Category: too much government

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national politics & policies responsibility too much government

Freeze Federal Salaries

Procrastination feeds deficits. Deficits feed debt. Debt feeds catastrophe.

Politicians avoid balancing budgets by saying they will do so not this year, but “sometime in the future.” Hence our looming debt crisis. This debt either must be paid, defaulted, or … “monetized.”

That last term is code for inflation.

Why not bring the need for cuts and inflation together? After all, the Federal Reserve still exists, so some inflation is inevitable. Inflation is what central banks like the Fed do.

So, barring a complete monetary reform, simply freeze all federal salaries, at least until the average level of compensation for federal jobs matches the average level of compensation for comparable private-​sector jobs.

Currently, as James Sherk of the Heritage Foundation has uncovered, federal workers earn 22 percent more than private sector workers … and that’s just in terms of nominal pay. If our politicians turned heroic and cut these down to where they should be, immediately, we’d save $47 billion in taxpayer funds per year.

But it gets worse, as Chris Prandoni writes: “The average federal civilian employee earns on average $32,115 a year in non-​cash compensation compared to a private sector employee who earns three times less, $9,882 annually.”

So freeze benefits, too. Defrost only when they match private sector levels. 

Politicians could start the freeze right now, just to show a smidgen of discipline. More likely? They’ll go with what they know: Procrastination. 

Responsibility? Wait for another freeze. Of hell’s shiny surface.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets general freedom too much government

The Full Flush of Equality

Years and years ago, it was often said against the proposed Equal Rights Amendment that it would prohibit separate toilets. Under the ERA, men and women would have to use the same public restrooms.

Properly interpreted, nothing of the kind should have happened. The text of the ERA stated that “equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.” One does not have a right to a toilet, really, so it shouldn’t have affected restroom construction.

But leaping to absurdity is, alas, a propensity of government. In Minnesota, today, the state’s Department of Human Rights has declared that the offering of a “ladies’ night” by taverns and bars, etc, is illegal, discriminating (as it does) on the basis of sex.

Economist Robert Murphy has carefully explained why price discrimination is not bad — why it is common and why it benefits us. By setting up “ladies’ nights,” certain businesses attract female customers and (shock of all shocks) male customers, too … men actually eager to pay extra, if only to be around women.

I don’t see much point in explaining the philosophical basis for not getting carried away over the “sexual/​gender discrimination” involved in this. But it may be good that the ERA fizzled in 1982. It would have been twisted by bureaucrats in state after state, and we’d all endure uncomfortable encounters in public toilets throughout the land.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Accountability government transparency too much government

The Liability Behind the Curtain

Do not look at the liability behind that curtain! Or: Do not mention that we don’t know what the liabilities are.

Some things are too painful to report.

Apparently.

The folks who audit the Social Security Administration are late on a set of reports. The reports in question account for the financial and actuarial (un)soundness of Social Security, specifically on the (un)funded liabilities of the pension system and Medicare.

Unlike corporations, which are required to report to the IRS on March 15 each year, and individuals, who must report on April 15, there’s no set date for the trustees of our federal government’s biggest program to make its report. But in recent years the reports have been published early enough to allow summary by May. The last report summary we have is for 2009.

Why so late?

Could it be that things have gotten so bad that it’s difficult to figure out — and embarrassing to sign one’s name to — the actual financial situation? After all, this year Social Security ran out of money to write checks for its promised (and quite immediate) pay-outs.

Sheila Weinberg, CEO of the Institute for Truth in Accounting, writes that she heard the reports were late because “trustees wanted to include the effect the health care bill had on these liabilities.” Ms. Weinberg not unreasonably challenges this rationale. Wouldn’t Social Security’s liabilities have been worth knowing before Congress committed to more entitlement spending?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
First Amendment rights free trade & free markets property rights too much government U.S. Constitution

Hooray for IJ

Let a thousand floral arrangements bloom.

Louisiana has just abolished the “demonstration” section of the state’s licensing exam for florists. The new law came in response to a lawsuit by florists working with the Institute for Justice. IJ argued that the four-​hour demonstration requirement was “arbitrary, subjective and antiquated,” and allowed state-​licensed florists to determine the fate of their future competitors.

The outcome represents yet another victory for the “merry band of libertarian litigators” who regularly do battle “in the courts of law and in the court of public opinion on behalf of individuals whose most basic rights are denied by the government.…”

Founded in 1991, the Institute for Justice has successfully fought to lift caps on the number of licensed taxis in Minneapolis; eliminate laws around the country that prevent competition in every kind of occupation, from animal husbandry and interior design to hair braiding and pest control; restore freedom of speech undermined by vague and arbitrary campaign finance regulation in Florida and enemies of property rights in Tennessee; protect businessmen and home owners from eminent domain abuse in Arizona and Ohio.

IJ’s many successful efforts to defend the rights of individuals are having a major impact. Looking back over the many installments of Common Sense, I find that I mention this group’s work again and again.

With good reason. They keep fighting the good fight, and winning.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
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.

Categories
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.