Author: Redactor

Listicle!

In education circles, “lifelong learning” is a mantra, a piety, a cliché. For the rest of us, it’s how we maintain sanity.

Take words. It’s worth learning a few new ones now and then. After all, with new words can come new insights. Mostly, it’s just fun. Listicle

Yesterday, I learned a new word: Listicle.

This gem courtesy of Jesse Walker with Reason. He blogged about a Cracked “listicle” entitled “The 6 Most Popular Crime Fighting Tactics (That Don’t Work).” If you are on the Internet (and, since you are reading this, you almost certainly are) you’ve seen plenty of “listicles.” These are articles constructed in the form of a list. They are very popular, often linked on Facebook, tweeted on Twitter. Walker defends his recommendation: “Don’t sneer. Many listicles are excellent. I’ll take the average listicle over the average op-ed any day.”

I’d never heard the word before, but I am certainly aware of the art form. The listicle in question was concocted by Robert Evans, and he makes some great points:

Drug Dogs Are Inaccurate . . . and Racist
Car Chases Are More Dangerous Than Criminals
Drug-Free Zones Keep Dealers Close to Schools
Red Light Cameras Are Killing People
“Dry County” Laws Increase Drunk Driving
Capital Punishment Does Nothing to Reduce Violent Crime

Walker excerpts the “dry county” prohibition story, which is well-reasoned. I’m against capital punishment, but not moved by Evans’s take on it. Still, a tip of the hat to his red-light intersection revelation . . . which I won’t quote, because, like the most popular listicles, this one contains a plethora of words that, were I quoting, would contain a superabundance of aster**ks.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

free trade & free markets ideological culture too much government

Estonia’s Success

When I was coming of age, the economic ideology of Keynesianism was going bust. Keynesians couldn’t explain the stagflation of the 1970s. Monetarists triumphed and the Austrian School experienced a resurgence.

Now, monetarist disputes are hard to follow, and the Austrian Theory of the Business Cycle is not exactly a piece of cake. But Austrian economists’ preferred policies possess a kind of common sense: The thing to do is prevent false booms. Once you hit bust, it’s too late: we are going to experience the pain of readjustment, “recalculation,” as we find new prices and levels. I riffed on this theme last weekend, in my column “Dead Hobo in Trunk.”

Keynesians, now back in the limelight, have it easier, promising “less pain.” They offer drugs to make us feel better: Borrow, go further into debt, and spend, spend, spend!

So you can see why today’s Keynesians would hate Austrian wisdom. Not inflating the money supply, not engaging in deficit spending? Risible! And “austerity”? Keynesian shill Paul Krugman never tires of pillorying that program.

Which brings us to Estonia.

The little post-Soviet Baltic state was one of the few countries to actually restrain spending after the 2008 bust, freezing pensions and cutting public employee salaries by 10 percent. Krugman infamously blogged about it, noting that the country’s current recovery hasn’t yet reached the height of the pre-bust boom. He thinks this tells against “austerity.”

But to Estonian economists, the height of the boom was a false prosperity that couldn’t last. They’re glad their country’s rid of it, and note that their current recovery is above the pre-2005 levels.

In other words, Estonians not only understand their country and their situation better than does Paul Krugman, they understand economics better.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Tags Austrian Economics, Estonia, Keynesianism, Paul Krugman

Thought

Thomas Sowell

The inefficiency of political control of an economy has been demonstrated more often, in more places, and under more varied conditions, than almost anything outside the realm of pure science.

Common Sense Thought

Aldous Huxley

Liberty, as we all know, cannot flourish in a country that is permanently on a war footing, or even a near war footing. Permanent crisis justifies permanent control of everybody and everything by the agencies of central government.

free trade & free markets national politics & policies too much government

Bipartisan Blame for Auto Wreckage

Post author By Redactor
Post date July 24, 2012
10 Comments on Bipartisan Blame for Auto Wreckage

President Obama often takes credit for President Bush’s worst policies while also averring that the economy hasn’t resurged yet because of his predecessor’s bad policies. I’m happy to blame both of them for the bad policies and bad results.

While campaigning in Ohio recently, Obama said we should pick him in November because he didn’t “let Detroit go bankrupt.” Auto Wreck

Financial writer Steve Conover points out that the car-czar idea started with Bush in the frantic last months of his administration. Also that the choice for dealing with troubled auto firms “in 2008-2009 was not bankruptcy versus no bankruptcy [but] between precedent-driven bankruptcy and White House-driven bankruptcy — rule-of-law versus rule-of-czar.”

Not every car company was going bankrupt back then and being “rescued” by the elephantine intercession of the federal government. GM and Chrysler were the special beneficiaries of that galumphing guidance. As were the auto unions at whose behest the usual bankruptcy procedures were bypassed.

Better-managed firms like Ford and Honda had circumvented the abyss. The reward for their hard work and foresight? Government-subsidized competition. Conover’s most basic point is that the only resource that can (and should) “save” any company from failing in the marketplace is “a sufficient number of buying customers.” The auto industry would have continued minus GM and Chrysler. People who wanted to buy cars would simply have bought cars elsewhere — from companies better able to supply their demand. And auto jobs would have moved accordingly.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Tags automaker bailout, Steve Conover

Thought

Aldous Huxley

To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behavior “righteous indignation” — this is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats.

too much government

The Stamps of Disapproval

President Obama is catching flak from pro-capitalist quarters for explaining to businessmen proud of building a business that “you didn’t build that.” Free Food!

Another sign of federal contempt for the work-for-a-living ethic has received less attention, but is just as revealing. It takes the form of Spanish-language radio “novelas,” produced in 2008, touting food stamps. The USDA recently yanked the novelas from its website after word spread about the brazenness of their something-for-nothing philosophy. (DailyCaller.com, which called attention to the campaign, has links to English translations.)

The episodes suggest that it’s almost impossible to eat healthy meals without relying on food stamps — or, these days, an electronic food-subsidy card — and that even if one’s husband is employed, a dutiful wife and mother would be remiss to refrain from getting government subsidies also.

One episode features two friends pontificating about a third, delinquent Diana. It’s a snap that Diana should take advantage of SNAP (the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program). But she keeps saying stupid things about how she doesn’t “need help from anyone.” Diana is “always making up excuses not to apply for SNAP,” laments Claudia.

Oh Diana! Stop making excuses!

It’s quite a suspenseful series, because we are supposed to be on the edge of our seats wondering whether the torpidly recalcitrant Diana will ever learn to be just as dependent on government handouts as all the healthily-eating people. Of course, in the end, Diana has learned her lesson.

Or un-learned one.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Tags radionovelas, SNAP

Thought

Frederick Douglass

If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.

Thought

Ludwig von Mises

The masses, the hosts of common men, do not conceive any ideas, sound or unsound. They only choose between the ideologies developed by the intellectual leaders of mankind. But their choice is final and determines the course of events. If they prefer bad doctrines, nothing can prevent disaster.

Thought

H. L. Mencken

The main thing that every political campaign in the United States demonstrates is that the politicians of all parties, despite their superficial enmities, are really members of one great brotherhood. Their principal, and indeed their sole, object is to collar public office, with all the privileges and profits that go therewith. They achieve this collaring by buying votes with other people’s money. No professional politician is ever actually in favor of public economy. It is his implacable enemy, and he knows it. All professional politicians are dedicated wholeheartedly to waste and corruption. They are the enemies of every decent man.