Category: too much government

Categories
national politics & policies political challengers too much government

Losing with Obamacare

Democrats and their many shills in the major media decry Republican intransigence and “absolutism” on the “settled matter” (un)popularly known as Obamacare. Yesterday, rather than give an inch to the House Republicans they accuse of intransigence, Senate Democrats voted to uphold the Affordable Care Act, including their own special exemption from it.

The House majority had been demanding the defunding of Obamacare as the price for keeping the government funded overall, but dropped that demand when Senate Democrats shook their heads No. Perhaps Republicans backpedalled because they surmised that they, not Democrats, would likely be blamed for the shut-down . . . Sen. Ted Cruz’s valiant efforts to re-define the debate notwithstanding.

Then Republicans downshifted, demanding a one-year delay in the implementation of Obamacare — granting to regular citizens, as Cruz puts it, the same solicitude Democrats have shown to big corporations — plus the deletion of a widely unpopular tax on medical devices and the repossession of Congress’s “Get-Out-of-Obamacare-Free” card.

Senate Democrats took less than half an hour to thumb their noses at the House, nixing all three provisions and leaving the federal government liable to partial shut-down. Obamacare, at least for the un-politically-connected, starts in earnest today!

Comedian Bill Maher is not alone in chiding Republicans for “refusing to admit” they “lost.”

Republicans, for their part, predict utter devastation from the reform bill’s implementation, and don’t see why the country should suffer from the Democrats’ intransigence.

If Tea Party-inclined Republicans do lose this battle and Obamacare’s bad results do pile up — increasing unemployment and depression, skyrocketing insurance rates, diminished private medical insurance rolls — would the Democrats concede that they’ve lost?

Or would they continue to think they’ve won?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets ideological culture too much government

A Shrill Note

The New York City Opera — the one that just produced an opera about Anna Nicole Smith — may close its doors soon unless it comes up with seven million dollars. That’s the gist of a New York Times story that doubles as an appeal to philanthropic opera buffs.

From comments at the site we learn that some readers feel that the opera house has been mismanaged. Others issue instructions to various deep-pocketed luminaries, telling them that here’s their chance do something for the city and their own legacy. Others heatedly defend the “Anna Nicole” opera against detractors.

Then we have this remark, from someone who calls himself BullMoose: “Tell me again how private charity works better than government subsidies.” That’s it. No argument, just a hit-and-run exclamation of ideological discontent with private enterprises, which don’t invariably succeed. Government-subsidized enterprises don’t necessarily succeed either; but the dole can keep them in operation regardless of whether they are doing something worth doing and doing it well enough to please customers willing to pay.

Private charity works better than funds forcibly extracted from me and other taxpayers because private charity is voluntary. When our contributions are voluntary, it means we don’t have to support artistic or other projects that we have no interest in and may even oppose. We are free to use our own judgment, devoting our limited resources to the things we care about . . . instead of the things BullMoose cares about.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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

To Dream the “Impossible” Repeal

Senator Ted Cruz’s non-filibuster filibuster, monopolizing the Senate floor for the ninth hour as I type these words, is easy to characterize — if you are Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert.

Easy to make fun of, especially when the senator read Dr. Seuss’s Green Eggs and Ham as a bedtime story for his children — via C-Span.

It’s not a filibuster, since it stops no vote. It’s not even a speed-bump on the way to a vote. It’s something of a demonstration by one senator and a few of his allies to highlight the dangers of the Democrats’ Affordable Care Act, and the necessity to repeal it. Marshaling emails, tweets, and open letters, Cruz hopes to pressure the unmovable Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to allow a vote on an amendment to defund Obamacare.

The point is this: Attacking Obamacare can’t help but seem quixotic. Like Don Quixote tilting at windmills, we who want less government — who want to limit government — often find ourselves jousting with giants who don’t budge, or (ahem) budget.

So of course we do appear comic, now and then.

But there’s also a reason that when Broadway and then Hollywood turned Cervantes’ classic into a musical, Don Quixote became something of a hero. The dream of justice, of economy, of equality before the law, of humility before the forces of nature, and resilience before the hordes of delusional politicians, does seem impossible.

But not fighting it, whatever peaceful way we can, would be disgraceful.

Ted Cruz is heroic.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets too much government

Bailout Follies

Economic news, these days, seems to be driving home some very old economic wisdom — about foolishness.

In an essay on banking from the 19th century, a writer quipped, “The ultimate result of shielding men from folly, is to fill the world with fools.” This basic lesson — that it is dangerous to shore up bad practices with bailouts and specially tuned central banking policies — is being borne out, once again, in the American economy. Thank the L.A. Times’s sad, sad article “Forget too big too fail: some banks now too small to succeed.” The article’s blurb nicely synopsizes smaller, non-bailed-out banks’ plight: “Small banks are finding it increasingly tough to survive, in part because of the cost of complying with regulations stemming from the financial crisis.”

Remember that 2008’s financial implosion led to a double whammy of governmental overkill:

  1. Bailouts for the biggest fools and
  2. Regulations for everybody, including the wisest players.

The former kept the fools in place and ready to do more damage, since their folly had basically been rewarded. The latter burdens all players, but the costs are hardest for smaller outfits to bear, while bigger outfits can easily jump those regulatory hurdles.

The details of all this constitute “news,” but the principles are old (I’ve discussed them here many times). Bailouts reward the biggest fools, and regulations protect the biggest players from competition from smaller ones.

Yes, indeed, the ultimate result of shielding bankers from the effects of their folly is to fill the world with foolish bankers.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets too much government

Equal Bailouts?

A new Pew Report tells us that Americans think that the rich got the biggest benefits — government handouts — after the collapse of financial markets in 2008. That’s my perception, too.

The banker class — including, perhaps focusing on, financial intermediaries on Wall Street — sure made out like the proverbial banditti, many of whom had their fortunes handed back to them after they lost billions and billions in 2008 and 2009.

Other programs bailed out Big Auto, to the advantage of stockholders and managers and union workers, but not to the discernible advantage of consumers or creditors or the bulk of non-union workers.

And yet, consider the extent to which government intervention in the labor market — including tax breaks, mortgage re-deals, and extended unemployment insurance — “helped” middle class and lower middle class workers and families. These programs had huge consequences, leading hordes to forego (hard-to-find) paid work for (comparatively easy-to-find) paid inactivity.

Americans are split on the lesson to be drawn from what they perceive as “scant signs of recovery” and government’s apparent lack of interest in “helping the poor”:

Although Americans were worried about the economic system, they remain starkly divided over federal regulations to control it. Nearly half thought that government regulation of markets did not go far enough, while almost as many said government regulation had already gone too far.

I’m in the latter camp. Government as Big Brother Bailout for businesses and families and individuals seems to just scuttle the necessary reshuffle our economy needs.

We don’t need more of the wrong response. We need less.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets too much government

The Zero Effect

The idea of hiking the legal minimum wage just doesn’t go away, alas.

The usual thought experiment those with common sense use to elicit a modicum of sagacity in the minimum wage advocates’ addled synapses runs like this: You say you want a higher minimum wage, say $9 per hour. Why not $49 — or $490.00?

Every sensible person knows that wouldn’t work; you can’t simply force all wages up without dire consequences in lost jobs, businesses. But it’s a way to impart some sense of why prices are what they are, how supply and demand work.

But there’s another tactic: Make the counter-offer. “I want to help low-skilled workers find jobs. Set the minimum wage to $0!” Then ask:

Would people work for zero dollars?

Would all wages fall to nothing?

You’ll get a few absurd answers, but the logic should sink in, eventually: High-wage jobs are there not due to Santa Claus employers, but because of worker productivity.

With no minimum wage, there would be more low-wage jobs available, sure. And some of the jobs at the current minimum may indeed go down in pay, but there would be a lot more employment.

And no 5¢ an hour jobs for the same reason no one but interns today work for zero dollars. It wouldn’t be worth it, wouldn’t even cover the costs of getting to work. Folks do have other options: Keep looking; sponge off relatives; beg, borrow, steal; scrounge. Sell things on eBay.

That’s why now people reject some jobs.

Let others protest low wages. The rest of us should protest low productivity.

And a lack of common sense.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets too much government

Saving You from Low Prices

Would you be upset if you had to pay “too little” for a limo ride?

Me neither.

Nevertheless, the Hillsborough County Public Transportation Commission requires limo drivers to charge a minimum of $50 per ride, no matter how brief the ride may be. In 2001, Florida lawmakers foolishly empowered the Tampa-area Commission to set minimum fares. These began at $40 for limo rides, then rose to $50.

The purpose is to protect established firms from competition. “That’s why taxi companies love it — because it protects taxi companies,” says Justin Pearson, executive director of the Florida chapter of the Institute for Justice, the valiant libertarian law firm. “Large taxi and limousine companies have divvied up customers.”

Dave Shaw, president of West Florida Livery Associate, admits that taxi and limo companies backed the $50 minimum. That way, “there wouldn’t be any issues where limousines were charging the same amount as taxi cabs.” Of course, the mere desire to see certain prices prevail, low or high, does not imply any entitlement to see those prices imposed by force.

The Institute for Justice has sued on behalf of limousine business owner Thomas Halsnik and two limo customers. IJ argues that the Commission’s mandatory minimum violates the right of customers to bargain and the right of owners to make a living. “The government shouldn’t make it a crime for businesses to give customers a good deal merely to protect politically powerful insiders from competition.”

Exactly. The government shouldn’t force us to pay more so the politically powerful can be unfairly protected from competition and enriched. But it too often does.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets too much government

Protesting Gravity

The continuing, ramped-up protests of low wages at low-end service jobs, like McDonalds and (to some extent) Walmart, put many of us in a bind. On the one hand, a decent person wants others to be happy in their work, and paid well. On the other, a wise person wants those others to face reality.

It does no good to protest the law of gravity, or blame nature for your limited skill set. We work with what we have, apply our intelligence and industry from our baseline situations. We adapt.

How?

Produce more of what someone else is willing to pay for. That’s how (some) other people earn more than $7.50 an hour. Or $17.50 an hour. Or $175.00 an hour. McDonalds doesn’t pay high wages. But there are many companies that do. Even in the restaurant biz there are better-paid burger-flippers — those burgers are priced higher (and taste better, and are served in posher places) thus allowing the purveyors of said hamburgers to afford the higher wages.

What do protestors really expect? If their wages go up, either their employers fire some workers and switch to automation (thus cutting costs) or up go the prices.

But if prices rise, who buys the burgers that pay for McDonalds’ workers’ wages? I’ll buy a McDonalds burger for a buck, or a premium burger for five bucks. But jack up the prices, and I go elsewhere.

Protesting low wages? Might as well protest gravity.

Or, since the economy’s in such a slump that folks would rather gripe than look for more productive jobs — which are, after all, unnaturally scarce — protest Obama.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
too much government

Prosecution Magnet

Buckyballs are little round magnets that can be sculpted into intricate geometrical patterns, providing responsible adults good clean fun.

Though marketed to adults, and despite the company’s extensive informational systems to discourage their use by unsupervised children, Buckyballs were indeed ingested by a few kids, alas. The ultimate misuse.

Even if you haven’t read those few horror stories — thankfully, no deaths have been reported, something you can’t say for drape drawstrings, tricycles, and bathtubs — you can probably imagine the huge havoc little magnets can wreak in little intestines.

Perhaps you might think it is up to parents to keep such adult playthings out of reach of toddlers and ultra-foolish older children, but this is America — and this is the age of regulation and loose liability lawyering.

So of course they were banned, and the company that made them, Maxfield and Oberton, folded.

There is a long story behind the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s ban on Buckyballs. One could use it to limn the strange world of modern American product liability and business regulation. But it’s not the only story. As Ari Armstrong put it,

Now, not satisfied with destroying Maxfield and Oberton, the CPSC is seeking to destroy the company’s former CEO, Craig Zucker — who led a spirited although ultimately unsuccessful public campaign against the CPSC’s actions.

Zucker’s “Save Our Balls” campaign was, he said, a success, “but not successful enough to save the company.” Apparently it really ticked off folks at the CPSC, for the agency, against its own legal authorization, continues to prosecute Zucker personally.

Zucker fears this personal vendetta “is just the beginning.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
too much government

Mugged by Obamacare

Sometimes people rush to support the destruction of their freedom (and that of others), then become shocked to learn how destructive such destruction can be.

Businessman and “left-leaning activist” Link Christensen, former advocate of Obamacare, once cheered this sweeping assault on what remains of our medical freedom because “it sounded like a good idea to offer insurance to all the people in the country.”

Perhaps he didn’t realize what kind of “offers” get foisted on us by government force. Anyway, his enthusiasm has now waned. Christensen and his employees currently pay about $60 a month for insurance coverage. But this insurance does not satisfy Obamacare’s mandates. To switch to a compliant program, they’ll have to fork over at least twice as much.

“It’s not going to be any type of bargain for people who work for me,” Christensen observes. “I’m concerned that my employees and others in that socioeconomic background are going to be left without any coverage. . . .”

Not the way things were supposed to be! What happened to the promised paradise?

Yet the higher costs, shrinking alternatives, and other baleful effects of Obamacare and of government interventionism generally are predictable. Perhaps Mr. Christensen and others inclined to leap before they look when it comes to government nostrums can now try the reverse. Perhaps they can think twice the next time somebody flourishes a pair of handcuffs and says “Here, put these on, it’ll help people.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.