Posts
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Is Obama's 'Prolonged Detention' American? | Nat Hentoff | Cato Institute: Commentary
Is Obama's 'Prolonged Detention' American? | Nat Hentoff | Cato Institute: Commentary: "Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall once warned: 'Throughout the world today there are men, women and children interned indefinitely, awaiting trials which may never come or which may be a mockery of the word, because their governments believe them to be 'dangerous.' Our Constitution ... can shelter us forever against the dangers of such unchecked power' (dissenting, U.S. v. Salerno, 1987)."
Killing in War - David Gordon - Mises Institute
Killing in War - David Gordon - Mises Institute: "If a policeman legitimately shoots at a suspect, the suspect cannot claim the right to shoot back in self-defense."
"Soldiers in an unjust cause have, for the most part, no right at all to engage in violent action against soldiers in a just cause. Not only do they lack moral standing to engage in aggressive warfare; they cannot legitimately even engage in defensive war, in most circumstances."
"Soldiers in an unjust cause have, for the most part, no right at all to engage in violent action against soldiers in a just cause. Not only do they lack moral standing to engage in aggressive warfare; they cannot legitimately even engage in defensive war, in most circumstances."
A Fake Financial Fix | Mark A. Calabria | Cato Institute: Commentary
A Fake Financial Fix | Mark A. Calabria | Cato Institute: Commentary: "Of course, the administration tells us that bailouts won't be needed — because the same regulators who missed the signs of the current crisis will get added powers to prevent the next one.
We're supposed to believe that, if only the Federal Reserve had the same oversight powers over AIG as it now has over Citibank and Bank of America, that the bailout of AIG would have been avoided. Just think: If only AIG had been managed and regulated as well as Citibank — because Citi is in such great shape now."
We're supposed to believe that, if only the Federal Reserve had the same oversight powers over AIG as it now has over Citibank and Bank of America, that the bailout of AIG would have been avoided. Just think: If only AIG had been managed and regulated as well as Citibank — because Citi is in such great shape now."
Bigger Than Madoff | Chris Edwards and Tad DeHaven | Cato Institute: Commentary
Bigger Than Madoff | Chris Edwards and Tad DeHaven | Cato Institute: Commentary: "Take Medicare. The Government Accountability Office reports that the program makes about $17 billion in improper payments each year. And that doesn't include problems in the new $60-billion-per-year prescription-drug plan, which is a juicy target for criminals. Harvard University's Malcolm Sparrow, a specialist in health-care fraud, recently testified to Congress that official estimates are 'lacking in rigor,' are 'comfortingly low and quite misleading,' and exclude many kinds of fraud and abuse. He thinks that as much as 20 percent of the federal health-care budget is consumed by fraud, which would be $85 billion a year for Medicare."
'The bottom line is that the enormous size and complexity of federal health programs results in a huge waste of taxpayer funds. The inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services recently told Congress: "Although it is not possible to measure precisely the extent of fraud in Medicare and Medicaid, everywhere it looks the Office of Inspector General continues to find fraud against these programs."'
'The bottom line is that the enormous size and complexity of federal health programs results in a huge waste of taxpayer funds. The inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services recently told Congress: "Although it is not possible to measure precisely the extent of fraud in Medicare and Medicaid, everywhere it looks the Office of Inspector General continues to find fraud against these programs."'
Mischa Barton Hospitalized Under Involuntary Psychiatric Hold - Celebrity Gossip | Entertainment News | Arts And Entertainment - FOXNews.com
Mischa Barton Hospitalized Under Involuntary Psychiatric Hold - Celebrity Gossip | Entertainment News | Arts And Entertainment - FOXNews.com: "where she was hospitalized under Section 5150 of the California Welfare & Institutions Code, which allows authorities to hold a person for up to 72 hours if they present a danger to themselves or to others."
Is that pre-crime?
Is that pre-crime?
The Jobs Problem - Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. - Mises Institute
The Jobs Problem - Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. - Mises Institute: "Mandating benefits for employees imposes costs on employment. The would-be worker bears the cost. It makes the worker more expensive to hire. The employer has to pay not only a salary but also a benefit. If you make it more expensive to hire people, fewer people will be hired.
It is no different from eggs at the supermarket. If they are $2 each, you will purchase fewer of them — you will economize. This is nothing but the law of demand: consumers will demand less of a good at a higher price than of a good at a lower price. A salary plus benefits amounts to a price that the employer must pay to purchase the work of a laborer. At a higher price, less work will be purchased by the employer.
That means that requiring employers to provide health benefits to employees will make the present job situation worse, not better. It will intensify the current problem that people want to work more but are having a hard time getting employers to hire them."
It is no different from eggs at the supermarket. If they are $2 each, you will purchase fewer of them — you will economize. This is nothing but the law of demand: consumers will demand less of a good at a higher price than of a good at a lower price. A salary plus benefits amounts to a price that the employer must pay to purchase the work of a laborer. At a higher price, less work will be purchased by the employer.
That means that requiring employers to provide health benefits to employees will make the present job situation worse, not better. It will intensify the current problem that people want to work more but are having a hard time getting employers to hire them."
The Zimbabwe-ification of South Africa? | Marian L. Tupy and Michael Kransdorff | Cato Institute: Commentary
The Zimbabwe-ification of South Africa? | Marian L. Tupy and Michael Kransdorff | Cato Institute: Commentary: "Even when the government has succeeded in distributing land, much of it has ceased to be economically viable. According to the government's own statistics, some 50% of land reform projects have failed. A once thriving potato farm in the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands is now a makeshift soccer field. A former tea estate in Magoebaskloof in Limpopo has become an overgrown forest. The list goes on."
Obama's Disappointing Secrecy | Benjamin H. Friedman | Cato Institute: Commentary
Obama's Disappointing Secrecy | Benjamin H. Friedman | Cato Institute: Commentary: "The administration recently threatened to veto the intelligence authorization bill, the annual legislation that funds the Central Intelligence Agency.
The trouble with the bill, according to the administration, is a requirement that intelligence officials brief some secret intelligence activities to Congress's full intelligence committees rather than just the 'gang of eight' (each party's leader in each house and the chairmen and ranking members of those committees). The administration wants to keep the power to determine whom it briefs."
"Thanks to a report written by the inspector generals of several federal agencies, we also learned last week that the National Security Agency's controversial, warrantless wiretapping program (the "terrorist surveillance program" to its Orwellian creators) found few, if any, terrorists, contrary to its advocates' claims."
The trouble with the bill, according to the administration, is a requirement that intelligence officials brief some secret intelligence activities to Congress's full intelligence committees rather than just the 'gang of eight' (each party's leader in each house and the chairmen and ranking members of those committees). The administration wants to keep the power to determine whom it briefs."
"Thanks to a report written by the inspector generals of several federal agencies, we also learned last week that the National Security Agency's controversial, warrantless wiretapping program (the "terrorist surveillance program" to its Orwellian creators) found few, if any, terrorists, contrary to its advocates' claims."
Friday, July 24, 2009
The Bureaucracy Problem - David Osterfeld - Mises Institute
The Bureaucracy Problem - David Osterfeld - Mises Institute: "It is not surprising, therefore, that the Soviet Union is regularly plagued by gluts of some items and acute shortages of others. When quotas for the shoe and nail industries were set according to quantity, for example, production managers in the nail industry found that it was easiest to meet their quotas by producing only small nails, while those in the shoe industry made only small shoes. This meant gluts of small nails and children's shoes and shortages of large nails and adults' shoes. But setting quotas by weight meant the opposite: gluts of large fat nails and adults' shoes. Similarly, since dress-makers don't have to sell their products they don't have to worry about style preferences. The result is periodic warehouses full of unwanted dresses. And at another time the Soviet Union found itself in the embarrassing position of having only one size of men's underwear and that only in blue.[5]
Thus it is not surprising that the quality of consumer goods in the Soviet Union is notoriously low, the average standard of living is about one-quarter to one-third that of the United States, and so many goods are in short supply that one must stand in line three to four hours each day just to get the basic necessities.[6] While capitalism can function with a minimum of bureaucracy, we have seen that socialism, far from eliminating it, requires a host of bureaucratic agencies. These are necessary in order to (1) collect the data for the construction of the plan, (2) formulate the plan, and (3) inspect the plants to insure that the plan is being carried out."
"This problem became evident in the only attempt to establish a pure socialist, Le., non-market, economy: The "War Communism" period in the Soviet Union from 1917 to 1921. By 1920, average productivity was only ten percent of the 1914 volume with that of iron ore and cast iron falling to 1.9 and 2.4 percent of their 1914 totals. In the early 1920s "War Communism" was abandoned and since that time production has been guided by means of restricted domestic markets and by co-opting the methods determined in the foreign Western markets."
"Perhaps the absurd lengths to which attempts at central planning can be carried is illustrated in an incident reported by Joseph Berliner. A plant inspector, with the job of seeing why a plant had fallen behind on its delivery of mining machines, found that the "machines were piled up all over the place." When he asked the manager why he didn't ship them out he was told that according to the plan the machines were to be painted with red paint but the manager only had green and was afraid to alter the plan. Permission was granted to use green, but only after considerable delay since each layer of the bureaucracy was also afraid to authorize a plan change on its own and so sent the request to the next highest agency. Meanwhile, the mines had to shut down while the machines piled up in the warehouses.[12]"
Thus it is not surprising that the quality of consumer goods in the Soviet Union is notoriously low, the average standard of living is about one-quarter to one-third that of the United States, and so many goods are in short supply that one must stand in line three to four hours each day just to get the basic necessities.[6] While capitalism can function with a minimum of bureaucracy, we have seen that socialism, far from eliminating it, requires a host of bureaucratic agencies. These are necessary in order to (1) collect the data for the construction of the plan, (2) formulate the plan, and (3) inspect the plants to insure that the plan is being carried out."
"This problem became evident in the only attempt to establish a pure socialist, Le., non-market, economy: The "War Communism" period in the Soviet Union from 1917 to 1921. By 1920, average productivity was only ten percent of the 1914 volume with that of iron ore and cast iron falling to 1.9 and 2.4 percent of their 1914 totals. In the early 1920s "War Communism" was abandoned and since that time production has been guided by means of restricted domestic markets and by co-opting the methods determined in the foreign Western markets."
"Perhaps the absurd lengths to which attempts at central planning can be carried is illustrated in an incident reported by Joseph Berliner. A plant inspector, with the job of seeing why a plant had fallen behind on its delivery of mining machines, found that the "machines were piled up all over the place." When he asked the manager why he didn't ship them out he was told that according to the plan the machines were to be painted with red paint but the manager only had green and was afraid to alter the plan. Permission was granted to use green, but only after considerable delay since each layer of the bureaucracy was also afraid to authorize a plan change on its own and so sent the request to the next highest agency. Meanwhile, the mines had to shut down while the machines piled up in the warehouses.[12]"
Let Customers Control The Money And Market Will Cure Health Care | Michael F. Cannon | Cato Institute: Commentary
Let Customers Control The Money And Market Will Cure Health Care | Michael F. Cannon | Cato Institute: Commentary: "Experts suggest that one-third of U.S. health care spending, or about 6% of GDP, is pure waste. The reason is simple: Government controls half of our nation's health care dollars, and lets employers control an additional quarter. And nobody spends other people's money as carefully as they spend their own.
Office of Management and Budget director Peter Orszag told Congress last year: 'Imagine what the world would be like if workers (understood) that today it was costing them $10,000 a year in take-home-pay for their employer-sponsored insurance, and that could be $7,000 and they could have $3,000 more in their pockets today if we could relieve these inefficiencies out of the health system.' Nothing will increase consumers' understanding like giving them that $10,000 directly."
Office of Management and Budget director Peter Orszag told Congress last year: 'Imagine what the world would be like if workers (understood) that today it was costing them $10,000 a year in take-home-pay for their employer-sponsored insurance, and that could be $7,000 and they could have $3,000 more in their pockets today if we could relieve these inefficiencies out of the health system.' Nothing will increase consumers' understanding like giving them that $10,000 directly."
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