the cowboy embodies dependency without end.
How mean-spirited are House Republicans? So mean-spirited that they would end federally funded cowboy poetry! Last Tuesday, Harry Reid, the majority leader, took to the Senate floor to thunder that this town ain’t big enough for both him and the Mean-Spirited Kid (John Boehner).
“The mean-spirited bill, HR 1 . . . eliminates the National Endowment of the Humanities, National Endowment of the Arts,” said Senator Reid. “These programs create jobs. The National Endowment of the Humanities is the reason we have in northern Nevada every January a cowboy-poetry festival. Had that program not been around, the tens of thousands of people who come there every year would not exist.”
“Tens of thousands” would “not exist”? There can’t be that many cowboy poets, can there? Oh, c’mon, don’t be naïve. Where there are taxpayer-funded cowboy poets, there must surely be cowboy-poetry festival administrators, and a Bureau of Cowboy-Poetry Festival Licensing, and cowboy-poetry festival administration grant-writers, and a Department of Cowboy Poetry Festival Administration Grant Application Processing, and Professors of Cowboy-Poetry Festival Educational Workshop Management at dozens of American colleges credentialing thousands of cowboy-poetry festival workshop coordinating majors every year.
It all adds up. In western railroad halts where the Last Chance Saloon shuttered in 1893, dusty one-horse towns are now glittering one-grant towns, where elderly hoochie-koochie dancers are being retrained to lead rewarding lives as inspectors from the Agency of Cowboy-Poetry Festival Handicapped-Access Compliance. Used to be a man could ride the range for days on end under lonesome skies with nuthin’ on the horizon ’cept a withered mesquite and a clump of sagebrush, but now all you see are clouds of dust and all you hear’s the mighty roar of thundering hooves as every gnarled ol’ wrangler in the territory races for the last hitching post outside creative-writing class.
Well, it’s easy to mock, and in the hours after Senator Reid’s effusions many of us on the Internet did. I liked Mary Katherine Ham’s channeling of Ted Kennedy: “John Boehner’s America is a land in which cowboys would be forced into back-alley poetry recitations.” Funny — although, being an example of private-sector non-government-funded wordsmithing, it obviously doesn’t “create jobs.”
But what’s more difficult to figure out is why everyone doesn’t mock — and why Senator Reid (and presumably senior flunkies in the bloated emir-sized retinues that now attend our “citizen-legislators”) thought this would be a persuasive line of argument. This year, the NEA will be giving $50,000 toward the exhibition “Ranchlines: Verses And Visions Of The Rural West” in Elko.
What’s the big deal? It’s 50 grand, a couple of saddlebags in small bills. Not a large sum. But then when you’re Harry Reid staggering around in your trillion-gallon hat, it’s all small potatoes, isn’t it?
He and too many other Americans seem to be living their version of the old line: If you owe the bank a thousand dollars, you have a problem; if you owe the bank a million dollars, the bank has a problem. America owes the world $14 trillion, so the world has a problem.
And, if it’s the world’s problem, why bother our pretty little heads about it? I’m struck by the number of times I’ve been blithely assured by insiders in D.C. and elsewhere that “it’s not in China’s interest” to yank the rug out from under America: We don’t need to do anything drastic, because they won’t do anything drastic. I’m not so sure I could claim with any degree of confidence to know what China considered to be in its interest. But we have the planet’s most lavishly funded intelligence agency, so they’re bound to be on top of it, aren’t they?
By Mark Steyn.
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koalabear
~Armed and Fuzzy~
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The humanity of it all, imagine those cowboy campfires out on the range, without those symphonies of bean fart rap.
I was just about to apply for a grant to build a chuck-wagon too.
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RightField
Literotica Guru
- Joined
- Jun 30, 2003
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He definately looks like he's had too much moonshine.
RightField
Literotica Guru
- Joined
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- Posts
- 9,361
March 24, 2011
Energy Fantasyland
By Victor Davis Hanson
National Review
Gas is well over $4 a gallon in most places in California -- and soaring elsewhere as well. But are such high energy prices good or bad?
That should be a stupid question. Yet it is not when the Obama administration has stopped new domestic offshore oil exploration in many American waters, curbed oil leases in the West, and keeps oil-rich areas of Alaska exempt from drilling. Last week, President Obama went to Brazil and declared of that country's new offshore finds: "With the new oil finds off Brazil, President (Dilma) Rousseff has said that Brazil wants to be a major supplier of new stable sources of energy, and I've told her that the United States wants to be a major customer, which would be a win-win for both our countries."
Consider the logic of the president's Orwellian declaration: The United States in the last two years has restricted oil exploration of the sort Brazil is now rushing to embrace. We have run up more than $4 trillion in consecutive budget deficits during the Obama administration and are near federal insolvency. Therefore, the United States should be happy to borrow more money to purchase the sort of "new stable sources of energy" from Brazil's offshore wells that we most certainly will not develop off our own coasts.
It seems as if paying lots more for electricity and gas, in European fashion, was originally part of the president's new green agenda. He helped push cap-and-trade legislation through the House of Representatives in 2009. Had such Byzantine regulations become law, a recessionary economy would have sunk into depression. Obama appointed the incompetent Van Jones as "green jobs czar" -- until Jones' wild rantings confirmed that he knew nothing about his job description "to advance the administration's climate and energy initiatives."
At a time of trillion-dollar deficits, the administration is borrowing billions to promote high-speed rail, and is heavily invested in the federally subsidized $42,000 Government Motors Chevy Volt. Apparently the common denominator here is a deductive view that high energy prices will force Americans to emulate European centrally planned and state-run transportation.
That conclusion is not wild conspiracy theory, but simply the logical manifestation of many of the Obama administration's earlier campaign promises. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu -- now responsible for the formulation of American energy policy -- summed up his visions to the Wall Street Journal in 2008: "Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe." I think Chu is finally figuring out the "somehow."
A year earlier, Chu was more explicit in his general contempt for the sort of fuels that now keep Americans warm and on the road: "Coal is my worst nightmare. ... We have lots of fossil fuel. That's really both good and bad news. We won't run out of energy but there's enough carbon in the ground to really cook us."
In fairness to Chu, he was only amplifying what Obama himself outlined during the 2008 campaign. Today's soaring energy prices are exactly what candidate Obama once dreamed about: "Under my plan of a cap-and-trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket." Obama, like Chu, made that dream even more explicit in the case of coal "So, if somebody wants to build a coal plant, they can -- it's just that it will bankrupt them, because they are going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that's being emitted."
There are lots of ironies to these Alice-in-Wonderland energy fantasies. As the public become outraged over gas prices, a panicked Obama pivots to brag that we are pumping more oil than ever before -- but only for a time, and only because his predecessors approved the type of drilling he has stopped.
The entire climate-change movement, fairly or not, is now in shambles, thanks to serial scandals about faked research, consecutive record cold and wet winters in much of Europe and the United States, and the conflict-of-interest, get-rich schemes of prominent global-warming preachers such as Al Gore.
The administration's energy visions are formulated by academics and government bureaucrats who live mostly in cities with short commutes and have worked largely for public agencies. These utopians have no idea that without reasonably priced fuel and power, the self-employed farmer cannot produce food. The private plant operator cannot create plastics. And the trucker cannot bring goods to the consumer -- all the basics like lettuce, iPads and Levis that a highly educated, urbanized elite both enjoys and yet has no idea of how a distant someone else made their unbridled consumption possible.
Energy Fantasyland
By Victor Davis Hanson
National Review
Gas is well over $4 a gallon in most places in California -- and soaring elsewhere as well. But are such high energy prices good or bad?
That should be a stupid question. Yet it is not when the Obama administration has stopped new domestic offshore oil exploration in many American waters, curbed oil leases in the West, and keeps oil-rich areas of Alaska exempt from drilling. Last week, President Obama went to Brazil and declared of that country's new offshore finds: "With the new oil finds off Brazil, President (Dilma) Rousseff has said that Brazil wants to be a major supplier of new stable sources of energy, and I've told her that the United States wants to be a major customer, which would be a win-win for both our countries."
Consider the logic of the president's Orwellian declaration: The United States in the last two years has restricted oil exploration of the sort Brazil is now rushing to embrace. We have run up more than $4 trillion in consecutive budget deficits during the Obama administration and are near federal insolvency. Therefore, the United States should be happy to borrow more money to purchase the sort of "new stable sources of energy" from Brazil's offshore wells that we most certainly will not develop off our own coasts.
It seems as if paying lots more for electricity and gas, in European fashion, was originally part of the president's new green agenda. He helped push cap-and-trade legislation through the House of Representatives in 2009. Had such Byzantine regulations become law, a recessionary economy would have sunk into depression. Obama appointed the incompetent Van Jones as "green jobs czar" -- until Jones' wild rantings confirmed that he knew nothing about his job description "to advance the administration's climate and energy initiatives."
At a time of trillion-dollar deficits, the administration is borrowing billions to promote high-speed rail, and is heavily invested in the federally subsidized $42,000 Government Motors Chevy Volt. Apparently the common denominator here is a deductive view that high energy prices will force Americans to emulate European centrally planned and state-run transportation.
That conclusion is not wild conspiracy theory, but simply the logical manifestation of many of the Obama administration's earlier campaign promises. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu -- now responsible for the formulation of American energy policy -- summed up his visions to the Wall Street Journal in 2008: "Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe." I think Chu is finally figuring out the "somehow."
A year earlier, Chu was more explicit in his general contempt for the sort of fuels that now keep Americans warm and on the road: "Coal is my worst nightmare. ... We have lots of fossil fuel. That's really both good and bad news. We won't run out of energy but there's enough carbon in the ground to really cook us."
In fairness to Chu, he was only amplifying what Obama himself outlined during the 2008 campaign. Today's soaring energy prices are exactly what candidate Obama once dreamed about: "Under my plan of a cap-and-trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket." Obama, like Chu, made that dream even more explicit in the case of coal "So, if somebody wants to build a coal plant, they can -- it's just that it will bankrupt them, because they are going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that's being emitted."
There are lots of ironies to these Alice-in-Wonderland energy fantasies. As the public become outraged over gas prices, a panicked Obama pivots to brag that we are pumping more oil than ever before -- but only for a time, and only because his predecessors approved the type of drilling he has stopped.
The entire climate-change movement, fairly or not, is now in shambles, thanks to serial scandals about faked research, consecutive record cold and wet winters in much of Europe and the United States, and the conflict-of-interest, get-rich schemes of prominent global-warming preachers such as Al Gore.
The administration's energy visions are formulated by academics and government bureaucrats who live mostly in cities with short commutes and have worked largely for public agencies. These utopians have no idea that without reasonably priced fuel and power, the self-employed farmer cannot produce food. The private plant operator cannot create plastics. And the trucker cannot bring goods to the consumer -- all the basics like lettuce, iPads and Levis that a highly educated, urbanized elite both enjoys and yet has no idea of how a distant someone else made their unbridled consumption possible.
Frisco_Slug_Esq
On Strike!
- Joined
- May 4, 2009
- Posts
- 45,618
I see oil is at $106 a barrel...
__________________
"How about just tracking down every single person who said drill baby drill and putting them all in prison. Why don’t we do that?"
Alan Grayson
__________________
"How about just tracking down every single person who said drill baby drill and putting them all in prison. Why don’t we do that?"
Alan Grayson
RightField
Literotica Guru
- Joined
- Jun 30, 2003
- Posts
- 9,361
I think they finally have an accomplishment that isn't the opposite to what they set out to do. Too bad it is a detriment to our country.
Frisco_Slug_Esq
On Strike!
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- May 4, 2009
- Posts
- 45,618
It's not a detriment to their country; the one nestled around Walden Pond...
RightField
Literotica Guru
- Joined
- Jun 30, 2003
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I used to swim in Walden Pond. It's a shithole.
