Larwyn just forwarded a link to Ace of Spades HQ blog which in turn links to AllahPundit:
>"The entire Republican Party...continues to maintain a net-negative favorable/unfavorable rating, 28 percent to 43 percent...But, for the first time in more than two years, the Democratic Party also now holds a net-negative rating, 35 percent to 45 percent...By comparison, the conservative libertarian-leaning Tea Party movement has a net-positive 41 percent to 23 percent score in the poll."
I had previously blogged about a Wall Street Journal article about this poll. Ace of Spades and Allahpundit out that Americans' views on the tea party movement correlate strongly with whether they watch the more left leaning of the Democratic media, CNN and MSNBC, or the mainstream media, Fox, which is the largest cable channel (almost equaling the entire combined viewership of the other cable channels, and apparently larger than any of the Democratic network channels, NBC, ABC and CBS.)
Friday, December 18, 2009
Profit Margin on Slaves versus New York Tax Payers' Burden
I am not expert on economic history but I have a niggling feeling. The net profit margin on American slaves after deductions for their amortized cost and maintenance costs (food, rent, etc.) may have been less than New Yorkers' tax burden. The government gets a bigger percentage of your income than slave holders got as return from their investments in slaves. In New York, to be free from imprisonment and other forms of government violence you must ante up about half and for many more than half of your income in taxes to "the man." These include a large property tax burden that all homeowners regardless of income must pay and so falls hard on retirees; sales tax of about 8-9%; state income tax; city income tax if you live in Big Apple; and of course federal income tax. Did I leave out inflation, which is a wealth transfer device, premium taxes, capital gains taxes and death taxes? Of course, the New York Times owners, the Ochs Sulzbergers, have managed to dodge the last for five generations while advocating them for the middle class. And alas, dear reader, you can probably think of some additional ones, such as gasoline taxes.
Slavery existed from pre-historic times and many historians speculate that it was an economic and incidentally moral improvement over the earlier method of handling conquered tribes, namely, massacring them. Slavery is a horrific institution well beyond economic considerations. Nevertheless, it might be interesting to know whether federal, state and local government exploits its citizens economically to the same degree that slaves were exploited. Naturally, there are some government services that benefit citizens, such as defense, social security, roads and police. But a large share of government budgets is pure waste, pandering to special interests, support of inefficient and failed programs, make work jobs for powerful unions like the Service Employees International Union and pure corruption.
In conclusion, let us recall this 1966 Beatles' song from their Revolver album:
>Let me tell you how it will be;
There's one for you, nineteen for me.
'Cause I'm the taxman,
Yeah, I'm the taxman.
Should five per cent appear too small,
Be thankful I don't take it all.
'Cause I'm the taxman,
Yeah, I'm the taxman.
if you drive a car - I'll tax the street;
if you try to sit - I'll tax your seat;
if you get too cold - I'll tax the heat;
if you take a walk - I'll tax your feet.
Taxman
'Cause I'm the taxman,
Yeah, I'm the taxman.
Slavery existed from pre-historic times and many historians speculate that it was an economic and incidentally moral improvement over the earlier method of handling conquered tribes, namely, massacring them. Slavery is a horrific institution well beyond economic considerations. Nevertheless, it might be interesting to know whether federal, state and local government exploits its citizens economically to the same degree that slaves were exploited. Naturally, there are some government services that benefit citizens, such as defense, social security, roads and police. But a large share of government budgets is pure waste, pandering to special interests, support of inefficient and failed programs, make work jobs for powerful unions like the Service Employees International Union and pure corruption.
In conclusion, let us recall this 1966 Beatles' song from their Revolver album:
>Let me tell you how it will be;
There's one for you, nineteen for me.
'Cause I'm the taxman,
Yeah, I'm the taxman.
Should five per cent appear too small,
Be thankful I don't take it all.
'Cause I'm the taxman,
Yeah, I'm the taxman.
if you drive a car - I'll tax the street;
if you try to sit - I'll tax your seat;
if you get too cold - I'll tax the heat;
if you take a walk - I'll tax your feet.
Taxman
'Cause I'm the taxman,
Yeah, I'm the taxman.
Republicans Roar While Deficits Soar
Jim Hoft of Gateway Pundit (h/t Larwyn) notes that:
"The Democrats increased the national debt to $12 Trillion. And Democrats nearly doubled the unemployment rate since the Bush years with their failed Stimulus Plan. So now their going to give 'Son of Stimulus' a try...
"Not a single GOP Rep voted for the democrat’s historic trilion dollar Stimulus Package. Not a single GOP Rep voted for the democrat’s record budget.
And, once again, not one single Republican House members voted for “Son of Stimulus” the latest Democratic spending bill. Despite what some people say, there is a difference between the two parties."
Here's the picture Jim presents. It is ugly:
The Democrats are a joke. But the performance of the Republicans while out of office has repeatedly failed to match their performance while in office. George W. Bush also increased spending, and if you looked at the magnitudes in 2003-2008 they looked really bad. It is true the above picture is that much worse.
Jim is right that the Democrats are worse, but notice that on the graph the only positive years were during the Clinton administration. The Republicans can do much better. There needs to be a two-pronged strategy of taking responsibility for tax-and-loot white elephants as well as defeating the donkeys.
"The Democrats increased the national debt to $12 Trillion. And Democrats nearly doubled the unemployment rate since the Bush years with their failed Stimulus Plan. So now their going to give 'Son of Stimulus' a try...
"Not a single GOP Rep voted for the democrat’s historic trilion dollar Stimulus Package. Not a single GOP Rep voted for the democrat’s record budget.
And, once again, not one single Republican House members voted for “Son of Stimulus” the latest Democratic spending bill. Despite what some people say, there is a difference between the two parties."
Here's the picture Jim presents. It is ugly:
The Democrats are a joke. But the performance of the Republicans while out of office has repeatedly failed to match their performance while in office. George W. Bush also increased spending, and if you looked at the magnitudes in 2003-2008 they looked really bad. It is true the above picture is that much worse.
Jim is right that the Democrats are worse, but notice that on the graph the only positive years were during the Clinton administration. The Republicans can do much better. There needs to be a two-pronged strategy of taking responsibility for tax-and-loot white elephants as well as defeating the donkeys.
Exchange on Costs of Middle East Oil Importation
A reader posts below:
>Let me agree with everything that you say about climate change. But please answer this question: Do cars use oil and do they emit carbon dioxide? If they do use oil, is it not beneficial for us to reduce our consumption so that American wealth is not transferred to the Middle East?
My response:
>I am not opposed to limiting pollution or reducing oil consumption. These can be done with rather than against natural market processes and so limit the dumb mistakes that governments inevitably make.
Murray N. Rothbard had an argument that I found interesting. In the 19th century there were court cases where citizens claimed that pollution was a form of battery and tried to obtain damages from the polluters. The courts threw out this argument. At the time, there was likely a utilitarian argument in favor of pollution, but the judges' decisions (I have no citations) were not fully consistent with the fundamental approach to rights used in the Declaration of Independence. The rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness do not imply the right to harm others. Judge Richard Posner has written a textbook on law and economics in which he argues that judges have acted to optimize efficiency. This is a utilitarian argument. If true, the reason for the judges' mistaken belief that encouraging pollution will maximize social welfare is an antiquated view of social welfare. Also, Posner's utilitarian argument is flawed. It may have made sense in the 19th century when development was just beginning, but it needs to be tempered with rights-based concerns. There ought not be an absolutist right to harm others in order to produce social welfare nor should there be an absolutist claim to limit all harm to the environment while the economy declines.
We now know that pollution does harm to us, including causing diseases like cancer. Also, there is tremendous value in a clean environment. A trip to China in 2003 convinced me of that. Because a clean environment is an inseparable good, that is, there is no way to charge people for its use, and as well pollution is an external cost, which means that polluters do not pay, some correctives are needed. There is market failure. But the correctives can most effectively be accomplished through means that support the market system.
The way to balance the costs of pollution with the benefits (e.g., in increased industrial production) is either through a tort system devised by the courts (where the courts establish standards of care and wrong doing that are stricter than today's) or legislation accomplishing the same thing. A moderate cap and trade system where realistic limits on pollution are coupled with the ability to sell rights to pollute is also workable. Such steps will slow economic growth with respect to consumer goods, though, so they need to be done with care.
Similar standards are in place in areas like automobile safety standards. When there is a car accident, the lack of the ability of the car to withstand the crash to some degree contributes to injuries. The question is how far to go to establish standards. If the courts say that all cars should be crash proof the cost of cars will increase exponentially. Congress and the courts have not concluded that cars can be built without regard to safety, but the standards do not appear to be extreme. Industry fought safety belts, for instance, but ultimately rules supporting inclusion of belts were put into effect and they have not been overwhelmingly expensive. There are tens of thousands of deaths each year due to automobile accidents. But I do not hear anyone proposing to criminalize cars. Rather, the Democrats just subsidized the car industry. So why are they subsidizing industry while aiming to impose massize costs via cap and trade? The goal is not limiting pollution but control and power of the state.
With respect to pollution and cap and trade the Democrats do not aim to maximize social welfare or the balance the need for a clean environment with the need for other kinds of progress. For instance, the cap and trade bill as it was originally proposed included, I believe, retroactive standards on homeowners that would have cost each American homeowner thousands of dollars. The standard of raising energy efficiency by 50% over six years seems arbitrary and capricious.
Moreover, there is a willingness to hand decision making to national and international authority (a cap and trade administrator, for instance) which poses a threat to freedom. Instead of talking in terms of costs and benefits and balancing progress with limits on pollution and capricious state authority, the Democrats and environmentalists have an extremist agenda.
The claim of global warming, for instance, has become an obsession with the Democrats and the environmentalist movement. Rather than debate the question intelligently, they have chosen to falsify research. The Democratic media then report the falsified findings as though they are facts. This is evidence of the partisan nature of the Democratic media such as NPR and the Washington Post.
That said, I agree that it is beneficial to us to reduce consumption of anything, including oil. That is efficiency. But buying a resource from another country is not transferring wealth. The reason we buy oil is to produce wealth. In other words, the benefit of the oil exceeds the cost. If the price of oil rises sufficiently, alternatives will be found. But purchasing oil from the Middle East is not so maleficent a result that government is needed to alter market processes. Firms have been much better at innovation than governments. If that were not so, then Sweden, Cuba and North Korea would be innovation centers.
Certainly, there is little in common between the Middle-Easterners-are-demons argument and the claim that there is global warming. I suspect that there will be alternative fuels coming into being as the real price of oil rises. Meanwhile, if you feel that we should rely on alternative fuels, why not study chemical engineering and work on inventing a low-cost alternative? That is what Americans used to do before the advent of paper money and big universities.
>Let me agree with everything that you say about climate change. But please answer this question: Do cars use oil and do they emit carbon dioxide? If they do use oil, is it not beneficial for us to reduce our consumption so that American wealth is not transferred to the Middle East?
My response:
>I am not opposed to limiting pollution or reducing oil consumption. These can be done with rather than against natural market processes and so limit the dumb mistakes that governments inevitably make.
Murray N. Rothbard had an argument that I found interesting. In the 19th century there were court cases where citizens claimed that pollution was a form of battery and tried to obtain damages from the polluters. The courts threw out this argument. At the time, there was likely a utilitarian argument in favor of pollution, but the judges' decisions (I have no citations) were not fully consistent with the fundamental approach to rights used in the Declaration of Independence. The rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness do not imply the right to harm others. Judge Richard Posner has written a textbook on law and economics in which he argues that judges have acted to optimize efficiency. This is a utilitarian argument. If true, the reason for the judges' mistaken belief that encouraging pollution will maximize social welfare is an antiquated view of social welfare. Also, Posner's utilitarian argument is flawed. It may have made sense in the 19th century when development was just beginning, but it needs to be tempered with rights-based concerns. There ought not be an absolutist right to harm others in order to produce social welfare nor should there be an absolutist claim to limit all harm to the environment while the economy declines.
We now know that pollution does harm to us, including causing diseases like cancer. Also, there is tremendous value in a clean environment. A trip to China in 2003 convinced me of that. Because a clean environment is an inseparable good, that is, there is no way to charge people for its use, and as well pollution is an external cost, which means that polluters do not pay, some correctives are needed. There is market failure. But the correctives can most effectively be accomplished through means that support the market system.
The way to balance the costs of pollution with the benefits (e.g., in increased industrial production) is either through a tort system devised by the courts (where the courts establish standards of care and wrong doing that are stricter than today's) or legislation accomplishing the same thing. A moderate cap and trade system where realistic limits on pollution are coupled with the ability to sell rights to pollute is also workable. Such steps will slow economic growth with respect to consumer goods, though, so they need to be done with care.
Similar standards are in place in areas like automobile safety standards. When there is a car accident, the lack of the ability of the car to withstand the crash to some degree contributes to injuries. The question is how far to go to establish standards. If the courts say that all cars should be crash proof the cost of cars will increase exponentially. Congress and the courts have not concluded that cars can be built without regard to safety, but the standards do not appear to be extreme. Industry fought safety belts, for instance, but ultimately rules supporting inclusion of belts were put into effect and they have not been overwhelmingly expensive. There are tens of thousands of deaths each year due to automobile accidents. But I do not hear anyone proposing to criminalize cars. Rather, the Democrats just subsidized the car industry. So why are they subsidizing industry while aiming to impose massize costs via cap and trade? The goal is not limiting pollution but control and power of the state.
With respect to pollution and cap and trade the Democrats do not aim to maximize social welfare or the balance the need for a clean environment with the need for other kinds of progress. For instance, the cap and trade bill as it was originally proposed included, I believe, retroactive standards on homeowners that would have cost each American homeowner thousands of dollars. The standard of raising energy efficiency by 50% over six years seems arbitrary and capricious.
Moreover, there is a willingness to hand decision making to national and international authority (a cap and trade administrator, for instance) which poses a threat to freedom. Instead of talking in terms of costs and benefits and balancing progress with limits on pollution and capricious state authority, the Democrats and environmentalists have an extremist agenda.
The claim of global warming, for instance, has become an obsession with the Democrats and the environmentalist movement. Rather than debate the question intelligently, they have chosen to falsify research. The Democratic media then report the falsified findings as though they are facts. This is evidence of the partisan nature of the Democratic media such as NPR and the Washington Post.
That said, I agree that it is beneficial to us to reduce consumption of anything, including oil. That is efficiency. But buying a resource from another country is not transferring wealth. The reason we buy oil is to produce wealth. In other words, the benefit of the oil exceeds the cost. If the price of oil rises sufficiently, alternatives will be found. But purchasing oil from the Middle East is not so maleficent a result that government is needed to alter market processes. Firms have been much better at innovation than governments. If that were not so, then Sweden, Cuba and North Korea would be innovation centers.
Certainly, there is little in common between the Middle-Easterners-are-demons argument and the claim that there is global warming. I suspect that there will be alternative fuels coming into being as the real price of oil rises. Meanwhile, if you feel that we should rely on alternative fuels, why not study chemical engineering and work on inventing a low-cost alternative? That is what Americans used to do before the advent of paper money and big universities.
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