Category: political economy

Opportunity for … All?

licensing, license, permission, work, labor, regulations

Simple pleasures are the best. So are simple questions.

Senate Bill 2306 in North Dakota “would make it easier for spouses of military personnel to transfer their existing occupational licenses for use in North Dakota, provided they are in good standing and licensed by a reasonable entity,” explains Rob Port at his SayAnythingBlog.

Occupational licensing has exploded, covering a mere 4 – 5 percent of occupations 60 years ago, but nearly 30 percent today. That’s a serious hurdle for folks trying to break into the marketplace.

Over at the Foundation for Economic Education, economist Daniel Mitchell calls licensing a “win-win” for politicians and interest groups that “get to impose barriers that limit competition.”

Not winning? Taxpayers and consumers, says Mitchell. “Or a poor person who wants to get a job.”

An Institute for Justice report released last November concluded that “licensing costs the American economy $197.3 billion” annually by “preventing people from working in the occupations for which they are best suited” and “forcing people to fulfill burdensome licensing requirements that do not raise quality.” Meanwhile, the health and safety benefits attributable to this licensing labyrinth seem scant.

A recent Grand Forks Herald editorial endorsing SB-2306 pointed to the state’s “more than 13,000 unfilled jobs, many of which require licensing,” arguing that “[o]ften, trailing military spouses are qualified to fill those openings, but because of the existing licensing process they are not able to immediately work.”

“[W]hy not make this sort of license reciprocity good for everyone moving into our state?” Mr. Port adroitly inquired.

Yes, Big Government: Tear down these barriers!

For all.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags regulations

ideological culture political economy too much government

Socialism Doesn’t Work, But…

Post author By Redactor
Post date February 11, 2019
2 Comments on Socialism Doesn’t Work, But…

socialism, force, incentive, Occassio-Cortez

“Socialism” — we all want to be sociable, right?

Last week’s anti-socialist moment was not limited to the president’s promise that America would never go socialist, as I noted this weekend there was also Panera Bread’s abandonment of its quasi-charitable Panera Cares (“pay-what-you-want”) fast food chain.

Isn’t that a bit of a strange connection? Socialism is not charity. It’s bad because it is force through and through, not because it seeks to help people.

Well, note that while Panera’s notion was the same as many socialists’, to help the poor. Panera’s method was to cajole, or “nudge,” the better-off to pay enough more to cover the costs of paying less.

Kinda like ObamaCare, but without the force.

And without the force, it failed.

What Panera management discovered is that not only is it very hard to get the message across, it is almost impossible to set up coherent incentives to successfully alter consumer behavior.

Getting incentives right is something that plagues all sorts of socialistic experiments, voluntary or coercive, within a capitalist society.

Take Finland’s recent experiment with a Universal Basic Income (UBI).

The idea of that nation’s centrist party was to take care of the unemployed beneficiaries’ basic needs so they could get back to work.

Well, those who received the basic income were happy enough receiving the moolah. Sure. But “there was no evidence from the first year of the experiment,” a report in Huffington Post admits, “that the scheme incentivized work.” Despite that, socialists in England are pushing for the UBI.

Socialism doesn’t work, and socialists would rather not work — except to advance socialism.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, force, incentive, socialism

ideological culture political economy Popular

Test of Humanity

Velfredo Pareto, economics,laws, socialism

It has been a big week for socialism — or, rather, anti-socialism.

The high point was probably President Trump’s State of the Union Address, in which he opposed not only the murderous, ruinous regime in Venezuela, but also the rising tide of socialism in the Democratic Congress — with Senator Sourface, er, Bernie Sanders, trying not to explode as he heard that taboo word “free” applied to America … not goodies.

Meanwhile, Panera Bread announced, The Blaze reports, that it is closing “its last pay-what-you-can restaurant, located in Boston, on Feb. 15.”

“Panera Cares” was, it appears, “initially created to serve food to low-income people nine years ago in 2010,” but sure seemed to be itching to prove a sort of post-capitalist point. The company’s founder, Ron Shaich, said that “the program’s aim was a ‘test of humanity.’”

More like a test of gullibility.

No branch of the “experiment” ever ran in the black. Like experiments in society-wide socialism, it relied upon subsidy to carry on — but unlike in socialism, Panera could not force people to cough up the dough needed to keep it going.

Once upon a time, the great economist Vilfredo Pareto, during a lecture, was repeatedly interrupted by one Gustav von Schmoller, who denied that economists had discovered any enduring principles, especially ones that would undermine his beloved socialism. So Pareto dressed down as a bum and approached Schmoller on the streets, inquiring about a restaurant that served meals for free. When Schmoller told him that there were only cheap, but no free meals, at restaurants, Pareto stood up with the ultimate gotcha:

“So there are laws in economics!”

Socialism fails reality’s test.

Humanity has not failed socialism’s.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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national politics & policies political economy Popular

Re-Packaging Nonsense as Wisdom

Post author By Redactor
Post date January 23, 2019
1 Comment on Re-Packaging Nonsense as Wisdom

When committed to folly, clever people make it look wise.

An article last week in Forbes, “The Green New Deal: How We Will Pay For It Isn’t ‘A Thing’ — And Inflation Isn’t Either,” by Robert Hockett, says that “how could we pay for it?” challenges have already been answered best by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

She demands to know why only “useful ideas,” like hers, get challenged that way. “Where were the ‘pay-fors’ for Bush’s $5 trillion wars and tax cuts, or for last year’s $2 trillion tax giveaway to billionaires?”

Where? Here!

And anywhere there’s common sense.

Hockney has his own retort, though, retrieving from the peanut gallery of economics an idiocy called “Modern Monetary Theory” (MMT).

“Congress will authorize necessary spending, and Treasury will spend,” he writes. Government funds are “never ‘raised’ first” because “federal spending is what brings that money into existence.”

Look, the United States has indeed come to rely upon debt financing. But it wasn’t always the rule. More importantly, the widespread and long-term effects are where post-gold standard monetary creation gets tricky.

So are MMT advocates. Tricky, that is. What they hide are the dispersed costs, many of which we pay in higher prices.

Their main “contribution” — as stated in the National Review, of all places, yesterday — is that “When a government issues its own currency, as our federal government does, it is in a financial situation different from those of most institutions or households.”

Not really. When a household writes checks it knows will bounce, it does pretty much the same thing.

When governments rely upon debt money, someone is still getting ripped off. With government, though, it isn’t the businesses holding bad checks, it is all of us.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

N.B. This episode of Common Sense has been corrected from the email version: the author of the Forbes article is not the painter David Hockney.

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