Categories
Thought

Jean-Baptiste Say

A man who applies his labour to the investing of objects with value by the creation of utility of some sort, can not expect such a value to be appreciated and paid for, unless where other men have the means of purchasing it. Now, of what do these means consist? Of other values of other products, likewise the fruits of industry, capital, and land. Which leads us to a conclusion that may at first appear paradoxical, namely, that it is production which opens a demand for products.

Categories
free trade & free markets tax policy

The “Fair” Tax That Wasn’t

Talk of tax “fairness” may be all the rage today, but it takes me back to 1980 and Jimmy Carter’s “windfall profits tax.”

In the previous year, then-President Carter had delivered his infamous “Malaise Speech,” in which he had addressed concerns about the energy crisis, going on and on about this program and that, and the need for “energy independence,” but not mentioning the one good thing done during his administration regarding energy: the beginning of energy market deregulation.

Carter’s Democratic Party was, like today’s Democrats, concerned about “fairness.” Because of the deregulation, they expected energy companies to reap “windfall profits.” Which those businesses somehow didn’t “deserve.”

Arguable, that.

But skip morality for a moment, and look at it from an economic point of view. The new, extra profits from a deregulated market would have enticed more investment into the areas where the “windfalls” were being made, thus increasing production, reducing prices. To the benefit of all.

Instead, Congress enacted the tax, and Carter signed it 33 years ago yesterday. And for six years, domestic production of oil produced “negative” profits. All Congress really did was delay and diminish the economic recovery to be expected from deregulation.

Congress also got much less revenue from the tax than projected.

The Crude Oil Windfall Profits Tax was repealed in 1988, and we experienced great growth in the 1990s.

A word of caution, I think, to those who bandy about “fairness” to the exclusion of sense, or worry overmuch about energy company profits, today.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Thought

Jean-Baptiste Say

Still how unenlightened and ignorant are the very nations we term civilized!

Categories
free trade & free markets media and media people

Apple Abjectly Apologizes for Arrogance

Apple is a huge company, selling gadgets around the world. One of its biggest markets turns out to be China, which is also a supplier of many components. And working within a quasi-capitalist/quasi-post-communist dictatorship does have its problems.

Yesterday we learned that Apple’s head honcho, Tim Cook, has openly apologized to Chinese consumers.

He did it under pressure . . . from China’s state-run media.

The non-paranoid way of looking at this is that Apple has fallen down on the job of Chinese consumer support. The company’s 17,000 outlets, including eleven Apple-branded stores, just do not service consumer complaints well enough.

This may be true.

But the pile-on by the media looks a little different than, say, the piling-on by America’s media against successful companies here. It has the odor of concerted plan, “commandment from on high.”

And it is well known that China — which tries to plan its economy as much as humanly possible, with the iron fist of totalitarian law — when it gets really serious, gets serious indeed.

So, Tim Cook’s abject apology echoes not so much Apple’s rare apologies in America, but the apologies made by targets of China’s Cultural Revolution, a generation or two ago, at least if the BBC has it right:

State broadcaster CCTV and the state’s flagship newspaper, People’s Daily, had portrayed Apple as the latest Western company to exploit Chinese citizens.

Last week the paper ran an editorial headlined: “Strike down Apple’s incomparable arrogance.”

Even Apple’s (or Microsoft’s) critics in the West don’t sound that strident.

For the record, I have complaints with all gadgets, all systems, all suppliers. I can truly be nonpartisan on this.

And this is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Thought

F. A. Hayek

Socialism has never and nowhere been at first a working-class movement. It is by no means an obvious remedy for the obvious evil which the interests of that class will necessarily demand. It is a construction of theorists, deriving from certain tendencies of abstract thought with which for a long time only the intellectuals were familiar; and it required long efforts by the intellectuals before the working classes could be persuaded to adopt it as their program.

Categories
too much government

Buck-Stop Bus Stop

A million dollars here, a million there, and pretty soon you’re talking about a real bus stop.

At least, that’s the sticker shock in Arlington County, Virginia, just minutes south of our nation’s capital; a bus stop costs a million bucks.

“Is it made of gold?” asked one commuter.

Others called it “ridiculous,” an “outrage,” and suggested someone get “their butt canned.”

Let us properly note, however, that local transportation officials have unequivocally pronounced this state-of-the-art bus stop “an investment in infrastructure to support the [Columbia] Pike’s renewal.” According to Washington Post reporting, “New and densely developed housing is expected to be built in the next 20 years,” along the highway — not to mention a planned streetcar with a $250 million price-tag.

Think Arlington taxpayers are lazy and wasteful? Well, 80 percent of the money for the bling bus stops came from state and federal taxpayers. And county officials are hoping federal taxpayers will fork over 30 percent of the streetcar project, too.

There are so many exasperating elements to this fiasco that it’d be easy to callously ignore the fact that the million-dollar-bus-stop-shelter, as County Board member Libby Garvey put it, “doesn’t seem to be a shelter.” Calling it “pretty,” she added, “but I was struck by the fact that if it’s pouring rain, I’m going to get wet, and if it’s cold, the wind is going to be blowing on me.”

If you don’t like wasting a million dollars on a shelter that doesn’t provide shelter, chill out; the county is only planning to build another 24 shelters, and at a savings — only a smidgen over $900,000 each.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

P.S. After news reports, lots of folks apparently refused to “chill out” causing Arlington County officials to abruptly suspend plans, for now, to build 24 more million-dollar “Super Stop” bus stops. Hooray!

Categories
Thought

Amos Bronson Alcott

The true teacher defends his pupils against his own personal influence. He inspires self-trust. He guides their eyes from himself to the spirit that quickens him. He will have no disciples. A noble artist, he has visions of excellence and revelations of beauty which he has neither impersonated in character nor embodied in words. His life and teachings are but studies for yet nobler ideals.

Categories
Thought

Amos Bronson Alcott

Stay is a charming word in a friend’s vocabulary. But if one does not stay while staying, better let him go where he is gone the while.

Categories
links

Townhall: Obama and the Bloody Shirt

Over at Townhall this weekend, your Common Sense columnist considers President Obama’s emotionalist focus on the Newtown massacre as an excuse for irrelevant “gun control.” Go there. And come back here to cogitate on a few of the more controversial points:

Categories
video

Video: Hawaii’s “Lone Ranger”

And you thought Ron Paul was lonely as “Dr. No”!