Stop Feeding the Crocodile!

Why Bother?

2009-10-19T21:11:00.001-04:00

I haven't written anything in a long time – partly because I've been working on the launch of our new website, RevereLiberty.com, but also because politics can be exhausting. If you've ever wondered why I bother writing these articles, then we're in accord.

Firstly, politics takes time – to research, to write coherently, even to be informed. Secondly, it's unpleasant, which probably explains its exalted position as one of the three taboos of polite conversation. Thirdly and finally, it often seems futile.

Why read and think and talk about politics only to end up, not only frustrated and angry, but also no more equipped to do anything about it?

That line of reasoning certainly stands up to logic. Putting so much effort into politics offers no immediate reward – on the other hand, it does introduce the risk of offending or losing the respect of loved ones.

Moreover, it's a difficult battle. Unless you're selling 'change you can believe in,' you can't merely tell people what they want to hear. From what I've seen, most people would rather indulge in wild rationalizations than accept basic principles of liberty and personal responsibility.

So why bother?

If everyone follows the same logic, then we can only expect our problems to worsen. People will continue to vote away the rights and money of others – including their posterity – but we will have done nothing to oppose this injustice.

That makes us accomplices to the robbery of our fellow countrymen and our children. Wealth redistribution is just organized thievery, whether we're taking it from 'the rich' using income taxes or from future generations using ever-growing public debt.

If that's not enough for you – if you have a higher purpose that makes stealing seem justified – then consider the fact that what we're doing as a nation also is not sustainable. In other words, ultimately, it will affect all of us – not just 'the rich' or our successors.

The more we destroy productivity by punishing achievement, the fewer 'rich people' we'll have to loot. The more free money we offer, the more 'poor people' we'll have dependent on the government. The more debt and IOU's we pile on, the more interest payments we must make and the sooner that debt turns becomes unmanageable.

People understand this in their personal lives – otherwise parents wouldn't bother encouraging their kids to work hard, go to college, and balance the budget. A good parent wouldn't wish financial ruin on his child, so why would he wish it on the entire nation?

Because he doesn't understand, or he is deluding himself – either way, that is why it's important to get involved. Eventually, the delusions will have the same effect on the country that we would expect them to have on our personal lives.

And although the United States is 'too big to fail,' you can bet the farm no one will be there to bail us out.

Greed

2009-10-01T09:33:00.005-04:00

I've always been mystified at how readily the public seemed to swallow the notion that the entire housing crisis, credit crunch, and ensuing recession were caused by greed.

Here is an articulate analogy I got from one of Thomas Sowell's columns: greed is like gravity – it's a fact of life, and blaming greed for anything that is going on now, or indeed anything you don't like in the free market is like blaming gravity for a plane crash.

Sure, if there were no gravity, the plane wouldn't crash; however, we cannot remove gravity from the physical world any more than we can banish greed from human interactions. People are hard-wired to act in their own best interests.

Any sane person's explanation of a plane crash would probably focus on whatever caused the plane to fall from the sky – not on the universal force that hundreds of thousands of flights defy each day.

By the same token, millions of Americans greedily go about their business every day without causing terrible disaster.

All of the routine decisions we make about money each day – choosing which credit card to use, if any, deciding whether to rent or buy a home, searching out the cheapest gas prices (if only by a couple cents), and so on – are properly motivated by the ubiquitous desire to obtain and preserve wealth: in other words, greed.

Therefore, it simply does not stand to reason that greedy behavior can cause major disasters like the subprime mortgage crisis. If it could, crises like this would be commonplace. Instead of labeling the current problem as the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, it would merely be the worst since last year.

Clearly, greed fails to explain the whole story, and we should be skeptical of anyone making such claims: either they are misinformed, or they are trying to divert the conversation from the realm of reason to the realm of emotion and gut-reactions.

Here is a funny example of the artful use of rhetoric against greed:

Greed is just one of those words that push people's buttons, and I believe it is invoked to stoke the embers of class warfare in people's minds. Condemning the rich as greedy gives us 'ordinary folk' a false sense of self-righteousness: we might not be as wealthy, but at least we weren't greedy like those jerks on Wall Street.

However, this sort of reasoning, if it can be called that, reeks of jealousy – which is ironic because if we didn't desire more wealth (in other words, if we weren't greedy), we would have no reason to be jealous, or even to care about another person's greed.

For a society that values freedom, we cast an awful lot of blame on the free actions of free people, and that blame does nothing to explain the reality of the situation.

Here is my suggestion: the next time you find yourself in danger of being swayed by the rhetoric of self-righteousness and altruism, stop and ask yourself what your life would be like without the greed of others.

I cannot think of a single (material) thing in my life that I devised and built on my own.

That means other people invented and put together all the things that I enjoy in my day-to-day life, from my computer to my comfy bed and favorite slippers, to my car. The couch I'm sitting on, the clothes I'm wearing, electricity, running water – all possible because of the volition of other people, motivated not by altruism but by the reward that comes from producing something of value.

In short, my life is unfathomably better and easier because of: the resourcefulness that enables people to create, and the greed that motivates them to produce more than they need for themselves.

The Bright Side of Health Care Reform

2009-09-27T01:46:00.001-04:00

Every iteration I've seen of the health care legislation has been a lot like the junk food we Americans love so much - chock full of the things people like, but practically nothing that would actually be good for anyone.

Although total government takeover is not on the table (yet), by setting up insurance companies to fail while simultaneously driving up costs (one of those nasty side effects of increasing demand of medical care without increasing supply), our public servants in DC can bet on us crawling back to them to 'fix it' sooner or later.

So the question is not whether the path we're on leads to government-run health care, but when. If, like me, you're a fan of liberty - and our very high standard of living - that realization might seem a little depressing.

However, as with many things in life, there is indeed a silver lining to this (hurricane) cloud. Being the optimist that I am, I like to try to look on the 'bright side of life,' so here it is:

When we arrive at government-run health care, we can undoubtedly expect 'free' medical procedures, at least the ones approved by the government. If our friends in Washington really want to fix all of our problems – as they promise – all they would have to do is make sure that surgeries altering the connections to the prefrontal cortex are fully covered and accessible to everyone.

That's right – the answer is FREE lobotomies for everybody!

Imagine the possibilities: all those dissenters and naysayers, all those rowdy individualists could be relieved of the responsibility of thinking (along with everyone else). What could be better for a government that wants to run our entire lives than reducing the entire population to tranquil, unthinking cattle?

Some might say that this would be really bad for our productivity. Not important. If people aren't productive, then we won't have to bother taxing them for being too productive. It's a win-win.

Everyone will just live their lives whatever way our enlightened leaders dictate. Without the capacity for original thought, they won't be able to cause all those undesirable symptoms of freedom, like unequal outcomes.

After all - isn't that the goal of constantly expanding the government, anyway? Might as well get it all over with at once - like ripping off a band-aid.

Wealth Redistribution: Two Stories

2009-09-23T09:05:00.001-04:00

Anecdotes are never a valid substitute for good logic and fact; however, they can serve as examples to help illustrate logic.

I disagree with the concept of forced wealth redistribution on many levels. Most importantly, it violates one person's rights in the name of another's need. This sort of precedent does not bode well for a free society.

It also is not good for the prosperity of a society as a whole. While decreasing the incentive to work hard, it offers reward for not working hard. The logical implication of this is that people will tend to work less and produce less. Here is where my two stories come in.

Taxing the Rich

Having lunch with my friend last week, I found myself in a conversation about parents and living so far from home. My friend, whom I'll call Jane, expressed concern that her dad was bored now that he's retired.

I can understand that – my dad would never be able to sit on his hands at home. He'll probably always have some sort of occupation – even if as a mountaineering guide – because retirement would simply kill him.

From what I've been able to gather, Jane's parents are fairly well-off. They own a farm, and her dad was in some sort of medical profession. Both of them are well-educated.

So I asked Jane, "Why doesn't he just get a job?" To which she replied, "Because that would put him in the next income bracket, and he doesn't want to pay more taxes."

That kind of blew me away. Jane's dad is a highly educated – and formerly highly productive – member of society. And now, he's sitting at home, bored, because working isn't worth giving up more of his income.

To Give to the Poor

Where would his money go? Well, some of it would go to people like my in-laws' former tenant, whom I'll call Nancy.

Being a single mom, Nancy needed all the help she could get. And she was getting plenty – enough to rent a very nice house (better accommodations than I could afford at the time) – thanks to various state and federal aid.

Nancy, like many in her position, didn't want to be there forever. She wanted to go back to school so she could stand on her own and support her family.

So she got a part-time, minimum wage job, and started taking night classes. When she got the job, however, she no longer qualified for government aid – so they pulled the plug.

At that point, she had to make a decision: keep working, or pay the rent. She quit the job – and the classes – and went back to living off the government.

If Nancy had the determination to overcome her circumstances on her own, she probably could have. However, the incentive for not working was too great.

These two people, Nancy and Jane's dad, both left the workforce because of the incentives created by forced wealth redistribution. Their stories go to illustrate the point the logic already makes – that punishing success and rewarding failure merely leaves us with less success and more failure. It encourages more people to become a burden on others – and more people to shrug off their burdens.

It makes me wonder – what would our economy be like if those incentives were removed?

Fun Facts: Federal Taxes

2009-09-18T00:43:00.002-04:00

Doing a little research on income and tax burden distribution in my spare time (I know, get a life, right?), I came across a few interesting nuggets of information to share. The following is the most recent data (2006) provided by the Congressional Budget Office here.

Income tax (after credits): 43.4% of tax receipts in 2006

The top 10% of income earners pay 72% of the taxes.
The top quintile pays 86%.
The bottom 40% actually earn 3.6% after credits (meaning they pay negative income taxes)
The effective income tax rate spans from 19% (top 1% of earners) to -6.6% (bottom quintile)
Average effective tax rate is 9.1%

Payroll tax: 34.8%

This is the only category in which the top 10% do not pay over half the total taxes collected
The top 10% pay a quarter of these taxes
The top quintile pays 43%, more than the bottom 3 combined
Due to caps on taxable amount, the tax rate spans from 9.6% (second-highest quintile) to 1.6% (top 1%)
Average effective rate is 7.5%

Corporate income taxes: 14.7%

80% is paid by the top 10% of earners
The top 1% actually pays over 50% of total taxes
Effective tax rate spans from 10.4% (top 1%) to 0.4% (bottom quintile)

Overall:

The top 10% pay over half (55%) of all federal taxes
The top 20% pays 69%
The bottom 40% pays 5%
Effective tax rate spans from 31.2% (top 1%) to 4.3% (bottom quintile)

So, next time you're enjoying one of the many services our federal government provides, be sure to thank a rich person…

Blame the Greedy Insurers

2009-09-15T08:26:00.001-04:00

As the basis for attacking business, I often hear the argument that companies are greedy SOBs. Instead of fellow human beings, they see market share. They care more about profit than curing diseases.

This tactic seems effective because of the emotion it invokes. Damn them for being so selfish. They're probably rich too. Certainly more wealthy than I am - those jerks. Why shouldn't I have some of what they have? (And so on.)

All that self-righteousness must cut off circulation to the brain, because as often as I hear someone deplore the profits made by another, I never hear anyone complain of his own earnings.

Anyone who works and saves money is guilty of making a profit. Moreover, if you're managing to save more than 3-5% of your income, you're even greedier than the health insurance companies are.

Companies are just groups of people, and you can always count on people to do what's best for them first. That's not me being cynical – it's actually a good thing. If a person doesn't take care of himself and his family first, then they become a burden on others.

In a free market, companies have an incentive to make customers happy. If they take advantage of people, they might make a huge profit for a little while, but then it's only a matter of time until others crowd into the industry to get some of that profit.

More firms in the industry means competition – which means it is in a company's best interest to keep customers as happy as possible. Neglecting customers for long enough could put them out of a job.

Wait a minute, aren't health insurance companies not making their customers happy? That's all I hear about in the news – how insurers are just screwing us out of money and driving up the cost of health care, right?

Firstly, insurers' profits only account for 1% of total spending on health care.

Secondly, according to this Gallup poll, 57% of Americans are satisfied with the total cost of their health care, 70% categorize their health care coverage as good or excellent, and 83% of them categorize health care quality the same way (with 95% confidence that the sample numbers are within +/- 3% of the population).

Finally, insurance companies already operate under a tangled web set of regulations at the federal and state levels. For example, every health insurance website I've visited has almost the exact phrase: "health insurance prices are fixed by law." However, if you want to find out exactly what laws they follow, you must look at each state individually. It's amazing we have people willing to work in health insurance at all!

Back to the original point. You can count on the people who work in health insurance to put their own interests first, and to condemn that is nothing short of hypocritical.

In a purely free market, you know that a company's best interest is to serve the customer, for fear of losing market share. However, as the market becomes less and less free, the incentive shifts from pleasing the customer to pleasing the government.

If the government fixes the price and mandates levels of coverage, is it really the fault of the insurers and their shameless 'greed' if we think there are problems in the insurance industry?

Perhaps the answer to health care reform is less self-righteous altruism and more free-market greed.

The Talents Parable

2009-09-09T09:01:00.001-04:00

[Warning: This article contains Biblical references. If that offends you, don't read it.]

Here is another example of the omnipresence of politics in my mind. I was in bed last night trying to sleep when a parable from Matthew 25 popped into my head.

It's the one where the master leaves town for a long journey and entrusts each of his three servants with some talents (some kind of Greek currency). From verse 15: "unto one he gave five talents, to another two, and to another one; to every man according to his several ability"

When the master returns, he finds that the first two servants have doubled their money – not bad! The master rewards each for being a "good and faithful servant" (verses 21 and 23).

On the other hand, the servant with just one talent buried his in the dirt because he was afraid. For that, the master called him a "wicked and slothful servant" (v. 26), gave his talent to the guy that had 10, and cast him into the "outer darkness," where "there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth" (v. 30).

When I heard this story as a kid, I thought it was somewhat unfair. The talents were not distributed equally in the first place – they were given according to each servant's ability. Then the guy with the short straw ends up with nothing at all. Talk about a regressive tax structure!

In Sunday school, it was explained to me that the story meant we must make the most of our abilities and not let ourselves go to waste – that the 'talents' are just a metaphor for our time on Earth.

Still, I was already steeped in the culture of entitlement – in reading the story for the first time, I expected it to end with the master giving the third servant a little from the others, to make him feel better.

If you think about it though, that would be contrary to reason. The third servant has demonstrated that he couldn't manage his master's money – he just wasted his opportunity when the others capitalized on it. Why punish the two that did exactly what the master wanted for the benefit of the one who didn't?

I'm not advocating that we rob poor people and give it to rich people – merely that we cease to rob anyone.

I realize that it seems pretentious of me, being blessed with very good parents and never knowing real poverty, to make this argument repeatedly. It has been brought to my attention many times that maybe I would feel differently if I had been born in some ghetto or some third world country.

Maybe I would – but how I feel about something is irrelevant. I still feel bad for the servant who ended up with nothing. If I were one of the other servants, I probably would have shared some of what I had with him.

That is the difference between emotion and reason. It is not rational to force equality on inherently unequal circumstances. Firstly, it is unjust to punish the innocent. Secondly, taking resources from those who can use them well in order to give to those who can't is suboptimal for society.

It is perfectly fine to allow emotion to guide my personal decisions – like giving to the servant that didn't earn it – but I cannot impose my feelings on others and force them to share.

This is why I get annoyed when people invoke religion to support mass entitlement programs. They use plenty of lovely words like "take care of" and "stewardship" and "compassion" – and all the rhetoric serves as a smoke screen to steer us away from reason.

However, I've never seen anything in the Bible about forcing people to give unwillingly or to ignore reason in the name of emotion. If God wanted that kind of behavior from us, the parable above would have had the Hollywood ending I expected as a child.

The Unforgivable Curses

2009-09-04T08:36:00.002-04:00

When you're obsessed with politics and political philosophy, like me, it somehow creeps into everything you do.

Take, for example, an innocent movie: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. I'm watching the scene where Moody is demonstrating the Unforgivable Curses (spells that carry a life sentence in wizard prison, Azkaban). Suddenly I'm wondering how Rowling originally decided what they would be.

The Killing Curse is pretty obvious – that one must have been the first on the list. Next on the list: the Cruciatus Curse, or pure torture. This is not water-boarding or playing loud music, but excruciating pain making you wish you were dead. Another fairly obvious choice.

Finally, we have the Imperius Curse, total mind control, marking it a little different from the others. It doesn't inflict pain on its own – rather, according to the online Harry Potter wiki, it's "described as a 'wonderful release' from any sense of responsibility. The victim is relaxed, and carefreeingly obeys any order"

I find it interesting that the Imperius Curse is unforgivable regardless of what it is actually used to do. It doesn't matter if you 'Imperius' your spouse to get the groceries, rob a bank, kill someone, or merely eat his green vegetables. It is still unforgivable.

That must mean that – in the world of Harry Potter – it is considered fundamentally wrong to control another person's mind. The intention behind the control is irrelevant.

Further, the fact that millions of fans accept it without question leads me to believe that it stems from a universal truth.

I like to think that most Americans believe in inalienable rights – the core of which is the right to life and liberty. The Imperius curse violates a basic human right – the right to free will.

It would be very tempting though – if I had the power to control people – to use that power to get them to do what I want them to. Especially if what I want them to do is good for them – like eating green vegetables.

It's easy to rationalize violating another person's liberty in the name of altruism. If you believe you know what is right for a person and that the choices you would make for him are better than the ones he would make for himself, then it almost seems wrong not to take control and help him out, right?

Moreover, doing so gives you the satisfaction of protecting him from himself. You could even make an argument for the evils of free will that led him astray in the first place. Good thing he has you to be his keeper!

With enough rhetoric, you can convince people to give up their liberty willingly for the benefit of your control. However, if you're the government, your actions must be homogeneous, meaning the government can't take the liberty only from those who willingly surrender it. Its actions apply to everyone.

That is the problem of using the government to satisfy our philanthropic aspirations – for each person saying 'help me,' there is surely another saying 'leave me alone.' When the government moves beyond its intended function – protecting our lives and liberty – it must take power otherwise exercised by individuals.

In other words, the government violates our right to free will in exchange for a 'wonderful release' from the responsibility of our own decisions. Hmm, why does that sound familiar?

Too bad this isn't the wizarding world – some time in Azkaban might help our lawmakers remember the high cost of their good intentions.

Emotional Politics

2009-09-01T08:28:00.001-04:00

Just a quick note on this short article from Think Progress about a pastor in Arizona saying he'll "pray that [Obama] dies and goes to hell."

What an awful thing to say. Don't get me wrong – I very much dislike the President's policies – but to pray that he dies? Perhaps Pastor Anderson is betting on the idea that 'no publicity is bad publicity.'

I wish he'd think about the groups people will believe he's representing – namely, Christians and conservatives.

When I read articles like this, I like to look through some of the comments made on it. The general disposition, of course, depends on the source. One commenter on Think Progress chalks Anderson up as another example of "hate coming from the extreme right."

Another comment, taken from the Drudge Report page, claims that conservatives will "downplay" it, sort of like a 'where are their mighty principles now' observation.

I didn't really see any downplaying, except one guy focusing more on disliking Obama than on the topic at hand, but to some extent, he's right. It becomes more of a debate over which party has the crazier cooks, which party made the worst mistakes, which party can use the most fowl language, etc…

This is what happens when an argument becomes primarily emotional, rather than rational. The pastor's sermon was merely emotion – hatred – and therefore irrelevant as any sort of argument or debate. However, he has a right to say (almost) anything he likes, even if it seems disgraceful to us.

Most of the responses to the pastor likewise are emotional – angry judgments, finger-pointing, swearing.

Although it might make some of these people feel better to curse and put down random online message board users, what does it ultimately gain?

This is just one of copious examples of emotional politics ruining our chances for rational, reasoned debate. If we care about the future of the country, we must put the emotions aside and speak like adults.

The Land of the Free

2009-08-28T09:00:00.001-04:00

Although I've only experienced the past quarter-century of this country, I still prefer to think of it as a nation of liberty. In that sense, I wish I could say its economy is a free market – because of the values that founded it.

Only in a free market can you really get out what you put in. That is the American dream and why so many millions of people have come here. However, the dream doesn't just 'happen' to those who expect to enter the country and passively receive it – it is there for anyone willing to work for it.

The degree to which you are rewarded for your efforts matches the degree to which your efforts are valuable to others. No more, no less. That, in turn, encourages individuals to make optimal use of their time, ultimately producing the most of what people want and the least of what people do not want.

It also allows individuals to choose what to do with their most valuable resource: time. When we choose a job, we choose what will reward us the most for our skills, efforts, and time. If I'm good with numbers, I might choose to research the next digit of pi, or to be an investment securities analyst. Which do you think would reward me more for my ability – and why?

The choices do not end there. Every day, I can choose to work or not work. If I work, I also have the choice of whether to work hard or coast through the day. Ultimately, though, my employer chooses how much my effort is worth to the company. If I'm often absent or not as productive as other employees are, I can expect to be paid less, or lose my job.

On the other hand, if I'm committed to being a valuable employee – which may also mean investing time to learn and improve my skills – then I'll be paid more. Even if I don't get a raise at my company, I'll be worth more to other companies.

Pay is the incentive to work hard, but more importantly, to use my time wisely producing a service others value.

A free market does not allow coercion. If you don't like the way your employer treats you, you have a choice: deal with it, or find a new job. If you don't like the way a company does business, you can choose: support the company, or refuse its products or services. If enough people refuse them, they must then make a choice: change, or go out of business.

I admire the free market because it is the only fair and moral economic system – each individual deals by choice and earns his rewards. (The added benefit of minimizing inefficiency and producing the highest overall standard of living is an incidental bonus.)

That stands in stark contrast to the system our country increasingly heads toward – in which individuals are coerced by the government and must vote for his rewards. In that system, the competition is not over who can produce the most value, but over who can win the favor of elected officials.

In other words, we're willingly giving up the benefits of free choice and the American dream for a standard that punishes productivity and rewards ineptitude: 'from each according to his ability; to each according to his need.'

Government as an ‘Efficient’ Alternative?

2009-08-27T08:40:00.001-04:00

Reading a story like this, I'm reminded of how ironic it is that people seem to think the government can do things better than the free market.

Apparently, the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA for short) sent out a bunch of letters telling veterans they have ALS, a fatal disease with abnormally high occurrence among Gulf War veterans. At least a third of those who received letters don't actually have ALS.

The precise number of veterans who received the letter by mistake is unclear. The VA estimates around 600; the National Gulf War Resource Center puts the number at 1,200. According to this news story, the Resource Center "has received calls and e-mails from panicked veterans in Alabama, Florida, Kansas, North Carolina, West Virginia and Wyoming."

It seems frivolous to say how awful it would be to receive a letter from your health care provider saying you're probably going to die within five years, even if you are skeptical at first.

Moreover, this is coming from the VA – the department that gave $24 million in bonuses even as "hundreds of thousands of disability claims lay backlogged." Even more ironic is the fact that the bonuses mostly went to the technology employees – when the mistake ruining these veterans' week was a computer coding error.

I can never understand why we keep giving the government more power when we don't particularly like the way it runs anything.

I'm not saying that all government employees are jerks - I happen to know a couple I like very much - nor am I saying I particularly enjoy dealing with insurance companies. The point is that government programs never tire of giving us examples of bureaucratic inefficiency, and we seem never to tire of giving it more power.

Good parents teach their kids that, to get more privileges, they must first demonstrate responsibility. Like, "See if you can keep this potted plant alive, and then we'll talk about getting a dog."

When the kid repeatedly neglects the plants, are his parents going to feel comfortable getting him a dog? Further, if the kid already has an entire menagerie of pets that have grown fat and sickly, would they get him one then? Of course not.

That is what our government looks like. It's a complete mess! Although it's impossible to know exactly how much the government's inefficiency costs taxpayers, here is an interesting article claiming that a "real war on government waste could easily save over $100 billion annually without harming the legitimate operations and benefits of government programs."

Even if we are skeptical of that, consider the first item on the list, which is verifiable by the Treasury department itself: $24.5 billion in government transactions were unaccounted for in 2003, and this is not an isolated occurrence.

That means the federal government losses track of more money in a single day than most of us will earn our entire lives. If we go with the $100 billion estimate, which I think is probably reasonable, that means it wastes more in an hour than what most people earn in a lifetime.

Are we certain we're comfortable trusting the government with more of our money?

History is fun!

2009-08-26T08:14:00.005-04:00

Time for a short exercise in not-so-distant history. Let's count the ways in which the proposed health care reform is like the series of government intervention that led to the subprime mortgage crisis.

As I only have 20 minutes to write today, please feel free to add on if I miss anything.

Here we go, starting with the most simple:

Banks and insurers are both financial institutions
(related to 1.) Both target financial firms to provide the cash to pay for something else (for banks, it was the cash to pay for houses; for health care reform, it's the cash to pay for medical services)
Both arguments are highly emotionally charged ("people are ill" and "families without homes")
(related to 3.) Both arguments in favor rely on emotion over reason
Both are principally aimed at helping "the poor" at the expense of "the rich" (i.e., they are both meant to redistribute wealth)
Both have no basis in the Constitution
Both involve increasing amounts of government control over personal decisions
Both involve industries that are already very highly regulated by the government
Both demonize the companies for being "too greedy" and have politicians calling them "dishonest" (talk about the pot calling the kettle black!)
(related to 8. & 9.) Both have "problems" in the market, many of which are logically explained by the government interventions, but the companies take the blame
Both claim "market failure" without any real evidence
Both are highly costly to the taxpayers
Both are aimed to "increase access" to the cash to pay for something, which will only raise the price of the thing itself as more people suddenly have the cash to pay for it (for the banks, it was Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac buying mortgages as well as imposing quotas on banks to lend more to high-risk groups, which, coupled with artificially low interest rates courtesy of the Federal Reserve, led to the housing boom... and bust; the health care reform will at the very least impose mandates on insurers to cover more and pay more, which will increase demand for the services being paid for)
Both create large new government entities to accomplish its goals (for banks, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, "officially" private but actually quite intertwined with government and ultimately very costly to taxpayers; for health care, it would be the government plan)
Both impose extra risks to firms without compensating them for it (for banks, it was the quotas to lend to high-risk "subprime" borrowers; for insurers, it is the proposed mandates to cover pre-existing conditions and other more or less certain expenses)

I see a lot of similarities between the two circumstances. One can only hope that history does not repeat itself!

TOO Good at What They Do

2009-08-24T08:50:00.002-04:00

In my days-long drive to find something to help motivate me to start writing again, I stumbled across this Bloomberg News article. Apparently, AT&T and Verizon Wireless have grown 'too big,' snagging around 60% of the wireless market share. Of course, that ticks people off, so a "broad inquiry into wireless industry practices" is being proposed for the next FCC meeting.

According to the FCC's Public Notice, here is what the meeting will try to accomplish:

Item 1: to "identify concrete steps the Commission can take to support and encourage further innovation and investment"
Item 2: look into "the status of competition in the mobile wireless market"
Item 3: find out "whether there are opportunities to protect and empower American consumers by ensuring sufficient access to relevant information about communications services"

I have to stop and admire the masterful use of rhetoric here: lovely words like 'support and encourage,' 'innovation,' 'protect and empower' – these guys sound like saints! What objection could I possibly have against their stated goals?

Rhetoric aside, they're really only trying to find a basis for prosecuting 'Big Wireless' for being so good at what they do that they've taken up too much of the market share.

When I say they're too good at what they do, I mean their business acumen. For example, I always thought the deal AT&T made to be the sole carrier of the iPhone's wireless service was absolutely genius. To consumers, that may be something of an annoyance, but I consider it about as annoying as Taco Bell's deal with Pepsi, when I prefer Coca-Cola. <sarcasm> What if I want a Diet Coke with my Crunchwrap – perhaps Pepsi should be investigated! </sarcasm>

I also find the contracts annoying, but similarly no more so than the need to sign a year-long lease to my apartment. Like my apartment building, telecommunications companies tend to have very high fixed costs (costs that remain more or less the same regardless of how many customers they have).

That means, if customers unexpectedly abandoned their contracts without penalty, the companies could be hard-pressed to meet their fixed obligations. They can't simply produce less bandwidth to match declining demand – they're more or less stuck with it. Requiring contracts and imposing penalties for leaving the contract early merely attempts to match revenues to costs. How is that a crime?

High barriers to entry probably have more to do with the huge amount of capital required to build the equipment needed for sufficient coverage over a large area. (That would also explain the high fixed costs!) Nevertheless, that is not the existing companies' fault, so why should they have to share or otherwise be punished for what they've built?

Instead of thanking them for investing so much to provide a service we couldn't get otherwise, we're investigating them for possible antitrust violations. We're essentially telling them they should stop doing business so well and 'let the little guy have a fighting chance' – meaning, let him use their infrastructure and take some of their market share, without putting in the same effort.

Does that mean I can tell a doctor to lend me some of his expertise and experience so I can try to take some of his patients without having to work for a medical degree?

If my boss told me to stop being so good at what I do because it's not fair to the other employees, I'd look for a new job. What if the big wireless companies did the same? I wouldn't blame them!

Good thing they have so much capital tied up in their business – even if it does cause high barriers to entry and high fixed costs.

Health Care Propaganda

2009-08-20T09:32:00.003-04:00

Here is yet another speech from the President calling his opponents liars.

I've listened to arguments from both sides. Some are plausible, some are not.

Congress and Obama have been working at this propaganda campaign for a long time now. The first I saw of it was the White House blog I cited a couple weeks ago. There's also a White House video series in which top aides attempt to 'debunk' the 'myths' that are being spread around.

The two most important 'lies,' in my eyes, are that we'll lose our current coverage and that the government may choose to refuse end of life care to the elderly. The White House says they are lies, myths, rumors, etc, because they are not written into any of the drafts of the bill.

However, if we look beyond the words in the bill, which our leaders haven't read, and beyond the rhetoric promising rights to this or that, what do we see?

There is no question that the bill will greatly harm insurance companies by imposing so many extra costs and restrictions. If there is a public option, they won't be able to raise prices very much or people will flock to the cheaper government plan.

Instead, they'll probably lose money slowly, maybe try to think of 'creative' ways to make up for the losses and get around the restrictions.

(Wait, why does that sound familiar – an entire industry taking on government-imposed risks and then creating 'innovative' ways to spread the risk, just to be able to make money?)

If there is no public option in the bill, then they'll raise prices, defeating the purpose, and the government will step in to take over then. Either way, it's a pretty dire situation for the health insurance industry.

So at one point or another, we'll probably be forced under the government plan. When the insurance companies fail, there won't be any other options, and Congress will be right there ready to save us.

That is where the 'myth' of losing our current policies comes from. Now, on to the 'death panels'…

Of course there are no 'death panels' in the legislation being proposed. That would cause a public outrage to dwarf anything we've seen so far.

Logically, though, by far the most expensive group in terms of health care is the senior population (darn them for wanting to live!), and it simply is not feasible to cover all the expenses at low cost to the patient.

The government is basically promising to cover just about everything, in order to get the bill through. If they pay for acupuncture and psychotherapy, how will they cut costs?

The only way is to have some 'independent group' assess whether the treatment your doctor recommends is likely to keep you alive, or if you're going to die soon anyway. Oregon has kindly provided a look into the future with this story and more: denying coverage for late-stage cancer treatment, but offering to pay for suicide pills.

The government has to ration health care somehow. Currently that is done through prices – whether you pay for better insurance or you pay out of pocket. We cannot logically pay for every advanced treatment for people who are just holding on for dear life. If the odds are stacked against you even with the treatment, at some point the government will have to say, "We just can't cover that."

If they didn't, all patients would have access to all the most expensive treatments, even experimental. Costs would go through the roof, and the country would speed full throttle toward bankruptcy.

Is it a 'lie' to say that 'death panels' and losing our current insurance is written into the bill? Sure, but no one is saying that. People are merely looking beyond the promises and drawing logical conclusions.

However, it's much more politically effective to call people liars or claim they've been deceived than to acknowledge their thought process and address it rationally.

More references of interest:

Fox News: Oregon's Doctor-Assisted Suicide Instead of Medical Care
CPR: Some videos and links
YouTube video: Barney Frank thinks public option most likely to lead to single payer
Thomas Sowell (Part1, Part2, Part3) regarding myths spread by the government

Corruption? In New Jersey?!

2009-08-18T23:13:00.001-04:00

This Newark Star-Ledger article was brought to my attention today, although it is a couple weeks old. Who would ever have thought that public officials and religious leaders in New Jersey could be guilty of corruption?

On the political side, apparently an informant "portrayed himself as a big-spending developer willing to pay cash to grease the way for building approvals." He helped bring charges against 44 people in New Jersey and New York, taping conversations of illegal deal-making for two years.

So, basically the politicians were taking bribes that couldn't be masked as lawful campaign contributions. And of course, Chris Christie, hoping to take away Governor Corzine's throne in the up-coming election, proposes reforms including strict punishments and enforcement of campaign finance laws.

Don't get me wrong – I'd prefer almost anyone to Corzine – but piling on more legislation for campaign finance, etc, isn't going to do anything because it doesn't strike at the root of the problem.

Scandals like this only tell me one thing: politicians have too much power. And expecting them to regulate themselves only gives them more power. If there are loopholes in the current campaign finance laws, who do you think wrote them in?

What I thought was interesting is that the bargains made with the political officials seemed to center around building and zoning laws, just one way government grants itself arbitrary power to make it difficult and expensive to do business.

If it's worth it for businesses to pay many thousands of dollars in bribes and risk their reputations as well as criminal punishment in exchange for expedited building permits or favorable zoning laws, then that must mean the cost of dealing legally with the government must be phenomenal!

I imagine waiting several months for a building permit or other permission to build would be costly. Construction and development companies, dealing with such large amounts of capital and long-term contracts, would be certain to have very large fixed costs.

So they have a choice. They can sit on their hands, watching their business leak more and more cash, or they can pay a little extra to get things moving. The larger the costs imposed by government, the more businesses will be willing to pay in bribes. The extra reform and punishments might increase the amount demanded for favors, but it's not likely to stop politicians altogether from sacrificing their integrity, as long as they have the power and the payoff is big enough.

Moreover, it's not like these building restrictions and other arbitrary government powers really serve much of a purpose. According to Thomas Sowell's excellent new book The Housing Boom and Bust, "less than 10% of the land area in the United States has been developed. Trees alone cover more than six times the area of all the cities and towns put together" (page 17).

Sounds like we have plenty of 'open space,' so we're paying the extra costs of available land and development for what? So that politicians can make a little extra granting favors on the side?

If we don't like this corruption, there is only one solution: don't let the politicians have so much power. If they can't keep their hands out of the cookie jar, take away the cookie jar! How much simpler does it get?

Protests Are un-American? Part 2

2009-08-15T14:14:00.002-04:00

A few thoughts to clarify the previous post:

Firstly, I've had a couple concerns raised about my choice of sources. Although I usually cite Bloomberg News or Fox News, that is simply because I would rather have readers going there than to other sources. I usually bounce around several news sources with different 'slants' before actually writing. Trust me, if you knew how much time I spend reading about this crap every day, you’d tell me to get a life.

Secondly, there was some confusion regarding the article I cited (from that no-good Fox News!), which had a truncated version of the following quote from our favorite Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi:

"These disruptions are occurring because opponents are afraid not just of differing views — but of the facts themselves. Drowning out opposing views is simply un-American. Drowning out the facts is how we failed at this task for decades."

Interestingly enough, while I was trying to find the original article she wrote (with Rep. Steny Hoyer), I found this report that she apparently rescinded her original wording. I'd say maybe I wasn't so far off base in my interpretation of her words, but I doubt she actually changed her mind - it's more likely that her new statements are just as politically motivated as any.

I realize that it was not the act of protesting she was talking about, but the 'bad behavior,' coupled with her belief that the protesters were not from the area (which seems to be contrary to what I've been able to find). Before writing the prior post, I spent an hour or so watching footage to see what was so terrible about the town hall protests. I didn't see anything at all to separate them from others. If you've forgotten the 2003 war protests that so warmed Pelosi's heart, here is a YouTube video in which you can see many parallels.

I've heard several allegations of violence and intimidation tactics at the town hall protests; however, the only examples I could find were initiated by SEIU members against the protesters. In fact, I've watched videos for several more hours before writing this and still couldn’t find anything to mark these protests as different from others.

Therefore, I concluded that Pelosi said what she did because the protests are against what she is trying to accomplish politically. The Fox News article I cited points out how energized she was by the 2003 war protests - which don't seem to be much different. My point in the blog was that she's a politician, and that we should expect her to speak well of protests that are politically convenient to her as much as we can expect her to demean the ones that aren't. If we don't like duplicity, we shouldn't encourage it in our elected officials.

Finally, on the subject of the so-called 'un-American' behavior of shouting over one's political / ideological nemeses: Personally, I don’t think shouting and making rude banners are effective ways of persuading people, but my disagreement with their mode of communication does not make them ‘un-American.’ It just makes them not me.

I’ve been to political rallies and protests where people are shouting over each other. When an issue is hot, and you get lots of people together with opposing views, it would be foolish to hope that hundreds or thousands of people will be quiet and not interrupt each other. They’re angry! I know what it’s like to have someone in my face shouting, pointing his finger at me, and trying to be intimidating. Uncomfortable? For me, yes - but un-American? Absolutely not.

I still believe that the person picking a fight with me is being more 'American' than the one who refuses to think for himself, get involved, or risk voicing his opinions. It’s much easier to sit at home and criticize the government, or criticize the protestors, than it is to go out and try to get something done. And I would argue that it is the latter, not the former, that characterizes the American spirit.

Protests Are un-American?

2009-08-11T09:13:00.002-04:00

When I first saw this article, I was a little shocked that the Speaker of the House would call protesting un-American. After all, exercising one's right to free speech and telling your representatives how you feel about an important issue is very American. Most people, it seems, hardly care what our government does, so to see people standing up for their beliefs is a good thing.

My first thought when hearing this quote from her was the she's un-American. Nevertheless, before jumping to that conclusion, we might as well consider what motivates her to say things like that. Not that it really matters from an objective standpoint – it doesn't change what she said or what she meant by it – but it does help elucidate her behavior.

Pelosi, like all those other hacks up in DC, is a politician. Politicians make a living by selling government. Right now, Congress and the President are trying to sell us a BIG one. And people are protesting that. Of course they're going to try to discredit their opponents. To them, it's personal – it's their careers, their reputations on the line.

I agree that it would be nice if politicians, instead of sputtering rhetoric all the time, would speak logically and rationally. I agree it's annoying when they resort to name-calling. However, politicians must always be on the offensive. I think the saying, "the best defense is a good offense" must have been derived from politics.

The fact is, politicians are taught to be shysters. If people continue to buy into silly, meaningless rhetoric (like, health insurance reform will lower the total cost of medical care), then politicians will always sell it.

If voters paid attention only to factual, logical arguments and took the politicians' propaganda with a grain of salt, then we'd have a lot more reasonable people running the country – much fewer worries about our future.

Instead, we like our politicians to be more like TV – constantly peddling an impossible utopia, propagating scandal after scandal, and portraying behavior fit for teenagers. People are not as interested in holding their representatives accountable as they are in dishing on the other party's leaders.

When our politicians are immature, when they have scandals, or when they meddle irresponsibly with our future, it's easy to be mad at them. It's particularly easy when they're not members of our party. However, if we want to know why these ridiculous people act the way they do, we should look closer to home.

After all, we're the ones who voted them in and continue to vote for them! It doesn't matter that we say we disapprove in the polls, in casual conversation, or even in protest. We bought into big government when they sold it in their campaigns. If we keep voting for these people, we can't be surprised when they act stupidly and try to take away our liberties.

If we don't like what Congress is doing, we must stop rewarding them with reelections. Get out there on Election Day and vote them out! It doesn't get more American than that.

Why So Serious?

2009-08-10T08:32:00.003-04:00

Apparently, some people are outraged at this poster depicting Barack Obama as the Joker. Of course, his supporters are calling it racism. Aside from the fact that George W. Bush was also painted this way, and many other derogatory ways, these people seem to forget how radical Obama is.

If he were even a little moderate, if he wasn't trying to push through ever more socialist legislation, then maybe there would be some credence to the racism charge. As it is, though, that accusation is merely yet another low attempt to discredit the President's opponents.

Politicians know the power of words, and they are master manipulators. Racist is a very emotionally charged word, and politicians know that it is the emotional that sticks in people's minds.

Another good example is the way Democrats are trying to spin the opposition to the health insurance bill cropping up in town hall meetings across the country. Apparently, the evil rich people funded and organized it all. They did the same with the tens of thousands of people that showed up for tax-day tea parties.

Reading this Bloomberg News article, I stumbled upon the following quote from the President: "We must lay a new foundation for future growth and prosperity, and a key pillar of a new foundation is health-insurance reform."

Surely, he's joking. Or trying to manipulate people. He might as well say, "We'd better get my bill through Congress, or you wouldn't want the economy to get worse, would you?" The President, our politician in chief, clearly knows the power of words.

The health insurance bill has almost nothing to do with economic growth. Sure, if it lived up to the wild claims of lowering costs, maybe it would help more people balance their budgets.

However, based on what I've read of the bill and what the President has asserted as his key goals for reform, this bill will not help the economy. The proposed 5% sales tax, to pay for the government option, certainly won't help.

I've explained in previous articles that many of these reform goals will increase the cost of insurance. Forcing the insurance companies to cover more and more can only make it cost more to everyone.

Furthermore, if the insurance companies cover more, then there will be increased demands on the health care industry. Economics 101: What happens when the demand for a service rises? If the supply stays the same, then the price must also rise. Because the bill has nothing to do with increasing supply of health care professionals, we can expect increased health care prices when we hide more and more of the cost from the actual consumers of medical care.

I have to conclude that either the President doesn't understand economics, or he cares more about his own political agenda.

Or maybe he's just testing out the theory that whatever doesn't kill the health insurance industry will simply make it stranger.

The Right to Health Care?

2009-08-09T01:36:00.001-04:00

This country was founded on the concept of God-given, unalienable, individual rights. In recent generations, however, at least since the Great Depression, the issue of rights seems a bit clouded.

I'm always hearing people claim a right to health care, a right to a home, a right to whatever else they want. While thinking about this in terms of health care, I discovered the source of the faulty logic of these claims.

When someone says he has a right to health care, he means someone else is obligated to care for him. If he has a right to a house, then others are obligated to build it for him, and still others are obligated to lend him the money to obtain it.

If we have a right to the work of medical professionals or insurance agents, then they essentially have no right to refuse to work. It means they have no choice of what to do with their lives. That makes them our slaves, because we sacrifice their right to liberty for our right to what we want or think we need.

Rights are supposed to be a guarantee of what you can do and what others cannot do to you. Now we are trying to make them into what others cannot do for themselves or what they must do for you.

The government pushes this concept of rights because it gives them more power. That is the opposite of individual rights, but the politicians can sell it because public amenities seem like door prizes to the people unable or unwilling to look beyond the immediate goodies. As long as the government isn't interfering with their personal lives, it can do what it wants with others.

How would you feel if the government demanded you to make less money than you currently do? That's what we're doing to the health insurance companies right now.

There's a lot of rhetoric out there about the companies taking advantage of people, refusing this or that, and so on and so forth. They make too much profit, they don't cover certain things, etc. That's why the government needs to step in and fix things.

Firstly, insurance companies don't force anyone to buy coverage. They're providing a service, not twisting arms. Only the government deals by force. Secondly, if we feel their service is inadequate, then we have a right to take our business elsewhere. We can even try to compete with them. However, we don't have the right to force them to business differently.

Insurance companies are already restricted by mandates and regulations. Now we're asking not only for more mandates and restrictions, but also for the government to spend a trillion or so dollars to compete with them.

In other words, we want to tie their hands and bring in an opponent with deeper pockets.

I can see why this doesn't disturb people who don't work in the industry. Who cares about their freedom, right? As long as we get what we want and the government's not taking our freedom, it's fine.

We think we're serving our "right" to health care, but we're merely continuing the tradition of feeding the crocodile. We can be happy because we're not the food. This time.

Risks, Insurance, and YOU

2009-08-06T23:30:00.000-04:00

Let's talk about how health insurance works, because I hear so many people equating the right to life with a 'right' to health insurance. The way these politicians talk, it sounds like the industry's employees were born to serve us, keep us healthy, and make sure we take care of ourselves. Actually, insurance is more like gambling.

Imagine you could add up all the probabilities combined with all the costs of what could happen with your health now and in the future. Then, take that amount and distribute it into a monthly savings program, with an interest rate that will grow your savings until you have a big pool from which to draw if something does happen.

That's what insurance companies do. They estimate the risk and the costs, and then you pay them to keep a pool available in case you need it.

Most people pay into the pool without drawing that much out of it. Some pay for a little while, and then end up needing a lot more. The point of insurance is that the money is available to them before they've been able to save for it. By pooling the risks of millions of people, the insurance companies can offset the big losses with the profit from the rest.

If you opt out of insurance for awhile, like I did, that's your choice. You save the money, but you have to handle the risk of your health on your own. It's like Russian roulette. If you're diagnosed with a chronic condition during that time, the cost associated with that is no longer a risk – it's now certain.

That means, on top of the normal risks associated with being human, you now have a relatively certain, ongoing medical expense.

Let's say that the cost of a particular chronic illness is around $5,000 per year. The average person's probability of contracting that illness is around 25% – give or take a few percentage points, depending on gender, age, etc.

Now pretend there are a million other people with the same odds, and they decide to pool their money to cover that risk. How much would it cost? Well, around 25% of them will become ill, so that's 250,000 people, and the cost per person is $5,000. That comes to $1.25 billion to cover the cost of treating this illness.

No one knows ahead of time who will actually get sick, so everyone pays into the pool according to his risk of becoming ill. Then the pool pays the medical bills for those that do need it.

As with any insurance policy, it won't seem worth it to some people. Maybe I'll think to myself, 25% is a fairly small chance, and I really want to save for a new computer. So I decide not to buy into the pool.

If I'm right, I keep my money. If I'm wrong, I now have $5,000 to pay on my own. Well, why not just have the collective pool pay for it? If half the people made the same decision as I did, then the pool only has $625,000 to pay for the medical claims, just enough to cover 25% of the 500,000 who had the foresight to buy insurance.

It's the same concept for pre-existing conditions. They only matter if you don't buy into the pool – or stop paying for long enough. We can't decide not to pay for the service of insurance and then expect the benefit when that decision turns out to be a bad one. That's like becoming indignant at someone for not washing the car you didn't pay him to wash.

One of Obama's priorities is to eliminate "discrimination based on pre-existing conditions." (By calling it discrimination, the insurance company automatically sounds like the bad guy.)

However, consider what would happen to insurance companies if they could no longer exclude or charge more for insurance on pre-existing conditions. In the prior scenario, half the people chose not to pay. That means, statistically, half of the unlucky few who got sick didn't pay for insurance.

Unfortunately for the insurance companies, there are many politicians out there who can gain political points by convincing people they have a right to this service, and to blame the companies when prices rise to cover the extra expenses.

I think, instead of demonizing the insurance companies for providing us a service, we should decry the politicians for deceiving us.

Wanted: Opponents of Health Care Reform

2009-08-05T08:41:00.003-04:00

If you're against the current bill for health care reform, better keep your mouth shut or risk being reported to Big Brother.

Surely, I'm joking. This isn't Soviet Russia. However, I must admit the following excerpt from this White House blog was a little creepy:

"There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care. These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation. Since we can't keep track of all of them here at the White House, we're asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov."

So, if you come across someone disagreeing with the President, be a good comrade! The White House apparently needs to keep track of the dissenters.

I'd rather believe that it's not as it sounded to me when I first heard it – but rather, that they're trying to keep track of what's going around so that they can address it point by point. It's more likely than the government spying on us, right?

Regardless, the White House blog sends the message that people are lying about the implications of health care reform. Even the title of the blog, "Facts Are Stubborn Things," a John Adams quote, implies that there is no basis for opposition to the health care reform bill.

The blog features a video tutorial by Linda Douglass about the President's position on keeping your private insurance. She points out a link to this video, which is just a compilation of quotes from key Democrats in favor of single payer (100% government provided) health insurance. Our friend Barney Frank says in the video that a good public option is "the best way to reach single payer."

So, excuse me for being concerned about the direction this is going, but I find it a little alarming! Intentions aside, anyone familiar with economics and willing to think it through can see the incredible burden being proposed for the insurance industry. (Don't worry; if you're not a fan of economics, I'll explain the logic behind that statement in coming posts).

No one is saying that the bill at hand has provisions to end the private insurance industry. It's posted on the internet for everyone to see. We're saying that the provisions in this bill are a good way to destroy the private industry. Judging by the attitudes of some of the politicians, it sounds like that is the goal.

If you wanted to overthrow private health insurance and expand your power, would you try to do it through an outright takeover? No, of course not. That would be extremely unpopular. It's much better to destroy the industry with restrictions and unfair competition from the government. Then all the problems can be blamed on the industry itself. Hmm, why does that scenario sound familiar?

In the end though, it really doesn't matter what the intentions of the politicians are – it's what they're actually doing. I don't care if they think they're using this plan to cure cancer, destroy private industry altogether, or fly to Saturn. What matters is the likely result.

It also doesn't matter why the White House is asking for informants – I'm taking it as a challenge to review the facts and use logic to scrutinize the bill objectively.

That's what I plan to do over the next few days. If I disappear suddenly, you'll know the thought police got me!

Farm Town!

2009-08-04T08:08:00.001-04:00

Just a quick note about the Facebook app Farm Town. In case you haven't been sucked into it, it's an internet Flash game about being an imaginary farmer. You can grow just about anything you want, as well as raise animals and build fences or buildings. It's your own little plot of paradise!

Harvesting crops earns coins, which in turn can buy seeds and other things. It's simple. I started playing because my mom had become hopelessly addicted, and I wanted to see what the hubbub was about.

What I like about Farm Town is the community. I can send gifts (such as trees, flowers, and animals) to my friends. I can also go help out on my friends' farms. It doesn't sound fun, but it is. The other day, my good friend sent me a pig and I was tickled to death the first time I saw that thing flop over and fall asleep.

You may be wondering – what does this have to do with politics? Don't worry; I haven't given up politics, and there is a point to all this.

Here's the first part of the point: I love to give and do things for other people, and I think most people are the same way. Even if your motive is to improve the friendship so that your friend might send you a cherry tree or something later on, that's okay, the point is that people are giving to each other and enjoying it.

Here's the second part: No one has to give anything or help anyone. It's fun because people give for the sake of giving. Although the "gift" is really just a picture, and maybe some animation – in other words, of no real significance at all – it feels good to know your friend was thinking of you. I know it makes me smile.

What if the developers of Farm Town decided to impose a gift-giving rule to address the inequities between established farms and newcomers like me? Sure, I could go to the market and get work helping at someone else's farm, but why should I when my mom has over 250,000 farm coins (told you she's addicted)? Surely, she could give me some – then I wouldn't have to work for it.

If that happened, Farm Town wouldn't really be fun anymore. I wouldn't have as much motivation to work on my crops if I knew someone would make me give part of my harvest away. (Technically, the gifts on Farm Town don't cost anything except for the time it takes to send them, but they could just as easily impose a time quota for helping on others' farms. Same concept.)

If my friends were forced to spend a certain amount of time helping me, or give me a certain number of cherry trees, I wouldn't want it. Imagine the (imaginary) humiliation! That would mean the Farm Government decided that my little start-up farm was too pathetic to grow on its own, that I'm not capable enough as an imaginary farmer, and that everyone else would have to cough up some help for me.

No, thank you! I wouldn't want to be one of the farmers forced to give up my crops, and I certainly wouldn't want to receive spoils unwillingly given. That would make me a party in stealing from others. If the game developers decided to impose something like that, people would stop playing. No one wants to me told what to do.

It's so simple to understand in Farm Town, so why don't we apply the same reasoning to real life?

Partisanship Aside…

2009-08-03T20:38:00.001-04:00

Here is another disturbing example of how quickly our government is running out of money. Apparently, due to the difficult economic conditions, both income and corporate taxes have plummeted.

That's going to make it difficult to pay for some of the programs the Obama administration has planned – namely, the new health care entitlement program, among other spending increases. Some of his other priorities, like cap 'n trade and financial regulations, will likely slow the economy further with extra costs. And that means even less tax revenues and more bailout programs.

This is not an anti-Obama or anti-Democrat monologue. That's not the point. Hell, if it were possible for Obama to wave a magic wand and fix everything as promised, I'd be as happy as anyone. I'm not fundamentally opposed to his administration – I'm opposed to the direction his policies are taking us because it's the wrong direction.

Here's how I define the wrong direction: increasing government deficits at the expense of real economic recovery. Unless we want a lower standard of living for everyone, we should oppose this direction in a big way.

One retort I often hear is, "Well, these problems were present during the Bush administration. We inherited them." Although that argument may have merit if our primary concern were allocating blame, it's no excuse for pouring gasoline on a wildfire. Using the recent deficits as a reason to propose deficits several times larger is just silly. If the Republicans were jumping off a bridge, would you do it too?

That argument attempts to make the discussion about fault, when it should be about the solution. Instead of throwing away the poison, we're drinking it as fast as we can while blaming whoever gave it to us last. Let me share something with you that my mom told me when I was young: two wrongs do not make a right.

Here's an idea: instead of wasting time pointing fingers, let's stop digging our own graves and start climbing out. We're constantly hearing about the government agencies and programs that are running out of money. Congress needs a billion for this, two billion for that. Next year we'll add over a trillion dollars to the public debt. That means every person in the country will owe this nation's creditors roughly $3,000 more.

Do you have an extra $3,000 on hand for wasteful government spending? I certainly don't. And it's not like we have a booming economy that could use a little cooling off to pay for all this.

We cannot fix irresponsible spending and meddling with the economy with more of the same. Nor can we fix it by convincing people of the other party's failure to fix the problem. If we want to move on, we need only to recognize that politicians are not deities, that their arbitrary power is no substitute for hundreds of millions of well-informed personal decisions, and that their promises to 'fix everything' are merely rhetoric.

Once we realize that, the way out of this mess is pretty simple. Rather than rely on elected officials to solve our problems, we rely on ourselves. As Calvin Coolidge said, "the chief business of the American people is business."

If we stick to that, we can't help but fix the economy. Then we can argue about blame.

Government Knows Best?

2009-07-30T23:13:00.001-04:00

People in this country love brands. From the brand of our appliances to our clothes and personal items, we have quite a lot of customization available to us.

Because of the blessing of liberty, I can stand proudly and say, "I prefer Colgate toothpaste." And because I always buy Colgate, that company is encouraged and rewarded by the money I spend on them.

But it doesn't stop at toothpaste. Do you prefer Apple computers or Microsoft? Playstation 3 or X-Box 360? Wendy's, McDonald's, or Burger King? Blackberry or iPhone?

That's the beauty of the free market. The companies that produce the most of what people want will prosper. If a company doesn't listen to what the people want, it goes out of business. And we all get the freedom (mostly) to choose what we like, as well as how and when we like it.

As we've demonstrated throughout the centuries, there are other avenues for fulfilling our basic needs, namely various levels of government. Today, we hear a lot of rhetoric about the government ensuring the right to this or that - like housing, or health care.

But the government is essentially different from the market we're used to dealing with, even though we sometimes don't see that difference. Fundamentally, when we ask for increased government benefits, we sacrifice our freedom to choose.

Instead of many brands to choose from, we get whatever the government bureaucrats think is best for us. Instead of paying for goods and services at the cash register whenever we choose, we are compelled to pay out of our paychecks when we work. Instead of participating in voluntary trade, we must trade with an entity that deals by force in place of mutual benefit.

Unless you're self-sufficient, you have to trade with someone to get what you need. More and more, people are turning to the government for that sense of security and 'fairness.'

The government offers us many amenities today - unemployment, Welfare, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security. We forego the choice of whether to participate in paying for these programs in exchange for the assurance that they'll be there if we need them. If you'd rather keep your money, and take your chances, you can't opt out the way you can in a free market. So essentially the preferences of some become the mandate for everyone.

Moreover, even partial government 'solutions' in the economy raise the cost of business, which means higher prices for all. Companies must employ compliance and legal departments as the regulations become more complex and onerous. According to a report published by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, "regulatory compliance costs hit an estimated $1.157 trillion in 2007."

In other words, businesses paid over a trillion dollars trying to comply with the tens of thousands of pages of federal regulations, and the taxpayers paid $44.5 billion in enforcement costs. All these costs seem invisible because they show up in higher prices, which means less for our money. In addition to the costs, these regulations directly limit the choices available to consumers – under the philosophy of 'government knows best.'

Sometimes people get so caught up in the idea that the government has some sort of magic wand to 'fix the shortcomings' of our freedom, we forget how much we pay in return.

If the choice is to fend for myself, but maintain the freedom to direct my life, or to passively accept whatever 'majority rule' decisions are made the government way, I'd gladly take liberty. Especially if the government brand of toothpaste turns out not to be Colgate.

You Can’t Do That!

2009-07-30T08:11:00.001-04:00

Yet another example of the federal government fixing to tell us, "You can't do that!" A federal ban on texting while driving.

Of course, it won't really be a federal ban – they need the states to enforce it. So they push it on the states the usual way: do it, or we'll take away your federal funding. At a time when many states are facing disastrous deficits, who could refuse?

One point in tangent: although we hear about the few stories of disaster caused by texting, do we hear of the millions of people who text carefully and don't run anyone over? But that's not really the point.

The point is not whether you agree people shouldn't text while driving, or even whether you think there should be a law to prohibit it. The point is, this is just another example of the federal government taking power from the states. The four senators pushing this bill are from New York, New Jersey (not that I support it), Louisiana, and North Carolina. If the bill is passed, the majority of states will push their legislation down everyone else's throats.

If so much of the laws that affect our daily lives are mandated by the federal legislature, what's the point of having states?

Originally, the states were meant to preserve the local culture and philosophy of government. If you wanted to have a government with a more active role in people's lives, move to California. If you prefer more liberty – and forego the opportunity to control others' lives – go to Oklahoma. People are highly mobile among states, so it's much more reasonable than the choice of stay in America or move to New Zealand (or any other country).

When I first started thinking about this topic, my initial reaction was: what's the difference? If I'm going to have laws imposed on me, like the income tax or banning incandescent light bulbs, what do I care where those laws are coming from?

However, as I've become more and more obsessed with politics (it's a legitimate disorder), I realized that the people with the most impact on my life are a tiny elite group, hundreds of miles away.

If other people are going to have power over you, wouldn't you prefer they be a little more accessible than DC? 535 legislators rule over 300 million people. That's roughly one for every 560,748 constituents. No wonder so many people don't vote because they think their vote doesn't count!

My home state of New Jersey has 120 members responsible for about 8 million people, or 1 for every 66,667 people. That's much better odds than the federal government, and it gets better the more local you get. More than that, these people live in New Jersey. They're more likely to know what the needs of our communities are, and they have no other states with which to contend or negotiate legislation.

One of the main points of having a representative government is that we must hold our representatives accountable, and that is much more difficult to do when a tiny elite mostly rules over everyone.

If we want freedom, we should start by dismantling federal power and transferring it to state power (and ideally on to communities and individuals). Let the people who rule over you be the ones you can find at the next town hall meeting, not the ones who may never even read your letters or return your phone calls.

Otherwise, what will the federal government decide we can't do next?

Deferring to Greatness: Thomas Sowell

2009-07-28T22:30:00.001-04:00

I've spent about an hour trying to get some inspiration for writing this evening. Apparently, I already used up all my brainpower for the day.

Then, a brilliant idea came to me. Why not just link to one of my favorite authors, Dr. Thomas Sowell? He's so eloquent, and happens to have had a couple of really great articles during the past few days.

The first one is about Obamacare. The main point is this: if you use your own logic and common sense, you can quickly see that what sounds too good to be true probably is. He brilliantly debunks two of the main arguments for government intervention in the industry: pharmaceutical CEO pay and denial of coverage for pre-existing conditions.

The second one is sort of a follow-up on my last article about race. In case you missed it, my position is that the motivation behind an action is not a consideration: the outcome cannot be not changed by the original intention, so that intention is irrelevant.

However, I may not have made it clear that, as a white person, I know I'm not that qualified to talk about race. Trust me, I know. Hell, I was taught since the first grade to feel guilty about what my predecessors did.

That's why I decided to defer further discussion to Dr. Sowell, someone I admire greatly for his incredible ability to bring economics and policy to life in his books Basic Economics and Applied Economics (among many others). Not trying to pull a 'Sen. Barbara Boxer' here, but if we're talking about race, and my experience can only go so far, it seems appropriate to bring in some of his opinions instead. (In case you didn't know, he's black, so theoretically he's endured racism in this country.)

In this article, Sowell talks about racial profiling and Obama's background in race politics. He contends that there are groups who "benefit greatly from crying racism" and that these issues can never be behind us if we won't let them go. And this one is a really good one on inequity, using a personal story to bring some light to the subject.

Check him out. He's brilliant.

The Gates – Crowley – Obama Debacle

2009-07-27T22:44:00.002-04:00

I initially didn't think the controversy over the arrest of Harvard scholar Henry Gates was really worth mentioning. However, as people seem to be harping on it quite a bit, I'll throw in a couple thoughts as well.

In case you've managed to escape all the news coverage on this, here's a YouTube video of the press conference that turned this whole thing into the controversy it is.

Although the question was framed in terms of what it says about "race relations in America," I don't think Obama was really talking about race when he said the police "acted stupidly." He was saying that – although he didn't know all the facts – a citizen in his own home shouldn't be subject to arrest without warrant.

Personally, I don't think the President was being racist, and I don't think Sgt. Crowley was being racist. They were both doing their jobs. What bothers me about this situation is that it must be about race. It involves a white man and a black man, so therefore it is a racial matter.

Why does everything have to be about race? It's getting to the point that so-called "race relations" must necessarily mean walking on eggshells. What sort of fraternity and unity can we expect from a nation that divides people into groups like that, and pits them against one another?

I'm not saying racism doesn't exist. I can't speak for everyone. But my opinion is this: what matters is what people do and say, not why.

Someone can always misrepresent his motivations, so it's useless to speculate about what cannot be proven. In the video, Obama talks about how African-Americans and Latinos are "stopped" disproportionately. He doesn't really say if the people in question are doing something wrong or not.

If they're doing something wrong, then it's good they were stopped. If not, it doesn't matter if the cop stopped them because they're black or for any other reason. The fact is that they were wrongfully stopped – and wrong is wrong whether we believe it's racially motivated or not.

My point is, you can divide people any way you want. Just because some people choose to separate one race from another in their minds doesn't mean everyone does, and it doesn't mean those people are any more ridiculous than those who dislike fat people, or short people, or women with high-pitched voices.

If one man kills another of a different race, is the death really more wrong because they look different? There's always the possibility of racism, and unless we're talking about the KKK here, it can't really be proven. Even if it is the KKK – a group that kills people is wrong regardless of what those people look like.

Furthermore, people tend to live up to the expectations you put on them. If you're constantly expecting racism, you might find some people distancing themselves from you. And you'll see it everywhere because you're looking for it. But how can you know for sure?

We can't see into other people's heads. For that reason, we also cannot make judgments about what may or may not be in there. If we want to stick to reality, we can only consider what actually happens – not our ideas of why.

I guess that means we'll just have to give Sgt. Crowley and President Obama the benefit of the doubt.

Debt - Just Add It to the Pile

2009-07-24T20:17:00.010-04:00

I've been around for less than a quarter century, and during that time, the total US National Debt has grown from 48% of the 1986 GDP to 87% of the 2008 GDP. It is projected to be 120% of the projected GDP for 2012. That means our debt as a percentage of our income will have increased 150% in just 26 years. And that's with an increasing income.

Let me put that into a little illustration. A hot-shot college grad, Joe, enters the job market in 1986 making a cool $20,000 (in current, inflation-adjusted dollars). He also has about $9,500 (also inflation-adjusted) in college loans to pay off. That sounds like a pretty normal scenario.

Fast-forward to today. Last year, in 2008, Joe made just under $64,000. He's done pretty well for himself. But unfortunately, Joe was more of a spender than a saver, and his debt burden has now grown to nearly $56,000. That's over 87% of his current income.

Not only that, but he currently estimates that he'll be making about $10,000 more by the end of 2012 and he'll add on $32,500 more debt. We're not talking about a mortgage here - this is just to cover his year-to-year spending.

To most people, 74k is a pretty nice income for one person, but even if he spends it all to pay for his debt in that year, he'll still have nearly $15,000 left over. Now he's really in a pickle.

It's okay, he says, my kids will be able to pay for it when they're grown up.

What would you tell this guy? Stop spending money! I can't imagine anyone disagreeing that Joe has so far led a pretty irresponsible and wasteful adulthood. If we wouldn't do that in our personal lives, why do we allow the government to do it? Not only do we allow it, we demand it with our insatiable desire for more and more programs and public amenities.

It's a basic principle of life - if you spend money, you'll have to pay for it someday. Even if the government simply prints money, we'll pay in skyrocketing prices. But people seem to think that public benefits are free. (Free health care!)

They're not. Unless the doctors work for free and the equipment and supplies are free, health care will always cost what it costs. And you cannot change the cost by hiding it. The taxpayers are ultimately liable to pay for the government's spending - if not now, then later.

On a personal level, we can see through Joe's mistakes. We know he's going to get into some trouble sooner or later. We can see that debt for what it is, not as free money. Why, then, can we not see what is happening to our country? And if we can, why are we not doing something about it?

I believe people have become completely insensitive to large numbers. $700 billion for TARP. A trillion or so for government health insurance. When will it end? In case you've forgotten, here is a nice illustration of what a trillion dollars is.

We cannot depend on the politicians to be responsible for us. All they hear from voters is, "We NEED [x program]" And they're happy to give it to us. They only have one goal - to stay in power. If they can expand that power in the process, that is a major plus.

The only solution to this mess is to start thinking of the government's money as our money. After all, it is - they can only get it by taking it from us or borrowing it and taking it from us later, along with interest.

We need to remember that our representatives are on our payroll, and that makes us their boss. What does a boss do with an employee that spends money on things the owner wouldn't? Maybe the employee will get a warning once or twice. After that, he's out of there because he can't be trusted.

If the taxpayers as a whole thought of our government this way and enforced it the way they would in their personal lives, our entire nation would be looking at a much brighter future.

Race Politics... Or Politics As Usual?

2009-07-22T23:10:00.006-04:00

Check out this video from YouTube. If you don't have 6 minutes of your life to waste, here's the main take-away: Senator Boxer is holding a committee hearing on green jobs which includes Harry Alford, the President and CEO of the Black Chamber of Commerce. Alford has taken up a position in opposition to Boxer.

To prove that her side of the issue is valid, she erroneously cites an NAACP resolution as well as several other "diverse" sources. By diverse, she means published by black people. Alford, himself a black man, points out that it seems a little inappropriate to bring race into a discussion on climate change, and he finds it offensive. She counters that the black man she was quoting would be PROUD she was reading from HIS report.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say, although Boxer came across as condescending, this is normal politics in our country. Politicians are constantly going after the 'Black Vote' and the 'Hispanic Vote,' etc., and in doing so they promise to pander to those particular groups. That's telling them, "you can't make it in this country without us. You need us to make special legislation for you."

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't that sort of undermine the whole non-discrimination thing? Going out of your way to point out that your argument is supported by minority groups is just another side of the same attitude. Boxer is essentially saying to Alford, "you may be black, but plenty of other black people support this cause. (So that makes it okay)"

The underlying message is that a cause or a position has no merit unless it is supported by black people – and/or other minority groups. Boxer underscored diversity several times. I must have missed the sections on diversity in my science and economics classes, but it comes up disturbingly often as a reason for supporting a policy.

The implications of this are deeper than being condescending to minorities: we're talking about a matter that should be considered in light of facts and expert opinion. The decisions these people ultimately make will affect millions of others. Who cares if the side supported by fact is composed of a bunch of white people or a bunch of black people? It doesn't matter!

I don't think Boxer was being stupid, or that she is necessarily racist against blacks. She's a politician. She knows how to maneuver in our political environment, which encourages this sort of behavior.

If we don't like it, we should stop rewarding politicians for catering to specific groups and start demanding equal treatment under the law.

The Right to be Heard?

2009-07-22T08:21:00.001-04:00

I've always thought people were sue-happy in this country, but this one is beyond ridiculous. Apparently, some kid was banned from Sony's game forums, and he believes this is an appropriate matter for the courts, on the basis of his first amendment right to free speech. He also wants $55,000 in 'punitive damages.'

Many of the comments on the site have already pointed out that his right to free speech is a right guaranteed by the government, not by private entities. Some also pointed out that the case would probably be thrown out, as there is no legal basis for his argument. So, there's no need for me to reiterate that.

What people seem to be missing is that the right to free speech does not amount to the right to be heard. Although the government can't stop you from saying whatever wacko things you want to say, no one is obliged to listen to you. And they certainly are not required to allow you to take up space on their servers and offend their other customers.

I haven't even been on this earth for a quarter century – so correct me if I'm wrong here – but it seems there's been a marked shift in political debates from before the Great Depression (maybe sooner) to now. Now, the argument seems to go, people have a right to this or that. Everyone has a right to a home. And health care. And a job. And good wages from the job. Right, Obama? Actually, FDR came up with this Economic Bill of Rights in 1944, which were in short: the right to a job with decent wages; right for farmers to sell their goods for high enough prices; the right to a competitive, but not overly competitive market; home, medical care, unemployment insurance, and education.

Personally, I think the Economic Bill of Rights is silly. We have a right to pursue those things unhindered by government, but if we are not willing to work for what we want, we have no right to them.

It seems to me that, since then, people focus too much on what our rights are instead of what the government's rights are not. Prior to that, political debates seemed to center on, or at least consider, whether Congress has a constitutional right to proceed. Now we constantly talk about what things or services the people have a right to that the government must fulfill (health insurance, anyone?) or enforce against someone else (minimum wage).

This is how people confuse the privilege of being heard with the right to free speech. How many other areas in our lives do we do that in? This is how we give the government control of our entire lives – by demanding privileges as 'rights' and expecting the government to be the enforcer.

It used to be that the government could guarantee us at least a certain amount of freedom from its intervention – now it guarantees at least a certain amount of intervention so that it can be our nanny.

It’s All Bernanke’s Fault

2009-07-21T08:08:00.003-04:00

This isn't really that new, but the first time I've had a chance to write some thoughts about it since it all started. Apparently Ben Bernanke is coming under some heat for his actions as Fed Reserve Chairmen. I just have a few short thoughts about this. (And please excuse any rambling – I'm trying to get this out before getting ready for work.)

First – am I the only one that notices how ridiculous these Senate "investigations" are? I'm not sure where Congress got the power to put private citizens on trial (maybe you could help me with that one) – but they've been doing this an awful lot: bank executives, oil executives, etc. Admittedly, Bernanke as a government official is a little different, but it seems the Senate holds "hearings" and "investigations" to allocate blame for things they themselves had a pretty big hand in. How preposterous is that! It's like the kid who broke his mom's expensive vase playing baseball in the house, and then interrogates his sister to try to ward off the blame. I'd say it's not working… but isn't it?

Second – Bernanke was just doing what everyone was pressuring him to do. As the Fed was lowering rates, pundits were constantly questioning, was he doing it fast enough? Should he be lowering rates faster? Now they're saying, HE's going to cause inflation! HE's going to ruin any economic growth we do have with higher prices. Do they forget the pressure there was to lower rates in the first place? At the last Fed meeting, people couldn't decide WHAT they wanted the Fed to do, but there was no resounding, "OK, let's start raising rates again." Why? We're still in a recession, and people still want the federal government to play God with the economy.

Third – I constantly hear people talking about how this is the longest recession in 50 years, or the worst, or both. I don't know everyone in the United States, but things really aren't that bad. Even so – doesn't it seem like the more government intervention we have to "steer the economy back," the longer things take to correct themselves? The best example of this, of course, is the Great Depression. I'm no expert, but it seems to me when you continually muck around in the economy, businesses don't know what to expect from the government and will hold back their capital until they do. Furthermore, a lot of the mucking around, like taking over industries does far more harm than good and can certainly be expected to have long-lasting results. People talk about how Obama has offered us a New New Deal, and we should be saying no-thank-you. If you're not familiar with all the finagling and worsening that was done to the economy during the Great Depression, I highly recommend this book.

Fourth (and final) – This follows from the third. Wake up people! The economy is like a cat – it always lands on its feet. Unless you're trying to juggle it, which the government usually does. What are we so afraid of? Although the economy is not 100% in your control, it IS 100% in "the people's" control, meaning unless everyone collectively wants to stay in a recession, things will get better. If the people who engage in the economy themselves do not have the power to drive the economy to growth, what makes us think the government can control it? It's an illusion! Sure, the government can do specific things to try to encourage growth (like lowering taxes), but this is not like fine-tuning a piano. It's more like shooting the piano with a shotgun and hoping more of the keys will be in tune than not. I understand the feeling that "someone is taking care of this mess." And there is of course some merit to the government's ability to give people hope that it's all going to be okay. But the fact is, it would have been better, faster, without asking the government to step in and do what it is immeasurably ill-equipped to do.

I guess the main take-away from this (aside from all the tangents) is that the only people qualified to help the economy are those who compose it – the people who, by their own myriad economic decisions, make their own fine-tunings toward their own optimal result. If you have 300 million people optimizing their own situations – what is the logical result of that?

When the government steps in to interfere with that, there will always be blame to award because the result is pretty much never good. Don't people ever notice how the government makes some decree to "fix" something, then it has to figure out who was to blame for the first decree and issue second and third and fourth decress to "fix" what it did in the first place? (Social Security started WHEN and they're still fixing it? Medicaid? Medicare? If a government program constantly needs help, maybe it was a bad idea in the first place!) Sure, sometimes Congress or the President can pass off the blame to the evil executives or the irresponsible free market, but that only covers their tracks until the ugly results of their current actions start showing up.

And don't say free market is how we got into this mess. It's not. We haven't had an acceptably free market in over a century – how do we know what our "freedom" caused when it's mixed in with so much government control? We can't, until we get rid of the government control.

The Wrong Thing

2009-07-18T00:02:00.004-04:00

Let the Rich Pay for it!

2009-07-17T08:21:00.001-04:00

Looks like the House Ways and Means Committee approved the government-run health insurance plan with a nice little kick in the pants to our nation's best earners. This is like a day at the carnival for liberals.

I don't understand why people don't seem to realize that taxing 'the rich' could possibly affect them. Firstly, we may or may not be talking about the wealthiest people here. Indeed, many of the wealthiest, such as Warren Buffett, now draw incomes much lower than these thresholds. So, they're really talking about taxing those who will potentially become some of the wealthiest, in the future. Either way, in the news, the rhetoric, and the propaganda, they say we're taxing 'the rich' because that makes 'the poor' feel better.

Secondly, these are the people that employ other people. Many of them probably own or manage businesses that presumably have employees. They can't be expected to carry us all on their backs, can they? It's not that 1% of $350,000 in itself is that much (well, $3500 is a lot of money to me), but do you think that is the first discriminatory tax placed on these people? By discriminatory, I mean the tax is levied on a very specific group of people. Virtually every new spending plan proposing taxing 'the rich' to pay for it. How many more taxes will they take before they leave, or worse, stop producing? Some of them are probably already hiding out in a safe haven somewhere in the Rockies…

Hell, I'm as jealous of rich people as anyone. I live in a crappy one bedroom apartment – and likely to for several more years. There are a lot of nice houses in my area, and I can admit to just a little house envy. But that gives me no right to take what someone else has earned to satisfy my envy. NO right. There are no circumstances in which I am entitled to any part of the income of anyone else, let alone someone who has produced far more than I.

This is an important point, and one that people conveniently forget when there are huge government spending increases to be paid for. Except in the case of criminal activities, people earn lots of money solely because they provide lots of value. There's this public image of evil executives sneaking into company vaults and taking everything. People like that are an exception, and they can't survive in a free market for long. The fact is, work is a commodity like anything else, and its price is commensurate with what it is worth to the buyer.

Just think of some of the famous rich people in history. They built the railroads, invented all the conveniences we have today (and were sometimes equally scorned for it). We have the highest standard of living yet known to man because of the people that produced the most in the past and present. I have no clue how the laptop I'm using works and could never build one in a thousand years – and that means the people that designed and built it are worthy of my thanks.

"But I work my ass off, and these guys sit at a desk getting paid twice my salary" – what does that tell you? Your labor isn't worth as much because a million other people can do it. Or it doesn't benefit that many people. I could break my back stacking big rocks on top of other big rocks, but that doesn't entitle me to earn more money. To earn money, you must provide value. That means you must have skills and experience that are highly demanded, but in short supply.

If you want to thumb your nose at rich people, to feel better, go ahead. OR you could learn a skill, work harder, do something to move yourself in that direction. People talk about the rich as if they're a bunch of spoiled cats living pampered lives on the 'backs' of others. Maybe people like Paris Hilton are, but the producers, the earners that our nation seeks to penalize so much – they're more like beasts of burden, carrying our weight.

We should be telling them, "Thanks – keep going!" But each new tax we throw on their backs instead says, "Don't work so hard. Produce less… Be more like the rest of us." Can you imagine the awful situation we'd be in if they all decided to heed that?

Health Care Reform!!!!, Part 2

2009-07-16T22:50:00.003-04:00

I didn't plan on harping on health care anymore, but reading this Bloomberg article got me kind of pissed, so here we go…

One of the main themes of this debate centers on the insurance companies being immorally profitable. After all, if those companies weren't so bent on making a profit and staying in business, then everyone could get coverage for less. Damn them!

Robert Menendez, one of my state's Senators (not that I'm proud of it), accused the companies of making their sordid earnings "on the backs of American families." Well, I realize how effective emotionally-charged statements like this are. It's despicable. These guys are just manipulating you by painting a picture of Big Insurance pitted against the poor, uninsured children.

While it's true that insurance companies and all other companies are able to continue in business by taking money from their customers, how exactly else should we expect them to render their services to us? Should we expect every company to self-immolate to serve these people's sense of fairness?

The article mentions the firms' embarrassing profit growth from 2000 to 2007. Firstly, 2007 was a peak year in profits for United Health Group. Using more appropriate, recent data, 2000 to 2008, the growth rate for United Health Group amounts to 336%, or an impressive (but not that impressive) 20.2% annualized growth rate per year. Although this is above average, it's not really that notable.

Further, if you want to establish that a company has been gouging the public, you should look at revenue instead of earnings, because revenue is the amount it receives for its services, earnings are that revenue minus what it must pay to its suppliers in order to provide those services. Looking at revenue, the annualized growth rate for the same period comes to 18% - still good, just not very remarkable, especially during a period of relatively solid economic expansion.

While inspecting the revenue, I noticed a few jumps: in late 2004 through 2006, United Health Group acquired several smaller health insurance companies (see page 58 and 59 of this annual report). That means, around the time cited by the article, United Health added the revenue from several other insurance companies to its financial reports. That's not genuine growth – it's like taking 3 cookies, smushing them together, and being amazed that the original cookie has grown. Amazing!

This document published in late 2006 by the New York State Assembly discusses an industry-wide health insurance industry consolidation, meaning many companies were making similar acquisitions. Therefore, I think it's safe to say that United Health Group's situation during this period was not unique.

What does that mean? This ridiculous, incorrigible growth is probably mostly an illusion brought about by a lot of acquisitions (i.e., mashing many cookies together into fewer, much larger cookies).

I don't know if Menendez knows this as he chastises these companies for doing, well, basically what every company in the United States does – I'll give him the benefit of the doubt – but spending just an hour or so looking into these remarks, using nothing but free resources (which I have fully linked) all but proves that he's just being silly. Or manipulative. Surely the resources of our public servants are enough to cover the cost of internet access and a little time to look into where this growth is coming from.

All that aside, even if the post-acquisition earnings shown by these insurance companies were comparable to earlier periods (which they are not), what Congress is asking them to do is to help build their own gallows. In effect, the government health insurance will compete with the private companies. It will be able to charge much lower prices because its goal is accessibility, not profit, so the taxpayers will cover the losses (an estimated $1 trillion over 10 years). Some proponents of the plan even want to penalize the insurance provided by private companies in order to fund the government plan's advantage. The unavoidable result of this, and indeed any case where the government incurs losses to compete with private companies, is to completely take over the industry. Think TVA during the Great Depression.

The government insurance plan, as the cheaper alternative, will cause great harm to the private insurance industry, if not obliterate it altogether. For this reason alone, it is wrong. The government will compete, using unfair advantage, with its own citizens! And on top of that, Senators have the chutzpah to decry the insurers for not contributing to their own demise.

Does it get more ridiculous than that?

Urgent!!! Health Care Reform

2009-07-15T23:24:00.003-04:00

Health care seems to be constantly on the top of Bloomberg Political News, so I guess it's worth a mention, even though it's been kind of like watching a car accident and not being able to look away.

Apparently Obama wanted to get this reform through before the August recess because it's extremely urgent. It's so urgent, they might have to just overrule those nasty Republicans on this one – although I think "bipartisan compromise" is silly, I also know this plan is just wrong, so I'm still hoping for stalemate. Hang in there, 21^st century axis of evil!

Here's why this is all so ridiculous. Firstly, they say that Americans don't have health insurance, and that is an urgent, serious matter. According to Bloomberg data, only about 15% of Americans are currently without it. That in itself isn't really a tragedy. Health insurance is just a way to pay a company to handle the risk of your health. You pay a premium – in turn, they pay your claims. In reality, people pay in premiums more than the insurance company will ever pay for their health care – that's how the insurance companies stay in business. So in theory, a family that could pay anything for health insurance, even if it's not market rate, could probably save that money and have enough to cover any real emergencies.

At any rate, it's nice to have the insurance because it's no fun worrying what if…? I know from experience, dude.

The problem of having no insurance comes when something serious happens and you don't have the money to pay for it. That's the worst-case scenario. My husband and I had a rather mild brush with this – in the end, the cost was around $4,000. I was a student, he was out of work. We had no extra money. Hell, we had just moved out of our apartment and back with my parents because we were broke. So what did we do? I took out some more student loans, which we are still paying off. At any rate, I can assure you the world did not end.

The second reason this is so ridiculous is that the bill is supposed to address wild, skyrocketing health care costs. I'll agree that the cost of medical care seems high, but not if you consider the cost of medical malpractice insurance and, in some regions, the cost of free health care given to illegal immigrants. In some specialties, doctors pay more in malpractice insurance than I make in a year. If a doctor is sued, he could easily pay that much in legal defense fees alone. Assuming he doesn't have limitless money to spend on these things, he'll have to recover these costs somehow – meaning you pay higher prices. If we want to lower the cost of health care, it would be much more effective to start with malpractice litigation or illegal immigration.

Additionally, insurance only hides the cost of medical care. If I go to the doctor, I pay $20, but the actual cost could be $200 or $300, especially if I had blood tests done. That cost is paid by the insurance company, so it's nearly invisible to me. That means, when I have insurance, I'm more likely to go to the doctor even though I don't really need to, and also possibly more likely to live a more risky lifestyle. After all – I'm covered, right? That's called moral hazard.

Got a headache? Better get an MRI. Sniffles? Blood test for swine flu. You can't be too careful, especially when the Uncle Sam's footing the bill.

Here's an example. In the year and a half I was off of health insurance, I never saw a doctor. Couldn't afford it. If I got sick, I'd have kind of a miserable week but end up just fine, and the $200 dollars were never spent, and the doctor has more time to see other patients.

This past year was my first having health insurance in awhile. During that time, I've seen the doctor three times, plus a specialist twice, a chiropractor, and a dentist. I've also had blood tests done. All because it costs a tiny percentage out of my pocket, so I can afford it now for the sake of peace of mind. Just me getting checked out for every little thing, I've probably cost my insurance company several thousands of dollars, for practically nothing!

If the insurance company is the government, that means it's the taxpayers paying that extra cost of seeing the doctor for a runny nose because it's nearly "free" to the patient. But if the plan goes into effect for all the Americans that currently do not have insurance, that's 46 million people making similar choices. Although the plan charges a small premium, almost by definition a government plan will lose lots of money because it is paying for the risks the private sector cannot bear at low prices.

So in all actuality, hiding the cost of health care from more patients effectively does two things. First, it places a lot more demand on doctors' time as patients decide to see them for less and less important reasons. For those of you out there familiar with economics, that means doctors will have to raise their prices in order to ration the time they have available. Second, the total cost of health care will go up, not only because of rising costs due to increased demand, but also due to people using more health care than if they personally must pay for it. That means more taxes.

But because the government is paying the costs, the prices won't actually be able to rise that much. It's the government we're talking about. When health care providers deal with insurance companies, they negotiate to mutual agreement. The insurance companies would have to bear the higher costs because they can't simply refuse to pay their contractual obligations. They'll just raise premiums. But the government can say, 'No, you can't charge that much. That's wrong.'

So suddenly it becomes less worth it to be a doctor. They can't charge what their time and expertise are really worth; meanwhile they must figure out how to treat more patients without being sued more. Using more medical supplies and equipment also costs them money. So, some aspiring doctors would decide to pursue other, more rewarding careers, and some established doctors may as well. That means, not only do we have rising demand from people trying to see doctors for trivial reasons, but we might also have less doctors to care for them. Quality suffers in a big way – and before you know it the British will be joking about our bad teeth! We'll be hearing of 13 year-old girls getting breast implants while people with serious illnesses die on waiting lists to get in to surgery. That is the hidden, and more sinister, cost of placing more demands on health care without allowing prices to rise enough to attract more providers, as they would in a free market.

The legislation before Congress looks like a simple wealth redistribution scheme from the majority with insurance to the (purportedly bottom) 15% without it. Make it cost less for the less fortunate – and everyone else bears the burden. In the process, the burden becomes bigger and bigger, the cost greater and greater. The end result, as with any such scheme, is lower standard of living; however, in this case it's in one of the most important areas of our lives: health care.

America's health care standards have always excelled over other countries precisely because of the lesser extent of government intervention in that area. Now, it appears this advantage we enjoy is the problem that urgently needs fixing.

Tax the Rich!

2009-07-14T15:59:00.000-04:00

Voting with Your Dollar?

2009-07-13T02:15:00.004-04:00

Judging by the magnitude of the Tax Day and other Tea Parties we've seen recently, I think it's safe to say I'm not the only one who is frustrated with the incredible amount of money the federal government spends these days. It's not just the amount though, it's what the money is being spent on.

Granted, the purpose of transferring wealth from the private to public sectors is to make different use of it than otherwise. If they used it the same way we would, what would be the point? Still, it seems a little absurd to me that the people who are supposed to be representing us end up using our money on things we never would. If they're doing that, how can they really say they're representing their constituents?

As someone who has never owned her own home, I can only roll my eyes at the talk of subsidizing the failing subprime mortgages. I live in a one-bedroom apartment, with no washer or dryer, garage, or back yard. If I were given the choice of what to do with the portion of my money that would go to paying for other people's mortgages, I must admit I'd use it to save for my own home. Who wouldn't? But if I have to surrender it to the government, I'd feel a little less indignant if I could choose at least broad categories of what it would be spent on.

I think that is a worthwhile idea. What if you could sign in to some website and decide what percentage of your taxes go to which category of government programs, and even change the portions periodically. Kind of like deciding the allocations of your 401k or charity donations. Then, instead of griping about what those crazy people in DC are using our money for, we could feel at least a little better that we were allowed to choose in a broad sense what should be done with our own money – aside, of course, from saving it for ourselves.

Our Constitution gave the "power of the purse" to the House of Representatives because its authors believed that funding should be more directly controlled by the people. That was supposed to decrease the likelihood of the mismanagement of the public Treasury, since back then, Representatives were elected directly and the Senate was not.

So why not take that principle a step further? Why not give the taxpayers more of a voice in the spending of their money? Imagine the ramifications of that. Congress would never be able to carry out programs the people didn't support, unless they wanted to reach into their own pockets, which are admittedly rather deep for self-proclaimed "public servants." No one would have to protest irresponsible or wasteful spending because they themselves could pull the plug. I think it'd be great if the taxpayers were the ultimate authority of what the government could and could not do.

On the other hand, if Congress thought we should have a say in what happens with our money, the vast majority of it could stay in our own pockets. The entire premise of wealth redistribution, subsidies, and other socio-economic programs is that they know better what to do with all that money than the private citizens do.

Now that I think of it, this crazy idea of letting people decide what to do with their money sounds familiar. I've definitely heard of it before… Ah yes, it does sound a lot like the free market.

There are some things that it's better to pool our resources, like public defense and infrastructure. But here's the underlying point: how many current government functions can you think of that really require government bureaucrats to be the middle-men of the transaction? I can donate to the poor, to the arts, to scientific research on my own.

If we really believe in a democratic system of government, then we believe that we are rational human beings that can reasonably decide what happens with our government. If we also believe, on a personal level, that we know what best to do with our own money, why do we allow some remote group of strangers make those decisions for us, aside from the few things we can't very well do on our own?

It seems sort of hypocritical to me. Something along the lines of – well, I know what to do with my money, but the government needs to keep those other people in line. Or, the natural outcome of rational beings pursuing their own optimal outcomes is somehow irrational and must be fixed. Not enough would be spent on this or that – but by whose standards? Certainly not by the standards of those whose labor produced the money in the first place.

But if we believe that the normal, day-to-day decisions of the general public need to be overridden, then we don't really believe in democracy at all, do we?

The Ant and the Grasshopper

2009-07-11T19:44:00.009-04:00

Printed below, for your entertainment, is Aesop's fable, "The Ant and the Grasshopper":

In a field one summer's day a Grasshopper was hopping about, chirping and singing to its heart's content. An Ant passed by, bearing along with great toil an ear of corn he was taking to the nest.
"Why not come and chat with me," said the Grasshopper, "instead of toiling and moiling in that way?"
"I am helping to lay up food for the winter," said the Ant, "and recommend you to do the same."
"Why bother about winter?" said the Grasshopper; we have got plenty of food at present." But the Ant went on its way and continued its toil. When the winter came the Grasshopper had no food and found itself dying of hunger, while it saw the ants distributing every day corn and grain from the stores they had collected in the summer. Then the Grasshopper knew: It is best to prepare for the days of necessity.

I like the moral of this story, but today it'd be a little different. The story wouldn't necessarily be about the Grasshopper laying in the bed he made - it would be about the greedy ants and how they should be made to share. Hell, we learn about sharing in kindergarten right? Time to teach those ants a lesson!

The poor Grasshopper. He was born without the foresight of the ants. It's not his fault he makes bad choices. No one ever told him to gather his own food. Oh, wait, the Ant did suggest it. But certainly his parents and his teachers neglected to tell him. He is clearly the victim of inadequate upbringing.

But should the ants be penalized for providing for themselves? Evidently the Grasshopper's suffering justifies making the ants suffer too. However, setting aside the emotional implications of allowing the Grasshopper to perish, what are the logical consequences of punishing those who produce in order to reward those who don't?

When dealing with rational beings, you get more of what you reward, and less of what you punish. That's why parents don't punish their kids for doing homework - they punish them for staying out past curfew or otherwise misbehaving. Why? Well, most parents would like less misbehaving and more homework-doing. Duh. It's an axiom so simple, so taken for granted that it seems silly to take up the space saying it.

Why then, why oh why do I still hear people squawking about taxing "the rich" more, or the evil corporations, in order to subsidize failing businesses or provide some public amenity to the needy? We resent the people that produce the most for our society, and we pity and reward those who produce the least.

I'm not saying that "the rich" should be the subject of charity, but I am saying that we are asking for trouble by punishing them merely for producing and making money. By forcing the redistribution of wealth from the industrious to the indolent, the government is like a parent saying, "less homework, more video games, got it?"

That message is not sent only to the rich, it is received by everyone. Suddenly it's not worth it to work harder, get educated, and improve one's lot in life. People who otherwise might work just enough to get by might decide it makes sense to apply for public benefits like welfare, or to pursue criminal activities instead of legitimate work. Think about it: if you keep less of your legal labor than illegal, crime starts to look more appealing. Plus, it's all those rich bastards' fault anyway. It's not fair they have so much - you're entitled to some of it, right?

Similarly, those who can afford to retire might decide to do so instead of working longer for a more comfortable retirement. So they leave the workforce in lieu of putting themselves in the class of citizens discriminated against by the government. In general, people work less than they would if they weren't going to be punished for it.

For advocates of shorter work weeks and more vacations (European style), this might seem like a positive boon. On the other hand, people are working and producing less. If you work less, you make less money and can buy fewer nice things. It's the same on the aggregate level - the general standard of living goes down. The number of people entering the public payroll is as disturbing as the number leaving the workforce that is expected to feed it.

It is ironic, then, that policies designed to redistribute wealth are enacted not only in the land of the 'free' but in the name of public welfare, of all things! I'm sure the bureaucrats feel better at having gotten something done. They look like a hero. And because people often can't see beyond the ends of their noses, they don't see the loss in productivity. How could they? The productivity they would have seen never came into existence. By this point, it's imaginary. Instead, they can see the public housing project, or whatever else the money was diverted to.

And there's never a shortage of other issues to complain about.

Right, Wrong, and Compromise

2009-07-09T20:16:00.009-04:00

Once in while I come across the argument that politics is just a clash between two different viewpoints, that if we could all just recognize that for what it is we could solve all of our problems. Sound familiar? A classic political excuse for not getting anything done (or getting the wrong things done) is "it's those darn [Republicans/Democrats] - they won't compromise on anything!"

The implication here is that the compromise is the preferable outcome, but if anyone truly believes he is right on an issue - and the other side is wrong - he can't be expected to compromise. Ask a devout Christian to compromise with Atheism - how does that make sense?

Congressmen and Senators invented the illusion of compromise by haggling over the wrong issues. For example, they might argue about how much of a man's personal income should be taken for the benefit of another. That is an argument that can be compromised anywhere between 100% and 0%. Imagine the possibilities! However, the real issue is: should the government be in the business of redistributing income? (And what gives it that right, what can justify taking that liberty from the people?)

If one side believes it's wrong for the government to take from some and give to others, then they lose that debate as soon as they concede to start arguing over how much. Merely entering into that discussion automatically compromises and effectively sacrifices their core principles. It's a slippery slope from that point. That's why, if this were 'The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly,' compromise would be the Ugly.

When the government ceases to consider whether it has the right to carry out a particular course of action, we - the people - forfeit our rights. That is how the government grows beyond previously imaginable. That is how we got the monstrosity we have now. Thanks a lot, compromise.

But it's not just compromise. If an issue like that were presented as it really is, it would be much too difficult. Before the issue is ready for compromise, it needs a strong emotional appeal. Instead of being a question of rights and the implications of expanding federal power, it becomes a plead of intentions. The justification for taking a course of action becomes: because we care. Because, how could we not care?

I think this charade works so well because people do care. Although I couldn't say what it's like to be inside someone else's head, it certainly makes me sad to see someone sleeping on the ground in the subway. I'm going to go out on a limb here: most people don't like to see others truly suffering.

And so, armed with these incredibly good and noble intentions and feelings, our representatives respond the way I would expect a normal human being to respond: what can I do to help? But there's a problem with that. It's one thing to ask what you can do to help another. It's quite another to ask what you can do to help - with other people's money.

Although "helping out my fellow man" is a commendable reason for an individual to give to charity or spend a day at the soup kitchen, as the justification for government intervention it is just an abuse of power.

Let me explain that. On a personal level, I might decide to donate to the poor. The I might become dissatisfied that, as just one person, I can't make much of an impact. So, I devise a plan to take money from the rest of the nation, with or without their consent. It's okay because I'd be doing it for a noble cause, because I care and think other people should care, too.

That might sound preposterous, because it is. In a civilized society, it would be called stealing. Think about it for a moment though. I don't have the right to forcefully take money from other people for any purpose, whether my intention is to cure cancer or to speculate wildly in pork belly futures. It doesn't matter - in a civilized society, you can't steal from other people and get away with it, so I'd go to jail.

Here's my point: If the government is a delegation of the rights of its citizens, then how does it get the right to redistribute income? No citizen has the right to take property from others, so how can he delegate that right to someone else? He can't. But the problem inherent in legislative bodies is that they can easily take the power to do whatever they can justify on a "moral" basis, and rights become more like... guidelines. (If not merely an afterthought).

They can look upon the natural outcomes symptomatic of people being different from each other and decide they can do something to fix it. They have the desire. They have the power. They have the "moral" high ground. Now the guy who doesn't agree looks like a jerk if he stands firm with his principles. BAM - Compromise.

And the rest, of course, is history.

Independence Day

2009-07-07T07:47:00.007-04:00

It's the Fourth of July. (At least it was when I scribbled the following into my notebook.) Any minute, the fireworks should be starting, but I'm inside. Probably won't see a single firework, except on TV. I guess I'm just not in the spirit.

Hearing the first couple "pops" off in the distance makes me sigh. I'm feeling kind of sad. Not exactly sad that I'm not out there - with tears in my eyes, feeling proud as hell of this country - but rather, I'm sad that I didn't want to be there, that slowly over the past couple years that magic seems to have left my heart.

Well. That is sad. I've always been confident that this is the very best country in the world. No question. Although I still feel basically the same way, it's more in the sense of: well, it's not as bad as the other countries in the world. Yet.

I've always thought of France and Britain and the rest of Europe as our past - like we're the front-runner of a marathon, looking over our shoulder and seeing the rest of the participants struggling uphill. Now... Well, considering the direction we're headed, they look frighteningly like our future. It turns out they were running backwards, and so are we. Next stop, European socialism.

All my life, Americans have enjoyed a much higher standard of living because of our freedom. But as I've become more aware of what's going on in this country - and as our pace has accelerated - I feel panicked. Indignant. We're America, damn it! We're supposed to love freedom more than anything. Still I see over 300 million people just willingly giving it up, giving away what our not-so-distant ancestors fought and bled for...

Here's another good quote from Ronald Reagan:

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.

Why do the younger generations squander what their parents and grandparents worked so hard for? And for what? Today it seems like we'll trade it for whatever sounds good at the time. It makes me wonder, if the founding fathers looked upon our nation today and saw how many of our decisions we now defer to the federal government, what would they feel? These were men that loved freedom and loved this country, and feared a tyrannical government. I can't pretend to know what they'd feel, but I can't imagine that pride would have much to do with it. I wonder, if they knew how we'd be so many years later, would they have still fought against Britain, or would it not have been worth it? Or would they have written the Constitution differently?

I still love this country, but I cannot see how people can celebrate when we've given up so much of what makes America so great. Are they celebrating because we've clung to whatever is left of our freedom for so long, that we managed to preserve some piece of the unattainable for longer than any other country? We're poisoning ourselves slower than Europe. Hooray for us!

I can't pretend to know what other Americans want - in fact I'm the least qualified to tell you that, because if you asked me, I would have said Americans want freedom. I want to think that that's still true, but how could it be?

When people consistently vote for those who continually take more and more rights, more and more property (because they believe they know what best to do with it than its rightful owners!), how can they say they value freedom above all else? We don't. We concede for this or that cause - emotion rules over reason. And in doing so, we mortgage our current problems onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. How can we be proud of that?

I am still thankful for what I have, and what we as a country have. We still (knock on wood) have the right to choose among health insurance and care options. We can still choose our banks. We can still choose what foods to eat and whether to exercise. But today, the government is trying to wrestle those choices away from us too. By the very nature of their position, our representatives will always try to take more. Have we forgotten that power begets power? Shame on us for trusting them implicitly.

Looking around on this Independence Day, I see people celebrating, not screaming at the top of their lungs: WHAT'S GOING ON HERE?! Instead of protesting the ruthless usurpation of our rights, we celebrate how free we are.

Maybe that's optimism. (Hey, it could be worse. At least we're not Europe or China!) But I'm still inclined to think it's blindness. Printed in the Declaration of Independence, "all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed" Indeed, we become accustomed to the government interfering in the economy, restricting businesses, and taking our pay. We would rather preserve the status-quo and trust everything will be fine as long as we don't think or talk about it too much. The government can just keep printing money to pay for our mistakes - but in the end, we'll pay for it. Or our children will, or our grandchildren.

To see into our future, we need only look across the Atlantic. At least, as our productivity and standard of living fall, we won't be alone. I guess misery does love company...

Stop feeding the crocodile!

2009-07-06T20:45:00.003-04:00

To sit back hoping that someday, someway, someone will make things right is to go on feeding the crocodile, hoping he will eat you last--but eat you he will. --Ronald Reagan I thought it fitting to begin my very first post of my very first blog by explaining where the URL came from. I spent nearly an hour trying to think up an appropriate name to the myriad of thoughts, ideas, and passions that I hope to impart here - something witty, possibly funny, yet meaningful and of course at least a tad political, at least once you understand its meaning. While searching hopelessly I stumbled upon this little quote by one of my favorite presidents... And I think that about sums it up. What I like about this quote is the imagery. I interpret the crocodile to be the government, especially federal. If you stop to think about how powerful it has become, how huge and bloated, it kind of looks like a big, fat, insatiable crocodile. People in this country have been slowly handing over their liberties to it for over 200 years. Well, that's not exactly true. People feed it other people's liberties. Tax the rich, subsidize my industry, control those prices, regulate those irresponsible hoodlums! But they don't realize that when every interest group does that, as they do now, everyone's liberties - even our basic concept of liberty - begin to erode away. But we keep feeding it. We actually ASK for more regulations, more controls. Something go wrong in the market? Regulate the markets. Worried about the environment? Impose a new tax on energy. Got health care bills? Force everyone to use government health care. It's simple. Feed it to the crocodile. He'll take care of it. Just watch your fingers! My mom says that if you want to get out of a hole, you have to stop digging first, which is another way of saying: the first step to fixing a problem is admitting that you have a problem. That's just another way of saying, stop feeding the crocodile!!