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Tuesday, May 10, 2011
The Wisconsin Congressional Delegation’s Unwritten Rule: Protect the Fiefdom | RedState
The Wisconsin Congressional Delegation’s Unwritten Rule: Protect the Fiefdom | RedState: "protecting yourself and letting good candidates founder so that you can avoid taking any heat in your own district?� So that you can reinforce the safety of your own sorry seat? …That’s cowardly, self-interested, unprincipled sleaze."
Monday, May 09, 2011
Keynes and the Pyramids - Paul A. Cantor - Mises Daily
Keynes and the Pyramids - Paul A. Cantor - Mises Daily: "[Keynes] prefers to turn matters over to the government and let it produce things that nobody wants — and at as extravagant a cost as possible. Keynes's preference for pyramids over railways is emblematic of statist thinking in general — he values the static over the dynamic; he champions monuments to state power over enterprises that might actually get ordinary people where they want to go."
V-OBL Day | David Rittgers | Cato Institute: Commentary
V-OBL Day | David Rittgers | Cato Institute: Commentary: "Bin Laden's death underscores the failure of al Qaeda to achieve its impossible goal: establishing a global caliphate living under his nihilistic worldview. As soon as al Qaeda establishes a return address for American special operations personnel to raid or bomb, they will be pummeled into irrelevance. Al Qaeda itself does not present an existential threat — but they can provoke us into sacrificing our blood, treasure and liberties to the point that we no longer recognize the society we set out to defend."
Six Fundamental Errors of the Current Orthodoxy - Robert Higgs - Mises Daily
Six Fundamental Errors of the Current Orthodoxy - Robert Higgs - Mises Daily: "In his view, one cannot have, say, too many houses and apartments. Increasing the spending for houses and apartments is, he thinks, always good whenever the economy has unemployed resources, regardless of how many houses and apartments now stand vacant and regardless of what specific kinds of resources are unemployed and where they are located in this vast land. Although the unemployed laborers may be skilled silver miners in Idaho, it is supposedly still a good thing if somehow the demand for condos is increased in Palm Beach, because for the vulgar Keynesian there are no individual classes of laborers or separate labor markets: labor is labor is labor. If someone — whatever his skills, preferences, or location — is unemployed, then in this framework of thought we may expect to put him back to work by increasing aggregate demand sufficiently, regardless of what we happen to spend the money for, whether it be cosmetics or computers."
"The workers seemingly produce without the aid of capital! If pressed, the vulgar Keynesian admits that the workers use capital, but he insists that the capital stock may be taken as 'given' and fixed in the short run."
"He fails to comprehend that it is a crucial relative price — namely, the price of goods available now relative to goods available in the future. Remember, he does not think in terms of relative prices at all, so it is entirely natural that he fails to recognize how the rate of interest affects the choice between current consumption and saving — that is, acting so as to make possible more future consumption by not consuming current income. In a free market, a reduction in the rate of interest reflects a desire to shift more consumption from the present to the future."
"The workers seemingly produce without the aid of capital! If pressed, the vulgar Keynesian admits that the workers use capital, but he insists that the capital stock may be taken as 'given' and fixed in the short run."
"He fails to comprehend that it is a crucial relative price — namely, the price of goods available now relative to goods available in the future. Remember, he does not think in terms of relative prices at all, so it is entirely natural that he fails to recognize how the rate of interest affects the choice between current consumption and saving — that is, acting so as to make possible more future consumption by not consuming current income. In a free market, a reduction in the rate of interest reflects a desire to shift more consumption from the present to the future."
Global Warming Flatliners | Patrick J. Michaels | Cato Institute: Commentary
Global Warming Flatliners | Patrick J. Michaels | Cato Institute: Commentary: "We don't shell out multimillion-dollar grants to people who say something isn't a problem. Recipients of this largess peer-review each other's papers. There's a lot of incentive to give a bad review to a manuscript downplaying the issue and to give a great one to the paper describing an upcoming apocalypse."
WSJ-NBC Poll: Making the False Case for Tax Increases | William Poole | Cato Institute: Commentary
WSJ-NBC Poll: Making the False Case for Tax Increases | William Poole | Cato Institute: Commentary: "The problem is that respondents were not forced to select some way to solve the problem."
"Perhaps the question might be, 'Should tax rates on upper-income families be increased even though doing so might lead small businesses to hire fewer workers?' We can ask economists to study the effects on employment of upper-bracket increases, but without the second part of the question, most respondents who are not in the upper brackets will, of course, favor taxing someone else if there is no cost to them."
"here is another poll question: 'Should retirees accept modest reductions in their current benefits or should the entire burden of these benefits be borne by their children and grandchildren in the form of higher taxes?'"
"Polls like the Wall Street Journal-NBC poll are meant to illuminate public attitudes toward many topics. When it comes to budgetary issues, questions should always include options that address the budget problem. There is no free lunch.
Is it too much to ask that poll designers understand that 'both' is not an admissible answer?"
"Perhaps the question might be, 'Should tax rates on upper-income families be increased even though doing so might lead small businesses to hire fewer workers?' We can ask economists to study the effects on employment of upper-bracket increases, but without the second part of the question, most respondents who are not in the upper brackets will, of course, favor taxing someone else if there is no cost to them."
"here is another poll question: 'Should retirees accept modest reductions in their current benefits or should the entire burden of these benefits be borne by their children and grandchildren in the form of higher taxes?'"
"Polls like the Wall Street Journal-NBC poll are meant to illuminate public attitudes toward many topics. When it comes to budgetary issues, questions should always include options that address the budget problem. There is no free lunch.
Is it too much to ask that poll designers understand that 'both' is not an admissible answer?"
Saturday, May 07, 2011
Budget-cutting Like It's 1995 | Tad DeHaven | Cato Institute: Commentary
Budget-cutting Like It's 1995 | Tad DeHaven | Cato Institute: Commentary: "The agencies and programs that the Boehner Republicans were able to trim bear a striking resemblance to the trims that the Gingrich Republicans achieved in 1995. Here are 10 of the dozens of programs that got cut in both 1995 and 2011: Corporation for Public Broadcasting, National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities, Youthbuild, Community Service Employment for Older Americans, Appalachian Regional Commission, Fund for African Development, Housing Counseling Assistance, Foreign Agricultural Service, Fossil Energy Research & Development."
Thursday, May 05, 2011
FCC chief to Congress: Leave Net neutrality alone | Privacy Inc. - CNET News
FCC chief to Congress: Leave Net neutrality alone | Privacy Inc. - CNET News: "Undoing the agency's Net neutrality rules will 'increase uncertainty, decrease investment, and hurt job creation,' FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski will say, according to a draft of his prepared remarks."
It might hurt job creation for the FCC. They would need more regulators to monitor the rules. Other than that, I can't see how any of his claims are correct.
Monday, May 02, 2011
Voodoo Economics? How about Voodoo Climate Science? | Patrick J. Michaels | Cato Institute: Commentary
Voodoo Economics? How about Voodoo Climate Science? | Patrick J. Michaels | Cato Institute: Commentary: "When will our greener friends at the UN learn that it's just not a good idea to make definite predictions about certain disasters?
This time they have been called out on their 2005 prediction that by now there would be 50 million 'climate refugees' — people choosing to emigrate because of bad weather. The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) even came up with a global map showing precisely where people would migrate from."
"But the UN named a specific year (2010) which allows for an actual test of their prediction.
Census takers around the world have inadvertently adjudicated the UN's forecast. It was dead wrong. Pretty much every recent census reveals that populations are growing rapidly precisely where everyone was supposed to be migrating from."
"global hurricane activity has recently sunk to its all time measured low, despite the UN's strident statements about more frequent and terrible storms"
"In 2007, the UN famously stated that, if warming continued at present rates (whatever that means — there hasn't been any since the mid-late 1990s), the massive Himalayan glaciers would disappear 23 years from now."
"Dr. Murari Lal, who authored the statement, eventually admitted that it was in the UN climate report to spur the governments of India and China into reducing their carbon dioxide emissions, and that it was not based on anything in the peer-reviewed scientific literature."
"what is odd about the UN is that its gaffes are all in one direction. All are exaggeration of the effects of climate change. In each case, the IPCC was relying upon scientific literature that was not peer-reviewed in the traditional sense. No one has found analogous errors in the other direction (which would be an underestimation of climate change based upon the "grey" literature), and you can bet that people have been looking very hard in an effort to exonerate the UN."
This just shows that the UN is a political organization (not a scientific organization) and its statements aren't scientific but political.
This time they have been called out on their 2005 prediction that by now there would be 50 million 'climate refugees' — people choosing to emigrate because of bad weather. The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) even came up with a global map showing precisely where people would migrate from."
"But the UN named a specific year (2010) which allows for an actual test of their prediction.
Census takers around the world have inadvertently adjudicated the UN's forecast. It was dead wrong. Pretty much every recent census reveals that populations are growing rapidly precisely where everyone was supposed to be migrating from."
"global hurricane activity has recently sunk to its all time measured low, despite the UN's strident statements about more frequent and terrible storms"
"In 2007, the UN famously stated that, if warming continued at present rates (whatever that means — there hasn't been any since the mid-late 1990s), the massive Himalayan glaciers would disappear 23 years from now."
"Dr. Murari Lal, who authored the statement, eventually admitted that it was in the UN climate report to spur the governments of India and China into reducing their carbon dioxide emissions, and that it was not based on anything in the peer-reviewed scientific literature."
"what is odd about the UN is that its gaffes are all in one direction. All are exaggeration of the effects of climate change. In each case, the IPCC was relying upon scientific literature that was not peer-reviewed in the traditional sense. No one has found analogous errors in the other direction (which would be an underestimation of climate change based upon the "grey" literature), and you can bet that people have been looking very hard in an effort to exonerate the UN."
This just shows that the UN is a political organization (not a scientific organization) and its statements aren't scientific but political.
To Work, Ryan's Reforms Need Process Constraints | Jagadeesh Gokhale | Cato Institute: Commentary
To Work, Ryan's Reforms Need Process Constraints | Jagadeesh Gokhale | Cato Institute: Commentary: "The Ryan or other similar budget proposals won't be sustained for long without constraints on the budget process to stabilize fiscal policy, and which provide the best environment for rapid economic growth. Historical precedent shows that reforms stick when they are combined with changes in infrastructure — even in just administrative mechanisms. Base closings and welfare reforms of the 1990s stuck because the former involved removal of infrastructure, and the latter changes in administrative mechanisms at the state level; both costly to reverse.
In contrast, reforms such as the TRA-1986 and the BEA-1990 involved legal constraints which were easily modified or reversed. TRA-1986 suffered death by a thousand cuts, and BEA-1990's constraints were simply not renewed. The other, more difficult, way is to combine reform measures with a procedural impediment to reversal by future Congresses. One example is the Senate's Byrd Rule which prevents budget legislation from including changes to Social Security through a simple point of order raised by a single senator, and cannot be overturned without a supermajority in the Senate."
In contrast, reforms such as the TRA-1986 and the BEA-1990 involved legal constraints which were easily modified or reversed. TRA-1986 suffered death by a thousand cuts, and BEA-1990's constraints were simply not renewed. The other, more difficult, way is to combine reform measures with a procedural impediment to reversal by future Congresses. One example is the Senate's Byrd Rule which prevents budget legislation from including changes to Social Security through a simple point of order raised by a single senator, and cannot be overturned without a supermajority in the Senate."
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