It is a logical position to oppose ANY compromise with progressives on fiscal matters that apply to additional government spending and tax increases. It is also logical to worry about the nation’s $1.x Trillion deficit which is of course the amount of money we spend as a nation each year in excess of what is collected in tax revenue. Each year it gets added to the national debt which now stands above $17 Trillion, which is in turn dwarfed by our unfunded liabilities (promises we have made to pay in the future) which now are approaching or exceed $120 Trillion ( It’s hard to keep up). Additional government spending and taxes simply takes money out of the private sector where it could find its most efficient use and puts it in the hands of government bureaucrats who first take out the government cut and then spend the rest on whatever THEY think would be best. The list of beneficiaries always seems to be topped by the “Friends Of The Party In Power Benevolent Association”. Funny how that seems to work. But back to fiscal compromise.
Fiscal compromise is one reason why the world economy is in the shape it’s in. For many decades the path to success in the U.S. congress was to “go along and get along”. You scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours. The secret to a long career was to bring home the bacon for your constituents so that when election time rolled around there would be no room for an opponent to criticize. This was done by agreeing to help your colleagues take home their own bacon. We’ve all seen “Mr. Smith Goes To Washington”. We all know how it works, but we also know that there isn’t really a crooked politician out there with the sense of decency to put a gun to his or her head.
But what’s the harm? A Billion dollars here a Billion dollars there. The government spends a Billion dollars every two hours and fifteen minutes. Who’s going to miss another Billion? Only they don’t get spent in single Billions generally. Generally they get spent by the hundreds of Billions and not for one time purchases….. but ongoing programs that now have managers who have a personal interest in continuing and growing the expenditure. Did you ever hear of a federal bureaucrat who advocated for the dissolution of his or her department?
So the spending and debt go up and up and everything seems cool. Everyone seems to be having a good time, and then something unexpected happens: Unexpected, but predictable, AND predicted. A policy of increasingly easy home mortgage financing promoted and then aggressively pushed by the federal government created the “housing bubble” which finally burst and crashed the whole world economy.
Compromise reaches its frenzied climax during the assembly of “Omnibus”, and “Comprehensive” legislation.
Omnibus legislation is just a hodgepodge of measures that legislators didn’t have time to deal with or didn’t want to talk about openly and so they wait until the very end of the session and throw them all into one big “anthology of pork”. Everybody gets something. Sort of like the Christmas party at school, only at this party there isn’t any limit to the amount of money that can be spent. The bills will contain legitimate amendments to existing law and other bureaucratic necessities, but way back in the back, neatly tucked in between substantive matters there will be more fiscal hijinks than you can possibly imagine. All of the things that legislators would be embarrassed to stand and openly argue for, or support are here, and the reason they’re here is because it’s where everyone is allowed a pass for voting in favor of all of their colleague’s corruption. The bills are long, and hard to read. Who’s going to know? And if someone does find out next year, who’s going to care? It’s a win/win.
Comprehensive legislation at least has a stated purpose which is to take a large general problem which is the sum of several, or many related problems and solve them all in one fell swoop. A problem with comprehensive legislation is that it requires a fair measure of arrogance to believe that one fully understands all of the moving parts of a situation and how they interact with one another. Yesterday’s comprehensive legislation was the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. We’ll be digging our way out from under that pile of rubble for a long time. Another problem with this sort of legislation is that it allows the executive authority the option of non-enforcement of parts of the law it deems unnecessary.
Today’s comprehensive legislation is “Immigration Reform”, which is only one of the three major problems that it purports to solve, the other two being border security, and what to do with the 12 to 14 million immigrants who are already here illegally. Tied together, these three separate but interacting problems will generate another 1500 page monstrosity of a bill, the exact contents of which no one will know until the provisions begin to be selectively administered. It will not be an attempt to solve a pressing national problem, but a means to an end, that end being an open border policy and liberal dispensation of social benefits and Constitutional rights to extralegals. The attempt to combine the solution in one piece of legislation will result in at least one, and perhaps all three of the problems going unsolved and perhaps made even worse. And there will be the requisite lies. If you liked “If you like your plan, you can keep your plan” you’ll LOVE “this bill does not give blanket amnesty to 14 Million illegals”.
The solution to the immigration problem is simple and can be accomplished by separate action. First) Secure the border. Everyone else does it, including all of those industrialized nations progressives like to trot out when speaking about nationalized health care. Securing the borders is not a small thing, but we landed a man on the moon in 1969. We can secure the borders. And those attempting border violation need to be immediately deported to the country that they just came from, not given a bus ticket to the U.S. city of their choice, and released on their own recognizance pending a hearing in six months. Simple. Except smugglers of course. They can stay. In prison, and THEN deported.
Next) While the borders are being secured, we can be reforming the immigration system to efficiently handle the volumes of applicants expected, and establish a status for guest workers who have no intention or desire to becoming Americans. We, as a nation, have a right, and responsibility to know who is coming to and leaving our country.
And Finally) Deal with the 12 to 14 Million “extralegals” already in the country. Separately, the issue is just as simple as the other two. With the borders secure the problem practically solves itself. People live their lives and eventually die. People move away. If no more illegals arrive then the number present will decrease all by itself. In the mean time some legal status can be given. No logistically minded serious person suggests the involuntary deportation of 12 Million people. It won’t be necessary to establish a special PATHWAY to citizenship. Immigrants can apply for permanent resident status and then for citizenship, just as they always could have, and once they have satisfied the requirements they can stand in front of a judge, raise their right hand, and recite the pledge of allegiance.
In separate pieces of legislation these three steps are straight forward and simple to execute. Trying to connect them would create a sort of Rube Goldberg contraption with so many moving parts that it would from the outset become impossible to operate or maintain. Our continuing experience with Healthcare.gov should have red flags going up on every pole.
Comprehensive legislation of ANY kind is the enemy of average Americans.
But that’s just what an average guy thinks.
Sunday, December 1, 2013
Wednesday, November 27, 2013
The Beginnings of Deceit
It began inauspiciously enough. Not even three weeks after the new President was inaugurated the democrat controlled congress passed a five hundred and fifty billion dollar economic stimulus package and named it the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.
It must be quite a feeling for a college professor, or a real estate developer or a former minor government functionary or community organizer to participate in the borrowing and then spending of half a Trillion dollars of other peoples money. This is, of course, an example of the last of the four ways we spend money: spending other people’s money on other people. In this mode, cost is of no concern (because the money will come from others) and neither are the results. For them it was all an abstraction and no matter what the result, there would be no consequences.
But my main thought for the moment are the “shovel ready” projects that were touted as one of the reasons for the rushed process that included no time for detailed examination and discussion of the bill’s contents. The President would later jokingly comment that the “shovel ready” projects were not as shovel ready as they had expected. Really?
If you give these executive neophytes the benefit of the doubt, if you accept, for a moment, that they didn’t know that before the golden shovels are polished up and brought out for show many months are spent in the promotion of ideas, feasibility studies, site selection studies, environmental studies, property acquisition, engineering and design, permitting, and that none of that happens until AFTER the money has been turned on then the best you can say about them is that they were inexperienced, incompetent, naïve, or all of the above. Or you can add deceitful to the list, and say that they knew it perfectly well and simply used the phrase “shovel ready projects” as an easy way to justify the hasty approval of a hundred Billion dollars in borrowing and expenditure.
My own feeling is that they were indeed inexperienced, incompetent, naïve, AND deceitful. Not exactly the traits you might want to look for when selecting national leaders.
But that’s just what an average guy thinks.
It must be quite a feeling for a college professor, or a real estate developer or a former minor government functionary or community organizer to participate in the borrowing and then spending of half a Trillion dollars of other peoples money. This is, of course, an example of the last of the four ways we spend money: spending other people’s money on other people. In this mode, cost is of no concern (because the money will come from others) and neither are the results. For them it was all an abstraction and no matter what the result, there would be no consequences.
But my main thought for the moment are the “shovel ready” projects that were touted as one of the reasons for the rushed process that included no time for detailed examination and discussion of the bill’s contents. The President would later jokingly comment that the “shovel ready” projects were not as shovel ready as they had expected. Really?
If you give these executive neophytes the benefit of the doubt, if you accept, for a moment, that they didn’t know that before the golden shovels are polished up and brought out for show many months are spent in the promotion of ideas, feasibility studies, site selection studies, environmental studies, property acquisition, engineering and design, permitting, and that none of that happens until AFTER the money has been turned on then the best you can say about them is that they were inexperienced, incompetent, naïve, or all of the above. Or you can add deceitful to the list, and say that they knew it perfectly well and simply used the phrase “shovel ready projects” as an easy way to justify the hasty approval of a hundred Billion dollars in borrowing and expenditure.
My own feeling is that they were indeed inexperienced, incompetent, naïve, AND deceitful. Not exactly the traits you might want to look for when selecting national leaders.
But that’s just what an average guy thinks.
Tuesday, November 5, 2013
Why Are Universities Hotbeds of Progressivism
Then the war was over, but the animas remained. But it was the 70s. It was, perhaps, not easy to be angry while wearing those collars and platform shoes. Double knit. Ban-Lon. But the people who believed in the evil nature of the United States… those who longed for the success and primacy of communal philosophy… like those carrying out butchery and barbarous acts in China, Cuba, Cambodia, and the Soviet Union, took a long view. Realizing they were up against a well developed legal system that would capture and prosecute them, a young population tired of sticking it to the man, and that was more interested in shaking its groove thing than in “social justice’ they simply went back to school and did the work required to put them in a position to take over the nation. They became educatiors. It was a great gig. They got to exercise their arrogant paternalism for a living, and they only had to work nine months a year. And work they did.
The sixties and seventies were times when the founders of the Confederacy, the Ku Klux Klan and the perpetrators of the horrific racial violence we had seen and read about for years, the very architects of the system of racial segregation that permeated American culture (the democrat party) began to change. The founders and the practitioners of abolition (the republicans) were suddenly portrayed as the villains of the story and the true villains, the ones with blood on their hands became soft a cuddly.
It was also in this time frame when a new age dawned. Not the age of Aquarius, which was simply a pop culture phenomenon, but the age of victimhood. The first order of business was to convince the voting public that the government needed to do more to help the poor. There seemed to be plenty of tax revenue to go around. Why not? And then minorities were convinced that they were owed the assistance because they had been victims of centuries of abuse, and that due to circumstances beyond their control they couldn’t make it without help. And then the story was changed yet again. Majority (white) voters were told that not only should they assist minority populations, but that they were responsible for their condition in the first place. And this is how it’s been, for forty years, or more.
Fast forward to the 2010s. Students…. the children of privilege are transitioning into the oppressed. Never having to have worked for anything and always the oppressors they are eager for relief. They no longer feel the religious guilt for the death of Christ that sustained their parents and grand parents and they yearn for the absolution that follows confession. Today’s educators are more than willing, in fact it was their purpose, to instill that guilt and to provide the relief. If you could listen in on the exchange in a university confessional, it might sound like this.
“Do you accept the sins of America, and take them as your own?”
“I do”
“And do you vow to accept and hold sacrosanct the teachings that have been imparted to you here, never questioning?”
“I do”
“Then go my child and sin no more”.
Or something like that.
But that’s just what an average guy thinks.
Sunday, July 28, 2013
Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics.
Okay, so here goes.
It’s all over the news. Income disparity. Bad and getting worse. So I’m thinking “really?”. We all have so much. We have multiple cell phones per family costing hundreds of dollars per month. We have flat screen TVs, and home theatres with sub woofers. Not just woofers mind you, we have subwoofers. We have cable and high speed internet and WiFi for our computers. Our cars last longer than they ever did before, our school districts spend twice as much money (in constant dollars) per student than they did just 40 years ago. Now you can take this or leave it, but from my point of view: not ever having anything that I didn’t really have to have just to get by, not having anything now, and not really figuring on having anything in the future, I don’t see that things are really much different than they ever were. Sure, sure, times are tough right now and I have proof, but that was the making of 50 years of “do good” government spending money it didn’t have, wasn’t going to have and making economic decisions that couldn’t be safely implemented by the private sector economy that is our heart and soul.
And the line is that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. If the phrase didn’t appear in popular song lyrics decades old one might be tempted to think it was a new concept, and it actually traces it’s origins to a speech made by William Henry Harrison in 1840. You’d think the tread would have worn off that old tire some time ago.
In any event, the case is being made again, and there are “NEW” “SOBERING” statistics to back it up. After 170 years. Finally. Something new. But while I’m not an economist I CAN read and I’ve noticed a few things that might make it seem to some degree as if wealth were concentrating in the hands of fewer and fewer hands. Referring of course to the evil 1%.
Let’s begin.
First we have to agree on some things as a basis for discussion. We must agree that younger workers have fewer skills, and less experience in the job market and that because of this they will have less wealth than their parents and grandparents. So. If you break the population into two age groups: 18-44 and 45-74 what you see is that from 1980 to 2010 the younger part of the work force declined from 41% to 36% while the older fraction increased from 27% to 33%. Now. How significant are those percentages? I don’t know. I’m not an economist. However, it’s pretty plain that the shift in age breakdown alone is going to make it appear that wealth is moving away from younger less skilled workers.
Next. In 1980 (according to Census data) 20% of all households were of the single parent persuasion. Three decades later in 2008 the number was 30%. Now, you might say “so what”, “there’s less money in the house”, and that would be true, but this is something that people decide to do. They choose to get divorced, or they don’t get married in the first place. No one cares anymore about stuff like that. It only means that your kids grow up poorer, but you’ll be eligible for food stamps and free lunches so what’s the diff? AND, this simple thing makes it look as if families are becoming poorer when at least a significant fraction choose this for themselves. They don’t actually choose to have less, but they make the decisions that lead to it.
This next sort of goes hand in hand with the last: In 1980 60% of all households were occupied by a married couple. In 2010 the figure was 48%. What this means is that because people are choosing not to form traditional families household income and thus accrued wealth will be lower. Doesn’t necessarily mean that it is, but it will look like it. The statistics will show it, but another saying that traces it’s roots to the mid 1800s is that “there are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics”. People know this, but frequently forget that two analysts can look at the same statistic and draw completely opposite conclusions. So the next time you hear someone saying how bad things are indicated by such and such a number take a few minutes and have some fun trying to think up what else that number could mean.
But that’s just what an average guy thinks.
It’s all over the news. Income disparity. Bad and getting worse. So I’m thinking “really?”. We all have so much. We have multiple cell phones per family costing hundreds of dollars per month. We have flat screen TVs, and home theatres with sub woofers. Not just woofers mind you, we have subwoofers. We have cable and high speed internet and WiFi for our computers. Our cars last longer than they ever did before, our school districts spend twice as much money (in constant dollars) per student than they did just 40 years ago. Now you can take this or leave it, but from my point of view: not ever having anything that I didn’t really have to have just to get by, not having anything now, and not really figuring on having anything in the future, I don’t see that things are really much different than they ever were. Sure, sure, times are tough right now and I have proof, but that was the making of 50 years of “do good” government spending money it didn’t have, wasn’t going to have and making economic decisions that couldn’t be safely implemented by the private sector economy that is our heart and soul.
And the line is that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. If the phrase didn’t appear in popular song lyrics decades old one might be tempted to think it was a new concept, and it actually traces it’s origins to a speech made by William Henry Harrison in 1840. You’d think the tread would have worn off that old tire some time ago.
In any event, the case is being made again, and there are “NEW” “SOBERING” statistics to back it up. After 170 years. Finally. Something new. But while I’m not an economist I CAN read and I’ve noticed a few things that might make it seem to some degree as if wealth were concentrating in the hands of fewer and fewer hands. Referring of course to the evil 1%.
Let’s begin.
First we have to agree on some things as a basis for discussion. We must agree that younger workers have fewer skills, and less experience in the job market and that because of this they will have less wealth than their parents and grandparents. So. If you break the population into two age groups: 18-44 and 45-74 what you see is that from 1980 to 2010 the younger part of the work force declined from 41% to 36% while the older fraction increased from 27% to 33%. Now. How significant are those percentages? I don’t know. I’m not an economist. However, it’s pretty plain that the shift in age breakdown alone is going to make it appear that wealth is moving away from younger less skilled workers.
Next. In 1980 (according to Census data) 20% of all households were of the single parent persuasion. Three decades later in 2008 the number was 30%. Now, you might say “so what”, “there’s less money in the house”, and that would be true, but this is something that people decide to do. They choose to get divorced, or they don’t get married in the first place. No one cares anymore about stuff like that. It only means that your kids grow up poorer, but you’ll be eligible for food stamps and free lunches so what’s the diff? AND, this simple thing makes it look as if families are becoming poorer when at least a significant fraction choose this for themselves. They don’t actually choose to have less, but they make the decisions that lead to it.
This next sort of goes hand in hand with the last: In 1980 60% of all households were occupied by a married couple. In 2010 the figure was 48%. What this means is that because people are choosing not to form traditional families household income and thus accrued wealth will be lower. Doesn’t necessarily mean that it is, but it will look like it. The statistics will show it, but another saying that traces it’s roots to the mid 1800s is that “there are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics”. People know this, but frequently forget that two analysts can look at the same statistic and draw completely opposite conclusions. So the next time you hear someone saying how bad things are indicated by such and such a number take a few minutes and have some fun trying to think up what else that number could mean.
But that’s just what an average guy thinks.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)