Author: CS Admin

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Government Efficiency!

government efficiency, military spending, drug prices, subscription drugs, monopsony, Common Sense, meme

If government is the main buyer for prescription drugs, then prices will go down… just like prices go down at the Pentagon!

References:

Here’s a report from the lefty magazine “Mother Jones” on the wastefulness of military spending. The same magazine also promotes the idea that prescription drugs would be cheaper IF ONLY government were the sole buyer for them. So much for consistency…

“Should the Government Use Its Monopsony Power to Reduce the Price of Drugs?” by Gary Becker and Richard Posner (Monopsony: a market structure in which only one buyer interacts with many would-​be sellers of a particular product)

Wikipedia on Reagan’s Packard Commission

Click below for high resolution version of the image:

government efficiency, military spending, drug prices, subscription drugs, monopsony, Common Sense, meme

 

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ideological culture national politics & policies

War on Young Women

Madeleine Albright, Gloria Steinem, HIllary Clinton, girls, women, voters, Common Sense, illustration

According to a weekend CNN-​WMUR poll in New Hampshire, Sen. Bernie Sanders leads former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton by eight percentage points.

Among women.

“Hillary Clinton’s quest to become the country’s first female president has encountered an unexpected problem,” begins a Washington Post report on Hillary’s “trouble persuading women, young and old, to rally behind her cause.”

Younger women seem to pose the biggest “problem.” The latest Wall Street Journal/​NBC/​Marist College poll of New Hampshire Democrats found Mrs. Clinton nine points ahead of Sen. Sanders among women 45 and over. But Sanders bests Clinton by a remarkable 29 percentage points with women under 45 years of age.

Not to worry, the faces of establishment feminism have been mobilized. Madeleine Albright, appointed to be the first woman Secretary of State in 1997 by then-​Pres. Bill Clinton, stood at a Granite State rally with Hillary to shout, “There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other.”

Persuasive?

On his HBO show, comedian Bill Maher asked feminist icon Gloria Steinem to explain why younger women “really don’t like Hillary.” Ms. Steinem postulated, “When you’re young, you’re thinking: ‘Where are the boys? The boys are with Bernie,’”

In her subsequent Facebook “apology,” Steinem claimed she “misspoke” and had “been misinterpreted as implying young women aren’t serious in their politics.”

Imagine that.

Dana Edell, the leader of an “anti-​racist gender justice advocacy group,” offers a less controversial explanation. “While the historic aspect of the first woman president is hugely powerful and important,” she told the Old Gray Lady, Hillary Clinton “might not be the right first woman.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Madeleine Albright, Gloria Steinem, HIllary Clinton, girls, women, voters, Common Sense, illustration

 

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Accountability folly national politics & policies

Hillary Clinton, Double-Agent?

HIllary Clinton

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton rails against a “political system hijacked by billionaires and special interests.” Billionaire George Soros just wrote a $6 million check to a pro-​Hillary SuperPAC.

“Our democracy should work for everyone,” states HillaryClinton​.com, “not just the wealthy and well-​connected.” Last week, we discovered Mrs. Clinton was paid a whopping $675,000 by Goldman Sachs, the politically-​connected Wall Street investment firm, for three speeches after she left the State Department.

Nice work if you can get it.

“Her top donors read like a Who’s Who of Wall Street,” editorialized Investor’s Business Daily. “But sure, she’s going to clean up campaign finance.”

Not only that, Hillary also claims she’ll take on and harshly regulate those same powerful Wall Street interests.

In last Thursday’s debate, Mrs. Clinton took umbrage at the idea that rival Senator Bernie Sanders “would characterize me, a woman running to be the first woman president, as exemplifying the establishment.”

This led columnist Danielle Allen, also a woman, to opine: “Clinton does not merely exemplify the establishment. She and her husband, former president Bill Clinton, are the Democratic Party establishment.… That candidate Clinton could deliver her line with a straight face goes to the heart of her trustworthiness problem.”

Responding to Bernie Sanders’s questions about her significant financial support from powerful interests, Hillary told the debate audience, “I know this game. I’m going to stop this game.”

Mrs. Clinton is very believable as to the first claim. The second? Not so much.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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HIllary Clinton

 

Categories
folly free trade & free markets ideological culture meme moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies too much government

What Kind of a Socialist is Bernie?

Bernie Sanders, monopoly, control, redistribution, central. planning, government, meme, illustration

He’s never met a government monopoly he didn’t love, or a free market service he didn’t distrust or despise…

…but don’t worry, he’s not really a socialist!

Click below for a high resolution version of this image:

Bernie Sanders, monopoly, control, redistribution, central. planning, government, meme, illustration

 

Categories
folly ideological culture moral hazard national politics & policies tax policy too much government

The B. S. Theory

tax the rich, tax, pay, paid, paying, Common Sense

Bernie Sanders is worse than merely wrong about the rich not paying their fair share of taxes.

It’s we, the much-​lauded “Ninety-​nine Percenters,” who don’t pay enough!

At least, when we figure taxes paid against direct subsidies/​services rendered: taxes minus transfers. And, according to the Congressional Budget Office, only the top quintile of income earners — including the much-​abhorred One Percenters — pay appreciably more in taxes than they receive in “benefits.”

In a republic, you would expect the masses to pay taxes, receiving only indirect benefits, like a broadly defined “security” and “the rule of law.”

The calculation of who is and is not a net tax-payer or net tax-consumer has to be difficult. I certainly haven’t vetted the studies carefully. But previous accountings also show that the super-​rich pay the bulk of income taxes in America.

How to put the system aright?

Don’t tax us more!

Bernie’s preference, to tax a whole lot more as well as to provide more subsidies and “benefits,” will only make a bigger mess.

Unfortunately, doing the right thing (cutting back on the giveaways at all levels) is politically … tricky.

But there’s something missing in all this: the indirect hazards of the “benefits” … the opportunity costs involved when we get hooked on hand-​outs. The most trapped people in America are those who pay the least and take the most. The dollar-​value of their received transfer payments measure neither their dependency nor their consequent lack of upward mobility.

How could we figure real harms and helps embedded in the current system, when some “benefits” are, in fact, detriments?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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tax the rich, tax, pay, paid, paying, Common Sense

 

Categories
general freedom national politics & policies political challengers

Standing with Rand

Rand Paul, 2016 Presidential Race, Common Sense

Rand Paul, the junior senator from Kentucky, suspended his presidential campaign yesterday. He took fifth place in Iowa, but garnered just four percent of the vote.

I’ll miss him.

“Ours has been a unique voice in this race,” the senator rightly declared, “one that says Big Government threatens Americans from all walks of life, rich and poor, black and white — from the coal miner who has lost his job over President Obama’s destructive EPA regulations to the teenager from a poor family facing jail time for marijuana.”

Some of Rand’s message resonates in the Republican Party; other parts, not so much.

An anonymous senior Paul aide told Politico that the problem — in addition to “Trump” — was “this foreign policy environment,” noting that “Rand was more flavor of the month a year ago … before they were beheading people in the Middle East.…”

Still, the GOP would be wise to heed Paul’s message, especially on foreign policy.

“I will not ignore the terrible cost of decades of war and chaos in the Middle East, and the unintended consequences of regime-​change and nation-​building,” the senator assured supporters. “I will continue to fight for criminal justice reform, for privacy, and your Fourth Amendment rights.”

In assessing his presidential campaign, Paul told reporters, “Brushfires of Liberty were ignited, and those will carry on, as will I.”

That’s good. Like his father, Dr. Rand Paul has become freedom’s foremost firebrand. We need him in the U.S. Senate.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob

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Rand Paul, 2016 Presidential Race, Common Sense