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Author: Redactor
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Nelson Mandela
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
“But constant experience shows us that every man invested with power is apt to abuse it, and to carry his authority as far as it will go.”
In which industries do prices and costs rise fastest? Those in which government is most involved.
The process is no mystery. Regulate supply by limiting entry into the business — to “increase quality,” of course — will raise prices, as producers behave oligopolistically. Government does this with health care providers, and have done so increasingly for the last century. If, at the same time, you subsidize the consumption, that amounts to increasing demand, which also puts upward pressure on prices. This has been accelerated in America since the beginning of Medicare, and with each additional healthcare program.
Typical government intervention double whammy.
Higher education is also not exempt from the play of supply and demand. One policy advocate’s explanation of this, which you can read excerpted, online, at National Review’s site, is worth considering. He explains what happens as vendors rake in profits under a regulated-and-subsidized system: they
sponsor crowd-pleasing sports events on weekends, building public goodwill. Other profits are used to hire professional lobbyists to plead for both more subsidies and more freedom to set prices. You also convince the government to allow you and other incumbent . . . sellers to form a private organization with the authority to decide whether new sellers can become “approved . . . vendors” for the purposes of receiving public subsidies. Unsurprisingly, few new sellers are approved.
Predictably, the analysis is followed by halfway measures that don’t lead to a free market in education at all. That’s just too radical.
Education policy wonks, like educators themselves, seem never to learn . . . economics.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Two Forms of Subsidy
Ronald Bailey, online at Reason.com, quotes a press release from a group of renewable energy outfits whining and moaning to keep their huge tax breaks. It’s all for the good of the country, they say.
But Bailey notes that when such tax credits go to businesses not favored by environmental activists and the New York Times, they get branded subsidies.
What is the difference?
A. Barton Hinkle, also working in the vineyards of Reason, clarified one such kerfuffle last year, showing that most of the allegedly shocking subsidies accruing to Big Oil were, in actual fact, general tax rules applicable to all sorts of companies. Hinkle readily concedes that maybe
these are dumb rules. Maybe they need changing. But in no sense can they be called subsidies—i.e., money taken from Smith and given to Jones. The failure to tax Exxon more does not increase your payment to the IRS by one red cent.
Hinkle concludes that if partisans, left or right, are going to treat tax breaks as subsidies, then they should do so across the board, without ideological cherry-picking.
And yes, there is an argument for calling all tax breaks “subsidies.” The lobbying for them looks about the same. They favor some businesses (or, more often, industries) over others. Politicians get the benefits from the special interests in the exact same way.
Perhaps we should define two broad categories of subsidy: Direct benefits and negated detriments. A tax sure is a detriment to the taxpayer. A tax credit or other break is a “negated detriment.” That is, an indirect benefit.
And those negative detriments sure can affect the bottom line.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Thomas Paine
“These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their county; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny like hell is not easily conquered yet we have this consolation with us, the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value.”
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Guadalcanal won
On Feb. 8, 1943, Japanese troops evacuated Guadalcanal, leaving the island in Allied possession after a prolonged campaign. In August of 1942, U.S. Marines landed on the island as the Allies’ first major offensive against Japanese-held positions in the Pacific. A series of bloody battles ensued in the tropical heat as Marines engaged Japanese troops on land and the Navy has seven major battles in the waters surrounding Guadalcanal. American casualty estimates were 1,600 combat dead, 2,000 died of disease and 4,000 wounded, while roughly 24,000 Japanese perished. The American victory paved the way for other wins in the Solomon Islands.
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John Paul Jones
“I wish to have no connection with any ship that does not sail fast; for I intend to go in harm’s way.”
“I have not yet begun to fight!”
For the last 22 years, I’ve had school-age kids. None of them went to a public school; instead, we homeschooled.
Though my children certainly didn’t cost Virginia’s state and local governments the more than $10,000 a year they spend on each public school student, I sure never got a letter from the government apologizing for not “earning” my tax payments or a reimbursement check for taxes paid.
Which went through my mind when I read an email from the Virginia PTA — the Parent Teacher Association. The group’s Janet Ciaravino urged its cadre to: “Let [legislators] know that public school is your choice and team sports are a privilege you earned and expect them to protect.”
The Virginia PTA has come unglued at the thought that House Bill 947, known as the “Tebow Bill,” may pass and allow homeschool children to try out for public school sports. To avoid that unthinkable prospect, the PTA pushes politicians to “protect” their privileges at the expense of homeschool kids who simply want a try-out.
Then come horror stories, unimaginable hypothetical situations designed to overwhelm our emotions. For instance, the PTA email posed a harrowing question, “What’s next? Drama, debate, electives?”
If we’re not careful, public education could break out.
The PTA’s orthographically deviant slogan is “every child. one voice.” Why not allow every one of those children his or her own voice? And an equal chance to win a spot on the team.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
“I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I traveled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.”