Tag: Reason

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Common Sense crime and punishment folly general freedom national politics & policies responsibility too much government

Cannabis and Kings

Jack boot, photomontage, collage, James Gill, Paul Jacob, Common Sense, http://cognitivebiasparade.prosite.com/

The over-riding reason to end the War on Drugs is to re-establish the rule of law in this country.

From Nixon and Reagan to the present time, America has vastly increased the population of prison inmates, many of them for drug offenses. The “land of the free” shouldn’t boast a larger population (per capita and total) of unfree persons than any other nation on the planet.

Further, in the mania to apprehend contraband drug users, producers, and traffickers, we’ve pretty much lost Bill of Rights protections on our lives and our property.

We’ve armed nearly every conceivable division of government against us, turning local, state and federal police “services” into police state apparatuses that hound and steal from portions of our population — which turns them from citizens into fearful, resentful, servile subjects. Meanwhile, the use of civil asset forfeiture and other policing for profit schemes corrupt our police forces in a serious and fundamental and “King Georgish” way.

Sam and John Adams, Toms Jefferson and Paine — they’d all be aghast at what we have become.

But what of the growing tide to legalize/decriminalize marijuana? Reading a report by Steven Greenhut in Reason, it becomes apparent that not every step moves us towards a rule of law. Some steps in “regulating and taxing” cannabis may be more about using crony capitalism to choose winners and losers.

Let’s use some common sense from lessons learned with alcohol — er, with regulating alcohol, that is. Keep marijuana away from the kids and keep the over-regulation of marijuana away from adults.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Jack boot, photomontage, collage, James Gill, Paul Jacob, Common Sense

 

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national politics & policies too much government

Economics vs. Politician-Incurred Debt

For several years now I have worried — here on Common Sense and on Townhall — about the unsustainability of politician-incurred debt.

I’ve used the word “unsustainable” quite a few times. But too often I’ve simply called it “government debt.” I think I like “politician-incurred debt” better. For it’s politicians who have been unable to keep from over-spending.

And pretending that the consequent problem of debt is “impossible to solve in the current political climate.”

They’re wrong, of course. The “current political climate” is whatever people think and speak right now. Change the way we think and speak, and suddenly the impossible becomes possible.

But what do economists say?

Economists are notoriously able at the higher maths, such as simultaneous equations, symbolic logic and regression analysis. But the number of economists unfazed by the simple calculations to figure debt load and maintenance is almost as frightening as those figures.

Luckily, those ready to do the arithmetic of public debt are on the rise.

Take economist Veronique de Rugy.

Writing in Reason magazine, de Rugy succinctly offers up the numbers. America’s trillions in debt now surpasses half of Gross Domestic Product. Politician-incurred borrowing increasingly soaks up the limited capital available, undermining market recovery. She says politicians must “reform entitlement spending, put both military and domestic spending on the chopping block, and start selling off federal assets. Better to do it now than during a fire sale later.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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free trade & free markets

The Next Market To Melt

“During melting markets, all pension funds come under siege.”

I’m quoting from a February article by John Entine. This Reason magazine cover story is entitled “The Next Catastrophe,” and, like so many things these days, it’s scary. Entine explains how fragile pension funds can become when markets collapse.

Regular listeners know that I’ve been worried about what we might call the Ultimate Catastrophe. Increasing demands on Social Security and other entitlement programs, like Medicare, added to never-ending deficit spending, threaten to bankrupt the nation.

But Entine looks at a different economic crisis. He points out that all pension funds can become unhinged in chaotic markets. Old news. What’s new? Well, many government and union pension funds began taking riskier stances regarding stock investing a few decades ago. And with greater risk comes You Know What.

Worse yet, many funds have been hijacked by well-meaning do-gooders, investing in “socially responsible” causes rather than reasonably run profitable companies. These funds are worth over $2 trillion. That is, they are until their fundamentals prove weak or worse, and they go down, down, down.

As with the mortgage markets, it seems that pension management has undergone a huge paradigm shift, away from security and savvy, towards . . . nonsense.

Things are not looking up, up, up.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.