Author: Redactor

Categories
free trade & free markets too much government

Chimp-o-nomics

Government is almost defined by one kind of business it runs: The last-use-of-force business, such as police and courts and military. Since we don’t pay for these services in fees, contracts, and sales — we’re taxed, instead — we don’t usually call them “businesses.”

But governments have gotten involved in a lot of other more business-like businesses: Roads, libraries, mass transit, waterworks, garbage collection, etc. Of course, government being government, it supports most such enterprises largely with taxes, not fees for services rendered.

Yet there are exceptions.

Take Jackson, Michigan. It runs a number of swimming pools, and charges for usage. The pools lose money. Which taxpayers subsidize. Typical. But Jackson also runs a putt-putt golf course. And it makes money at that business.

All to the good? A government business that actually comes out in the black — what a deal!

Well, Bill Chrysan, proprietor of Putterz Golf & Games in nearby Ypsilanti, doesn’t think so. He notes that the government golf course doesn’t pay property taxes and has its maintenance done at taxpayer expense. With advantages like this, it’s hard to compete against — and it hardly pays its way like other businesses.

For that and other reasons, this one putt-putt course provides no model. Governments shouldn’t run businesses, says James Hohman of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, for the “[s]ame reason that chimps shouldn’t drive. Just because some can do it doesn’t mean that it should be encouraged.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
general freedom

Thank You, Joe Blow

Psychological research has unearthed a completely unsensational truth: Expressing gratitude makes you happier.

What the research shows, I’m told, is that it doesn’t matter to whom one gives thanks. Just expressing it does the trick.

Of course, offering thanks to people you really care about, or who helped you in some extraordinary way, must make some other kind of difference. Still, there’s more than a little sense in being thankful for the people you walk by on the street — and expressing it here:

  • That fellow, the other day? He didn’t mug me. Ah, indifference! It’s better than malevolence.
  • That nice woman with the odd hair, some time back? She gave an encouraging smile when I dropped something. She didn’t have to say anything. I understood: “We all drop things, now and then.” No biggie. A little kindness goes a long way.
  • All the people who took my money and gave me what I wanted in return. Without you, my life would be impoverished. Whether you are selling me fruits or nuts or lattes or bread, I live because you work. And I work, too, to help you live.

In one of my favorite movies, Brazil, the Robert De Niro character encourages our embattled hero with a simple “We’re all in this together.” Actually, much of the time we’re all in this separately. But the connections we make are vitally important, and work remarkably well — for more than our feelings.

Even in tough times.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ideological culture national politics & policies

The Murky, Muddled Middle

We’ve seen a lot of insightful reflection about what the recent elections say about the prospects for liberty and the efforts of many Americans to fight for endangered liberties.

One lesson I hope we’re on the way to unlearning is how allegedly “praiseworthy” it is to evade any clear-cut defense of fundamental political principle. How allegedly “critical” it is to compromise not only on the details of a program that does advance one principles, but also on the basic principles themselves.

In a recent communiqué, Representative Ed Emery rejects the notion that “moderates” lost, sometimes spectacularly, because voters “weren’t thinking.” No, “Moderates lost because voters woke up to the truth that lukewarm does not protect personal liberties; it compromises them [and] protects the status quo. . . .”

But not even the status quo is protected by huddling in the middle of the road. The premier beneficiaries of the worship of the muddled middle are those who do advocate certain fundamental (and poisonous) ideological principles but who succeed in posing as practitioners of “moderation.” Today, the radical left calls itself “the center” and screams bloody murder about “extremism” when anybody offers cogent objections to their socialist agenda. “Compromise,” to them, means only tweaking the speed at which we hurtle ever closer to full government control over our lives.

Let’s not submit to this intimidation, this fraudulent debate-framing.

Let’s demand a fair and open clash of basic political principles.

That’s a battle we’ll win.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ballot access First Amendment rights

Clean Elections or Dirty Con?

No supporter of so-called “clean elections” would argue that we should be forced by law to pull the lever on election day for the candidate we oppose. But the tangled web that politicians and regulators have woven with campaign finance laws does often force us to support candidates we oppose during the run-up to election day.

Here’s just one perverse example: The “‘clean’ elections” system in Arizona. Under Arizona’s scheme, if Candidate A runs as a “‘clean’ elections” candidate, every time Candidate B, who declines public funding, raises a certain amount of money by making effective appeals for support, Candidate A gets matching funds at taxpayer expense. In other words, the government forces you as taxpayer to offset the support you give to Candidate B voluntarily by ensuring that your money goes to Candidate A too — involuntarily. Under this law, the spending of independent groups is also matched by coercive taxpayer donations to “‘clean’ elections” candidates.

It’s a horrific skewing of the political field in favor of the ideas and candidates voters don’t want to support — a direct coercive assault on their democratic rights.

The fate of Arizona’s “welfare-for-politicians” law has survived a federal appeal, but may yet be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court. The Institute for Justice has taken up the cudgels on behalf of independent groups and candidates who garner financial support the old fashioned way . . . they earn it.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
general freedom ideological culture national politics & policies too much government U.S. Constitution

Perfect Safety?

Maybe the most interesting thing to come out, so far, from the “porno-scanner”/TSA-gropings controversy is this statement by Rep. Ron Paul of Texas: “You can’t provide perfect safety.”

Going on, Rep. Paul denied that it is “the government’s role . . . to provide safety.”

It isn’t; it’s to protect our rights. But here we’re being told that we go to the gate, we buy a ticket, and you’ve lost your right, you’ve sacrificed your right. Where did that come from? It’s about the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard.

Rep. Paul has introduced legislation that would prohibit physical contact between TSA screeners and would-be airline passengers, and would prohibit taking images of people’s bodies using X-Rays, millimeter rays, etc..

Ron Paul sees all these new, invasive screening techniques as based on the idea that it is the government’s job to ensure airline invulnerability to terrorism, not the airlines’. He suggests putting the onus back on the airlines, who would likely be more respectful of their customers than the TSA is.

9/11/01 caught the airlines and the government with their pants down. Maybe the best solution to this security lapse isn’t to institute intrusions into our pants, or the kind of X-Ray vision scanners that boys used to be enticed with in the back of comic books.

There must be better ways.

Alas, government probably won’t find them. Which is why Ron Paul is on to something: It should be up to private enterprise.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets ideological culture national politics & policies video

Video of the Week: Quantitative Easing Explained

Earlier this week I did a short Q&A about the latest in monetary policy: quantitative easing. This video goes into much more detail. And is pretty funny:

For an extended, non-animated explanation of QE, try a helpful article by monetary economist Leland Yeager: “The Fed’s Easy Money.”

Categories
national politics & policies too much government

Dare to Cut

If the Tea Party’s newly elected spokespeople really want to prove they are serious, they must dare to gore a familiar ox.

The best place to start? Pentagon budgets.

It’s not just me saying that. Just as Congress overspends domestically, it overspends militarily, primarily by what Cato Institute’s Downsizing the Federal Government website defines as “overreach”:

We would improve the nation’s security by adopting a more restrained and defensive strategy. We should cut the number of military personnel and reduce overseas deployments to save money and relieve burdens on military families.

But Cato’s a think tank. What say actual, elected Tea Party politicians?

Well, Sen. Tom Coburn recently wrote that “Taking defense spending off the table is indefensible.” Further, Senator Elect Rand Paul has called for a debate in the Senate and House over the war in Afghanistan. He started off by saying that Congress had proved lax in its duty to declare war, and then argued that the debate ten years ago on the Afghanistan intervention was not enough for the war’s continuation. He brought up a list of sensible concerns that require careful discussion.

Tea Party politicians should also see the political value of strategic disengagement from any number of worldwide hotspots. Or funding sinkholes, like Europe. Being the world’s policeman costs us dearly, in more ways than one. Were Republicans to rethink their traditional No Pentagon Budget Left Behind approach, Democrats might have less standing to oppose the domestic cuts that must be made.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
First Amendment rights general freedom national politics & policies too much government U.S. Constitution

The Costs of Airport Security

John Tyner, a 31-year-old man hailing from Oceanside, California, not only declined San Diego International Airport’s kind offer of a full-body scan via privacy-invading machine, he also declined a full-body groping via privacy-invading human.

Unfortunately for TSA (who would like to make it unfortunate for Tyner as well) he happened to record his interactions with security personnel on a cell phone. Now TSA honchos are growling that they may well follow through with a threat to fine him $10,000 for not submitting to either procedure — inasmuch as it’s now a crime to care about one’s personal dignity.

The penalty has gone up, though, since TSA threatened Tyner at the airport. It’s now $11,000.

Five or ten dollars for refusing an obnoxious groping, I understand. Or a nickel. Better? A penny. But thousands of dollars?

I’m sure other aspiring passengers who initially cooperated with such intrusions also decided mid-procedure that things were getting too invasive for comfort and that retreat was the better part of valor. I doubt that TSA has sought to extract $10,000+ from each recalcitrant.

But it seems Tyner’s conduct is especially heinous. First, he balked at unreasonable search of his person; second, he blatantly exercised his First Amendment rights by shockingly sharing evidence and testimony about what happened.

If the TSA doesn’t do something, fast, more and more people might act as if their constitutional rights still apply.

Do they?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall too much government

The People Speak

Mainstream media often become so fixed on the major players in Washington, DC, that journalists miss the most telling democratic action: At state and local levels, regarding initiatives.

Nicely, there are exceptions. An editorial, last week, in The Washington Times was subtitled “Ballot initiatives advance a limited government agenda in the heartland,” and explained how “voters showed their displeasure with the country’s direction with their votes” . . . on particular ballot measures.

The editorial lists numerous important initiatives around the country:

  • Oklahoma’s and Arizona’s nullification of Obamacare provisions (and Colorado’s failure to do so);
  • Nevada citizens killing “a sneaky amendment designed to undermine protections from eminent-domain seizures for private gain”;
  • Several states blocking our president’s union-vote rule revisions, known as card-check;
  • Louisiana “stopped public officials from voting themselves a salary boost until after they stand for re-election”;
  • Washington citizens overturned sales taxes on foodstuffs that left-leaning folk regard as sinful, such as soda pop and candy and the like.

Washington State sported an even weightier initiative, one famously sponsored by Bill Gates’s dad. TV ads featured Bill Sr. getting dunked. It wasn’t a baptism. He was pitching for a “soak the rich” income tax in the state. The ad didn’t make a great deal of sense, and Evergreen State voters nixed the income tax once again.

The Times editorial ends advising Democrats that they need “to listen to what the public has to say.” But, obviously, Republicans need to listen, too.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
national politics & policies

QE Q&A

It’s one of those terms seemingly designed to conceal something ugly, dangerous, or unnerving; this example of contemporary policy jargon just looks like a euphemism. It’s “quantitative easing” (QE) and it’s Federal Reserve policy.

What does the “quantitative” part refer to?

The quantity of money in bank reserves.

Is this all about increasing that quantity?

Yes.

Isn’t that synonymous with inflation?

According to the old definition — where inflation is the increase in the supply of money — yes. But since economists became obsessed with the price level, and “correcting” the price level, today inflation usually designates a general rise in prices. Of course, more money will tend to raise prices. But because demand for money can offset supply moves, price levels are not affected on a simple input-output, one-to-one manner.

Is this what we call “printing money”?

Yes, but in the digital ledgers of banks, not in terms of paper dollars.

So this “easing” is just “easy money”?

Yes, but not “just.” Because the new money hits bank reserves, it eases banks’ pressure vis-a-vis risk. So banks can lend more.

Will banks, helped out by QE, actually follow through and make loans?

Big question. They didn’t, much, after the bailouts. Banks loan funds only when they can expect a return. Monetary manipulation doesn’t, presto chango, solve the problem of the future. If the future looks especially unstable, or uncertain, no loan.

Will this necessarily jump-start the economy?

No. Our elite experts’ desperation is showing.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.