Greed Friday

November 23, 2012 by Leave a comment

Well first of all tell me, is there some society you know that doesn’t run on greed? … What is greed? Of course none of us are greedy. It’s only the other fella that’s greedy. – Milton Friedman

If you believe that Wall Street greed crashed the American economy, you may be right. But today’s Black Friday Drudge Report headlines should disabuse you of the notion that greed is some special evil inherent to the financial sector. We are a materialist society from top to bottom. The reason Wall Street colluded with government to take advantage of Main Street (and not vice versa) had to do with ability, not greater desire. Or, as Friedman adherent Thomas Sowell would put it: “you can become the greediest person on earth and that will not increase your pay in the slightest.”

Current Drudge Report headlines:  Read more of this post

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What is income mobility and the definition of poverty?

July 30, 2012 by 4 Comments

In his column on Sunday, Randy Edelman of Georgetown University asks why the United States can’t end poverty, but he ignores some basic truths regarding income mobility and those who start life below the poverty line. As his solution to the poverty issue, the 74-year-old Edelman pushes the same liberal policies that have never lifted anyone out of poverty and have kept entire groups in poverty for decades. Also, he doesn’t lament the number of dependent citizens and how to help them stand on their own, but rather how to get more people on the government handout list.

It’s impossible to tackle every fallacy in this column in one blog post, so what we will tackle is his underlying assumption that the United States is a static economy where the pie never grows and can only be redistributed between people permanently entombed in a particular class.

Edelman begins his column with a series of interesting statistics that are nothing more than a snapshot of income values at any given moment. He doesn’t quite define where he’s coming from until about three-quarters of the way through the column, where he recites a portion of the liberal litany of social justice:

We know what we need to do — make the rich pay their fair share of running the country, raise the minimum wage, provide health care and a decent safety net, and the like.

This amounts to no more than a series of bandaids that don’t heal any wounds and ignore a basic reality of the economic spectrum.

Thomas Sowell has frequently reiterated the fact that most people who are in the bottom quintile of the income spectrum tend not to stay there, and people in the top quintile of the income spectrum tend not to stay at the top. The following graphs illustrate this point clearly:  Read more of this post

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California’s new social policies based on self-congratulation

July 11, 2012 by 2 Comments

Notorious for his hard-nosed play on the field, the great Chase Utley had this to say about his quiet demeanor off of it: “My father always told me if you’re good, let other people tell you that you’re good.”

Easy to say when you’re ripping off one of the most productive stretches by a second basemen in baseball history, but a good lesson nonetheless. Many politicians would do well to learn from it. While the nature of their job demands some level of self-promotion, too often that transitions into decision-making for that very purpose. Responsible service to one’s constituents is usurped by social policy platforms based on self-congratulation. The bankrupt state of California provides three recent examples.

First, Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, on a new bill that would make California a de facto sanctuary state for illegal aliens:

Today’s vote signals to the nation that California cannot afford to be another Arizona.

As if it is the job of politicians to “signal to the nation” their supposed moral superiority, instead of serving as caretakers to their constituents’ safety and financial well-being. The dangerous incentives created by this bill are ignored, and instead we have the same self-congratulatory hooey that accompanied the naive presumptuous of California’s earlier attempt to “take the lead” on climate change. Read more of this post

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I pledge allegiance, to my skin color

June 9, 2012 by Leave a comment

In 5th grade Social Studies class, I learned that America was a “melting pot” and was told that this helped make us great. People of all different backgrounds, nationalities, and races came together into one country. E Pluribus Unum. Once you got to the United States, all that mattered was that you were free, and we were all equal before the law. No more:

Latinos Must Sign Ethnic Affidavit To Qualify For New York City Business Program

That creepy title from the Huffington Post should be enough. Unfortunately the story continues with a faint awareness that something about all this is uncouth, yet treats the following questions as legitimate for a government to ask:

Do Brazilians count? What about Spaniards?

Defining exactly who is “Hispanic” and who is not, when the label should be applied and when it should not, is a matter on which academics, Census-takers, and even those who identify themselves as part of the ethnic group, sometimes disagree.

Those debates have intensified as cities, corporations, and universities expand, contract, and otherwise change diversity and affirmative action programs. In New York, Latino entrepreneurs who want to take advantage of a city program designed to give businesses owned by women and minorities access to information and guidance, must first swear that they are Hispanic, in the way that the city defines it.

Sad examples throughout history immediately come to mind:  Read more of this post

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Higher Education another bubble waiting to pop

May 9, 2012 by Leave a comment

Day 3 of the protest Occupy Wall Street in Man...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Next time you throw a BBQ and Mrs. Smith is boring you with another tedious conversation on her son’s college prospects, throw this grenade: “I believe too many people go to college.” Watch the jaws drop as you blast this tired piece of conventional wisdom. People unthinkingly accept the current system, where even low skill jobs often require a college degree, and never question why. Has everyone blocked out all the lazy stoners and drunks who coasted to degrees alongside us, and refused to contemplate whether over $100K to “get a piece of paper” made any sense for these slackers? Employers know college is the new high school and use that piece of paper as a minimum bar certifying someone’s ability to write in complete sentences. We now accept a premise that disqualifies 70% of the workforce from decent paying jobs.

A sister conversation to that, one new parents are familiar with, starts with a question: “Have you already started saving up for college? Hope so, because by the time he’s 18 it’s gonna cost…” The questioner waits for your eyeballs to glaze over and your shoulders to slump, to which they will sagely nod. A simple response will turn this back on them: “No, I’m not worried about it. College education costs are a bubble that is bound to pop well before then.” Your reward will be a look of confusion, followed by a slowly dawning realization, “Shoot, why hadn’t I thought of that before?” It’s as if the housing bubble, where the same “costs will only go up” argument was prevalent, taught us nothing. Sadly, our elected central planners clearly haven’t learned from it, as Yahoo’s The Ticket reports:

Senate Republicans blocked a vote Tuesday on a bill that would have extended the current low 3.4 percent interest rate on Stafford student loans, taking issue with how the Democratic bill would fund the extension. If Congress fails to pass such an extension by July, the rates will double.

Unfortunately the gridlock is over whether to even pay for this extension, and not whether it’s a good idea in the first place. But it should be:  Read more of this post

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