We need to learn quickly to keep up with the massive change around us so we don't get run over. We need to outrun change.
Did you know that in the 1930s raisin producers had to give a portion of their harvest to the government with the feds deciding what portion of the crop every producer had to turn over and what price they would get?
Neither did I.
(Cross post from my other blog Freedom is Moral.)
Did you know that program is still in place today, 80 some odd years later?
Neither did I.
Did you know that in the 2002-2003 season
Continue reading “Economic destruction from the New Deal just keeps rolling on”
(Cross-post from my other blog, Freedom is Moral.)
The sinking of the Titanic is usually blamed on that careless, horrible Captain Smith and the greedy, capitalist shipowner who didn’t want the expense or inconvenience or clutter of enough lifeboats. Rarely discussed is the role of the regulators in the tragedy.
Chris Berg points out in his Wall Street Journal article a year ago, The Real Reason for the Tragedy of the Titanic, that the regulators, the British Board of Trade, required all boats over 10,000 metric tons to have 16 lifeboats. It didn’t matter how many passengers were on board. Just put 16 lifeboats on.
Was the Titanic in compliance? Yes.
Continue reading “Role of regulatory failure in the sinking of the Titanic”
“A tax on income is the price you pay for working; a tax on profits, the price you pay for success; and a tax on capital gains, the price you pay for taking risks that work out.”
That is Steve Forbes’ great one-sentence explanation of taxes in Forbes magazine. When you tax something you get less of it. Here’s a few questions:
Continue reading “How much working, success, and capital gains do we want?”
When can we start calling it foolishness to burn corn in our cars?
Via Meadia’s post Biofuel Boondoggle Just Won’t Quit begins:
Corn-based ethanol starves the world’s poor and increases greenhouse gas emissions
Standards set by Congress require a certain amount of ethanol be used. Here’s the required amount this year compared to production and expected demand:
…check out the wisdom of politicians and regulators evidenced before the last crisis.
Read The Housing Bubble and the Limits of Human Knowledge , by Alex Pollock.
The fallacy in play today is that the regulators who didn’t see our current financial crisis coming (or helped facilitate it) are now wise & bright enough that they will be able to detect any future crisis far enough in advance to prevent them. It’s quite obvious that is the operating concept driving laws and regulations for several years now.
Continue reading “While pondering the wisdom of those who can prevent the next financial crisis…”
(Cross-post from my other blog, Freedom is Moral.)
“My family and I have succeeded by following the path to freedom. But that path is on the verge of vanishing. What we’re starting to see here in America now is a growth in the size and the scope of government that is now starting to look like the governments that we left behind.”
Here is how to lift people up the economic ladder:
Advancing economic freedom is the best way to improve human well-being, especially those at the bottom.
That’s the path to moving out of poverty and economic success. Check out this video from LIBRE Initiative:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNHywGefNnQ&feature=player_embedded]
Continue reading “Want to improve the lives of people at the bottom? Then provide economic freedom.”
There was a big on-air confessional a while back. Something about bicycles. Here’s another interview that got overshadowed by that big one. Or perhaps it is an educational cartoon. I’m not sure.
Bernanke to Oprah: ‘I’ve Been Doping for Years’.
This cartoon gives a superb explanation in 12 minutes of a major factor about how we got into our current economic mess.
The format is an imaginary interview with the chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank, Ben Bernanke, as he confesses to long-term doping of the economy.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=orh64vypKwU]
Continue reading “Quantitative Easing and other performance enhancing drugs”
In this video, Milton Freidman explains the tradeoffs between making cars more safe versus the cost of doing so.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faSa3r8WIU0]
The questioner, who hasn’t thought the issue through very well, illustrates the confusion on the issue. He objects to Ford designing the Pinto car to exclude a $13 part and in doing so costing 200 lives a year. The breakeven point is $200,000 per life.
Let’s look at those numbers.
Let’s stipulate those facts and numbers are correct. Don’t know if that is the case, but let’s assume so. Don’t know if that supposed memo actually exists, but let’s assume so.
That means it would have cost Ford $40,000,000 to put that part in all the 3,076,923 Pintos they built.
Dr. Freidman devastates the questioner by pointing out this is not a moral argument of principle. What the questioner is arguing is the value used. He believes the $200K number should be higher.
And that is the debate.
What value would you pick?
Just in time for the Oscars…
A post at my other blog, Freedom is Moral – Movie Production Credits – Crony Capitalism that Attracts Few Jobs.
At a combined price tag of $1.5 billion a year, state and local governments try to outbid each other to get production. The main issue is how much of a net drain those subsidies create on state and local economies. Check out the article.
(Cross-post from my other blog, Freedom is Moral.)
If you need anything other than the clothes you wear in order to do the work needed to get a paycheck, you are dependent on “the rich” to provide the tools and equipment to get your work done.
That is the point in a 1-25-13 letter to the editor at the Wall Street Journal from Mr. Fred Anderson of Pittsburgh.
He says: Continue reading “The poor need the rich so the poor can go to work”
If you thought zero documentation and 120% loans were good for the economy, you will love capital appreciation bonds.
Here’s the deal – what are schools and local governments in California to do once they have run out of cash to pay even the interest on bonds, can’t cover the principal on the cost of new buildings, and face huge voter resistance to any increase in spending? What to do when you just want to keep spending?
How about issuing capital appreciation bonds. That allows the government agency to keep spending whatever they want.
You can borrow money, make no payments for 20 years, compound the interest into principal, and burden the adult children of current students with the huge payments.
(Cross-post from my other blog Freedom Is Moral.)
That would be capitalism.
I, for one, am thrilled to not live as my great-great-grandparents did. I’m not into subsistence agriculture, loosing half my children in their infancy, or facing a life expectancy of 30 years.
John Mackey has expanded that idea in his book, Conscious Capitalism.
Carpe Diem has a quote from the author in their post, Quotation of the day: Capitalism has lifted humanity out of the dirt and is greatest value creator in history of the world Continue reading “What economic system has lifted humanity out of the dirt?”
(Cross-post from my other blog, Freedom Is Moral)
“[…] many of the financial institutions that contributed to the problem were crony capitalist. Business leaders can have confidence in the working of free markets. It is government interference in markets that they should fear.”
John A. Allison
That’s the opening quote in Pablo Paniagua’s review of Mr. Allison’s book, The Financial Crisis and the Free Market Cure: Why Pure Capitalism is the World Economy’s Only Hope
Mr. Allison was a long-serving CEO of BB&T Bank. He saw the interference of government in the banking industry up close and personal.
Those icky, greedy bankers and icky greedy Wall Street financiers played a role in our current mess, but minor compared to the interference and misdirection and forced distortions arising from various federal agencies.
An overview of the mess we are in: Continue reading “Role of the government in generating the financial crisis”
Here is the first entry in the current year Economics Music Video Contest from Fayetteville State University.
Big books shows value is determined by the consumer.
Do you want to make a fortune? Figure out what consumers want and provide it.
Check this out:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLjiT5tt-WVpqPX1roEXtp8kttcHYVEv4g&feature=player_embedded&v=aAHR8NEpnP8]
A couple of fun lines: Continue reading “Value and satisfaction are defined by the consumer”
A frequent comment at several blogs I follow and discussion on this blog is the dramatic improvement in life generated by technology over the last few decades. Look here, here, here, and here. For a longer term perspective, look here.
Don Boudreaux and Mark Perry expand the discussion beyond technology to explain the middle class is much better off today than in the 1970s. Check out their article in the Wall Street Journal – The Myth of a Stagnant Middle Class.
The claim they are addressing is the idea that only the richest people are better off over the last 30 years:
Continue reading “American middle class isn’t stagnating but is better off than in the ‘70s”