Category: Uncategorized

The Hell with a $9.50 Minimum Wage!

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This is REAL vote-buying! (Courtesy of Unix-Jedi via email.)

Barack Obama Advisers Unveil Economic Stimulus Plan

Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama unveiled an economic stimulus plan sunday that he said would provide tax relief for middle income families and help jump start an economy he said was showing signs of slowing.The plan, which would immediately inject $75 billion into the economy and retain $45 billion in reserve to be used over the next three months if necessary, was presented Sunday by Obama advisers Gov. Tim Kaine of Virginia, former Clinton Commerce Secretary Bill Daley, and economic adviser Austan Goolsbee.

Only in Washington D.C. can a person simply wish $120 billion into existence, and (with a straight face) say that they’re holding “$45 billion in reserve” because they’re not handing it out right away. It’s the vote-buying equivalent of saying that a 5% spending increase is really a 4% budget cut because the original request was for a 9% increase.

What chutzpah! And they say Obama has no experience!

The plan, they said, is one Obama would not only enact if elected, but one he is asking Congress and the president to pass now.

So that Bush can veto it. Or not. (See update below.)

Obama’s plan would provide immediate tax relief and help offset a coming economic slowdown being signaled, he believes, by the recent .3 percent jump in unemployment rates, advisers to the campaign said Sunday.

A 0.3% increase on a current unemployment rate that is about 5% – a rate that prior to the Bush administration translated as “full employment.”

Obama supporter Gov. Tim Kaine of Virginia said the plan addresses both long-term growth and immediate concerns, and shows Obama understands the importance of education, technology, and a thriving small business sector.

Wait… How does giving out $75 billion in tax refunds (with another $45 billion in reserve) equal understanding “the importance of education, technology, and a thriving small business sector”? The recipients are going to study up on which big-screen TV they’re going to buy from the local Big-Box store?

The main difference between Obama’s plan and that being offered by his chief rival for the Democratic nomination, Sen. Hillary Clinton, is that Clinton’s plan would not be able to kick in immediately.

What, she’s not offering more bucks per vote?

Obama’s stimulus plan has four components to prevent recession:

1. Cut $250 checks for some 150 million low and middle income workers and send them out. If needed, send out an additional $250 per worker, totaling $500 for these workers

2. Likewise, send $250 to seniors earning under $50,000 as a Social Security supplement, and and prepared to send out a second $250 payment

“Need” being determined by how well Obama is doing in the primaries?

3. Establish a $10 billion fund to help “responsible” families avoid foreclosure. The money would be given to homeowners who did not lie about their incomes and were “mindful of personal responsibility.”

As determined by some harried Federal contract employee? Who is responsible for all of this? Do we get another billion-dollar bureaucracy to administer this program?

4. Provides money to state and local governments hardest hit by housing crisis to prevent them from slashing infrastructure and other important state spending.

5. Expand unemployment insurance.

What, Obama’s not going along with Edwards’ $9.50/hr minimum wage initiative?

Asked how Obama would pay for the package, Goolsbee said the point was to get the money immediately into the economy, and that while it could increase the deficit in the immediate term, macro macro economic experts agreed it would prevent a costly recession in the long-term.

Then why not send out $1,000 checks? $10,000 checks? After all, we must avoid a costly recession!

The advisers said the $45 billion reserve could be used to offset the possible effects high oil prices could have on the proposed breaks.

“Economic stimulus.”

Riiiiighht!

Pull my other leg.

UPDATE: (*sigh*) $250? Hell, let’s go for $800! And Bush (last I checked) isn’t even on the ballot!

Now I’m with Milton Friedman when it comes to tax cuts (never oppose them, ever), but tax “rebates” is another topic. Hey, if Congress wants to give me $800 of my money back, I’m fine with that, I still need to buy a scope for my long-range rifle. But apparently tax cuts aren’t immediate enough. It’s not acknowledgment that the .gov took too much of our money last year and now needs to give some of it back, it’s just a “temporary correction” they’ll tax as income next year.

But why do I think that the legislation is going to carry a name like “The Obama-Clinton-Edwards Economic Stimulus Package”?

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Quote of the Day.
or: I Can Believe That

“(T)hey could cut Hillary open from head to toe and I wouldn’t get sick or faint”. – Bill Clinton

Taken deliberately out of context from here.

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Including “Happiness” on the National Spreadsheet.

Tight on the heels of my piece Freedom and Equality comes this bit of news out of France (via Eternity Road):

French President Wants to Include Happiness in Measures of Nation’s Economic Growth

Which means Sarkozy A) has no grasp of economics, or B) wants to deflect bad news by sleight-of-hand. You have three guesses, and one of them can be “all of the above.”

PARIS (AP) — What price happiness? French President Nicolas Sarkozy is seeking an answer to the eternal question — so that happiness can be included in measurements of French economic growth.

He’s turned to two Nobel economists to help him, hoping that if happiness is added to the count, the persistently sluggish French economy may seem more rosy.

“Seem” being the operative word here. And if two Nobel-winning economists are involved in it, they ought to have their medals revoked.

“It reflects a general feeling in Europe that says, ‘OK, the U.S. has been more successful in the last 20, 25 years in raising material welfare, but does this mean they are happier?'” said Paul de Grauwe, economics professor at Leuven University in Belgium.

Meaning “we envy the Americans their cars, their homes, their plasma TVs, their…”

“The answer is no, because there are other elements to happiness,” said Grauwe, once a candidate for the European Central Bank governing council.

And now you know why he didn’t get the job.

In terms of gross domestic product, the internationally recognized way of measuring the size of an economy, French growth lagged behind the U.S. throughout most of the 1980s and ’90s and in every year since 2001.

What?? In that socialist worker’s paradise which has the best universal health care system in the world??

How can that be?!?!?

Although recent turmoil in financial markets may hit the U.S. economy harder, the loss of speed in the world economy’s biggest player will also drag down growth in France. Economists say growth may fall short of the government targets this year.

Read that: “Growth may fall short of the already lackluster targets this year.”

Sarkozy’s move raised questions about whether he wants to ward off disappointing growth numbers as a rise in oil and food prices combined with a slowdown in the U.S. clouds the effect of his economic reforms.

He’s got nothing else up his sleeve.

Since his election in May he has sought to boost growth, notably by encouraging people to work longer than the much maligned 35-hour week.

A move I’m certain that has gone over about as well as changing the law to allow employers to fire slackers did.

Sarkozy has often appeared impatient with the French economy’s lackluster performance, once declaring: “I will not wait for growth, I will go out and find it.”

“And failing that, I will fake it!”

Frustrated with the what he termed Tuesday “the growing gap between statistics that show continuing progress and the increasing difficulties (French people) are having in their daily lives,”

…otherwise known as reality…

Sarkozy said new thought should be given to the way GDP is calculated to take into account quality of life.

At a news conference Tuesday, Sarkozy said he asked U.S. economist Joseph Stiglitz, winner of the 2001 Nobel economics prize and a critic of free market economists,

…and free market economics…

and Armatya Sen of India, who won the 1998 Nobel prize for work on developing countries, to lead the analysis in France.

Which is now relegated to the status of a “developing country.”

Sen helped create the United Nations’ Human Development Index, a yearly welfare indicator designed to gear international policy decisions to take account of health and living standards.

Would that include measures like ones that rank countries higher if their health care systems are paid for by the State, regardless of how well they perform?

Once the preserve of philosophers, measuring happiness has now become a hot topic in economics.

Where it absolutely doesn’t belong.

Heinlein again:

Expertise in one field does not carry over into other fields. But experts often think so. The narrower their field of knowledge the more likely they are to think so.

Obviously that never stopped anyone.

A recent report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development considers taking into account leisure time and income distribution when calculating a nation’s well-being.

Right. So if all the money is equally distributed and nobody works, that’s the best possible score?

And the European Commission is working on a new indicator that moves “beyond GDP” to account for factors such as environmental progress.

Words. Fail. Me.

Richard Layard, a professor at the London School of Economics and author of the 2005 book “Happiness: Lessons from a New Science,” said Sarkozy may be seeking recognition for policies, popular in Europe, that promote well-being but don’t show up in the GDP statistics.

Governments are rated on economic performance, and this influences policy in favor of boosting GDP, the value of goods and services produced over a calendar year, he said.

“But people don’t want to think they live in a world of ruthless competition where everyone is against everyone,” Layard said. “Valuable things are being lost, such as community values, solidarity.”

They “don’t want to think” it, eh? Sounds familiar. Over here they call themselves the “reality-based community.”

His book shows that depression, alcoholism and crime have risen in the last 50 years, even as average incomes more than doubled.

And taxes have done… what, exactly?

Jean-Philippe Cotis, the former OECD chief economist who took over as head of France’s statistics office Insee two months ago, said Wednesday that a measure of happiness would complement GDP by taking into account factors such as leisure time — something France has a lot of.

Which explains why their growth is so slow.

And I’m not even an economist!

France’s unemployment rate is stubbornly high, and when French people do work they spend less time on the job — 35.9 hours per week compared with the EU average of 37.4.

And the American average of…? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

Cotis said he looked forward to a “passionate” debate beyond the traditional realms of his science.

“Statisticians are also interested in happiness,” he said.

Especially since they are totally unable to quantify it.

And so, it would seem, are presidents.

Ditto.

Basking in the happy glow of new love with model-turned-singer Carla Bruni, Sarkozy showed on Tuesday that his concern for happiness is universal.

A president, he said, “doesn’t have more right to happiness than anyone else, but not less than anyone, either.”

I’ve seen pictures of his babe. YOWSA! You can bet HE’S happy.

But just remember one thing, Sarko. No matter how beautiful she is, someone somewhere is tired of her shit. (I kid! I kid!)

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Those BASTARDS!.

Via Dave Hardy. The Justice Department has filed a brief in the Heller case. The Justice Department is asking the Court to overturn the Appeals Court decision and allow D.C. to keep its gun ban. The grounds? The Appeals Court used a “strict scrutiny” level of review.

Apparently the Bush Justice Department is in agreement with the ACLU’s Nadine Strossen on this one:

(T)he fact that something is mentioned in the Constitution doesn’t necessarily mean that it is a fundamental civil liberty.

Now I know why my name is on a list.

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Well, Hell, John. Why Not Make it $20? Or $50?

I just heard John Edwards on CNN tell Wolf Blitzer that the Federal minimum wage should be raised to $9.50/hr.

And this guy’s running for President.

Sheesh.

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Hey!.I’m On a List!

I’m in California. The company I work for has its head office here, and they flew in all of the satellite office people for the 2007 “Holiday” party. I just left the party.

But I learned something interesting. I’m on a TSA list. I couldn’t get my boarding pass electronically yesterday. I had to check in at the counter. Apparently someone at the TSA thinks I require additional scrutiny, or so I was told by the airline counter worker. If I want to do anything about it, I need to contact TSA.gov.

That settles it. When I get home, I’m going to buy one of these.

Freedom and Equality

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From each according to his ability, to each according to his need – Karl Marx, Critique of the Gotha Program – 1875

Sounds nice, doesn’t it? It sounds fair. It sounds equal.

I was reminded of this by a comment (again) by our lone Leftist, Markadelphia. Specifically, this partial line:

My point was that if you want to have true equality in this country…

Interesting point.

Interesting because I don’t want “true equality”.

That may shock some of you. Let me explain.

The Declaration of Independence states:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

All men are created equal. We are all born equal. It’s a fundamental founding principle of this nation and one I expounded on a bit in That Sumbitch Ain’t Been BORN! a while back. It’s the belief that no man, no matter how much he’s worth or how far back he can trace his ancestors is better than anyone else because of it. But this concept has been distorted by the philosophy of egalitarianism, coming out of revolutionary France and, at a guess, the writings of Rousseau. For far too many people, “egalitarianism” means equal in all things. That’s the meaning Mark has.

In a comment before the first one referenced he said this:

I would have no problem if the rich paid the same amount of taxes next year that they did this year. In fact, how about if they pay less? No problem….only it has to be a law that every taxpayer…and I mean EVERY FUCKING TAXPAYER…regardless of how much money they make gets the exact same level of legal and financial advice that the top 5 percent get.

So, Joe Smith, annual salary of 20k a year gets the same legal team and financial team that Warren Buffet gets as a buffer between anyone or any institution trying to take their money. Now, I know that you are thinking that I am thinking that the government should be pay for it…but no sir, not at all. All of the white collar criminals (lawyers, accountants etc) serving time in our prisons will be put to work, for time off their sentence, to help these people for free. It’s a win-win. And here’s the best part…

Joe Smith will be able to rip off the government, sneak around laws, fuck people over and end up with all the same perks that rich folk get. Well, what do you think?

Well, what I think is that’s a raw and blatant example of the politics of envy. It’s also an example of someone with absolutely no grasp of economics (as other commenters proceeded to point out.)

But it’s apparent that Mark thinks the unequal distribution of wealth in this country is unfair, dammit!

In short, Mark is convinced that rich people are rich only because they “sneak around laws” and “fuck people over.” I hate to say it, but this is typical of my experience with people on the Left, especially ones who believe that they’ve chosen a career that’s meaningful and important (and woefully undercompensated because of RICH FUCKING REPUBLICANS!). Typically these people are journalists, teachers, Federal Park employees, etc. They believe they fulfill a crucial role in public life – in those examples, informing the electorate, educating the electorate, and defending the environment – that is underappreciated. It’s a sacrifice they’re willing to make for the betterment of society, but that doesn’t stop them from wondering why they can’t afford a 52″ plasma TV, or why the NEA can’t negotiate a better health care plan.

We’re all supposed to be equal, right?

Well, no.

You see, nobody seems to pay much attention to the last part of Thomas Jefferson’s immortal line.

We have, Jefferson says, inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That’s a modification of the inalienable rights list that philosopher John Locke wrote of in his Two Treatises on Government. Locke listed them as “Life, liberty, and property,” but I think Jefferson’s genius won out. In Dinesh D’Souza’s What’s So Great About America he writes:

In America your destiny is not prescribed; it is constructed. Your life is like a blank sheet of paper and you are the artist. This notion of being the architect of your own destiny is the incredibly powerful idea that is behind the worldwide appeal of America. Young people especially find the prospect of authoring their own lives irresistible. The immigrant discovers that America permits him to break free of the constraints that have held him captive, so that the future becomes a landscape of his own choosing.

If there is a single phrase that captures this, it is “the pursuit of happiness.” As writer V. S. Naipaul notes, “much is contained” in that simple phrase: “the idea of the individual, responsibility, choice, the life of the intellect, the idea of vocation, perfectibility, and achievement. It is an immense human idea. It cannot be reduced to a fixed system. It cannot generate fanaticism. But it is known [around the world] to exist; and because of that, other more rigid systems in the end blow away.”

More of that “jingoism,” eh, Mark?

An inalienable right to “pursue happiness” means freedom. “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need” means control. No one can tell you what will make you happy. You may, in fact, never find it. Your life may serve only as an example to others of what failure looks like, but you are free to pursue whatever you think might bring you happiness.

That freedom, that immense human idea, is what has made America what it is. It is responsible for the vast wealth we have made here. It has drawn the best minds from every culture around the world, fired their imaginations, and it has made people rich.

Instead of admiring this, instead of pursuing it themselves, the Left hates it, because everyone is not equal. Milton Friedman had something to say on the topic:

A society that puts equality before freedom will get neither. A society that puts freedom before equality will get a high degree of both.

Guaranteeing equality requires management. Someone must be in charge of determining inequality and righting it. It is, as I mentioned to Markadelphia, an old and well recognized problem. It is the Procrustean bed, and someone must take the role of Procrustes. Human nature being what it is, well, “Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.” But freedom? It merely requires people to get the hell out of the way.

There’s still a role for government. Enforcing contracts, settling disputes, establishing reasonable limits. Friedman had something to say about that as well:

The existence of a free market does not of course eliminate the need for government. On the contrary, government is essential both as a forum for determining the “rule of the game” and as an umpire to interpret and enforce the rules decided on.

But that government should be strictly limited:

Political freedom means the absence of coercion of a man by his fellow men. The fundamental threat to freedom is power to coerce, be it in the hands of a monarch, a dictator, an oligarchy, or a momentary majority. The preservation of freedom requires the elimination of such concentration of power to the fullest possible extent and the dispersal and distribution of whatever power cannot be eliminated — a system of checks and balances.

And we forget this at our peril:

Because we live in a largely free society, we tend to forget how limited is the span of time and the part of the globe for which there has ever been anything like political freedom: the typical state of mankind is tyranny, servitude, and misery. The nineteenth century and early twentieth century in the Western world stand out as striking exceptions to the general trend of historical development. Political freedom in this instance clearly came along with the free market and the development of capitalist institutions. So also did political freedom in the golden age of Greece and in the early days of the Roman era.

History suggests only that capitalism is a necessary condition for political freedom. Clearly it is not a sufficient condition.

I don’t want “equality,” but I’m not for going back to the days of serfdom, either. I want freedom, because with it can come a level of equality you can’t get any other way.

All people are born equal – squalling babies unable to care for themselves – but they don’t stay that way. America was founded as the nation where everyone gets to pursue happiness, to avoid having your life prescribed for you. It may not lead to “true equality,” but there is literally no such thing. There can’t be. “True equality” requires someone to decide what each person’s abilities are (put the peg in the designated slot, whether the peg wants to go there or not) and what each person’s needs are.

But who gets to be the “equal” of the person or people who make those decisions? Orwell understood that problem well. Some are, under that system, inevitably “more equal” than others.

UPDATE: Markadelphia responds. I reply.