Category: free trade & free markets

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free trade & free markets too much government

Resistance Is Not Futile

Who says signing up for Obamacare is all snarls and snafus?

Thirty-year-old law student Brian Mahoney already had a high-deductible, low-premium insurance plan. But the day the Obamacare exchanges went online, he decided to check it out. For him, unlike thousands of others, signing up was easy.

Great. Except that . . . Mahoney had been paying for medical insurance, and now he’s on Medicaid. The website told him he was eligible. Thus, the “success” here is the triumph of making a capable adult less self-responsible and more dependent on government handouts.

And that’s bad. If we care about our freedom, what we must do is resist appeals, or demands, that we forfeit control over our lives — even if offered a mess of pottage in return. Refuse to cooperate with the bureaucrats and politicians. Not become martyrs, but resist to the extent that we can resist. Even if it’s, well, more than a tad inconvenient. Certainly we should not submit to new chains and crutches eagerly.

A reader at the Hot Air blog reports that when he asked his doctor about “about how our electronic records would be used and protected” under the Obamacare regime, the doctor replied: “We’re not keeping electronic records. We refuse to comply with Obamacare. We’re not switching over.”

Good for you, Doc. We need more like you.

I certainly don’t want my medical records in the hands of government . . . to name just one of the things having to do with me, my rights and my life that I don’t want government anywhere near.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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free trade & free markets too much government

Billions to Billionaires

I began the week talking about opera. If I end the week discussing football, you can be sure that I’m closer to my home turf.

Which doesn’t make this any easier, for, though many operas stay afloat with taxpayer funds, far more taxpayer money goes to football.

The National Football League, owned by billionaires whose product rakes in big bucks through ticket sales and eye-popping broadcast fees, could certainly support itself. And yet these rich folk don’t merely pass the hat, they wave guns under the table, extorting money out of taxpayers across the country.

Writing in The Atlantic, Gregg Easterbrook surveys the damage. He might as well channel Carl Sagan, for the answer to “how much do taxpayers waste on football?” is “billions and billions.”

Santa Clara’s new “home” for the 49ers is a $1.3 billion stadium, which, writes Easterbrook, although largely “underwritten by the public,” will drive revenue that will mostly “be pocketed by Denise DeBartolo York, whose net worth is estimated at $1.1 billion, and members of her family.”

So much of subsidy ends up helping mainly the rich. Opera? Mainly an upper class thing. Football? It may reach the lowbrow, but boy, do the rich make out like bandits, off the taxpayers.

Indeed, argues Easterbrook, this is worse than the bailouts. “Public handouts for modern professional football never end and are never repaid.”

If you don’t oppose subsidies to football, which are obviously unnecessary transfer payments from the poor to the super rich, what subsidy would you oppose?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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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.

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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.

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free trade & free markets

Dis-united We Stand

In 2011, when the battle in Wisconsin raged between Governor Walker and his allies on the one hand and the public employee unions on the other, the two sides seemed monolithic. Especially the union side, with thousands of members swarming the state capitol to march in angry protest.

It would be calamity, union reps declared, were any concession made to the requirements of fiscal sobriety. Union members should not be required to contribute more to their health care or pension costs; suffer any limits on pay raises or collective bargaining; and certainly not be required to let their own members decide whether they wished to remain in a union.

It’s this last point that suggested a not-so-very-monolithic union force after all. Now that members are being asked whether they want their unions, the state’s public employee unions are losing between 30 to 60 percent of their members in various cities and counties.

In the Kenosha Unified School District, Wisconsin’s third largest, only 37 percent of the membership voted to re-certify their union. An official with the Wisconsin Education Association Council (WEAC) trade union admits that “the majority of our affiliates in the state aren’t seeing re-certification, so I don’t think the KEA is . . . unique in this.”

“As it turns out,” writes blogger Brian Fraley, “Act 10 was the largest anti-bullying initiative in the nation. Who knew?”

Well, now, we all should.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.