Archive for category Government Regulation

Constitution’s First Amendment Is Nothing To Obama

Posted by Tom in Constitution, Freedom, Government Regulation, Law, Morality & Religion in the Public Square, Rule of Law on February 4, 2012

As an American Catholic, I am appalled at Obama and his “Catholic” minion, Sebelius, who ignore the Constitution. I shouldn’t be surprised, they have continually done that before. What follows is a statement read this weekend in Catholic churches throughout Nevada. Freedom of religion is at stake here:

Note the conclusion in the third to last paragraph: To abide by the law, leads to a violation of our moral teachings. To ignore the law makes us subject to fines and other consequences. To act within the “nonexemption” leads us to abandon our mission to serve people in need. None of these is acceptable to people of faith.

This is what lead to the founding of our great nation. Freedom from religious persecution.

And the critical last question posed by the Nevada bishops: “Where else will this regulation lead?”

Obama and his ilk must be stopped for the sake of our freedoms.

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Applaud Inequality And the Freedom to Stretch Its Limits!

Posted by Tom in Corporate Welfare, Entitlements, Freedom, Government Regulation, Individual Freedom, National Character, Poverty, Socialism, Welfare on December 17, 2011

So much is being made of OWS’s dichotomy, the 99% versus the 1%, by the  mainstream media, the unions and Obama, that it has become mind numbing. Today Charles Blow in his NYT op-ed, Inconvenient Income Inequality, even analogizes it to global warming! In it he pitied the ignorant public for its declining opinion the country is divided into “haves” and “have nots.” He then goes on to prove that income inequality is increasing and concludes that Americans are the equivalent of climate change deniers! So much for the intellectual level of the NYT editorial staff.

The suppressive equality argument that a desperate president is trying to sell to distract attention from his miserable performance in office is falling flat on its face. Why, you ask? Because it is against the very core of human nature. Man by nature wants to grow, to improve, to succeed. That nature demands the hope that this core need can be met by individual effort. Essential to that hope is the freedom enshrined in law to pursue dreams, to succeed and yes to fail. Obama’s equality argument dims that hope, puts a lid on that freedom, turns success into something to be condemned. He has traveled the country railing against the successful.

Ryan Streeter posits a kinder opinion for the OWS misfits’ protests in his Indystar post, How to succeed by merit. He suggests that what the protestors really oppose is unearned wealth: “America isn’t a land divided by the 99 percent and the 1 percent. It’s a land divided by those who earn their success day after day and those who don’t. This class distinction has nothing to do with how rich or poor you are. It has everything to do with what kind of person you are.”

Streeter contrasts Steve Jobs with Bernie Madoff then gives examples of unearned success: lottery winners, Fannie and Freddie executives, unionized public employees, ineffective tenured teachers, spoiled rich kids, and too-big-to fail corporations. Trying to put a good face on and ascribe good intentions to “the bearded misfit sitting in a festering tent on public property” Streeter suggests that what he really objects to is this “unearned success.”

In a hopeful conclusion he argues: “It’s time to stop protesting a false premise and focus instead on promoting earned success. Do we need to end too-big-too-fail policies? Yes. Do we need to end harmful welfare programs? Yes. But most of all, we need to encourage earned success in our own homes. That’s where the real change begins.”

Now I would submit that income inequality is good. It sets the ever changing level to which to aspire. The lower views the higher status as something to be strived for and eventually attained. Even if not in his current generation so long as his children will be in positions to continue to improve. Challenge to improve is key to success; the lower the position on the income scale the greater the challenge.

The beauty of inequality is that it exists all up and down the income scale. It causes challenge, effort and either success or failure up and down the ladder. Those close to the top want to leapfrog into the number one position. And once that is attained someone below will always be striving to leapfrog again.This in turn promotes an aggregate rise in the standard of living for the whole of society. It’s Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” at work.

So we should reject Obama’s socialistic, big-government equality hogwash and promote freedom to succeed with fewer limits and less government.

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Brad Schiller, et al on Crony Capitalism

Posted by Tom in Corporate Welfare, Economics, Government Regulation on December 14, 2011

This latest Economic Freedom pinpoints “rent seeking.”

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Europe’s Road to Serfdom

Posted by Tom in Constitution, Europe, Federalism, Government Regulation, Statism on November 24, 2011

Friedrich Hayek distrusted the central planners for the fatal conceit that they knew more than people working freely in society, in the marketplace, in the polity. This “rule by the few” has gained a major foothold, no, strangle hold, in Europe. The technocrats in Brussels rule by dictat!

Rany York sent the following video in which Nigel Farage, MEP and UKIP, describes the situation with some accurate historical perspective. He correctly points out the shaky assumptions on which the EU and European Monetary Union were based. His fiery indictment of the unelected technocrats should serve as a warning to us in America: our bureaucrats, agencies, commissions, and tzars are nothing other than unelected technocrats!

Witness the financial upheaval in European financial markets resulting in yesterday’s failed German bond auction, to see where socialism leads. Sadly our President and the leftist Democrats think we are somehow immune.

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Grove’s Law of Government

Posted by Tom in Antitrust, Freedom, Government Regulation, Technology on October 24, 2011

Or, “the education of a liberal tech CEO.” This story is too good to ignore. Gordon Crovitz’s opinion piece in today’s WSJ, Google Speaks Truth to Power, is a lesson in liberal education on the impossibility of regulation. CEO Eric Schmidt opened up to the Washington Post on his feelings about being hauled before Congress and accused of being a monopolist.

“So we get hauled in front of the Congress for developing a product that’s free, that serves a billion people. OK? I mean, I don’t know how to say it any clearer,” Mr. Schmidt told the Post. “It’s not like we raised prices. We could lower prices from free to . . . lower than free? You see what I’m saying?” HARD TO ARGUE.

“Mr. Schmidt recounted a dinner in 1995 featuring a talk by Andy Grove, a founder of Intel: “He says, ‘This is easy to understand. High tech runs three times faster than normal businesses. And the government runs three times slower than normal businesses. So we have a nine-times gap.’ All of my experiences are consistent with Andy Grove’s observation.”

“Mr. Schmidt explained there was only one way to deal with this nine-times gap, which this column hereby christens “Grove’s Law of Government.” That is “to make sure that the government does not get in the way and slow things down.”

In other words: GET OUT OF THE WAY! This is not exactly what President Obama advocates. He wants Silicon Valley money, he wants Wall Street money, and he gets both. Yet when he and his liberal ilk need political pinatas or need, as in this case, to extort juice from other rent seekers, they bash both. For show or for real? Who knows?

Don’t you just love Obama voters facing Obama reality?

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Economic Freedom In America Today

Posted by Tom in Freedom, Government Regulation, Property Rights, Rule of Law on October 14, 2011


Big government is eroding our economic freedom on an accelerated basis. We need change…and soon!

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Minimum Wage Argument Debunked

Posted by Tom in Employment, Government Regulation, Minimum Wage, Poverty on October 14, 2011

Brad Schiller’s op-ed in yesterday’s WSJ is republished here in full:

Families Don’t Depend on the Minimum Wage

The data are clear: In most cases minimum-wage earnings are only a small fraction of family income. 

By BRADLEY SCHILLER

The minimum wage is likely to be a hot-button issue in the 2012 presidential campaign.

Last month, MIT professor Paul Osterman wrote in the New York Times that 20% of American adults are employed at “poverty-level wages.” He said minimum wages should be raised if the economy is to grow and prosper (the federal minimum wage is currently $7.25, but it is as high as $8.67 in Washington state). Similarly, CNN.com and the Washington Post ran pieces recently on the importance of raising the minimum wage to get more cash to the working poor.

We do have serious poverty in our economy, even more so in this lingering recession. And everyone favors the rising real wages and living standards that come with productivity advance and economic growth. But advocates of a higher minimum wage put the cart before the horse. A growing economy generates good jobs; higher wages don’t grow the economy. And the overwhelming evidence is that higher minimum wages reduce the availability of jobs at the lowest end of the job market.

Consider that the official poverty threshold of $22,000 per year for a family of four implies a “poverty” wage of $11 an hour. This is the target minimum wage Mr. Osterman advocates in his book “Good Jobs America: Making Work Better for Everyone.” The flaw here is the implicit assumption that all minimum-wage workers not only have families to support, but do so single-handedly. That is clearly not the case for the million teenagers who are paid at or below the minimum wage.

Very few families depend on the earnings from a single minimum-wage job for their economic support. This is the conclusion of a study I helped conduct this year for the Employment Policies Institute.

The study used the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth to track the wages and finances of families over time. From the survey’s 31-year history, we pulled data for the years 1998-2006, a nine-year period when the federal minimum wage was $5.15. We then searched for every adult aged 33-50 who held a minimum-wage job at any time during those years. One out of four adults held a minimum-wage job at least once during those nine years.

One of the striking findings was that most adults who worked at the minimum wage did so for a relatively short time: Over 70% of them had no further minimum-wage job after two years. Almost all them held higher-paying jobs at some point, including ones they held while working at another that paid a minimum wage.

The family status of these adults is critical to the debate about “good jobs for everyone.” In 1998, 30% of adult minimum-wage workers in the survey were single parents (mostly female) and another 23% were married with children still at home. These are the two demographic groups that are of greatest concern in the debate over income dependence. The rest of the adult minimum-wage workers were married without kids at home (22%) or single (25%).

Single parents are clearly the most vulnerable. Every year the Census counts millions of them, many working at minimum-wage jobs. But it is important to recognize that these are not the same single parents every year. Three out of four of the single parents working for the minimum wage in 1998 were no longer single parents in 2006. They moved in and out of two-parent households frequently.

If we focus on two-parent families in which one parent holds a minimum-wage job, the obvious question is whether the spouse also works. The survey data reveal that the answer is overwhelmingly “yes”: Nine out of 10 married-with-children minimum-wage workers have a working spouse. Even more revealing is how much income that spouse earns: 40% of those spouses earn more than $40,000 a year. Another 27% report spousal earnings of $20,000-$40,000.

None of these households is in poverty. Nor is their economic well-being dependent on the minimum wage. In only 15% of these households are the earnings of both the minimum-wage worker and the spouse less than $10,000 apiece. (The federal poverty line for families with two children averaged around $17,000 during this period.) The minimum wage accounts for less than 20% of total family income in more than 75% of the families in which one spouse works for minimum wage.

The long-term survey data are clear: Family dependence on minimum wages is the exception rather than the rule. In most cases, minimum-wage earnings of adult workers are a small fraction of family income. Hiking the minimum wage as a way to achieve “poverty-level” incomes is both misguided and inefficient.

Mr. Schiller is professor of economics at the University of Nevada, Reno, and author of the textbook, “The Economy Today” (McGraw-Hill/Irwin, 2010).

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Environmental CO2 Drag on the Economy

Posted by Tom in Environment, EPA, Government Regulation, Uncategorized on August 3, 2011

We know we pay a lawyer tax, a union tax, and a rent-seeker tax, but the environmental tax is probably one of the largest drags on the state, national and world economies. There are various segments of that tax but one of the largest of those is the CO2. You know, breathing, eating and later producing CO2 from one end or the other!

Don Parsons alerts us to the recent NASA data that debunks the environmental alarmists “global warming” models. On point is James Taylor’s article in Forbes, New NASA Data Blow Gaping Hole in Global Warming Alarmism.

“In short, the central premise of alarmist global warming theory is that carbon dioxide emissions should be directly and indirectly trapping a certain amount of heat in the earth’s atmosphere and preventing it from escaping into space. Real-world measurements, however, show far less heat is being trapped in the earth’s atmosphere than the alarmist computer models predict, and far more heat is escaping into space than the alarmist computer models predict.

“When objective NASA satellite data, reported in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, show a “huge discrepancy” between alarmist climate models and real-world facts, climate scientists, the media and our elected officials would be wise to take notice. Whether or not they do so will tell us a great deal about how honest the purveyors of global warming alarmism truly are.”

Now, think of how California is shooting itself in the foot with its own emission standards more stringent than the current national standards. And don’t forget the EPA’s current efforts to regulate CO2!

 

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Ethanol Whores

Posted by Tom in Corporate Welfare, Deficit, Economics, Energy Facts & Policies, Government Regulation, Politics, Republicans, Subsidies, Tariffs on June 16, 2011

There is no better current intersection of economics and the environment than ethanol. The rent-seeking corporate farmers in the U.S. and their political employee representatives in Congress and the White House have been able to (i) subsidize, (ii) mandate, and (iii) restrict imports of the environmentally harmful gasoline additive. Even Al Gore, now that he’s made his money, calls ethanol a fraud.

So why in this time of sky high deficits and unsustainable debt burdens we are laying on our grandchildren, do so-called Republican candidates support the ethanol fraud? Votes in corn producing states! It’s that simple.

Newt Gingrich, if he’s still a viable candidate, is an ethanol whore. He supports it. Mitt Romney, that smooth talking flip-flopper who developed the fore runner of Obamacare, is an ethanol whore. He supports it.

In fact, Mitt supported it publicly in Iowa as a follow-up to Tim Pawlenty’s gutsy Iowa statement that we can’t afford ethanol subsidies. So not only is Mitt a ethanol whore, but he’s a cheap one at that.

I expect Obama to win in 2012, if Mitt Romney, father of ObamneyCare, is leading the Republican field. When you think of it, Mitt should be running as a Democratt!

It’s heartening to see that the Senate today voted to end ethanol subsidies. That means it’s probably time for another Mitt Romney flip-flop. Get ready!

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Minimum Wage, Another Bad Idea of the Left

Posted by Tom in California, Economics, Government Regulation on May 19, 2011

The following and op-ed by Brad Schiller originally published in the Sacramento Bee:

Viewpoints: Minimum Wage Law Relies on False Belief

The debate over the minimum wage has raged since the federal government first set wage standards in 1938. It continues today in California, where freshman Assemblyman Luis Alejo, D-Watsonville, is touting a popular bill – Assembly Bill 10 – to raise and index the state’s minimum wage. The two major points of contention in the policy debate on the minimum wage are whether job loss accompanies a minimum wage increase, and whether a large number of families depend on the income from minimum-wage jobs.

The first argument has been largely resolved: The best empirical evidence confirms standard economic theory that, if the government sets a wage floor above prevailing wages, some jobs will be lost.

But what of the second argument? Legislators from both sides of the aisle have been persuaded to vote for past increases in the minimum wage due to a strong conviction that many families are struggling to make it on the minimum wage alone. My new research debunks this conventional wisdom: A majority of adult minimum-wage earners in families are living well above poverty and are supported by a spouse who earns a considerably higher wage.

If family dependence on the minimum wage is the most widely used justification for wage hikes, we should know how prevalent such dependence is. For instance, a parent working at the minimum wage may hold another, higher-paying job. In two-parent families, the spouse of the minimum-wage employee may be the primary breadwinner. These and other possibilities imply that households with adult minimum-wage workers may not be as income dependent on those jobs as some advocates would like you to think.

The most compelling evidence on this topic is found by examining the finances of affected families in which one adult, age 33 to 50, worked a job earning at or below the minimum wage. I used data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth between the years 1998 and 2006, when the federal minimum wage was constant.

In 90 percent of the married-with-children households I studied, there was also a working spouse; 63 percent of these spouses earned more than $30,000 a year, with about half earning more than $40,000 a year.

None of these households are in poverty, nor is their economic well-being dependent on earnings from their minimum-wage job. In only one out of seven of these households are the earnings of both the minimum-wage worker and the spouse less than $10,000 apiece.

We can further describe the financial situation of these married-with-children minimum-wage workers by looking at the percentage of total family income coming from that job. With so many high-earning spouses, the percentage is low; in more than 75 percent of these families, the minimum-wage job accounts for less than 20 percent of family income.

In short, the evidence is overwhelming that family dependence on the minimum wage is the exception rather than the rule. And since almost all of those employees held higher-paying jobs at some point during the period studied, we can once and for all dispel the notion that a sizable number of adults are “stuck” at the minimum and waiting for a raise.

But what about the small number of less-skilled or experienced adults who do work at the minimum for an extended period of time and lack other sources of income? For them, raising the minimum would very likely hurt more than it would help – raising the cost to employ them increases their risk of losing employment altogether. Better-targeted assistance like the Earned Income Tax Credit would be less costly and more effective.

If the principal motivation for increasing the minimum wage is to aid struggling families in California, it is clear that such a strategy is highly inefficient. A majority of families with an adult earning the minimum wage are not struggling, and – given the small percentage of household income contributed by the minimum wage – their economic well-being is little changed as a result of a hike.

 

 

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