Category: too much government

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free trade & free markets too much government

Head Over Heals for Stimulus

Which thinker is more relevant right now, Lord Keynes or Naomi Klein?

We’ve hit hard times. The Keynesian advice is to spend a lot of taxpayer money to make up for the lack of private spending, thereby jump-​starting the injured market order.

Naomi Klein, on the other hand, is best known for her book “The Shock Doctrine,” in which she charged that free-​marketers were conspiring to use social and economic crises as excuses to “take over” and remake the world in their favor.

Let’s look at the evidence, shall we? We’ve hit a crisis. The government has done the Keynesian thing. Unemployment went up, but … who has made the biggest gains?

USA Today reports that federal workers are enjoying a boom in both employment and salaries. “Federal employees making salaries of $100,000 or more jumped from 14% to 19% of civil servants during the recession’s first 18 months” — and that’s not counting overtime and bonuses!

It’s not markets being stimulated, here, but government.

Not only is this Keynesianism on its head, but Naomi-​Kleinism, too. Those who have taken advantage of the crisis are the ultimate insiders. As a Washington Examiner editorial puts it, “bad times for the rest of us are good times for the federal establishment.”

We could wish Naomi Klein were right.

But things aren’t getting better because she’s wrong.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets too much government

Virgin Galactic’s Latest

It seems like only yesterday that Burt Rutan flew SpaceShip One into near-​orbit and received the Ansari X‑Prize for piloting the first manned private craft into space.

But it’s been five years. 

Things have happened in the meantime. To be specific, SpaceShip Two, just unveiled.

It’s a much larger ship than the original, capable of carrying six passengers as well as two pilots. It has more windows. I like windows.

A year or so ago the company, Virgin Galactic, had shown off their White Knight Two, a twin-​fuselage aircraft designed to ferry SpaceShip Two high into the atmosphere.

There’s still a lot of work to be done before rich people can actually trek up into space. Yes, space tourism is a few years away. But it’s coming, and it’s important.

As long as space is a government-​subsidized and ‑organized industry, it will suffer from the usual problems associated with bureaucracies and politics. 

But let’s give NASA its due: Those scientists and engineers took the risks, squelching the screechings of many folks who, these days, don’t approve of burning any kind of fuel, really, or risking anyone’s life. Think of the lawsuits that would have happened — the OSHA violations, for instance — had private industry been allowed to start this!

Now, it’s high time for private enterprise to take over. To make space flight rational. And fun, again.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets too much government

A Contorted Practice, Challenged

In his book Stuff White People Like: The Definitive Guide to the Unique Tastes of Millions, Christian Lander notes that “Yoga is essentially stretching with guidance.… . You might think that since yoga is such a minimalist activity, it can be done almost anywhere. But you would be wrong. Yoga must take place on hardwood floor at a studio. Exposed beams are generally believed to enhance yoga experiences by 40 percent.”

With this droll explanation in mind, you might think that much of the “specialness” of yoga depends on trivialities, like “$80 pairs of pants.”

But the state of Virginia harbors no such cynical thoughts. It understands the secret of yoga’s ancient allure: The great chain of instruction must be regulated by the state.

Virginians are free to do yoga, even in their own dingy homes, and to inappropriate music, say Bach or the Turtles.

Further, any Virginian may teach yoga. Hey, it’s a free state.

But under no circumstances may a Virginian teach another Virginian how to teach yoga — not without paying heavy administrative fees in the state’s vocational licensing system.

Silly, you say?

Yes.

Thankfully, the Institute for Justice teamed up with yoga-​teacher trainers Julia Kalish, Suzanne Leitner-​Wise, and Beverly Brown to challenge the law, on Constitutional grounds.

Now that’s soothing.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets responsibility too much government

Massive Failures

How many times, in the last year, have I heard praise for FDR’s banking reforms, even down to the specifics of federal deposit insurance?

The funny thing is, this factoid is false. Roosevelt opposed deposit insurance. Everyone did who at that time knew the history of the states that had experimented with this form of subsidy. Only logrolling pushed deposit insurance into law as a known special favor to small banks in rural areas — not to cure the nation’s ills.

The actual history and lessons of bank failures is explored by Charles Calomiris in a recent paper provocatively titled “Banking Crises Yesterday and Today.” According to this Columbia Business School professor, bank panics were not uncommon in the U.S., prior to the Federal Reserve in 1913. And the Fed pretty much stopped them. Massive bank failures, on the other hand, are different. Not unheard of elsewhere, massive failures had not been a problem in America leading up to that time. However, such failures became a problem a few decades later in the Great Depression.

Calomiris explains that such massive crises are brought on, chiefly, by institutional risk factors, like deposit insurance, government manipulation of the housing market to increase ownership through loosening of financial standards, and the “too big to fail” doctrine.

It turns out that honest standards, and not mammoth government subsidies and guarantees, prove the best way to prevent catastrophe.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
national politics & policies too much government

Give Liberty a Chance

Give a golf club to Tiger Woods, and you know what to expect: Great golf.

Give the same club to Mr. Woods’s wife, and, well, you get something else again.

Give our politicians both a huge allowance and unlimited credit, and you get a batch of people unable to control their spending.

Expected, or unexpected?

Expected. Of course. We’ve come to expect this for a very long time. That’s why both the Federalists who wrote the Constitution, and the anti-​Federalists who amended it, were obsessively concerned with checks and balances, with limitations on government. 

Unfortunately, too often we speak of BIG government these days. But it’s not the size, as such, that is the problem. It’s the unlimited nature of it.

So when you have a chance to check government at the ballot box — say, in a state or local initiative or referendum — ask whether the measure limits government or unlimits it.

And, when considering a candidate, look for his or her promises about limits. If the candidate won’t limit spending in some very sure way, or the candidate’s own terms in office, then reject the candidate. Vote against. Go to the polls and write someone else’s name in, if that’s the only pro-​limit, pro-​liberty thing you can do.

We’ve got to put “limits” back into the conversation. Think constitutions. Think rule of law. Think liberty.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
tax policy too much government

Words and Definitions

As a candidate, Barack Obama promised that he would not raise taxes on any but the wealthiest Americans. Make less than $250,000 a year? You’re home free under his administration. 

I mean, not counting current federal levies.

But President Obama has all the ambitions of a big-​spending liberal. And “big-​spending” translates pretty quickly into “big-​taxing.”

One of these projects is a massive new federal takeover of the health care industry, in the name of “universal coverage.” New taxes would be imposed. For example, anyone who refuses to sign up for health insurance in the new regime would be slammed with a hefty tax.

Obama denies that such taxes would in fact be taxes. He even rebuked George Stephanopoulos for citing a dictionary definition of the word. Leaping to the president’s defense, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer agreed that the new taxes would not be taxes. “[W]hat we are saying,” Hoyer said, “is everybody will contribute … to making sure that health care options are available to all of our citizens.” 

Try dispute that. It’s like arguing with fog. Columnist Jacob Sullum quotes Hoyer and observes, “So we’re talking about a legally required contribution that will be used to provide a government-​arranged benefit. If only there were a shorter way of expressing that concept.”

Well, in searching for le mot juste, don’t tax yourself.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.