Left Wingers To Murder Christian Missionary

The July 13 New York Sun says that:

"Efforts to save the life of Son Jong Nam, a North Korean evangelist who faces a death sentence from the communist regime for practicing Christianity, will reach the State Department today."





Son converted to Christianity and fled North Korea to China after his wife was brutally beaten and murdered. The Chinese socialists returned Son to the North Korean socialists, where he has been arrested and sentenced to death for the crime of evangelizing.

Let us pray and voice support for Mr Son. I have written the following letter to President Bush:

I urge you to speak out on behalf of Son Jong Hoon who has been sentenced to death in North Korea for practicing Christianity.

Bill Maher's The Decider : Affirmative Action for Liberals

HBO produces several good shows, such as the Sopranos, Entourage, Big Love , Curb Your Enthusiasm and the unbelievably talented Jemaine Clement 's and Bret McKenzie 's Flight of the Conchords. But most television has been a disappointment in recent years. The supply of good programs has been slowing to a trickle. After Law and Order, CSI, 24 and several others there isn't much, even if you spend $140/month and get every channel.

Last night my wife and I watched Bill Maher's Decider reluctantly, since when watching Bill Maher programs I feel like I'm being victimized by an affirmative action program for left wing liberals. HBO's ideology only permits liberal humor, and Bill Maher is the best that they can do given the HBO quota system of 19 liberals to zero conservatives.

Maher's inability to develop a range of material and his tiresome, ill informed harangues are about as entertaining as a traffic jam on the George Washington Bridge. Blog impressario Larwyn watches Maher to laugh at him, not with him. Perhaps with the limited supply of talent Maher is the best that HBO can do. Maybe they would be better off going to New Zealand to find more talent like Clement and McKenzie.

The Limits of Anti-Kelo Legislation

Ilya Somin has written an article in Reason Magazine's print edition about legislative reaction to Kelo v. City of New London, the Supreme Court case that allowed eminent domain for economic development purposes. The Kelo decision publicized the expansion in the definition of eminent domain that has occurred in recent decades. Under private use eminent domain, well-connected developers can contribute to politicians' campaign funds and request that the politicians steal property and transfer it to the developer in the name of "urban blight", "economic development", or any other "purpose" that the politicians and developers concoct. There is no reason to believe that governments are competent to assess economic projects, so in Kelo the Supreme Court legalized property theft by the states. Particularly laughable are the "cost/benefit" analyses used by agencies such as New York's Empire State Development Corporation and toasted by ESDC clients like the New York Times.

Somin, an associate of the Institute for Justice, which brought the Kelo case, points out that better than 80 percent of the public opposes Kelo and that opposition crosses party and racial lines. Somin adds that although many states have responded by enacting laws that seem to limit eminent domain, most of the laws have been false pretense. Somin estimates that only 14 states have passed meaningful eminent domain laws. Somin adds:

"Seventeen state legislatures have passed laws that purport to restrict eminent domain, but in reality accomplish very little."

The reason that 17 states have been able to pretend to pass anti-Kelo legislation when in fact they are passing laws that give pro-Kelo forces the nod, and Congress has failed to pass anti-Kelo legislation in deference to pro-Kelo forces in Washington, is in Somin's view an application of group interest theory.

Mancur Olson has written several books, such as Rise and Decline of Nations, that explain why it is difficult for law to reflect public purpose. It is too expensive and too difficult for non-specialists to track developments in a field such as eminent domain. Legislators have financial incentives to pander to special interests such as real estate developers. Courts are similarly corrupt. By cloaking legislation in terms that most people, including most journalists, do not understand, politicians can pretend to take action when in fact they do not. Laws such as the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA), the Securities and Exchange Act, and real-estate regulation in New York City are examples of the many laws that pretend to protect the public when in fact they facilitate special interests, typically with the support of the federal courts.

Group interest theory suggests that the interest group with a gain per member that exceeds the cost of getting a law passed will be the one that triumphs. In the case of Kelo, although many small property owners have considerable equity in their homes, the right to steal is worth millions to developers. Hence, the courts' and Congress's pandering to wealthy developers; the mixed results from the public outcry; and the public indifference to the legislature's indifference to the public's wishes are all consistent with Olson's theory of special interests.

Besides the Institute for Justice, the Castle Coalition has been fighting eminent domain abuse. Real estate is a corrupt business; and press coverage of eminent domain is undoubtedly influenced by the fact that the New York Times has been one of the largest beneficiaries of private-use eminent domain taking.

Inequality Might Matter

James Taranto forwarded an article by Arthur C. Brooks of Syracuse University's Maxwell School. Professor Brooks makes several good arguments against the left's misguided obsession with income equality. In his research, Professor Brooks has found that inequality does not make poor people miserable and that:

"...the evidence reveals that it is not economic inequality that frustrates Americans. Rather, it is a perceived lack of opportunity. To focus our policies on inequality, instead of opportunity, is to make a serious error..."

Professor Brooks notes that some left wing academics hold that the wealthy should be taxed so that they will not work. The proponents of this theory believe that the only significance of high incomes is high earners' ability to make whoopee and spend money. This, of course, fails to grasp that high earners create consumer surplus, so that discouraging the productive wealthy from working would devastate national welfare.

Think of it this way. Let's say Albert Sabin and Jonas Salk had become wealthy as scientists. The left would argue that because they had made money in prior work, they should have been discouraged from doing further work because their high incomes might have been irritating to low-income Americans. However, the low-income Americans who would otherwise have suffered from polio might have been more irritated at the economists than at Sabin's and Salk's high incomes. Advocacy of broad policies based on narrow findings about reactions to income inequality puts academics making such generalizations into the quack category.

Brooks adds that the general level of happiness has not changed since 1972 and that economic mobility rather than equality creates happiness among Americans:

"An accurate and constructive vision of America sees a land of both inequality and opportunity, in which hard work and perseverance are the keys to jumping from the ranks of the have-nots to those of the haves. This vision promotes policies focused not on wiping out economic inequality, but rather on enhancing economic mobility."

Amen. But there are reasons to be concerned about inequality. Increasing income inequality may not result from free market sources. Rather, increasing income inequality may result from federal policies that liberal economists have previously advocated. These include (1) indirect effects of the income tax and (2) credit policies of the Federal Reserve Bank.

Marginal tax rates may discourage effort of low-wage workers, increasing inequality. Because income taxes discourage saving, they reduce capital formation. Capital formation increases wages, especially for blue collar workers.

Federal Reserve Bank policy may be the ultimate source of increasing income inequality. Professor Brooks ought to ask whether wages of low-wage workers relative to high-wage workers are increasing at the rate they did before the Fed was established in 1913. They likely are not. Since the 1970s there has been a flattening in real wage growth.

The reason the Fed's credit policies might result in more rapid income increases at the upper end of the distribution is that cheap credit increases the available investment opportunity set. Low interest rates increase profits. Increased profits help the wealthy. They may hurt low-income Americans if low interest rates expand the expected present value of returns on cost-strategy type investments such as moving plants overseas, reducing demand for domestic labor. Such investments might not be made in a high interest rate environment if they do not impact the expected present value of future earnings sufficiently. This could easily be the case.

An error that the American Enterprise Institute makes in its various media statements is the claim that credit expansion and interest rates are costless to the public. This is not true. Low-income workers may pay twice. First, because they do not participate in profit growth due to low interest rates because they are less likely to hold assets (stocks and real estate, for example). Second, if high earners are not like Sabin and Salk and are earning their high incomes because of Federal Reserve policy rather than because they create of consumer value. If easy money has resulted in extraction of wealth through "malinvestment", credit expansion may cause inequality and also result in inflation. Credit expansion is not free--it results in a declining dollar, high import costs, economic dislocation, and likely ultimately inflation. In the 1970s the sum of unemployment and inflation was called the "misery index".

In order to gauge the effects of increasing income inequality, Professor Brooks would need to look dynamically into the future, when Americans are confronted with inflation and economic dislocation due to the same Fed policies that have contributed to increasing income inequality. Although the claim that taxation is the solution to this problem is preposterous, the issue is more important than the American Enterprise Institute would like us to believe.