"Do You Austrians Have a Better Idea?" - Robert P. Murphy - Mises Institute

"Do You Austrians Have a Better Idea?" - Robert P. Murphy - Mises Institute: "n one sense, the critics are right when they ask, 'Oh, so we should just sit back and do nothing and let the market fix itself?' Yes, that would be a perfectly good idea. The whole reason we are in a recession in the first place is that the capital structure of the economy had become unsustainable due to the Fed's massive credit expansion following the dot-com bust and 9/11 attacks. Resources — most notably, labor — are currently idle, because the economy needs to readjust. Overextended lines such as housing and finance need to shrink, while others need to expand. (And no, I don't know what those understaffed lines are; that's why we have a price system.) Because Americans lived beyond their means for so many years, they now need to live below their means, consuming less while they rebuild their checking accounts and portfolios."

Ten specific proposals are listed in the article.

Campaign For Liberty — File This Under...

Campaign For Liberty — File This Under...: "... 'You know you're in trouble when...'

The former head of the KGB warns you that you're embracing too much socialism:

Russian Prime Minister Vladamir Putin has said the US should take a lesson from the pages of Russian history and not exercise 'excessive intervention in economic activity and blind faith in the state's omnipotence'....

Sounding more like Barry Goldwater than the former head of the KGB, Putin said, 'Nor should we turn a blind eye to the fact that the spirit of free enterprise, including the principle of personal responsibility of businesspeople, investors, and shareholders for their decisions, is being eroded in the last few months. There is no reason to believe that we can achieve better results by shifting responsibility onto the state.'..."

Problems with the Iowa Supreme Court Decision on Homosexual marriage

Voddie Baucham Ministries: "Right off the bat the Iowa decision jumps on the “Gay is the New Black” bandwagon."

"They do not ‘prove’ that homosexuality is a Civil Rights issue; they assume it. There is no Constitutional Right to sodomy. Moreover, homosexuals are not deprived of their Civil Rights in marriage, because they have the same rights in that regard as every American. That’s right... HOMOSEXUALS HAVE THE RIGHT TO MARRY! What they don’t have the right to is same-sex marriage."

"The Supreme Court of Iowa is basing its opinion on what is “unappealing to a gay or lesbian person.” This is not jurisprudence; this is social engineering."

"In other words, a right that you cannot enjoy is no right at all. Imagine this phrase applied to other sexual deviants. “Thus, the right of a [pedophile] under the marriage statute to enter a civil marriage only with a person [of legal age] is no right at all.”"

"How do the Justices know that the plaintiffs’ relationships were committed and loving? How does a same-sex couple raise children “just like heterosexual couples” if they do not have the same male/female makeup? Can a mother function ‘exactly’ like a father? Can a father fulfill all the roles of a mother? Is the law in the business of defining love? What legal standard did the Justices use to define commitment? If one of these couples experienced adultery, separation, or divorce, would that have change the decision? If so, then the law is purely situational and there is no longer an objective standard. If not, then the statement is superfluous and has no place in a legal decision."

Freedom or Regimentation - Mark Scheel - Mises Institute

Freedom or Regimentation - Mark Scheel - Mises Institute: "He asks the questions, does societal inequality necessarily imply victims and villains, and why do we tend to divide ourselves into 'them-versus-us' dichotomies? Carabini then warns of the pitfalls inherent in a strict system of democracy and reintroduces the old concept of "the tragedy of the commons." A consideration is offered as to how wealth is not a static monopoly but rather begets more wealth for all. A clarification is made as to what really constitutes money and how money does not equate with "prosperity." Carabini then berates the news media today for misleading us with skewed reportage and deconstructs the phenomenon of so-called "earnings gaps," explaining why any quest for "economic equality" is not only futile but harmful to the whole of society. As clearly demonstrated, redistribution of earnings and wealth quickly becomes a bane to a healthy economy, and everyone suffers the worse for it."

New Ideas for Roads - Jeffrey A. Tucker - Mises Institute

New Ideas for Roads - Jeffrey A. Tucker - Mises Institute: "It should go without saying that roads were originally private in the United States and were only later taken over by government, before public ownership had become an accepted convention."

"President's Preschool Emphasis Is Misdirected" by Andrew J. Coulson (Cato Institute: Commentary)

"President's Preschool Emphasis Is Misdirected" by Andrew J. Coulson (Cato Institute: Commentary): "When it comes to our children's future,' writes president Obama in his first budget, 'we cannot waste dollars on methods, programs, and initiatives that are not effective and efficient.' He's right, but his budget fails to heed his own dictum."

"In 2007, Heckman identified three small preschool programs from the 1960s and 1970s that studies suggest have more than paid for themselves in lower subsequent welfare and criminal justice costs incurred by their participants. But Heckman cautioned that "a much more careful analysis of the effects of scaling up the model programs... has to be undertaken before these estimates can be considered definitive.""

"If the president really wants effective, efficient programs, he should look at Florida's scholarship donation tax credit. Under this program, businesses can contribute to non-profit scholarship organizations that subsidize private k-12 tuition for needy families. For each dollar they donate, the businesses owe one fewer dollar in taxes. Last December, Florida's own government accountability office found that this education tax credit saves $1.49 for every dollar it reduces tax revenue. That is three times the largest return on investment for the preschool programs cited by Heckman —and it comes from a policy that is already serving 23,000 students statewide.

Giving at-risk children access to private schooling has been repeatedly shown to improve their educational attainment. Economist Derek Neal has found that Catholic schools raise the graduation rate of urban African Americans by 26 percentage points, and more than double their chances of graduating from college – even after controlling for differences in student background between the sectors. Half a dozen other scientific studies echo Neal's findings. Researchers from the U.S. and abroad also point to higher test scores for students when they attend private rather than public schools, after controlling for student and family background, as I report in a forthcoming global literature review in the Journal of School Choice."

"A Troubling Tax Day" by Chris Edwards (Cato Institute: Commentary)

"A Troubling Tax Day" by Chris Edwards (Cato Institute: Commentary): "The number of pages of tax rules skyrocketed from 40,500 in 1995 to 70,320 in 2009. Congress is increasingly micromanaging society with special tax incentives for education, energy, and other activities.
Federal tax paperwork consumes 7.6 billion hours of time annually, which is like having a full-time 'tax army' of 3.8 million people.
There are about 500 changes to the tax code every year as Congress and the Treasury churn out a never-ending stream of laws and regulations.
The share of taxpayers requiring professional help keeps rising, with 62 percent of returns completed by professionals in 2007.

Aside from the compliance burden, tax complexity creates other problems:

It complicates decision-making in the economy, for example by confusing family financial planning and generating uncertainty for businesses.
It encourages an invasion of privacy by the government. Each new tax incentive requires special documentation, which exposes people to scrutiny by the IRS.
It results in frequent errors by taxpayers and the IRS. Individuals and businesses can get locked into battles with the IRS for years because of uncertain tax rules.
It encourages tax evasion. High tax rates combined with complexity fosters aggressive tax dodging, which prompts Congress to pass even more complex tax regulations."

"All Aboard the Gravy Train" by Chris Edwards (Cato Institute: Commentary)

"All Aboard the Gravy Train" by Chris Edwards (Cato Institute: Commentary): "The CFDA was launched in the 1960s because members of Congress needed a guide to help their constituents access benefits from the hundreds of new Great Society programs. There were 1,019 federal subsidy programs by 1970; the number rose more in the late 1970s before President Reagan cut back in the early 1980s. It started growing again in the late 1980s, but leveled out in the mid-1990s as Congress briefly restrained the budget.

This decade, budget restraint vanished and the number of subsidy programs grew by 27 percent. The number of subsidy programs in the Department of Agriculture increased 56 percent thanks to bloated farm bills in 2002 and 2008."

"To illustrate the broad advance of the federal welfare state, here is a sample of large and small subsidy programs added since 2000 and their annual cost:

Medicare prescription-drug benefit ($62 billion)
Homeland-security state grants ($1 billion)
Local firefighter-staffing grants ($180 million)
Clean-diesel funding ($156 million)
Healthy-marriage promotion ($150 million)
Community abstinence education ($117 million)
Education-data-systems grants ($100 million)
Small-shipyards subsidies ($98 million)
Bioenergy-fuels grants ($80 million)
Anti-gang state grants ($45 million)
Laura Bush library program ($26 million)
Specialty-crop block grant ($49 million)
Seniors' farmers-market program ($22 million)
EPA community-action grants ($2.4 million)
Drug-free-workplace grants ($1 million)

All these programs cost taxpayers money, but they also generate great deals of bureaucracy. Each requires armies of federal, state, and local administrators to handle grant applications, police eligibility, calculate funding formulas, and write stacks of reports that nobody reads.

These efforts don't always work, so scam artists claim unjustified benefits. (The cost of fraud is in the tens of billions of dollars for large subsidy programs such as Medicare and Medicaid.) And each new subsidy program spurs the creation of lobby groups that set up camp near Capitol Hill to push for even higher federal spending."

Baldwin Bulletin Baldwin Wisconsin: Phoenix Bar and Grill readied for May 1 opening

Baldwin Bulletin Baldwin Wisconsin: Phoenix Bar and Grill readied for May 1 opening: "The board discussed whether the village ordinances should be amended to require that a garage be built with every home. The consensus was that should be the case and the board passed a motion to require at least a 20x20 garage with every home. The measure now needs to be published and then adopted as an ordinance."

Why in the world do they think they need to mandate that every new house have a 20x20 (2 car?) garage?

Spanish Study Sparks Skepticism About Green Jobs - First 100 Days of Presidency - Politics FOXNews.com

Spanish Study Sparks Skepticism About Green Jobs - First 100 Days of Presidency - Politics FOXNews.com: "'Will America watch as the clean energy jobs and industries of the future flourish in countries like Spain, Japan or Germany?' he asked in January.

But a new report out of Spain says if that country is any indication, Americans shouldn't be depending on green jobs to help the U.S. economy."

"Calzada says for every green job that's created with government funding, 2.2 regular jobs are lost and that only one in 10 green jobs wind up being permanent."

D.C. Families Bemoan Imminent Loss of Voucher Program - Presidential Politics | Political News - FOXNews.com

D.C. Families Bemoan Imminent Loss of Voucher Program - Presidential Politics | Political News - FOXNews.com: "Democrats, teachers' unions and other opponents say it is impossible to expect public schools to do better while precious public dollars are being siphoned away to private schools."

The public schools keep some of the money that they used to get for the students so if all students participated in the program the public schools would have tons of money (and no students). The root isn't isn't about losing money -- it seems to be about control.

Report: NSA tried to eavesdrop on Congress member | Politics and Law - CNET News

Report: NSA tried to eavesdrop on Congress member | Politics and Law - CNET News: "The National Security Agency tried to wiretap a member of the U.S. Congress without a warrant, and has engaged in 'significant and systemic' illegal surveillance activities in the last few months including e-mail and telephone call interceptions, according to a report this week."

With this level of abuse against someone at that high of position how safe do you feel?

Introducing Human Action Audio! - Ludwig von Mises - Mises Institute

Introducing Human Action Audio! - Ludwig von Mises - Mises Institute: "It was the ideas of the classical economists that removed the checks imposed by age-old laws, customs, and prejudices upon technological improvement and freed the genius of reformers and innovators from the straitjackets of the guilds, government tutelage, and social pressure of various kinds."

"The economists exploded the old tenets: that it is unfair and unjust to outdo a competitor by producing better and cheaper goods; that it is iniquitous to deviate from the traditional methods of production; that machines are an evil because they bring about unemployment; that it is one of the tasks of civil government to prevent efficient businessmen from getting rich and to protect the less efficient against the competition of the more efficient; that to restrict the freedom of entrepreneurs by government compulsion or by coercion on the part of other social powers is an appropriate means to promote a nation's well-being."

"The U.N.'s Global Green Raw Deal" by Patrick J. Michaels (Cato Institute: Commentary)

"The U.N.'s Global Green Raw Deal" by Patrick J. Michaels (Cato Institute: Commentary): "the United Nations has just jumped on President Obama's hybrid bandwagon, demanding yet another trillion dollars (coming mostly from you-know-who) to fund 'A Global Green New Deal for Sustainable Development.' Translation: The U.S. will provide funds to poorer nations so that they, too, can tell their private companies what to make, whom to employ, and how much to pay them."

"Resenting the Rich - Rebutting Thomas Piketty" by Chris Edwards (Cato Institute: Commentary)

"Resenting the Rich - Rebutting Thomas Piketty" by Chris Edwards (Cato Institute: Commentary): "Piketty's understanding of the nature of income is very European. He implies that there is a fixed income pie, such that any income that high earners receive must come at the expense of others. Because the share of income earned by the top 1 percent has increased, he says that there has been 'an income transfer of about 14 points of national income' to the top group. But high earners did not take that money from other people, they generated it by their own efforts.

In a market economy, there is no central pile of money that is distributed out to the citizens. Each person produces value and earns income by voluntary exchange in a decentralised fashion. Compensation follows from people producing items of value to others. Of course there are exceptions, such as those high-earning CEOs who perform poorly, but it doesn't make economic sense to impose exorbitant tax rates because of the exceptions.
Those at the top end—the entrepreneurs, doctors, and others with unique skills—often generate benefits that are greater than their reward in compensation. One reason is that there is scope for innovation in top-end jobs like heart surgery that there isn't in lower-income jobs. The trash collector's wage matches his contribution, but when the surgeon invents a new medical technique, it can create long-lasting benefits for the rest of us that will only be partly reflected in compensation."

"Piketty's work is based on income as reported on tax returns, but there have been huge changes in the American tax system since the 1970s that make measuring income over time very difficult. My colleague Alan Reynolds has tackled some of these problems with the Piketty data.1 One issue is that the top federal income tax rate fell from 70% in the late 1970s to 35% today, with the result that high-income taxpayers are avoiding and evading taxes less, and reporting more income on their returns.

If you look at Piketty's data showing the share of income received by the top 1% since the 1970s, you will see sudden upward spikes after major tax rate cuts. That suggests that a portion of the income gains at the high end are not based on structural factors, such as globalisation as Piketty suggests, but are simply expected responses to changes in tax law."

"In the United States, half of all business income is reported on individual returns, not corporate returns, and a lot of that business income is reported by people at the top end. If you raise individual income taxes at the top end, you hit a large amount of small business income. And empirical research has shown that small businesses are sensitive to income tax changes. A series of studies by economists Robert Carroll, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, Mark Rider and Harvey Rosen explored, for example, the effect of marginal income tax rates on small business hiring, investment, and growth.4 They found substantial effects, such as that a five percentage point cut in marginal tax rates would cause a 10% increase in capital expenditures."

Open Letter to Mothers Against Drunk Driving - Walter Block - Mises Institute

Open Letter to Mothers Against Drunk Driving - Walter Block - Mises Institute: "with a system of private highways and streets, the various owners would compete with one another to provide service for their customers (including, preeminently, safety). Those who failed (e.g., pursued policies detrimental to the 'health of children and other living things') would be forced either to change the error of their ways or go belly up. Those who saved lives by better dealing with drunkards, speeders, etc., would earn profits and thus be enabled to expand the base of their operations.

Third, this is precisely the system — privatization — that vastly outstripped that of the U.S.S.R. in providing computers, cars, clothes, and a plethora of other products and services. Yet, instead of borrowing a leaf from our own success and applying it to highways, we have instead copied the discredited Soviet economic system and applied it to our network of roadways. That is, our highway network is governmentally owned and managed. This is why people die like flies on these roads and suffer from traffic congestion serious enough to try the patience of a saint (which also exacerbates casualties through road rage).

Fourth, the rules of the road that would minimize automobile accidents (this goes for most other valuable economic recipes) do not come to us from on high, imprinted on stone tablets. Rather, they have to be learned, ofttimes by hard and difficult experience. The time-honored and traditional capitalist way of learning is by allowing all entrepreneurs, willing to risk their own money, free rein to do exactly as they please. The ones who hit upon the best way of proceeding earn profits; those who do not either have to copy the successful or fall by the wayside. It is precisely this, the magic of the marketplace, that has brought us our world-class standard of living. But this learning process cannot possibly take place when politicians, bureaucrats, and other members of the nomenklatura class determine the rules of the road, and do not lose an iota of their personal fortunes when they err in this way, or, indeed, are guilty of any other sort of highway mismanagement."

"It is perhaps a truism that "speed kills." Yet the rate of fatalities has decreased after the elimination of the 55 mph speed limit. Some analysts have suggested that it is not the average rate of travel that is determinative but rather the variance in speed. That is, we might all be safer with a slow-lane speed requirement (both minimum and maximum) of 60 mph, a middle lane of 70 mph, and a fast lane of 80 mph than with the present minimum of 40 mph and maximum of 70, typical of many highways. I don't know the answer to this question. But I do know the best way to answer it: unleash a new breed of road entrepreneurs on it. Allow each of them to address this issue as they wish. Then, using the same system we as a society have utilized to improve the quality of cars, computers, and clothes, among other things, we shall find the answer."

FOXNews.com - Report: U.S. Considers Attacks on Somali Pirates' Land Bases - International News | News of the World | Middle East News | Europe News

FOXNews.com - Report: U.S. Considers Attacks on Somali Pirates' Land Bases - International News | News of the World | Middle East News | Europe News: "Defense officials said the U.S. military is considering attacks on Somali pirate bases on land and aid for the people there to help stop the hijacking of ships off Africa's coast, Bloomberg.com reported."

Defending ships in international waters -- Good.
Military operations in other countries -- we have seen how long, expensive, and involved that can be.

"Tax Freedom Day Today" by Doug Bandow (Cato Institute: Commentary)

"Tax Freedom Day Today" by Doug Bandow (Cato Institute: Commentary): "The Tax Foundation figures that 'Tax Freedom Day' (TFD) arrived today, April 13. ... April 13 is more than two weeks earlier than the recent record of April 30 set in 2007. In fact, TFD hasn't been so low in more than 40 years. The last time we finished paying our taxes -- local, state, and federal -- sooner was 1967, when TFD fell on April 12. The more recent record was set in 2003, after the Bush tax cuts, at April 16."

"Warns the Foundation: "For 2011, both the HR 1 tax cuts and the earlier Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 are set to expire." Unless both houses of Congress and the president agree to extend the Bush tax reductions, Americans will pay far higher taxes starting in 2011"

"Spending, whether financed by taxes or borrowing, is the best measure of government's fiscal impact. This year more than a third of government outlays are borrowed funds. Total government expenditures are at record levels. You have to go back to the last two years of World War II to beat this year's spending burden.

Reports the Tax Foundation:

Because of the federal government's ability to deficit-finance its operations, Tax Freedom Day moves somewhat independently from an alternative calculation that adds the federal budget deficit to total taxes collected. In 2009, an unprecedented budget deficit over $1.5 trillion produces a date of May 29, fully forty-five days later than Tax Freedom Day."

"CBO figures that the legislation is likely to slightly raise the GDP through 2012, have no impact for a couple years, and then reduce economic output starting in 2015. The most optimistic case envisions small increases through 2014 instead of 2012. But the reduction in GDP will be permanent, and will mostly manifest itself in lower salaries -- for workers who will be taxed much more to pay off the government's increased debt. The agency's conclusion has special credibility since CBO is subject to retaliation by the Democratic congressional majority for criticizing the party's economic centerpiece.

Runaway spending ensures that this year's TFD will be dwarfed by future TFDs. Some day someone will have to pay off the debts being run up today. The Obama administration's budget figures are bad enough, but they almost certainly rest upon unrealistic economic expectations. The CBO again offers a sobering analysis: "CBO's estimates of deficits under the President's budget exceed those anticipated by the administration by $2.3 trillion over the 2010-2019 period.""

"Moreover, "The cumulative deficit from 2010 to 2019 under the President's proposals would total $9.3 trillion, compared with a cumulative deficit of $4.4 trillion projected under the current-law assumptions embodied in CBO's baseline. Debt held by the public would rise, from 41 percent of GDP in 2008 to 57 percent in 2009 and then to 82 percent of GDP by 2019.""

"Even at today's "low" tax burden, observes the Tax Foundation, "Americans will pay more in taxes than they will spend on food, clothing and housing combined." When the rest of the government's bills come due and taxes rise accordingly most Americans won't have any money left for necessities let alone discretionary outlays after they pay their taxes."

FOXNews.com - Afghan Taliban Kill Young Couple for Trying to Elope - International News | News of the World | Middle East News | Europe News

FOXNews.com - Afghan Taliban Kill Young Couple for Trying to Elope - International News | News of the World | Middle East News | Europe News: "Taliban gunmen used a firing squad to kill a young couple in southern Afghanistan for trying to elope, shooting them with rifles in front of a crowd in a lawless, militant-controlled region, officials said Tuesday.

The woman, 19, and the man, 21, were accused by the militants of immoral acts, and a council of conservative clerics decided that the two should be killed, said Ghulam Dastagir Azad, the governor of the southwestern province of Nimroz."