Monthly Archives: October 2009

QED: Normal People Like Taxes

Posted on by razma766
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Kurt Bouwhuis, Mackinac Center Intern

Eric Baerren makes an interesting point in this blog post over at MichiganLiberal.

“Normal people would establish as their chief priority to make sure that schools are good and that people can access health care and that the garbage trucks operate according to a reliable schedule. Again, that’s normal people. Abnormal people first and foremost concern themselves with making sure we don’t raise taxes.” – Eric Baerren

Eric is confusing means with ends. All the services listed in the first sentence of the quote are the ends.  Most people agree that these ends are very important.  The desired means, however, vary from person to person.  The people who think more like Eric believe that government is a useful means for achieving the ends.  Those who oppose such means believe that reducing government will bring about the same ends.

The questions is not whether someone is normal or abnormal, but rather, whether or not the desired means to the end are destructive or productive.

btw – By Eric’s criteria, I am an abnormal person with normal person desires.

An Undeniable Influence

Posted on by ewreynolds
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95-thesesOctober 31, 1517: Martin Luther nailed ninety-five theses on the doors of the castle church in Wittenberg for discussion and debate. Luther’s hammer did not just merely question church practice; it tolled the beginning of our modern world.  Read more on Landmarks of Liberty…

E. Wesley – Mackinac Center Intern

Spoils Exchange

Posted on by razma766
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Here is a letter I recently sent to the Midland Daily News:

A recent editorial by the Midland Daily News contained the following statement: “[Midland] is also due for a federal grant, stimulus money, to help offset some of the costs of smaller-scale green efforts. It’s all taxpayer dollars, but not all Midland taxpayer dollars. That’s the kind of government assistance we need.” (“Greenbacks for green energy a good trade,” October 21).

Nonsense.

How would residents of Midland feel if an additional tax were levied on them in order to fund a project in Ann Arbor? Is that the sort of government assistance Ann Arbor needs?

Kurt Bouwhuis

Two Cheers for Capitalism?

Posted on by razma766
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Kurt Bouwhuis, Mackinac Center Intern

I attended the Midwest Students for Liberty conference this weekend where I listened to some great lectures.  The last speaker of the conference was Peter Leeson who gave a lecture titled “Two Cheers for Capitalism?”  The following is a couple take aways from his lecture, which is also in a working paper.

1. Unless one prefers poverty, premature death, ignorance, and political oppression to wealth, longevity, knowledge, and freedom, less capitalism deserve no cheers.

2. When people say things like, “It’s still unclear what effect the spread of capitalism throughout the world has had on humanity,” they’re wrong. Similarly, when people say that “markets are important; but we should be restrained in our endorsement of capitalism, as it has harmed as well as helped humanity,” they’re also wrong. Global capitalism’s effect is clear to the point of smacking one in the face: it has made the world unequivocally better off.

Zama, Elephants, and Rome

Posted on by ewreynolds
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Schlacht_bei_Zama_Gemälde_H_P_Motte

October 19, 202 BC:  Roman General Scipio hears the noise of his opponent’s army, but most terrifying of all is the trumpet of Hannibal’s elephants.  Would that sound resound the end of Scipio, as it had proclaimed so many other times in the past, or would this day be different?  Scipio didn’t know, but in a way, Rome was founded in a day: this day.  Read more on Landmarks of Liberty…

E. Wesley – Mackinac Center Intern

Case against the Minimum Wage

Posted on by imhoffer
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Here is an article that I found from Dan Smith. It is about all the negative effects of minimum wage laws. It is really interesting to see how the laws hurt wages of young workers, that minimum wage laws generally hurt blacks, and increase job turnover. Those are just a few of the negatives that are listed on the site. Check it out and see why the minimum wage should be abolished.

http://www.house.gov/jec/cost-gov/regs/minimum/50years.htm

Swarms of Poisonous Insects

Posted on by razma766
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Here is a great letter to the editor by Don Boudreaux:

Don
http://www.cafehayek.com/
http://marketcorrection.powerblogs.com/
………………………………….

13 October 2009

Editor, Washington Post
1150 15th St., NW
Washington, DC 20071

Dear Editor:

Reporting on the Obama administration’s enthusiasm for government regulation, you report that “In a move designed as much for symbolism as effect, the new chairman of the Consumer Product Safety Commission dispatched all 100 agency inspectors across the country last month to enforce a law that requires special drains on swimming pools to prevent children from entrapment.  The agency shut down more than 200 pools.  The new regulators display a passion for rules and a belief that government must protect the public from dangers lurking at home and on the job” (“A Vigorous Push From Federal Regulators,” Oct. 13).

Symbolism indeed.

The symbol I’m reminded of is the Declaration of Independence.  Words that Thomas Jefferson used to denounce King George III apply with equal force and justification Mr. Obama: “He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.”

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Chairman, Department of Economics
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030

The Silverdome and Sunk Costs

Posted on by razma766
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Kurt Bouwhuis, Mackinac Center Intern,

This morning, I read an article titled Pontiac opens bidding for Silverdome.  The article primarily focuses on the costs of the facility as well as various people’s opinions of the auction.

The article fails to recognize the economic idea of a sunk cost.  The initial cost to build the stadium as well as the $1.5 million a year maintenance fee are both unrecoverable.  As a result, these costs should be ignored when making decisions about it’s potential future uses.  If the stadium sells for a “low” price, it is not a steal – the price someone offers will be based on the future expectations of the value the stadium as well as the next best alternative use of the bidder’s money.

Hat-tip to James Hohman

Michael Moore’s Logic?

Posted on by razma766
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logic

Kurt Bouwhuis, Mackinac Center Intern

Check out this video of Michael Moore.

Within the first minute of the clip, Michael Moore says the big business don’t like competition – I couldn’t agree more.  He also agrees that government is at least part of this problem.

Moore pokes fun and the old Soviet way of needing only “one newspaper” and “one car company.”  Later in the clip, he is disappointed with politicians because they failed in their attempt to make on health insurance provider.

He advocates choice at the beginning of the clip, but by the end of the clip, he despises the choices offered to college students by credit card companies.

Michael Moore likes the idea of being able to take two years off after college to find yourself, but fails to mention who is going to pay for it.  He thinks people should be able to have the job they want, not the jobs that actually create wealth.

At the end of the video, Moore is disgusted by tax riots, and then less than a minute later, is disappointment with how the American government spends money.

Cash for Clunkers was a complete failure

Posted on by jskorup
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“This is the one stimulus program that seems to be working better than just about any other program,” said Ray LaHood, Secretary of Transportation, in August.

Well if that’s the case, than every government program should be thrown out.

The Wall Street Journal explains what a disaster “Clunkers” truly was, calling it one of Washington’s “all-time dumb ideas”.

Last week U.S. automakers reported that new car sales for September, the first month since the clunker program expired, sank by 25% from a year earlier. Sales at GM and Chrysler fell by 45% and 42%, respectively. Ford was down about 5%. Some 700,000 cars were sold in the summer under the program as buyers received up to $4,500 to buy a new car they would probably have purchased anyway, so all the program seems to have done is steal those sales from the future. Exactly as critics predicted.

Of the two things the program was supposed to achieve (boost car sales and help the environment) it did neither:

“According to Hudson Institute economist Irwin Stelzer, at best ‘the reduction in gasoline consumption will cut our oil consumption by 0.2 percent per year, or less than a single day’s gasoline use.’ Burton Abrams and George Parsons of the University of Delaware added up the total benefits from reduced gas consumption, environmental improvements and the benefit to car buyers and companies, minus the overall cost of cash for clunkers, and found a net cost of roughly $2,000 per vehicle. Rather than stimulating the economy, the program made the nation as a whole $1.4 billion poorer.”

The broken window fallacy teaches that you cannot create wealth by destroying productive assets, and yet that is exactly what bureaucrats had in mind.

The Journal sums it up, “In the category of all-time dumb ideas, cash for clunkers rivals the New Deal brainstorm to slaughter pigs to raise pork prices.

The people who really belong in the junk yard are the wizards in Washington who peddled this economic malarkey.

Eureka!

Posted on by razma766
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Kurt Bouwhuis, Mackinac Center Intern

I was reading a few blog posts this morning at Michigan Liberal and stumbled across an interesting passage:

“Meanwhile, I wish someone would come right out and start identifying one of the real culprits for this semi-annual nonsense … Republican hard-line ideology.  The elected Republican leadership talks and talk and talks and tells the GOP base that we don’t need no stinking revenue and that we don’t need no stinking government and we don’t need no stinking gubmint burrowcrats tellin’ us what to do, which paints everyone into a corner because people who take that kind of hardline, no compromise approach can’t be negotiated with in good faith.” – Eric Baerren

Eureka!  Eric has discovered why he doesn’t always get his way.  It’s because individuals who think differently about the world (labeled as republicans, laissez fairies, greedy capitalists, GOP, etc…) oppose the confiscation of individual private funds to pay for the grand ideas and solutions of politicians.  This is not to say that this ideology is superior to Eric’s, but rather, that these individuals have every right to at least be skeptical of those who hold opposing ideologies.

Complaining about republicans in politics is like complaining about the inconvenience of having an opposing team in a soccer game.  “If we could just get rid of 11 of those pesky players on the other team, we could score more goals and win more games!”

Pie in the Protectionist’s Face

Posted on by razma766
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Here is a great letter to the editor by Don Boudreaux:

Don
http://www.cafehayek.com/
http://marketcorrection.powerblogs.com/
………………………………….

29 September 2009

Editor, The Washington Times

Dear Editor:

Protectionist William Hawkins accuses Adam Smith of being “dreadfully wrong” to insist that the ultimate goal of economic activity is consumption rather than production (Letters, Sept. 27).

Alas, the dreadfully wrong one is Mr. Hawkins.  He confuses means with ends.  Flour, sugar, apples, an oven, and labor are necessary ingredients for baking an apple pie, but these means are valuable in this use only if someone wants to consume the pie.  If no one wants to eat apple pie, then using these ingredients to produce the pie would be wasteful.

Adam Smith correctly understood that the desire to consume is what justifies production.  If Mr. Hawkins were correct that the ultimate goal of economic activity is production, then he should be just as pleased to have a fresh-from-the-oven sawdust-and-earthworm pie for dessert as he is to have an apple pie.

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Professor of Economics
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030