Category: too much government

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free trade & free markets too much government

X Marks the Mistake

Take subject X. What if nearly everything we’re told about X — by the most famous experts and by people in government, as well as most folks in the media — is wrong?

Let X be diet. Maybe the whole “anti-fat” idea, dominant for most of my adult life, is wrong. There’s evidence for it.

Let X be AGW, the theory of anthropogenic (human-caused) global warming. We’re told that there’s a consensus in favor of it. But there’s less to that alleged consensus than meets the eye — or scientific rigor.

But to really blow your mind, consider central banking.

We’re told that the job of the central bank is to protect us from the fluctuations of boom and bust. The Federal Reserve was established by the federal government just to help us! But . . . what if that was never the actual reason that banks have been centralized?

Economist George Selgin posted, last week, a thorough debunking of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke’s recent statements about what he’s up to. If you have never heard of free banking before, or the long tradition of central banking criticism among monetary economists, Selgin’s critique may seem outrageous . . . as outrageous as Copernicus and Galileo were back when most folks thought the Earth was the center of the universe.

If Selgin is right (and I think he is), nearly everything we’ve been told by experts and politicians about money, boom and bust, and banking, is wrong.

The central banking school is X.  X is wrong.

So if the Fed doesn’t do what it’s “supposed to,” why do we have it?

It serves big government and some big bankers.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom ideological culture too much government

Down With the Capital

My wife and daughter have devoured Suzanne Collins’s trilogy of dystopian novels, The Hunger Games, Catching Fire and Mockingjay, and they let me accompany them to this weekend’s blockbuster movie of the first in the series.

In the depicted dystopia, a dozen outlying districts have been conquered by the capital. Once a year, for the diversion of sport and, moreover, to assert their life-and-death control over the districts, folks in the capital choose one male and one female teenager from each district — as “tribute” — to go to the capital to fight to the death. The last of the 24 left alive is the “winner.”

The story’s protagonist is Katniss Everdeen, a 16-year old girl whose prowess with bow and arrow helps (illegally) feed her family. When her 12-year old sister gets selected to meet a certain death in the games, Katniss “volunteers” to take her place.

Expressing an independent spirit, Peeta, her district’s male contestant, tells Katniss: “I just keep wishing I could find a way to show them they don’t own me. If I’m going to die, I want to still be me.”

In The Hunger Games, the capital thrives, while folks out in the districts struggle to find enough to eat. In our own country, today, seven of the 25 wealthiest counties are in the Washington, D.C. area. While much of the nation suffers a depressed housing market and high unemployment, that’s not the case in our nation’s capital region.

I liked the movie so much, I’m now reading the book.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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free trade & free markets ideological culture too much government

From Local to Federal

Both the politics of “getting what we want” and the politics of reasonable principles — too often two very different things — rely, ultimately, upon the local, upon voters in actual communities.

In a review of a book with the provocative title How Local Politics Shapes Federal Policy, economist Robert Meiners considers the political economy of America’s most famous dam:

[M]ultiple states wrestled for control of the multi-state Colorado River and for control of the electricity that might be generated. When there is a pot of gold on the table, the stakes are high. Eastern interests opposed the dam. The rhetoric was about “states’ rights” . . . but likely had more to do with eastern members of the legislature seeing no benefit, only costs, for themselves. Again, assuming the dam had net benefits, there is no reason the national government needed to be involved in a project that provide benefits to six states at best.

The book’s author tells the story in terms of ideology, but the reviewer counters that it looks, to him, “more like traditional rent-seeking and logrolling. . . .” Our folks in Congress “constantly think about how to satisfy local interests at the expense of non-local taxpayers,” and that’s certainly the current problem.

And here ideology comes back into the picture. If you think that some people’s lives or property should be sacrificed for some other people’s lives and property, then the ultimate result is the mess we have today. Voters have little option but to take a stand and “ideologically” place limits on politicians and their very own selves.

In our limits, our liberty.

Lacking those limits, we’re each others’ hosts and leeches.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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national politics & policies too much government

IRS Overreach

The taxman puts his hands in our pockets. But it’s one thing to reach into our bank accounts and take our money, it is quite another when governments engage in different kind of overreach, where they go beyond the rule of law and just start pushing people around.

Take the case of Sabina Loving and Elmer Killian.

The Institute for Justice has.

These plaintiffs are suing the IRS because that bureau of plunderers has ruled that Ms. Loving and Mr. Killian — who provide tax preparation services — must be regulated and schooled and certified by the IRS itself. The IRS says that these independent tax preparers (independent in that they are not part of big businesses) can’t just offer their services on the market, they must undergo an expensive annual education and certification process.

The overreach part is that the IRS has no statutory authority to regulate these businesses. Congress rejected precisely such regulation back in 2008. So the clever kleptocrats now argue that a pre-IRS law hailing from way back in 1884 authorizes their regulatory powers.

But that law doesn’t even deal with representatives of folks who owe the government money. It deals with representatives of people owed money by the federal government.

Nice try.

“You will be as shocked as Captain Renault to learn that big tax-prep companies — H&R Block, Jackson Hewitt, Liberty — all support the new regulations,” writes A. Barton Hinkle in Reason magazine, “for the same reason big tobacco companies go after roll-your-own smoke shops: It’s in their interest to stifle low-cost competitors.”

Like Ms. Loving and Mr. Killian.

As we prepare our tax returns in the next several weeks leading up to April’s filing day, perhaps we should burn a little incense along with our midnight oil in support of the plaintiffs and the Institute for Justice. For, really, they are fighting for us, too — eternal vigilance and all.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom national politics & policies too much government

Central Planning, Clarified

Last Friday, the President of the United States signed an Executive Order on “National Defense Resources Preparedness,” and it’s gotten no small amount of attention. It seems to commandeer the entire economy — pretty much anything the government needs — in cases of a presidentially (not congressionally) declared “emergency.”

The powers are vast.

The checks and balances, vague.

The whole thing is matter-of-fact, sporting that business-as-usual style we’ve come to know and . . . view suspiciously. A few clauses at the end of the document build up to a sort of finale of weirdness with this clarification: “This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.” It may be about “national security,” but the government has certainly protected itself. Against us.

Reasons for angst? Yes.

But the angst should not be conceived as new.

Economic historian Robert Higgs, writing for The Independent Institute, notes our long history of what he calls “fascist central planning.” Citing his own milestone work Crisis and Leviathan, he fingers warfare as the major rationale behind the centralization of power and industry. Under the Defense Production Act of the Truman Era, “the president has lawful authority to control virtually the whole of the U.S. economy whenever he chooses to do so and states that the national defense requires such a government takeover.”

It’s breathtaking. It’s sweeping. It’s almost ancient.

And it shows how important actual peace is to our freedoms, our property rights, our very lives.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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national politics & policies too much government

Very Lame Duck

A Washington Post feature story on Kent Conrad refers to the retiring U.S. Senator as “the Democrats’ balanced-budget guy for more than a decade.”

Of course, no budget has been balanced for “more than a decade.” Being the Democrats’ “balanced-budget guy” is sorta like being the Taliban’s diversity outreach guy or AARP’s youth activities director or the bartender for the Temperance League.

I won’t dispute Sen. Conrad’s claim that he’s “done [his] level best,” but, in the time he’s been in Congress, the federal debt has climbed more than 700 percent, from $2.1 trillion in 1986 to $15.4 trillion today.

Nonetheless, Conrad continues to work his colleagues in the dark corridors of the capitol, and The Post reports his goal is to “draft far-reaching legislation to tame the debt and present it for a vote after Election Day, when lawmakers will be under intense pressure to reach an agreement to avert huge tax increases and deep spending cuts set to hit Jan. 1.”

But how will the desire to avoid tax increases and spending cuts “pressure” Congress to pass Conrad’s preferred package of tax increases and spending cuts? Especially in a lame duck session that sidesteps public pressure?

House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan offers a different view: “We shouldn’t be insulating this from the American public, trying to cut back room deals on commissions or whatever. I think the process is moved forward if we put plans out for the public to see and defend our ideas.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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too much government

Garbage Day

Sometimes, before you can progress, you must first take out the garbage.

This is certainly true of America’s vast library of laws and regulations.

The solution? Repeal.

Congress needs to go into a session devoted to repealing existing laws and regulations.

The reasons for such a grand garbage disposal were handily supplied, yesterday, by John Stossel, who argues in “Complex Societies Need Simple Laws,” that we must “end the orgy of rule-making at once and embrace the simple rules that true liberals like America’s founders envisioned.”

Stossel isn’t saying anything new or shocking. The great legal scholar Richard Epstein wrote a book devoted to just this argument, and the classical liberal thinker Herbert Spencer defined the point of view in 1850 — his classic Social Statics derived law from a principle that should remain static, allowing the rest of complex society to develop dynamically from that simple standpoint.

Free societies need understandable, universal laws. As Stossel puts it, “[n]o legislature can possibly prescribe rules for the complex network of uncountable transactions and acts of cooperation that take place every day.”

Oddly, Stossel doesn’t mention the word repeal.

It’s certainly not a word you hear much in the current Republican primary campaigns. Only one current contender for the GOP nomination seems committed to exercising veto power — the illustrious “Dr. No” — and he is not leading in the delegate count. A Dr. Veto as president could cajole Congress into mass repeals.

Which I bet could have mass appeal.

Unfortunately, we’re not going to get this from our current president, or contenders Romney, Santorum and Gingrich, or the leaders of either party in Congress. These politicians know, really, only one thing: Adding to the mess.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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

The $820 Billion Oops

Getting good estimates is not easy. Anyone who’s hired a contractor knows to make sure the estimates are sound by insisting that bidders stick to their estimates.

This is not what happens in government, though. Projects almost always start out with a whopping figure for an estimate . . . and then as the project gears up the costs shoot higher and higher — it soon becomes clear that the high initial cost estimate was a low-ball figure after all.

My “favorite” recent example of this has been California’s high-speed rail project, which soared by the billions before even breaking ground.

But move over, transit. Here’s medicine — 2008’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, better known as “Obamacare,” has just received an estimate upgrade. When passed, the legislation’s enthusiasts boasted a ten-year cost estimate of “only” $940 billion. Now, the Congressional Budget Office has revised the decade’s cost tally up to $1.76 trillion.

According to Philip Klein in the Washington Examiner, the CBO says that weakness in the economy leads to more people “obtaining insurance through Medicaid than it estimated a year ago at a greater cost to the government . . . fewer people will be getting insurance through their employers or the health care law’s new subsidized insurance exchanges.”

I “daringly” predict that this estimate, too, will turn out to be woefully below the actual figure . . . unless something novel happens, like Americans rallying around a “throw the bums out” campaign to elect a Congress and a President that will surgically remove Obamacare from the body politic. Before it kills us.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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

Blame Policy

Petroleum-based fuels are going up in price, so naturally people start looking for someone to blame. Call up the Usual Suspects:

  1. Speculators. These futures market folks never get credit for lowering the prices of gas, but they can always be counted on to serve as easy “bad guy” targets when prices go up. Same this time. You’ve heard the rumors, the rancor. (It’s nuts.)
  2. President Obama. You know, for not allowing drilling and pipelines and such. Go to a meeting of conservatives and you’ll hear someone yell out “Drill, baby, drill!” Now, I’m all for drilling, and it’s stupid to clamp down on future supplies of oil — indeed, investors in the futures market for oil see these political and bureaucratic restrictions on exploration and mining and refining, etc., and no doubt bid up the price of oil — but really, don’t blame just Obama, blame, also,
  3. Romney and Santorum and Gingrich. All these presidential candidates have engaged in hysterical, belligerent rhetoric about Iran, threatening warfare in the Persian Gulf region. War is bad for supply lines. Compromising supply lines means compromised supplies. Which means less oil. Which means rising prices.

So of course futures traders will bid up those prices — they would lose money if they didn’t — and in so doing they make the likely future conditions palpable to contemporary decision makers.

That’s their economic function. Don’t blame the messenger.

So, if you think the U.S. should bomb Iran to prevent that country from bombing the U.S. in a few years (after which the U.S. could easily make the populous nation, full of innocents, a sea of irradiated glass), don’t gripe.

One consequence will be (must be) rising prices.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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incumbents national politics & policies too much government U.S. Constitution

Emperor Obama

People change.

George W. Bush won the presidency pledging a dose of “humility” in our foreign policy and forswearing the temptation to rebuild failed foreign states. But after the 9/11 attacks, the U.S. went to war in Afghanistan and Iraq . . . followed by even more deadly and difficult nation-building efforts.

Presidential powers expanded.

Along came Barack Obama, the peace candidate. His advantage in winning the 2008 Democratic Party nomination was his unequivocal opposition to the Iraq War. Meanwhile, then-Senator, now Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton had voted to give Bush congressional approval to launch that war.

During the campaign, Obama recognized constitutional limits on the commander-in-chief: “The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.”

But as president, Mr. Obama launched air strikes against Libya without congressional authorization. In fact, he refused to even report to Congress as required by law.

And then last week, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) asked Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, “Do you think that you can act, without Congress, and initiate a no-fly zone in Syria, without congressional approval?”

“Our goal would be to seek international permission,” Panetta replied, and then added, “and we would come to the Congress and inform you and determine how best to approach this.”

A republic? America goes to war on the order of one man: Emperor Obama.

But empires change. Past empires rarely asked foreign permission for their military adventures.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.