All science is static in the sense that it describes the unchanging aspects of things.
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Frank Knight
Author: Redactor
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Townhall: Arkansas Accidents
This weekend at Townhall.com? Arkansas’s GOP-unified legislature has initiated a constitutional assault on Arkansas citizens.
Expect them to be called out. Click on over, then back here, for more reading.
- AR Legislative Digest Blog: “Oops — the three proposed constitutional amendments referred by the 2013 legislature are now in limbo”
- Arkansas Times: Term limit advocates form group to fight constitutional amendment
- Save Arkansas Term Limits
- Arkansas Democrat-Gazette: Outrage of the year (And it snuck right past us)
- Sen. Warwick Sabin (D-Little Rock): Unethical Attack Against Term Limits
- Arkansas Times: Regnant Populus ethics group renews canvassing for initiated ethics law
- Common Sense: The Natural State of Politicians
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Lysander Spooner, January 19
On January 19, 1808, Lysander Spooner was born. Spooner’s achievements in American life, law, and political philosophy, are among the most colorful of the 19th century. He sued to practice law, and won the suit. He set up a postal service that directly competed with the United States Postal Service, delivering mail at a fraction of the cost. He wrote “The Unconstitutionality of Slavery,” and convinced noted Garrisonian abolitionist Frederick Douglass of his argument. (The book became the centerpiece of intellectual ammunition for the Free Soil Party.) Later in life Spooner turned against constiutionalism itself, and penned some of the most radical political works of his day, including “Vices Are Not Crimes” and “The Constitution of No Authority.” Spooner also clearly articulated a “jury nullification” position in his classic treatise “Trial by Jury.”
You probably saw the original video on Upworthy, a slick presentation of the pop inequality meme. But you probably wondered: isn’t there some slippery income/wealth evasions going on here? Well, it turns out it’s far, far worse than you (or at least I) guessed:
This response video is from nearly a year ago. But the ideas and stats are worth looking at anyway.
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Montesquieu, Jan 18
On January 18, 1689, Montesquieu, French satirist and philosopher, was born. His treatise “The Spirit of the Laws” was a major influence of America’s founding generation.
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Oops! Goes Washington
One hundred billion dollars isn’t chump change.
That’s the official amount of overpayments not recovered made by the federal government. According to the Financial Times, as reported on MoneyNews.com, “The OMB figures showed that in 2012 alone, 13 programs of the federal government made a combined $101.3 billion in improper payments – nearly $16 billion more than the highly charged budget sequester ended up cutting from government spending last year.”
Medicare overpayments make up the biggest slice of this mis-proportioned pie — a whopping $55.9 billion — but “the Internal Revenue Service had the highest error rate, a figure of 22.7 percent for the Earned Income Tax Credit program, amounting to $12.6 billion in improper payments in 2012.” Other agencies nudged up the numbers into the big time category: $6.2 billion for inappropriate unemployment insurance payments last year, $2.5 billion in mistaken “food stamp” outlays.
And just when you think the government has to be good at something. Like “writing checks” to some people at the expense of others.
Well, I guess the government is still “writing checks” and “making deposits.”
Just not doing it well.
The reason? Well, who would lose his or her job because his or her department disbursed funds to the wrong recipients? No one.
The federal workers administering these programs aren’t stupid. Aren’t dolts, or fools — that is, “chumps.” They’re simply behaving according to incentives.
Still, the more-than-chump-change errors make the city itself rather doltish. Call it Dolt City, shorten it to D.C.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Stigler, Jan 17
On January 17, 1937, Chicago School economist George Stigler was born. Stigler won a Nobel Memorial Prize for his work. His delightful autobiography is entitled “Memoirs of an Unregulated Economist.”
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Frank Knight
Goods move in response to price differences from points of low to points of higher price, the movement tending to obliterate the price difference and come to rest.
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Poddy, Jan 16
On January 16, 1930, conservative writer Norman Podhoretz was born.
We’re told that “economic inequality” is on the rise.
Ronald Bailey, at Reason’s site, does a pretty good job of setting the record straight. The rich may be getting richer, but the poor aren’t getting poorer.
Further, “the rich” aren’t the same folks one year to the next. There is still income mobility in America. Some poor folks become super-rich; a majority of super-rich “1-percent-ers” will fall out of that 1-percent category. Over time, most folks move from one quintile to at least the next.
What prevents widespread understanding of this? Intellectual muddles. The difference between income and wealth often get fuzzed up, for example. Take two high-income workers, earning the same pay: The one who saves will wind up with much more wealth than the other who spends it all. And rates of savings vary radically from person to person.
As does everything else.
Making things more complicated? Government policy. Bailouts are now an integral feature to aid some of the rich, to prevent their losses (we’re told) from spreading “financial contagion.”
Considering the moral hazard involved, I’d say “financial contagion” is endemic . . . on a whole different level.
And the same President Obama today decrying income inequality was yesterday bailing out rich folks.
A question for the inequality obsessed: Since the War on Poverty really set in, poverty rates have leveled off and even worsened (that is, the numbers of the officially impoverished have increased, despite increases in after-tax/after-subsidy incomes) — could you be missing the moral hazard that any sort of bailout portends?
Real economic justice, as I suggested in my most recent weekend column, is just that, justice. Establishment of good rules, no special privileges.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Graph on this page shows income per household, courtesy Cafe Hayek. Caution: Households changed complexion radically in the 1960s-1980s.