What Was the Point of Bailing out GM? | Daniel J. Ikenson | Cato Institute: Commentary

What Was the Point of Bailing out GM? | Daniel J. Ikenson | Cato Institute: Commentary: "If GM emerges from bankruptcy organized and governed by the plan created by the Obama administration, it is impossible to see how free markets will have anything to do with the U.S. auto industry henceforth. With taxpayers on the hook for $50 billion (at a minimum), the administration will do whatever it has to — including tilting the playing field with policies that induce consumers to buy GM, hamstring GM's competition or subsidize its costs — for GM to succeed. Thus, $50 billion is a sum that is more likely to grow larger than it is to be repaid. It is also a sum that will serve as the rationalization for further government interventions on GM's behalf.

Thus, what's going to happen to Ford? With the government backing GM, will Ford's access to capital be compromised? Can it compete against an entity backed by an unrestrained national treasury?"

Campaign For Liberty: Ron Paul on Hypocritical Posturing Toward China

Campaign For Liberty — Ron Paul on Hypocritical Posturing Toward China: "This resolution 'calls on the People's Republic of China to invite full and independent investigations into the Tiananmen Square crackdown, assisted by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and the International Committee of the Red Cross...' Where do we get the authority for such a demand? I wonder how the US government would respond if China demanded that the United Nations conduct a full and independent investigation into the treatment of detainees at the US-operated Guantanamo facility?
The resolution 'calls on the legal authorities of People's Republic of China to review immediately the cases of those still imprisoned for participating in the 1989 protests for compliance with internationally recognized standards of fairness and due process in judicial proceedings.' In light of US government's extraordinary renditions of possibly hundreds of individuals into numerous secret prisons abroad where they are held indefinitely without charge or trial, one wonders what the rest of the world makes of such US demands. It is hard to exercise credible moral authority in the world when our motto toward foreign governments seems to be 'do as we say, not as we do.'"

The Costs of Carbon Legislation - Robert P. Murphy - Mises Institute

The Costs of Carbon Legislation - Robert P. Murphy - Mises Institute: "The latest IPCC report (AR4) says that aggressive action against GHG emissions — and the schedule of cutbacks contained in Waxman-Markey is very aggressive in the range of models studied by the IPCC — could cost up to 5.5 percent of global GDP by the year 2050, relative to the baseline trajectory of GDP if no carbon caps are imposed."

"If your household would normally take in $100,000, then aggressive carbon legislation could raise the prices of goods and services such that you lose up to $5,500 in purchasing power, by the year 2050. (Because the total cap on emissions shrinks over time, the annual impact on consumption gets worse and worse as time rolls on. In the early years, the hit to income would be lower than $5,500 annually.)"

"These MIT and IPCC estimates assume an optimal enforcement of the climate policies, for all major governments and for a century straight."

"Most, and perhaps all, of these studies assume that the government uses the proceeds of the cap and trade (or carbon tax) in an efficient manner."

"According to this estimate by climate scientist Chip Knappenberger, Waxman-Markey would lead to a planet that warmed 9/100ths of a degree Fahrenheit less than would otherwise be the case, by the year 2050."

Is Universal Coverage Comparatively Effective? | Michael F. Cannon | Cato Institute: Commentary

Is Universal Coverage Comparatively Effective? | Michael F. Cannon | Cato Institute: Commentary: "a recent New England Journal of Medicine article concluded, 'Although some preventive measures do save money, the vast majority reviewed in the health economics literature do not.'
Likewise, economists Helen Levy of the University of Michigan and David Meltzer of the University of Chicago have thrown cold water on the conventional wisdom that expanding health insurance is a good investment.

In 2004, Levy and Meltzer reviewed the literature for the Urban Institute and concluded: "There is no evidence at this time that money aimed at improving health would be better spent on expanding insurance coverage than on other possibilities," such as programs that fund inner-city clinics, screen for discrete diseases such as hypertension, or promote better nutrition.

Writing in the Annual Review of Public Health in 2008, Levy and Meltzer reaffirmed that conclusion: 'The central question of how health insurance affects health, for whom it matters, and how much, remains largely unanswered at the level of detail needed to inform policy decisions.'"

"In a 2008 article for the Journal of Public Economics, Amy Finkelstein of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Robin McKnight of Wellesley College reported that even though Medicare achieved universal coverage for the elderly, it had no impact on elderly mortality rates in its first 10 years. Medicare may (or may not) have improved enrollees' health in other ways. Yet Finkelstein's and McKnight's results leave open the question of whether those and any additional benefits were worth Medicare's substantial cost."

"In the 1970s, at a time when many reformers were demanding to make health care "free" for all, Congress funded a massive social experiment to test the idea. The RAND Health Insurance Experiment startled reformers by showing that "free" care cost far more than mere catastrophic health insurance, yet offered little or no additional improvements in health."

Choices or Echoes? | Doug Bandow | Cato Institute: Commentary

Choices or Echoes? | Doug Bandow | Cato Institute: Commentary: "First, the percentage of GDP spent on the military is meaningless. The U.S. economy has grown dramatically over the years—today it is more than five times as large, in real terms and despite the recession, than in 1946. In that year total national-defense outlays, which remained high as the country demobilized after World War II, accounted for 77.3 percent of total federal expenditures and 19.2 percent of GDP. Today military spending consumes 'only' 17.3 percent of the budget and 4.8 percent of GDP, yet the actual budget adjusted for inflation is more than one-third larger.

America is now spending 10 percent more, in real terms, on the military than it did on average during the cold war, when the United States faced a hegemonic antagonist. America currently accounts for roughly half of all military spending on earth. That wasn't the case during the 1930s. Or during the cold war. America's international dominance has never been greater. Second, the prospect of an Iranian or North Korean nuclear weapon pales compared to the one-time prospect of a conventional or nuclear war with the Soviet Union. For some four decades the United States confronted the possibility of continent-wide combat in Europe. Fighting could have extended around the world, engulfing China, the Koreas, Japan, Taiwan and more. And any conflict could have escalated into nuclear war—full-blown, massive, catastrophic."

Voters Are the Cause of America's Fiscal Mess | Gene Healy | Cato Institute: Commentary

Voters Are the Cause of America's Fiscal Mess | Gene Healy | Cato Institute: Commentary: "There's no end of finger-pointing in our Red-Team/Blue-Team battles over fiscal incontinence. But there's one group that rarely gets the blame it merits. That's us. When you look at the positions embraced by the ordinary American voter, you start to suspect that we're getting the government we deserve."

"Add up defense, health care, and Social Security, and you find that the public has declared more than two-thirds of the federal budget off limits. Nondefense discretionary spending — the territory on which most budget fights take place — is 17 percent.

We could (and should) shutter the departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Education, Energy, and Homeland Security (for starters) but even that wouldn't begin to dig us out of the hole we're in."

Competition - Ludwig von Mises - Mises Institute

Competition - Ludwig von Mises - Mises Institute: "The classical economists favored the abolition of all trade barriers preventing people from competing on the market. Such restrictive laws, they explained, result in shifting production from those places in which natural conditions of production are more favorable to places in which they are less favorable. They protect the less efficient man against his more efficient rival. They tend to perpetuate backward technological methods of production. In short they curtail production and thus lower the standard of living. In order to make all people more prosperous, the economists argued, competition should be free to everybody." "They advocated the nullification of privileges barring people from access to certain trades and markets."

"Some fifty years ago people used to declare: You cannot compete with the railroad companies; it is impossible to challenge their position by starting competing lines; in the field of land transportation there is no longer competition. The truth was that at that time the already-operating lines were by and large sufficient." "The bigness and the economic "power" of the railroad companies did not impede the emergence of the motorcar and the airplane."

"Today people assert the same with regard to various branches of big business: You cannot challenge their position; they are too big and too powerful. But competition does not mean that anybody can prosper by simply imitating what other people do. It means the opportunity to serve the consumers in a better or cheaper way without being restrained by privileges granted to those whose vested interests the innovation hurts."

"The start is much more difficult for a poor boy than for the son of a wealthy man. But the consumers are not concerned about the problem of whether or not the men who shall serve them start their careers under equal conditions. Their only interest is to secure the best possible satisfaction of their needs. If the system of hereditary property is more efficient in this regard, they prefer it to other less-efficient systems."

Only Criminals Use Honest Money - Christopher P. Casey - Mises Institute

Only Criminals Use Honest Money - Christopher P. Casey - Mises Institute: "Fiat money does not exist in prison. Prisoners do not dye sheets of paper green and attempt to circulate them as money. No inmate would accept this as money, not even if the penal equivalent of a Bretton Woods agreement existed between the toughest gangs.

Why is it that criminals continue to use real money in their transactions? Because they have not been fooled otherwise. In The Case Against the Fed, Murray Rothbard detailed the process by which people have been fooled into thinking those green pieces of paper are a proper store of value (the key purpose of money). Once government changed the law to recognize monetary warehouse receipts (dollar bills) as a debtor relationship instead of that of a bailment (the temporary possession of another's property), fractional-reserve banking was born. Fractional-reserve banking is inherently fraudulent.

In contrast, a penitentiary does not include a warehouse issuing receipts for cigarette packs or cans of mack.If they ever do, we know what will follow: fraud (the warehouse issuing notes in excess of deposits), then government-sanctioned fraud, then government-imposed fraud, and finally — The Big House Reserve (perhaps consisting of notes with the warden's picture and Latin phrases)."