Category: too much government

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

Wide-​Eyed Wackiness

Where to begin? How about the very first sentence of the New York Times article hailing passage of the Dodd-​Frank financial bill? According to the illustrious fishwrap, “sweeping expansion of federal financial regulation” reflects “a renewed mistrust of financial markets after decades in which Washington stood back from Wall Street with wide-​eyed admiration.”

We’ve seen some liberalization of financial dealings over the years. It was once illegal to own gold. Travelers can be glad of the rise of interstate banking after governments began to permit it in the 1980s.

But have politicians really offered nothing but “wide-​eyed admiration” for “Wall Street” for “decades”? Has the federal government really been hands-​off till now?

Take Senators Dodd and Frank. They were out front pushing home ownership on people who could not afford homes, with multiple programs and legislative packages. This bubble-​making process was further inflated (quite literally) by the Federal Reserve’s cheap credit policies. Many lenders, encouraged by government-​provided (but perverse) incentives, jumped onto the Irresponsibility Bandwagon in the run-​up to collapse. 

So how can the “solution” be additional bailout authority … which will further encourage bankers and others to invest unwisely? 

And the new regulations — these, too, are supposed to help? We don’t even know what they are yet, because bureaucrats have yet to write them, as specified (vaguely) by Congress. In addition to their burden, they will allow pols to shake down Wall Street for years to come. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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free trade & free markets Ninth Amendment rights too much government

Farm at Your Own Risk

Some of the most vicious threats to individual rights and liberty occur not on the federal but on the local level. Clint Bolick, an attorney who has combated many local governmental assaults on citizens around the country, once wrote a book to make the point entitled Leviathan: The Growth of Local Government and the Erosion of Liberty.

Example? Consider the zany local edict issued in the little town of Lake Elmo, Minnesota. The Institute for Justice — Bolick’s old stomping ground — informs us that the city council there has begun “enforcing a law that makes it illegal for farmers to sell products from their own land unless they were grown within Lake Elmo.”

Two of the farmers being threatened with fines and 90 days in jail are Richard and Eileen Bergman, who have tilled the land in Lake Elmo for almost four decades. They grow pumpkins. But part of their farm extends beyond the city limits, and most of their pumpkins grow on that out-​of-​Elmo part.

The Institute for Justice has filed a federal lawsuit to overturn the town’s ban on out of-​of-​town pumpkins. Council members who support the ban must have some ludicrous theory about how such totalitarian edicts goose the local economy. But the ban is certainly no good for folks stopped from buying and selling what they want to buy and sell. 

And how, pray tell, do you promote local farming by throwing local farmers in jail?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets too much government

Winners and Losers in Sports and Government

Sports excite because of the contest: There are winners and losers. But in making “big shows,” some promoters make losers of us all.

South Africa’s sticker price for hosting the World Cup was marked up past $4 billion to nearly $6 billion. The games generated fewer billions in revenue, but the taxpayers of South Africa, one-​fourth of whom are out of work, will see little return on their massive investment.

So why would politicians want to “invest” only to lose?

They can’t resist the hoopla. They get to throw a big show with someone else’s bucks. And if some of the money they throw around reaches their pals’ businesses, all the better.

Around the world, governments vie to spend tax money like South Africa just did. In America, we have our city-​funded/​state-​funded sports stadiums. And remember when our president flew across the globe to pitch for the Chicago Olympics?

Rather than soccer fans paying for soccer, baseball fans for baseball, etc., taxpayers support soccer at the expense of those who find the game tedious, baseball fans helped at the expense of opera lovers, etc.

But considering the wages paid to athletes and the profits made by team owners, these subsidies flow bigger not so much from fan to fan but from regular folks to the rich.

Governments are supposed to serve us all. It ruins the game when governments pick sides through subsidies. That way we all lose.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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

Déjà vu Economics

Last week I noted the revival of interest in F.A. Hayek’s classic political tract, The Road to Serfdom. This week? The ongoing revival of interest in Hayek’s theory of boom and bust.

According to economist Gerald P. O’Driscoll, Jr., today’s debate about stimulus spending mirrors the debate in the Great Depression between John Maynard Keynes and Hayek. Republished letters from October, 1932, Times of London, are eerily up-to-date.

The letter from Keynes and his allies, arguing that spending — any spending whatsoever — would spring the economy out of depression strikes me as a tad bizarre. All spending is equal? Make that several tads bizarre.

Can you say déjà vu?

The Hayekian response seems at once more sophisticated as well as commonsensical. For instance, Hayek recommended an immediate repeal of the infamous Smoot-​Hawley Tariff. He recognized a major factor for the Depression’s low expectations and business doldrums: The trade-​killing legislation that hit the New York Times’s front page the day before Black Tuesday, 1929.

O’Driscoll and other economists have been making much of the enduring significance of the Hayek-​Keynes debate. But there are differences between the Depression and now, aren’t there? 

Back then, the loss part of the profit-​and-​loss system hadn’t been so completely undermined by recovery policy. Today we have bailouts, and these only increase risk-​taking, likely to make the next bust even bigger — and today’s Keynesianism perhaps worse than the disease itself.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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

How to Keep Your Health Insurance Plan

Like the medical insurance coverage you have now? Don’t worry, you can keep it under the new “health care” regime … Or so President Obama and his Democratic allies promised during the recent debates over reform of medical insurance and delivery institutions.

Now we’re now learning, per “internal White House documents,” that the insurance plans we were told would enjoy grandfathered protection under the new law won’t be immune at all. Looks like more than half of current company plans must be chucked by 2013.

We shouldn’t be surprised. Apparently, the goal has always been destruction of private insurance. But why? Well, so government can swoop in to “rescue” us after private firms collapse under the weight of all the new taxes and regulations.

The State of Massachusetts offers a preview of what awaits us. Insurance regulators there were recently warned by a department in charge of “monitoring solvency” that a new round of price caps on insurance rates would jeopardize private insurers’ solvency. Officials imposed the caps anyway. Now those private firms face losses that, if the price controls persist, can lead only to bankruptcy.

Despite all this, there is a way to keep your current health insurance coverage. All folks in Congress have to do is repeal their recent “reforms.” All you have to do is make sure they do.

To ensure that you have better options in the future? Well, very different reforms will be required. And repeals of different laws.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
media and media people too much government

Boring Ferry Story?

Government has a notorious record of wasting money when it engages in regular business activity. One reason is that governments tend to pick up businesses that fail, and deliver goods at prices that often have nothing to do with costs. So of course government businesses lose money. They’re set up that way.

But it’s worse than that.

Three years ago I told the sad story of Washington State’s ferry system for Puget Sound. For over a score of years, ferry system managers have been unable to provide a comprehensible audit, unable even to account for cash flow. 

Now, a series of stories for Channel 5 in Seattle, by Susannah Frame, has exposed the operation for wasting “millions and millions of taxpayer dollars,” according to Ken Schram, a popular Seattle-​area pundit who works for another news service on another channel.

Schram claims not to know “why every news organization in the Puget Sound isn’t outraged.” He sees this as a non-​partisan issue, and is befuddled by lack of interest from news consumers. And he’s especially annoyed by Washington State’s governor, who blew off the news story, saying she couldn’t keep track of everything. Schram calls her arrogant, and goes further: “I find her lack of regard and respect for taxpayers offensive.”

I’m on Schram’s side, except I wonder: Is this really all so inexplicable? Maybe everybody just knows, deep down, that government businesses never will run as well as real businesses.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.