Category: too much government

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media and media people national politics & policies tax policy too much government

Smart Reaction?

If you balk at having more and more of your life run from the nation’s capital, you’re stupid. 

Or, so blares Joe Klein in a Time magazine online article, “Too dumb to thrive.”

See, “smart” Americans understand that a trillion in federal “stimulus” spending can only do “good.” Apparently dumb Americans are the ones telling pollsters that the “stimulus” money is being wasted.

Klein says the biggest part of the stimulus is a tax cut for most, meaning more money in their paychecks. But ignorant Americans focus on the huge debts we’ll have to pay back … in higher taxes.

Klein says that the second biggest portion of stimulus money went to state governments to keep our kids’ teachers from being laid off and state taxes from being raised. The notion that without the stimulus all the public school teachers would have been pink-​slipped is a bit much. 

As for higher state taxes, couldn’t state spending actually be cut? And not just on police, teachers and firemen?

Klein’s blithering blathering reminds me of Chris Matthews, and other MSNBC geniuses, who contend that politicians are in deep doo-​doo because “people are angry and scared” and want to take their frustrations out on someone.

People are angry and scared, sure. But taking out our anger out on those responsible for destroying our wealth and freedom seems … well .  .  . smart.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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

Do As I Don’t

Many American politicians decry any attempt to liberalize the market for grade school education. They insist that the public school system must be protected from competition. They hate charter schools, vouchers, tax credits, anything like that. 

Yet many of these same politicians send their own kids to private schools.

But simultaneously promoting government-​run industry, while choosing private alternatives, isn’t just an education pathology. Consider medicine.

Canadian politicians eager for medical care that really works have made it a habit to travel to the United States to get it. The latest is Danny Williams, premier of the Canadian providence of Newfoundland and Labradour. Williams recently trekked stateside for heart surgery. His office wasn’t releasing many details, but indicated that the surgery isn’t routine. 

That explains it. If there’s any chance a life-​saving procedure will be tricky, quality is really important.

Williams’s deputy premier, Kathy Dunderdale, told reporters that surgery in the province was never an option. She said: “He is doing what’s best for him.” I’m sure that’s true.

Folks, we can’t, just cannot, further put the American medical industry under government bureaucratic control — that is, make our health care as bad as Canada’s. There’s got to be somewhere for our Canadian friends to go when they really need the good stuff.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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national politics & policies too much government

Do the Right Thing – Later

Late in life, St. Augustine characterized his youthful, wayward ways in a droll prayer: “Lord, make me chaste and celibate — but not yet!”

Today, politicians of both parties understand the sentiment. 

On Monday of last week, President Barack Obama unveiled his budget to Congress with this nicely worded maxim: “We simply cannot continue to spend as if deficits don’t have consequences, as if waste doesn’t matter, as if the hard-​earned tax money of the American people can be treated like Monopoly money.”

Obama proposed a record budget of $3.8 trillion — including a deficit of well over $1 trillion. We can’t keep deficit spending like this, but we keep deficit spending like this.

Talking to reporters, Obama admitted that he and his friends in Congress “won’t be able to bring down this deficit overnight.” He cited the need for more job creation as reason to continue to spend so much money.

Money we don’t have. So it will be borrowed. Against future taxes. Or future default.

Sure, the president is proposing a freeze. To start next fiscal year. And he’s proposing a bipartisan committee to cook up some way to balance the budget. The committee hasn’t been formed yet.

That seems like too much procrastination for the state of our nation. I think St. Augustine would agree with me: Virtue is not something you put off until next year.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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free trade & free markets too much government

Disaster Economics 101

Could House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have spilled the beans, laid bare her party’s vision of economic growth in one offhand utterance?

A terrible tragedy in impoverished Haiti. An earthquake. The scope of the damage staggers the imagination … and spurs outpourings of charitable aid from America, and across the globe.

And this is where Mrs. Pelosi chimes in. As if she had never heard of the Broken Window Fallacy, she just blurted it out, hazarding that Haiti “can leap-​frog over its past challenges, economically, politically, and demographically in terms of the rich and the poor and the rest there, and have a new — just a new, fresh start.”

Over 70,000 dead, Haiti in ruins, and she’s talking about hope for a “real boom economy.” 

Now, I know, politicians like to spend money. They think it does a lot of good — though in Haiti’s case, the billions spent, previously, have sure fizzled. But Pelosi isn’t just arguing that the aid is going to remake an impoverished country. She thinks that scurrying about rebuilding is a net positive. 

If you wonder why politicians so like economic booms, even the most artificial ones, look no further. They cannot distinguish between real progress and the frenzy of making up for disaster.

Perhaps that’s why they are so nonchalant about the disasters their own taxes and regulations so often cause. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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free trade & free markets too much government

Who Killed Disco?

The age of the glittery mirror ball and loud, simple dance music is over. 

According to Ian Schrager, as recorded in Vanity Fair’s recent oral history of disco, it “wasn’t AIDS that made the nightclub business difficult. Government regulations did it in.”

Schrager and his partner set up their first nightclub, in Queens, for $27,000. The more famous Studio 54 — or is that “infamous”? — went up for $400,000.

“Now,” says Schrager, a major real estate developer, “with all the regulations, fire codes, sprinkler requirements, neighborhood issues, community planning boards … before you even put on the first coat of paint, you’re into it for over a million dollars. What it’s done is disenfranchise young people.”

And it’s not just disco that’s suffered. It’s worth remembering one sad side effect of all the red tape cities and states put up to new enterprises. It leaves the private sector desperate to focus on the surest forms of wealth generation, less able to serve niche markets. Like discos.

Nowadays, to establish and run non-​school,  non-​work activities for young people, volunteers organize community events, write grant applications and hold out their hats. This crowds out funding for needier, worthier charities, and litters our towns with poorly run government-​funded efforts. 

Personally, I don’t like disco — but could it be that things were better when entrepreneurs like Schrager set the stage? 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets general freedom too much government

How Not to Help Haiti

Haiti has suffered horrific devastation. It didn’t have to.

There was no way to prevent the 7.0 earthquake itself. But estimates of as many as 200,000 dead? That didn’t have to happen.

Economist Donald Boudreaux recalls that in 1989, an equally powerful quake hit the San Francisco Bay area. It caused lots of trouble but killed fewer than 70 people. But Haiti is a much poorer country than the U.S., with weaker buildings and roads, for starters.

Why so poor? 

Haiti is not a free society. It’s had one corrupt tyrant after another, recently emerged from the terrorizing rule of Jean-​Bertrand Aristide, who was sent packing in 2004.

Many pundits are saying that the way to strengthen Haitian society over the long haul is torrents of foreign aid. Economist Jeffrey Sachs wants Washington to spend billions on a five-​year development plan, which he says it should fund by taxing Wall Street bonuses.

Charity and rescue efforts are wonderful. Government-​to-​government foreign aid, not so much. Haiti has remained desperately poor despite the massive flow of foreign aid, which, over the years, has mainly subsidized corruption. What Haiti needs is stability. The ability to attract investment. Less propping up of corrupt politicians. Less foreign aid, more freedom. 

But a free society is something Haitians will have to build themselves.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.