Category: too much government

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Accountability general freedom ideological culture porkbarrel politics responsibility too much government

Ask the Next Question

next question, socialism, Republicans, Democrats, regimentation, Democracy, Democratic, lies, politicians

Republicans are very reliable. When given our system’s “Mandate of Heaven” — majorities in both houses of Congress and the Presidency — they can be relied upon to do one thing: add debt by piling up huge deficits.

It happened under George W. Bush, and it is happening under Donald J. Trump: “The Trump administration expects annual budget deficits to rise nearly $100 billion more than previously forecast in each of the next three years,” the Wall Street Journal tells us, “pushing the federal deficit above $1 trillion starting next year.”

Republicans should ask themselves why. And while they ask themselves that, everyone else should ask the next question: why do politicians who say they want one thing so often deliver its opposite?

This is not a mere “right-wing” phenomenon. Leftists say they want “democratic socialism,” but, as Irving Kristol noted, at some point not far down their road to Utopia, “democratic socialists” must choose between democracy and socialism.* By promising everybody everything, too quickly everybody gets shanghaied into service to produce that “everything,” finding themselves conscripts in socialism’s army.

The equation of socialism with regimentation and general un-freedom has been clear for over a century, explained carefully by sociologists, economists and even politicians.* And yet, increasingly, today’s Democrats are embracing a philosophy with proven anti-democratic features.

Could some deep principle be at play?

Probably. It is built into the very nature of state governance, of politics itself. It may be why republics metamorphose into empires, conservatives go radical and liberals become serviles.

Which is why effective democracy requires limited government. To minimize that boomerang effect.

We might start by limiting spending.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Herbert Spencer’s writings on socialism include The Man versus the State (1884) and Industrial Institutions (1896, Principles of Sociology, Vol. III, Part VIII); German politician Eugene Richter’s satire Pictures of the Socialist Future (1896) is well worth reading; and economist Yves Guyot preceded Ludwig von Mises’ classic Die Gemeinwirtschaft (1922, translated as Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis, 1950) with several books, including The Tyranny of Socialism (1893) and Socialistic Fallacies (1910).

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

Trump’s Biggest Secret?

golden crutches, farm subsidies, tariff, trade, free, Trump, EU

“This trade war is cutting the legs out from under farmers,” says Senator Ben Sasse (R-Neb.), “and White House’s ‘plan’ is to spend $12 billion on gold crutches.”

Referring to Donald Trump’s tariff brinksmanship with China, Sasse is decrying Trump’s request to Congress for compensatory farm subsidies. Sasse insists that “America’s farmers don’t want to be paid to lose” — but regardless of what farmers want, we should want free trade.

Tariffs are taxes. Consumers ultimately pay for them all.

Trump’s requested “crutches” is just another example of a bad government program leading to another, “compensatory” bad government program.

Old story. Too familiar.

The senator is right to be alarmed by the Trump “administration’s tariffs and bailouts,” for the president is playing a most dangerous game. Trade wars are not mutually beneficial. Trade is.  

Of course, if the ultimate result is an end to all trade barriers — as Trump himself demanded regarding the EU — then . . . could it be worth it?

One thing’s for certain: the history of protectionist brinksmanship is not pretty. Sasse himself predicts that Trump’s tariff hikes “aren’t going to make America great again, they’re just going to make it 1929 again.”

Sasse is referring to the passing of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1929, which led not only to a spooked Wall Street, but to bank failures and retaliatory protectionism from other countries. 

And a worldwide depression. And world war.

But is Trump really a secret free trader,* using tariffs in a game of chicken with trading partners?

This just in, from The Guardian: “Trump and EU officials agree to work toward ‘zero tariff’ deal.”

Stay tuned.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* We could be forgiven for thinking him an old-fashioned protectionist, considering his repeated insistence that “Tariffs are the greatest!” But with Trump, maybe we should never take him literally.

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Photo by Carlos Martinez

 

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Accountability folly free trade & free markets general freedom moral hazard property rights responsibility too much government

Poison Is Poisonous

poison, inflation, Venezuela, socialism, free markets, capitalism

Venezuela’s socialist economy has been collapsing.

No big mystery. If, out of hostility to capitalism, a society keeps destroying everything that production, trade, and prosperity depend upon, the economy suffers. The benefits of markets don’t flow no matter what.

One assault has taken the form of hyperinflation — runaway printing of currency, done in part to dissolve government debt. Many Venezuelans are resorting to barter. It’s easy to understand why.

Or is it? A Reuters reporter says that economists say that “the central bank [of Venezuela] has not printed bills fast enough to keep up with inflation, which . . . reached an annual rate of almost 25,000 percent in May.”

So go faster!?

Dude. Dude. The massive expansion of Venezuela’s money supply is what’s causing massive jumps in prices. Just like any other economic good, the medium of exchange is subject to the laws of supply and demand.

Other things being equal, enormously increasing a supply of a good will enormously lower its market value or price. Money, too, has a price — in terms of the non-monetary goods being bought. If the pre-hyperinflation price of a dollar in terms of bread is one loaf and the post-hyperinflation price is one bread crumb, you won’t reverse the decline by printing even more dollars or bolívars even faster.

If you’re ingesting poison, you can’t fight the effects by being poisoned more and harder. The very first thing to do is stop ingesting the poison.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

 

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Accountability crime and punishment folly free trade & free markets general freedom local leaders nannyism national politics & policies responsibility too much government

Kick the Addiction, Save Money

marijuana, tax revenue, taxes, spending, war on drugs, opioid epidemic

The political case for the War on Drugs has always been intuitive. “Drugs are bad” has trumped practical concerns. But the actual, responsible case for the political crusade has depended upon some concept of “social cost.”

Now that marijuana is being legalized state by state, the case against the greater War on Drugs is being taken seriously — enough to rethink all varieties of costs. Indeed, many now see the opioid epidemic as being driven, in part, by the War on Drugs, and not just as an excuse for a stronger crackdown.

Nevertheless, coming to some accounting — especially “social cost” accounting — remains difficult. This is especially true so long as its effects on freedom and the rule of law do not get figured in.

Somewhat surprisingly, even the budgetary effects of legalization have proven a bit tricky.

So it is welcome to read Harvard economist Jeffrey Miron’s study of marijuana legalization as it has occurred in the states of Washington, Oregon, and Colorado. He compares results of legalization with the predictions he had made eight years ago, in a previous Cato Institute study. It turns out that while tax revenues are far greater than expected, law enforcement costs have not gone down.

“Early experience suggests that governments will reallocate rather than reduce those expenditures,” Miron writes. “That reallocation may be beneficial, but it does not have a direct effect on the budget deficit.”

On a federal level, though, we might expect greater savings. How? We could shut down whole bureaus.

Yet, achieving such savings would require progress on Washington’s biggest addiction:  spending.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

Studies cited:

Jeffrey Miron, “The Budgetary Effects of Ending Drug Prohibition,” Cato Tax & Budget Bulletin, Number 83, July 23, 2018.

Jeffrey A. Miron and Katherine Waldock, “The Budgetary Impact of Ending Drug Prohibition,” Cato Institute white paper, September 27, 2010.

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Accountability crime and punishment folly free trade & free markets general freedom moral hazard nannyism responsibility too much government

Taking a (Lemonade) Stand

lemonade, freedom, regulation, FDA, free market, law, authoritarian, media

When life hands you lemons. . . .

Once upon a time, putting up a summertime lemonade stand was the American way for kids to learn about hard work, good will, and entrepreneurship. Almost every kid had one, making some spendable profit selling the nectar.*

Some of the youngsters grew up to become Bill Gates and Steve Jobs and, well, lemonade’s one heck of a gateway drink.

But then, along came “progress” — that is, mandates and regulations slapped upon businesses. And the hordes of regulators required to enforce the morass of rules — “swarms of Officers.”

Soon lemonade stands were vanquished from our neighborhoods.

And America was made safe (at long last!) for . . . inane bureaucracy.

“Reports of kids’ lemonade stands being shut down for breaking local health or permitting laws have long left grown-ups feeling sour,” today’s Wall Street Journal informs. But the story also details how “a growing movement of adults is fighting back.”

So, when government policies hand you lemons, what do you do?

Make a map of all the lemonade stand clampdowns.

“I think the Constitution covers [lemonade stands] as written,” Dave Roland told the Journal, explaining the map he and his wife Jenifer have produced. “But if there’s any doubt about that, let’s get it fixed.” The Rolands run the Freedom Center in Missouri, but theirs is a regrettably national map.

Last month, the popular lemonade maker Country Time started “Legal-Ade,”  pledging to come to the defense of any kid “busted” for trafficking in lemonade.

Seriously.

“When life gives you arcane laws,” the company’s video says, “make lemonade.”

Taste the Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* The profit was made possible largely by pushing their costs off onto their parents. But isn’t that sorta what parents are for? And good lessons were still learned.

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Accountability folly general freedom government transparency initiative, referendum, and recall local leaders nannyism responsibility too much government

Minimum Sense

Washington, D.C., City Council, Representation, democracy, initiative, minimum wage, association, Counsel,

Suddenly, the Democrats who dominate the Washington, D.C., City Council seem unwilling to increase the minimum wage for tipped workers — despite their official support for legislative minimum wage rate increases.

And a vote of the citizens.

Initiative 77, which passed easily last month, requires restaurant employers to incrementally increase the “tipped wage” until rates “reach what will be the uniform minimum of $15 an hour by 2025.”

“Initiative 77 is something I believe will be very harmful to our restaurants and, more importantly, our restaurant workers,” argues Councilman Jack Evans, one of three council members pledging repeal.

A spokesperson for One Fair Wage DC, calling a repeal “deeply undemocratic,” notes that “D.C. voters don’t like it when Republicans in Congress do it, and we trust council will not stoop to that level.”

Yet it would not be “the first time the city’s lawmakers overturned a decision by the electorate,” the Washington Post reminds readers, citing “a decision in 2001 when the D.C. Council overturned term limits approved by voters.”*

I’m all for ballot measures to decide any issue the people have a right to decide . . . limited by all of our inalienable rights as individuals. Minimum wage laws constitute an abuse of our First Amendment right to association, which neither legislatures nor voters may legitimately abridge.

That the council doesn’t recognize this right of association, yet nonetheless thinks it should nullify a vote of the people tells you everything you need to know about the sorry state of representation.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

 

* And even quoting moi on the incredible hypocrisy dating back 17 years: “If you’re in a city struggling to get representation in the first place, that’s a terrible signal to say that your own local officials don’t respect their own citizens.”

 

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Accountability crime and punishment folly free trade & free markets general freedom judiciary local leaders moral hazard nannyism Second Amendment rights too much government U.S. Constitution

Ought Implies Cantifornia

microstamping, bullet, California, law, guns, gun control

“Strip away the absurdity,” writes Scott Shackford at Reason, “and it’s essentially a very technical ruling.”

Shackford is explaining a bizarre recent judgment of the California Supreme Court.

Politicians in Sacramento had, years ago, passed a gun control measure requiring gun manufacturers to “implement microstamping technology that would imprint identifying information on bullets as they were shot from semi-automatic weapons.” In 2014, Smith & Wesson announced that it would pull some guns from the California market rather than comply. Why? The technology just wasn’t ready yet.*

Since California’s Civil Code contains a section reiterating an old commonsense principle to the effect that the “law never requires impossibilities,” the National Shooting Sports Foundation sued to block the law.

But the group just lost.

The Court did say it could protect citizens from punishment, but it refused to nullify the legislation on constitutional grounds.

Unanimously.

Why do this? Apparently to protect California politicians in their ongoing social engineering schemes.

The dollar costs of trying to comply with impossible demands are huge, of course. But the biggest costs may be more subtle.

In moral philosophy, it is a truism to say that “ought implies can.” In natural law as understood long ago, an impossible law was thought not a law at all, justifiably ignored by anyone and everyone.

In a just state, flouting of maddening regulations like California’s would lead not merely to the defense of the absurdly put-upon citizen — as this court ruling still allows — but also to the nixing of the “impossible” law.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Shackford notes that “a cynic might theorize that this is the law’s actual intent.” I wouldn’t limit that suspicion to folks given to cynicism. Pragmatists and political scientists and almost anyone else would be placing bets on that, too.

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Accountability First Amendment rights folly general freedom ideological culture media and media people moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies Regulating Protest too much government U.S. Constitution

Freedom “Weaponized”

free speech, First Amendment, censorship, freedom, liberty, rights, Justice Elena Kagan

Justice Elena Kagan has a way with words. The conservative majority on the court, she said after two recent rulings, is “weaponizing the First Amendment.”

What a phrase! But what does it mean?

“Conservative groups, borrowing and building on arguments developed by liberals,” explains The New York Times, “have used the First Amendment to justify unlimited campaign spending, discrimination against gay couples and attacks on the regulation of tobacco, pharmaceuticals and guns.”

First: if “liberals” now find themselves not supporting the idea of particular freedoms, or freedom in general, are they really “liberal”?

Second: “borrowing arguments” is what we expect to happen. Logic isn’t partisan.

Third: the point of the Bill of Rights is to “weaponize” the defense of freedom.

Remember, it is freedom of speech; freedom of the press; freedom of association; freedom of exercising one’s religion. The First Amendment weaponizes their defense by disallowing Congress from legislating against them.

Now, it has long been a “problem” that these listed freedoms blend together. They all work together or don’t work at all. And each points to freedom more broadly.

Kagan wants to read freedoms narrowly — though liberals historically have, indeed, read them broadly.

She’s objecting to two recent rulings. The first prohibits states from requiring pregnancy centers to talk up abortion options to their clients. An obvious free speech issue. The second prohibits governments from backing unions in their extraction of “agency fees” from non-members. An incontrovertible issue of freedom of association.

Kagan and The New York Times apparently think that “liberalism” means defending some freedoms in some contexts, but denying freedom in others.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

 

Illustration by Newtown grafitti

 

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crime and punishment general freedom ideological culture moral hazard nannyism political challengers privacy Regulating Protest too much government

Don’t Enable Tyrants

Tor, anonymity, privacy, Venezuela, socialism, dictator, censorship, criticism, Maduro

If I deliberately help somebody to do evil things — and nobody is holding a gun to my head — I am thereby doing evil myself.

A person should not let himself be in that position. Not even if he’s “just doing my job” and looking for a non-evil job would be demonstrably inconvenient. To have a motive for doing a bad thing is not by itself exculpatory.

What provokes this observation is a newly amplified assault by the Venezuelan government on the rights of its citizens. The government is seeking to violate the right to peacefully read stuff on the Web by blocking Tor software, which allows users to elude government surveillance and reach banned websites.

Venezuelan dictators Chavez, now dead, and Maduro, still there, have never hesitated to stomp freedom in the name of a spurious greater good. Somebody like Maduro is certainly unscrupulous enough to go after Tor for thwarting censorship. So he fulfills that requirement. I doubt that he possesses very extensive programming ability.

Tor may not be perfect, but it’s pretty robust. You need substantial resources, such as those at the disposal of a government, to stop it. You also need to know what you’re doing. The coders on Venezuela’s stop-Tor team are probably smart enough to grasp the purpose of their work.

They and all other such collaborators should defect to the other side: that of programmers working to protect innocent people from government-sponsored cyber-assault.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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Accountability local leaders moral hazard porkbarrel politics responsibility tax policy too much government

Panic in the Prairie State

Illinois, pensions, politicians, taxes, tax, theft, shake down

When your state has the lowest credit rating in the union, the highest population decline rate, and spends nearly a quarter of its annual budget on an out-of-control government-employee pension system, what do you do?

Raise taxes, of course!

That’s the advice of experts in Illinois, anyway.

You can see why they panic: The unfunded portion of Illinois’s public employee pension system amounts to $11,000 per person in the state. Something extraordinary must be done.

Yet, as Pat Hughes at the Illinois Opportunity Project insists, taxpayers need relief — not a statewide 1 percent property tax increase.

Besides, it is not as if tax hikes could solve the problem. “It was just last year that politicians raised the state income tax by 32 percent in a desperate attempt to balance the budget,” Hughes explains. “Despite over $5 billion in new taxes, the state was back in deficit spending in less than a year.”

Hughes mentions a number of tax limitation measures in the works. More power to them.

But what’s needed even more? Spending limitation measures.

No government can be trusted to offer anything but defined-contribution pensions — and no government, at any level, should ever manage a pension system. Politicians can’t help themselves. They just cannot resist the temptation to buy off the government-worker constituency by promising more in the future than financially feasible (or just plain old politically possible) to pay for now.

Other people’s money is theirs to spend. And a future financial bind? Some other politician’s problem.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

N.B. Congratulations to the Illinois Policy Institute for its Liberty Center, which won its case against forced unionization, Janus v. American Federation, on June 27. Commentary about this Supreme Court case appeared on this site in early May, “Post Blindfold.”

 

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