Category: folly

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Accountability folly national politics & policies responsibility

Greedy Union Bosses

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Since the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) is a union, you might assume it holds that workers should be unionized.

Or, at the very least, that workers should have a right to unionize, if they so choose.

But you would be mistaken.

Similarly, many unions, most notably the SEIU, have been quite vocal in urging — demanding — that cities and states and the federal government require businesses to pay their employees a minimum wage of $15 an hour. The “Fight for 15” is their fight, no?

No.

Well, yes and no. It may be a fight they’ve picked, but unions such as the SEIU are on both sides of it. They’re fighting mighty hard to make other employers pay at least $15 an hour to employees, sure, but they’ve apparently not got an ounce of fight left to muster up the $15 an hour in pay for their own employees.

Last month, the pro-labor In These Times covered the struggle between the SEIU and those working for the SEIU’s “Fight for $15” campaign to form their own union as well as to receive an hourly wage of $15.

“We don’t have the right to join a union that we’re fighting for other workers to have,” one worker explained. “When we’re fighting for everyone to have $15 an hour, we should have it ourselves.”

“It is true that over the labor movement’s long history,” confirmed David Moberg, senior editor at In These Times, “many unions have fought with their staff over whether staff could or should organize.”

“Practice what you preach,” Moberg admonished the unions.

And if that’s so difficult for the SEIU, maybe what it preaches is the problem.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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folly free trade & free markets general freedom moral hazard too much government

When Parasites Collide

Apple, EU, tax, Europe, Ireland, illustr

There are times I wish I were a tax accountant.

You know, just so I could better understand the news.

The European Commission has handed Apple, Inc., a $14.5 billion tax bill.

Owed to Ireland.

Apple, the tax commissioners said, had paid too little in taxes to Ireland, amounting to a mere 1 percent of the company’s European profits.

The Emerald Isle’s normal corporate tax rate is 12.5 percent.

On first read, this sounded like a tale of crony capitalism, with the EU’s tax authorities riding in, heroically, holding aloft the gonfalon of fair play, on the side of truth, justice, and an even playing field.

Well, the story gets complicated. The U.S. Treasury has protested the ruling as unfair. And Senator Chuck Schumer called it a “cheap money grab.”

The Wall Street Journal opinion page comes out on Apple’s side, too, but gives some specifics. Apple paid all the taxes it owed under Irish and EU law, but the ruling wasn’t about law, it was, we are told, about politics.

I can believe that.

So, as near as I can make out, what we have here are three sets of governmental interests, each intent on sucking the most out of a rich, innovative, and wildly successful multinational corporation.

It’s hard not to side with the target, Apple, and think of the other groups as mere parasites.

After all, my non-accountant’s spidey sense suspects that Schumer objects because the U.S. government isn’t going to get any of that $13 billion.

Preferring an “expensive money grab,” I suppose.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.  

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folly ideological culture media and media people national politics & policies political challengers

Naked Came the Pickle

Donald Trump, statue, Hillary Clinton, pickles, illustration

Last week, Donald Trump’s enemies staged an “emperor has no clothes” gag in full view of the public. It was a caricature of Trump, and featured him fat, old, and nude . . . and gave us a full view of the pubic.

Titled “The Emperor Has No Balls,” it failed to qualify as highbrow.

Kristin Tate, author of Government Gone Wild, was one of many non-left commenters to take note of the double standard in plain sight: while media folk chuckled and even gloried in the short-lived art placements, their reaction to a similar graven image of Hillary Clinton would almost certainly have been viewed with horror and outrage.

This week, the real (non-effigy) Hillary proffered another stunt.

Facing rumors that she is not well, that her fall several years ago left her with a host of neurological and physical disabilities — rumors that focus on her weird leave of the stage at one of the Bernie debates, her strange, uncomfortable and borderline autistic bouts of laughter, her exaggerated motions, and much more — Mrs. Clinton went on Jimmy Kimmel Live to open a jar of pickles.

Considering the pickle she placed America in throughout the Middle East, perhaps there was a message here.

Whatever feat of strength this was supposed to amount to, Kristin Tate is having none of it. On Fox News’s RedEye, Ms. Tate insisted she heard no telltale “pop” that would indicate the unsealing of a sealed jar.

Somehow, this whole election season is symbolized in one lame stunt.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Categories
Accountability folly ideological culture nannyism responsibility

Venezuela’s New Firing Squad

Maduro, Venezuela, socialism, collapse, illustration

We’ve watched Venezuela’s big-daddy socialism descend into dystopia:

  • Arbitrary arrests of political opponents;
  • An economy managed by government decree, in which inflation “may top 700 percent this year” and toilet paper, food and medicine are in terribly short supply;
  • The once oil-rich country has become “the worst performing economy in the world,” with hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans clogging border crossings with Colombia;
  • Meanwhile government workers “enjoy” a two-day work-week to save electricity, avoiding the wasted hours caused by daily blackouts;
  • And President Maduro has decreed that citizens can be conscripted — drafted into service — for 60 days, forced to pick crops.

“Venezuela brings back fedual [sic] serfdom to try to alleviate food shortages,” read one online headline. (Don’t laugh, that may be how we spell “feudal” someday.)

Still believing in magic . . . “Maduro ordered a 50 percent increase in the minimum wage last month,” informed the National Post, “but the latest studies show that salaries still fall far short of the amount needed to obtain basic household goods and food.”

Socialism has failed, again, and in doing so demonstrates something more than economic shortcomings. As the late President Ford warned, “A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take everything you have.”

The Venezuelan people have the right to recall the president enshrined in their constitution, a particularly popular right at present . . . but the Maduro dictatorship refuses to take prompt, lawful action to facilitate the recall.

Not to mention unjustly arresting citizens circulating the recall petition or telling high government ministers to fire any government worker who signs.

So much for the socialist revolution . . . now tyrannically blocking a real revolution.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.     

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folly free trade & free markets general freedom moral hazard national politics & policies tax policy too much government

Whose Side Are They On?

Uber, Lyft, Taxi, protection, tax, crony, cronyism, illustration

Excuse me if I drive over familiar roadways. But we are witnessing one of the great revolutions in human cooperation.

And our governments and politicians are working mightily to block traffic.

I refer, of course, to Uber and Lyft and the like.

The innovation that these companies bring to market? Enabling everyday drivers to leverage their personal investment in a capital good — a car or SUV — to make extra bucks (or even a living) while efficiently serving people who want rides.

Ride-hailing apps on smart-phones provide more security and consumer guidance than the old taxi services ever bothered to even try. The elaborate online rating system, where drivers rate riders and vice versa, provides a new market in information that outstrips government “regulation” as a consumer defense system.

And consumers get better rides, cheaper.

The Uberization of ride sharing competes directly with taxis, of course, and that’s a problem . . . for taxi companies. And the politicians who have regulated them for years. This regulation never was about consumer protection, but politicians just feathered their own nests with campaign contributions through crony capitalism, helping some taxi services at the expense of others.

And customers.

The latest idiocy hails from Massachusetts, which has enacted a 20¢ per trip tax on all ride-sharing apps, with 5¢ of each charge slated for subsidizing the old, established taxi services.

Taxachusetts’s Republican governor, Charlie Baker, has been sucked in to the government racket, choosing to support old cronies rather than customers.

Still, it could have been worse. The advocates of the tax had initially demanded Uber be banned.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Illustration based on original cc photo by GörlitzPhotography on Flickr

 

Categories
Accountability folly general freedom ideological culture meme moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies

Two Headed Beast

Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, Godzilla, beast, business as usual, presidential, meme, illustration, collage

More War, More Cronyism, More Corporate Give-Aways, More CrowdedPrisons, More Taxes, More Regulations, More Drug War, More PoliceMilitarization and Civil Rights Violations, More Assaults on Free Speech, More Economic Bungling, More Debt, More Control, More Corruption.

Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, Godzilla, beast, business as usual, presidential, meme, illustration, collage

 

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education and schooling folly free trade & free markets general freedom ideological culture national politics & policies responsibility too much government

Miseducated and Unemployed

minimum wage, illustration, money, economics

The persistence of the issue of raising the minimum wage is an indictment of public education, for at least two reasons:

  1. It shows that “our” schools are not teaching basic economics. Generally, those who think minimum wages help the poor do not understand what wages are (price of labor), why they are paid (worker productivity bolstering the bottom line) and what a minimum wage law is (a prohibition on contracting for work below the arbitrary government-prescribed rate).
  2. It shows that schools aren’t preparing the young for real-world activity. Wages track productivity. If disturbingly large numbers of people are affected by the minimum, that means they haven’t been adequately trained in the skills they need.

Bernie Sanders wanted a 15-buck minimum. Hillary went on record supporting a 12-buck rate. Donald Trump would prefer that the minimum wage regulations be enacted by the states, though he says a hike to ten dollars per hour would really help the less fortunate.

It wouldn’t.

That is the tacit theme in a Wall Street Journal piece on the recent minimum wage rate hikes in 14 American cities, including the nation’s capital. A classic, succinct article on BET makes the point even more stark: a duo of economists from Trinity University “report that when a state, or the federal government, increases the minimum wage, Black teens are more likely to be laid off. The duo analyzed 600,000 data points, which the Employment Policies Institute says included ‘a robust sample of minority young adults unprecedented in previous studies on the minimum wage.’”

Just as theory predicts.

Could it be that politicians promise a raise because they believe government-schooled Americans too miseducated to know better?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability Common Sense folly general freedom ideological culture media and media people meme national politics & policies too much government

More Common Sense from Tom Paine

Tom Paine, Thomas Paine, quote, quotation, wrong, right, meme, illustration

“A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right.”

Quote (from Paine’s “Common Sense”) verified here.

Tom Paine, Thomas Paine, quote, quotation, wrong, right, meme, illustration

 

Categories
Accountability folly moral hazard national politics & policies

The Longest War

Afghanistan, Obama, war, quagmire, illustration, photo

Is there a light at the end of the proverbial tunnel?

President Obama announced, Wednesday, that he would leave more troops in Afghanistan when he exits office than previously planned. Instead of cutting the current troop deployment of 10,000 down to 5,500 soldiers, Obama will now keep 8,400 “in country,” continuing our longest war.

Entering the 15th year of armed conflict and military occupation, thousands of lives lost along with hundreds of billions in treasure spent to equip and train Afghan forces and build infrastructure — and buy off warlords — recent U.N. estimates find the tyrannical Taliban controlling more actual territory in Afghanistan today than before the 2001 U.S. invasion.

Don’t blame the military. Our all-volunteer army is the greatest fighting force on the planet. But militaries break things; building new institutions and especially new modes of thinking among a foreign population is more difficult.

No political magic exists capable of turning Afghanistan into Arizona. Not this year, not the next, a decade from now, or two decades . . . not even a century down the road.

We must never forget that “war is the continuation of politics by other means.”

And the politics don’t add up. There’s no credible plan to “win” in Afghanistan. All our leaders can muster is the witless maintenance of a deadly charade: nation-building a nation that balks at being built, hoping the roof falls in on someone else later . . . in the other party.

Sometimes courage means recognizing reality.

Our men and women in uniform have better things to do than fight and die for decades in a no-win war.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Photo credit: Joseph Swafford on Flickr, courtesty of DVIDSHUB

 

Categories
Accountability folly free trade & free markets general freedom government transparency initiative, referendum, and recall moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies property rights

The Return of the Philosopher King

technocracy, expert, epistocracy Brexit, illustration

On Sunday, at Townhall, I addressed the whining attacks on referendums and “democracy” that followed the Brexit referendum.

The most outrageous? A broadside from Jason Brennan.

“To have even a rudimentary sense of the pros and cons of Brexit,” argues this Robert J. and Elizabeth Flanagan Family Associate Professor of Strategy, Economics, Ethics, and Public Policy at the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University, “a person would need to possess tremendous social scientific knowledge. One would need to know about the economics and sociology of trade and immigration, the politics of centralized regulation, and the history of nationalist movements.”

In other words, most Brits needn’t worry their pretty little heads about deciding their future; experts have everything under control.

Brennan has a new book coming out, Against Democracy, wherein he posits that we need “a new system of government — epistocracy, the rule of the knowledgeable.”

Sound familiar? ’Tis the old Platonic whine in new wineskins.

This Philosopher King is necessary, you see, because citizens don’t posses the advanced degrees to judge whether Brennan is right or wrong. We can’t even find a Holiday Inn Express in the phonebook. Or a phonebook.

Nonetheless, why not consult other known knowers?

The late William F. Buckley, Jr., well-educated and well-spoken on political matters, once declared that he would “rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory, than to the faculty of Harvard University.”

“Incestuous, homogeneous fiefdoms of self-proclaimed expertise are always rank-closing and mutually self-defending, above all else,” warned journalist Glenn Greenwald, an expert on such hooey.

“I know no safe depositary of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves,” wrote Thomas Jefferson, “and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education.”

Most decisions in a free society are thankfully made by individuals (not voters, bureaucrats, or academics) about their own lives.

But when legitimate decisions of governance must be made, I’ll take democracy over rule by experts.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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