My uncle was an engineer maintaining the facilities at Ohio University. He built a little suspension bridge to connect the campus to the golf course. They had no budget, so he scrounged together parts and they built the bridge for about $500 in the 1960s. It was replaced 30+ years later by a bridge that cost about $500,000 -- 1000 times more. Your gov't spenders at work.
But my uncle's bridge was not built far enough over the river. They figured that if the water came up more than four feet, no one was going to go golfing anyway. One winter day, the bridge started catching the ice that was floating down the river, turning it into more of dam than a bridge. It's hard to think of every contingency when designing something. That's true even of something as simple as a 150 foot suspension bridge.
They watched as the water backed up behind the accumulating ice. What to do? One fellow suggested that maybe they could use dynamite to break it up. That seemed a bit dangerous, so they decided to go to breakfast and talk about it.
An hour or so later, they returned to the bridge to find that the water had risen while they were at breakfast and pushed the ice chunks over the bridge and downriver. Problem solved.
Sometimes the best thing to do is nothing at all. Have a nice breakfast.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Thursday, February 05, 2009
The velocity of money
I got a letter from a relative who says that she does not want to buy from companies like Nike because they exploit their workers. There seems to be a bit of a contradiction in what she said, in that she said she doesn't care about these people but she does not want to buy anything made by slaves or children or sweatshop workers (presumably because such work exploits them). Let us leave aside the notion that these people work voluntarily under such conditions in order to avoid worse conditions, that what is seen as a miserable existence to us is a step up for them from an even more miserable existence. I am focusing on this paradox: that she seems to care more about punishing those who make a profit from these people then she does about the people they are supposedly exploiting.
As for jingoism, my father's father ran for Congress in the 1930s and his number one issue was to preserve American jobs by raising tariffs. This was the accepted Republican doctrine of the day, a contrast to today's Republicans who tend to support free trade. Economists agreed then as now that raising tariffs was one of Hoover's big mistakes (another mistake was raising taxes quite a bit in a slow economy, when money was already tight).
But trade barriers, like union labor barriers, look good only when you consider their effect on a subset of people. When you consider the universe of people, they don't look so good. It is true that a union raises the wages of its members, but that also limits the number of people a business can hire at that wage (assuming that the business had already determined what fraction of its budget to devote to labor costs). This means that some people who would be available and willing to work at that company, even at a lower wage, will go unemployed. Is it better for 75 people to get 100 quatloos per month or for 100 people to get 75 quatloos (a quatloo being a Star Trek unit of currency).
The union worker says, "Yeah, it's better to have only 75 workers making a higher wage because I'm amongst the lucky 75 and the other 74 are my brothers and sisters in the union." The poor, unemployed schmucks on the outside have a different opinion. It is obvious they will never agree. But theirs is not the only consideration. Presumably, a group of 100 employees are more productive than a group of 75. All other things being equal, they are 33% more productive and produce 33% higher profit. A company with 33% more profit can afford to either hire more workers (if the market warrants it) or pay higher wages to its workers in order to secure its productive labor force in a competitive market. Or it might not expend the additional profit in labor, but might invest it in equipment. In this case, the benefit spills out of the company and into the coffers of its vendors. Conversely, when that profit is not earned as in our example where the company is restricted to 75 workers, this hurts not only the 25 workers who did not get hired today, but the various vendors who did not sell their wares.
Lowering labor costs is just one of many ways of boosting productivity, but higher productivity is good for society. It is what grows the economy. There was a time when people feared that automation would put people out of work and eventually only the employed elite would be able to survive (the rest, presumably, would have starved). In retrospect, we see that this did not happen. Not only do workers have a higher standard of living than 100 years ago, but we work fewer hours to make that living (and live longer).
As workers, we would prefer that productivity be increased through other means than having our wages cut, but the economic forces have no preference. I am not arguing that unions do not have the right to agitate for higher wages, and I certainly understand the reason for it. It's just that the effect of unions is higher wages and the effect of higher wages is also lower productivity and less than optimal economic growth.
The same principle undergirds trade barriers and union labor barriers: Both restrict the flow of capital. The union constrains capital to be spent on a less productive workforce. Trade barriers constrain capital to be spent on more expensive goods, presumably made by less productive workers. This depresses the economy by keeping money from getting re-spent. If I have to buy more expensive American-made goods, I might run out of budgeted money in the first store, so I never get to the next store to buy something from them. When money is concentrated with one entity, the more likely it is to be saved instead of spent.
Going back to my simplistic union example, the union shop supports 75 spenders and the non-union shop supports 100 spenders. Just as a sieve with 100 holes lose water faster than an equal-sized sieve with 75 holes, a community with 1,000,000 spenders spends money faster than a similar community with 750,000 spenders.
Economists speak of the velocity of money, which measures the rate at which the same dollar gets re-spent. They call this measure the M1 money multiplier. You can see what happened to the velocity of money this fall in this chart. It depicts a historic drop-off in the velocity of money. It would seem to me that the last thing you would want to do at this time is decrease the number of spenders in the global economy by restricting the flow of capital.
This is not just theory, either. America tried protectionism in the 1930s, the very sort of protectionism my grandfather espoused. We see where that got us.
As for jingoism, my father's father ran for Congress in the 1930s and his number one issue was to preserve American jobs by raising tariffs. This was the accepted Republican doctrine of the day, a contrast to today's Republicans who tend to support free trade. Economists agreed then as now that raising tariffs was one of Hoover's big mistakes (another mistake was raising taxes quite a bit in a slow economy, when money was already tight).
But trade barriers, like union labor barriers, look good only when you consider their effect on a subset of people. When you consider the universe of people, they don't look so good. It is true that a union raises the wages of its members, but that also limits the number of people a business can hire at that wage (assuming that the business had already determined what fraction of its budget to devote to labor costs). This means that some people who would be available and willing to work at that company, even at a lower wage, will go unemployed. Is it better for 75 people to get 100 quatloos per month or for 100 people to get 75 quatloos (a quatloo being a Star Trek unit of currency).
The union worker says, "Yeah, it's better to have only 75 workers making a higher wage because I'm amongst the lucky 75 and the other 74 are my brothers and sisters in the union." The poor, unemployed schmucks on the outside have a different opinion. It is obvious they will never agree. But theirs is not the only consideration. Presumably, a group of 100 employees are more productive than a group of 75. All other things being equal, they are 33% more productive and produce 33% higher profit. A company with 33% more profit can afford to either hire more workers (if the market warrants it) or pay higher wages to its workers in order to secure its productive labor force in a competitive market. Or it might not expend the additional profit in labor, but might invest it in equipment. In this case, the benefit spills out of the company and into the coffers of its vendors. Conversely, when that profit is not earned as in our example where the company is restricted to 75 workers, this hurts not only the 25 workers who did not get hired today, but the various vendors who did not sell their wares.
Lowering labor costs is just one of many ways of boosting productivity, but higher productivity is good for society. It is what grows the economy. There was a time when people feared that automation would put people out of work and eventually only the employed elite would be able to survive (the rest, presumably, would have starved). In retrospect, we see that this did not happen. Not only do workers have a higher standard of living than 100 years ago, but we work fewer hours to make that living (and live longer).
As workers, we would prefer that productivity be increased through other means than having our wages cut, but the economic forces have no preference. I am not arguing that unions do not have the right to agitate for higher wages, and I certainly understand the reason for it. It's just that the effect of unions is higher wages and the effect of higher wages is also lower productivity and less than optimal economic growth.
The same principle undergirds trade barriers and union labor barriers: Both restrict the flow of capital. The union constrains capital to be spent on a less productive workforce. Trade barriers constrain capital to be spent on more expensive goods, presumably made by less productive workers. This depresses the economy by keeping money from getting re-spent. If I have to buy more expensive American-made goods, I might run out of budgeted money in the first store, so I never get to the next store to buy something from them. When money is concentrated with one entity, the more likely it is to be saved instead of spent.
Going back to my simplistic union example, the union shop supports 75 spenders and the non-union shop supports 100 spenders. Just as a sieve with 100 holes lose water faster than an equal-sized sieve with 75 holes, a community with 1,000,000 spenders spends money faster than a similar community with 750,000 spenders.
Economists speak of the velocity of money, which measures the rate at which the same dollar gets re-spent. They call this measure the M1 money multiplier. You can see what happened to the velocity of money this fall in this chart. It depicts a historic drop-off in the velocity of money. It would seem to me that the last thing you would want to do at this time is decrease the number of spenders in the global economy by restricting the flow of capital.
This is not just theory, either. America tried protectionism in the 1930s, the very sort of protectionism my grandfather espoused. We see where that got us.
Friday, January 23, 2009
Dancez
I just rewatched the video for "The Safety Dance", a video from 1982. There's a word whispered by a breathless woman in the background before the first chorus. I never understood what she was saying. It's not repeated in the song. I had to look up the lyrics. It's voiced by a rather attractive blonde in the video.
I also ran across this homage to "The Safety Dance" from the TV comedy scrubs. Clever how they worked that in.
I also ran across this homage to "The Safety Dance" from the TV comedy scrubs. Clever how they worked that in.
Baby boomer Obama
My brother just wrote an email suggesting that Obama was not a baby boomer and that he will distinguish himself from his predecessors because he is of Generation X, not a selfish baby boomer. Well, Obama is technically a baby boomer, if you believe that hooey. I think astrology is more useful as an indicator of human behavior. What sign is he?
[I have an old girlfriend who just told me she is Aquarius with Scorpio rising. Well, she certainly made this Scorpio rise, but that had more to do with her birthday suit than her birthday.]
Anyone who looks at Bill Klinton and George W. Bush and sees them as alike because of their relative nearness in age is not a serious onlooker of history.
And if we're going to use hyphenated prefixes to describe Obama's particular flavor of American, then let's not stop at African. We must describe him as half-African-American. I don't know what the other half is and it does not seem to matter to most people. Even though the African parent spent less than a day with him after he had left Obama's mother, and it was his non-African mother and grandparents who raised him, his father's line gets top billing. How patrimonial!
We bother to distinguish between French and Italian and Irish and German Americans (although we do rightly tend to lump English, Scots and Welsh into the group British-Americans). We don't call all white people Euro-Americans. No one would mistake a Russian accent for a Mexican one (although we probably would not pick up Alsatian as Robert Redford does at the end of "Three Days of the Condor" when he confronts hit man Max Von Sydow). And yet we are to believe that all Africans are the same; Kenyans, Tunisians, Hutu and Tutsi They seem to distinguish each other somehow, sometimes cleaving the difference with a machete, but they all look alike to us (except those descendants of Boers, like Teresa Heinz Kerry; she's white! How dare she call herself African-American just because she actually came to America from South Africa).
I remember my niece excitedly talking about the international students at her college and how some of them were African-Americans (not blacks and not Africans -- "African-Americans from other countries!"). Look, if we really intend to remark upon a person because of the color of his skin, and I see no reason to, let's refer then to his skin color and not the continent where some of his descendants came from. And let's be more accurate about it. Barack and Michelle are not the same color, and neither is black.
I am not impressed with Barack Obama. He voted present more often than not in his short and undistinguished career. When and if he actually does something, I shall judge him on that basis and not on his relative age or skin color.
As for his wife, she received a $195K raise after her husband became a US Senator, probably solely because of his new position. Obama obliged by granting her employer $millions in earmarks. She went on to spend most of her time on the campaign trail and could not have done much real work for them as "VP of community affairs". Not a problem, she had already done her job (or I should say, Barack did it for her) by securing the money. Her raise in pay was a kickback. Nice kickback. Perfectly legal, too. And it turns out that, now that she has moved on to Washington and resigned her position, the hospital has decided that it really does not need a "VP of community affairs" after all and is not going to replace her, not even with someone willing to work for less than $317K.
With her, I'm impressed, but not in a nice way -- and I think it has nothing to do with her skin color, nor her relative age.
But these are our overlords. They live by their own rules. They are better than us, or they think they are. Obama's pick for Treasury Sec'y used to work at the International Monetary Fund -- what better qualifications for overlord? He had to be reminded by the IRS to pay his self-employment taxes (Social Security and Medicare) for 2003 and 2004. And he did pay them... late. Even though the IMF had promptly reimbursed him for those payments, making him sign a paper promising to use the money to pay his taxes -- he forgot somehow and pocketed the money. This is the guy we want in charge of the Federal fisc? A guy who forgets what money was supposed to go where? A guy who thinks paying his taxes is optional? This is the guy we want solving the Social Security crisis, a guy who forgets that Social Security is funded by taxes?
And, after the IRS reminded him of his 2003 and 2004 obligations, did he go back and pay his 2001 and 2002 obligations? He did not. Those were beyond the statute of limitations. He still owed the taxes, but could not be legally compelled to pay them. So he didn't (even though, he had been reimbursed by the IMF and signed the same notice saying that he understood what the reimbursements were for). He has paid them now, of course. Paid them while he was being vetted for the Treasury job. But would he have paid them otherwise? What reason do we have to believe he would? Under oath, speaking to Congress, he refused to answer the question. Well, at least he had the decency not to lie under oath. That's a step up from past Democratic administrations.
Shouldn't the same rules apply to all? And shouldn't the rules apply more strictly to those who seek to administer them?
But have no fear, Obama has signed a paper saying that he expects his administration to uphold high ethical standards. Of course, that is probably just lip service to soothe those who need such soothing, who hear words and feel no need to watch to see if actions match. He said the right thing. That's what matters, right?
And so, Obama promises to go beyond partisanship -- this after he trashed the previous administration and the opposition party in order to get elected. Oh yeah. The Congressional Republicans probably won't remember any of that. And they're mostly old baby boomers anyway.
[I have an old girlfriend who just told me she is Aquarius with Scorpio rising. Well, she certainly made this Scorpio rise, but that had more to do with her birthday suit than her birthday.]
Anyone who looks at Bill Klinton and George W. Bush and sees them as alike because of their relative nearness in age is not a serious onlooker of history.
And if we're going to use hyphenated prefixes to describe Obama's particular flavor of American, then let's not stop at African. We must describe him as half-African-American. I don't know what the other half is and it does not seem to matter to most people. Even though the African parent spent less than a day with him after he had left Obama's mother, and it was his non-African mother and grandparents who raised him, his father's line gets top billing. How patrimonial!
We bother to distinguish between French and Italian and Irish and German Americans (although we do rightly tend to lump English, Scots and Welsh into the group British-Americans). We don't call all white people Euro-Americans. No one would mistake a Russian accent for a Mexican one (although we probably would not pick up Alsatian as Robert Redford does at the end of "Three Days of the Condor" when he confronts hit man Max Von Sydow). And yet we are to believe that all Africans are the same; Kenyans, Tunisians, Hutu and Tutsi They seem to distinguish each other somehow, sometimes cleaving the difference with a machete, but they all look alike to us (except those descendants of Boers, like Teresa Heinz Kerry; she's white! How dare she call herself African-American just because she actually came to America from South Africa).
I remember my niece excitedly talking about the international students at her college and how some of them were African-Americans (not blacks and not Africans -- "African-Americans from other countries!"). Look, if we really intend to remark upon a person because of the color of his skin, and I see no reason to, let's refer then to his skin color and not the continent where some of his descendants came from. And let's be more accurate about it. Barack and Michelle are not the same color, and neither is black.
I am not impressed with Barack Obama. He voted present more often than not in his short and undistinguished career. When and if he actually does something, I shall judge him on that basis and not on his relative age or skin color.
As for his wife, she received a $195K raise after her husband became a US Senator, probably solely because of his new position. Obama obliged by granting her employer $millions in earmarks. She went on to spend most of her time on the campaign trail and could not have done much real work for them as "VP of community affairs". Not a problem, she had already done her job (or I should say, Barack did it for her) by securing the money. Her raise in pay was a kickback. Nice kickback. Perfectly legal, too. And it turns out that, now that she has moved on to Washington and resigned her position, the hospital has decided that it really does not need a "VP of community affairs" after all and is not going to replace her, not even with someone willing to work for less than $317K.
With her, I'm impressed, but not in a nice way -- and I think it has nothing to do with her skin color, nor her relative age.
But these are our overlords. They live by their own rules. They are better than us, or they think they are. Obama's pick for Treasury Sec'y used to work at the International Monetary Fund -- what better qualifications for overlord? He had to be reminded by the IRS to pay his self-employment taxes (Social Security and Medicare) for 2003 and 2004. And he did pay them... late. Even though the IMF had promptly reimbursed him for those payments, making him sign a paper promising to use the money to pay his taxes -- he forgot somehow and pocketed the money. This is the guy we want in charge of the Federal fisc? A guy who forgets what money was supposed to go where? A guy who thinks paying his taxes is optional? This is the guy we want solving the Social Security crisis, a guy who forgets that Social Security is funded by taxes?
And, after the IRS reminded him of his 2003 and 2004 obligations, did he go back and pay his 2001 and 2002 obligations? He did not. Those were beyond the statute of limitations. He still owed the taxes, but could not be legally compelled to pay them. So he didn't (even though, he had been reimbursed by the IMF and signed the same notice saying that he understood what the reimbursements were for). He has paid them now, of course. Paid them while he was being vetted for the Treasury job. But would he have paid them otherwise? What reason do we have to believe he would? Under oath, speaking to Congress, he refused to answer the question. Well, at least he had the decency not to lie under oath. That's a step up from past Democratic administrations.
Shouldn't the same rules apply to all? And shouldn't the rules apply more strictly to those who seek to administer them?
But have no fear, Obama has signed a paper saying that he expects his administration to uphold high ethical standards. Of course, that is probably just lip service to soothe those who need such soothing, who hear words and feel no need to watch to see if actions match. He said the right thing. That's what matters, right?
And so, Obama promises to go beyond partisanship -- this after he trashed the previous administration and the opposition party in order to get elected. Oh yeah. The Congressional Republicans probably won't remember any of that. And they're mostly old baby boomers anyway.
Saturday, January 17, 2009
We Are the Ones Who Are No Longer Waiting for Ourselves
They sent out a memo at work saying "We recognize that Inauguration Day is going to be a historic day, but we caution against watching the event on streaming video. Thank you for respecting our bandwidth issues".
Had they been on the ball, they would have set up a video feed in the largest conference room and played the inauguration on big screen TV. I guess that's only for official executive use, though.
Not that I would be watching at that historic noon. I'll be in the bathroom retching.
Chris Matthews, whose leg tingles when Obama speaks, does not feel that way about Bush. After Bush's farewell address, he claimed that Bush was responsible for 100,000 deaths in Iraq. If that is the case, then FDR and Truman were responsible for the deaths of tens of millions (including 6 million Jews). Doesn't that get things backward? Is there not at least some intellectual rigor left amongst the media (not at MS-NBC, apparently). Most of the deaths in the Iraq War were caused by the insurgents. They planted the IEDs and they were the suicide bombers. They blew up the mosques and marketplaces. It was not coalition forces killing these people.
That's not to say that no innocents were killed, but anyone who understands the concept of a just war realizes that innocents may be killed. One cannot fight a just war if one is afraid of dying oneself, nor if one is afraid of accidentally or inadvertently killing the wrong person (including killing one's co-warriors in friendly fire). Of course one strives not to make these mistakes, but one cannot remain paralyzed in fear of making them.
Nonetheless, it was not by coalition forces that the majority of such innocents perished. It was at the hand of the enemy that they perished. It is calumny to suggest that it is Bush's fault. And it is blindness to fail to realize that Iraq is far better off today than under Saddam Hussein. Moreover, Saddam was a murderous bastard in his own right, a prolific killer who would have killed and tortured almost as many as the nearly vanquished enemy unleashed by his capture.
But these people are blind to true suffering. Obama will be responsible for more than 100,000 deaths in his first year in office if he fulfills his promises to reverse Bush's anti-abortion policies, such as funding for the UN's family planning agency, which helps fund forced abortions in China and China's one-child policy -- don't let anyone tell you they're pro-choice when in fact these people are pro-abortion, even when it is not the choice of the mother. Ironically,many of the aborted babies are female since Chinese prefer males, thus the feminists support the death of future women.
This is just one of the reasons I'll be quelling my nausea on Inauguration Day.
Had they been on the ball, they would have set up a video feed in the largest conference room and played the inauguration on big screen TV. I guess that's only for official executive use, though.
Not that I would be watching at that historic noon. I'll be in the bathroom retching.
Chris Matthews, whose leg tingles when Obama speaks, does not feel that way about Bush. After Bush's farewell address, he claimed that Bush was responsible for 100,000 deaths in Iraq. If that is the case, then FDR and Truman were responsible for the deaths of tens of millions (including 6 million Jews). Doesn't that get things backward? Is there not at least some intellectual rigor left amongst the media (not at MS-NBC, apparently). Most of the deaths in the Iraq War were caused by the insurgents. They planted the IEDs and they were the suicide bombers. They blew up the mosques and marketplaces. It was not coalition forces killing these people.
That's not to say that no innocents were killed, but anyone who understands the concept of a just war realizes that innocents may be killed. One cannot fight a just war if one is afraid of dying oneself, nor if one is afraid of accidentally or inadvertently killing the wrong person (including killing one's co-warriors in friendly fire). Of course one strives not to make these mistakes, but one cannot remain paralyzed in fear of making them.
Nonetheless, it was not by coalition forces that the majority of such innocents perished. It was at the hand of the enemy that they perished. It is calumny to suggest that it is Bush's fault. And it is blindness to fail to realize that Iraq is far better off today than under Saddam Hussein. Moreover, Saddam was a murderous bastard in his own right, a prolific killer who would have killed and tortured almost as many as the nearly vanquished enemy unleashed by his capture.
But these people are blind to true suffering. Obama will be responsible for more than 100,000 deaths in his first year in office if he fulfills his promises to reverse Bush's anti-abortion policies, such as funding for the UN's family planning agency, which helps fund forced abortions in China and China's one-child policy -- don't let anyone tell you they're pro-choice when in fact these people are pro-abortion, even when it is not the choice of the mother. Ironically,many of the aborted babies are female since Chinese prefer males, thus the feminists support the death of future women.
This is just one of the reasons I'll be quelling my nausea on Inauguration Day.
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Doctor Doctor
I tried to comment on a blog post at New English Review, but can't see the reply. I don't want to lose it, so here it is:
In Westport, Connecticut works a physician named Doctor. He is Dr. Doctor. His wife is a doctor. Together they are the Doctors Doctor. The physicians who treat them when they are ill are the Doctors Doctor's doctors. Not exactly "onions, onions, onions", but factual.
Conan Doyle chose Watson to be a doctor. It convinces because we know some doctors to be clear and precise.
James Michener described his success as being able to get people to read to the end of the page. Not a fan myself, but his popularity and the heft of his tomes suggests that he had found the knack.
Are clarity and precision essential in getting people to read to the end of the page? Usually, I would say, even when seeming to write about nothing. The writing may be desultory, or have no main topic whatsoever, may have no point or direction, yet capture and hold the reader's attention. Still, on that random walk, one expects clear and precise narration.
Exceptions abound. "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" comes to mind. Wonderful, but in part because of what is left unreported and unclear. "A pair of ragged claws" is imprecise, but effective.
Thursday, August 07, 2008
Drill and conserve
Obama claims that we who support drilling in the outer continental shelf (OCS) are ignorant and that we are proud of being ignorant. Why? He claims (wrongly) that Americans could save as much oil by properly inflating their tires as could be produced by drilling for it offshore. He claims that to deny this is ignorance and to flout one's denial is to be proud of being ignorant.
He implies that those of us who support offshore drilling oppose proper tire inflation. As McCain said about inflating tires (and conservation in general), "Do that. But also drill". Obama assumes we are too stupid to realize that we can do both.
I guess his argument works with some people. It's very simple to contradict:
Consider what a child would do. Tell the child you've hidden a candy bar in the kitchen and a candy bar in the bedroom. Which will he search for? Well, some children would search in the kitchen. Some would search in the bedroom. But 99.999% of the children would search both rooms and get both candy bars. Because even little children know that if some is good, more is better.
Can Obama show one good reason why drilling offshore would prevent us from also properly inflating our tires (or vice versa)? If not, he is presenting us with a false choice.
You'd have to be ignorant to fall for that false choice. Obama assumes we are.
He implies that those of us who support offshore drilling oppose proper tire inflation. As McCain said about inflating tires (and conservation in general), "Do that. But also drill". Obama assumes we are too stupid to realize that we can do both.
I guess his argument works with some people. It's very simple to contradict:
Consider what a child would do. Tell the child you've hidden a candy bar in the kitchen and a candy bar in the bedroom. Which will he search for? Well, some children would search in the kitchen. Some would search in the bedroom. But 99.999% of the children would search both rooms and get both candy bars. Because even little children know that if some is good, more is better.
Can Obama show one good reason why drilling offshore would prevent us from also properly inflating our tires (or vice versa)? If not, he is presenting us with a false choice.
You'd have to be ignorant to fall for that false choice. Obama assumes we are.
Saturday, July 19, 2008
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Free Our Oil
Editorial in today's WSJ: Free Our Oil
In Alaska, the citizens get cash payments from the royalties derived from Alaskan oil drilling. Wouldn't it be nice if we had some offshore royalties coming in to shore up sagging Florida state gov't revenues? Wouldn't it be nice if we had a Taxpayer Bill of Rights that limited growth in state spending -- and the offshore oil royalties were pouring in? Wouldn't it be nice if Florida had to send out royalty checks to its citizens -- per capita checks benefiting rich and poor, young and old, black and white, English-speaking and Spanish-speaking alike?
The only thing standing between us and those checks are the Dems in Congress. Does anybody doubt that, if the Republicans still formed a majority in Congress, the offshore oil ban would be history? If Newt were Speaker instead of Nancy, Congress would have presented a repeal of that ban for the President to sign on the same day he lifted the Executive moratorium.
And oil dropped by the biggest one-day percentage in some 16 years -- second big drop this week. This on the day after the President ended the moratorium. But we're told lifting the ban would not affect oil prices for years to come.
If Duke Cunningham, Jack Abramhoff and Mark Foley could sink the Republican majority in 2006, this issue -- Democratic obstinacy on offshore drilling -- could sink the Democratic majority. Did any of you see the electoral disaster for Republicans at this point in the summer of 2006? A steady drumbeat of criticism could do in the Congress who has overseen the doubling of oil prices and refused to respond.
In Alaska, the citizens get cash payments from the royalties derived from Alaskan oil drilling. Wouldn't it be nice if we had some offshore royalties coming in to shore up sagging Florida state gov't revenues? Wouldn't it be nice if we had a Taxpayer Bill of Rights that limited growth in state spending -- and the offshore oil royalties were pouring in? Wouldn't it be nice if Florida had to send out royalty checks to its citizens -- per capita checks benefiting rich and poor, young and old, black and white, English-speaking and Spanish-speaking alike?
The only thing standing between us and those checks are the Dems in Congress. Does anybody doubt that, if the Republicans still formed a majority in Congress, the offshore oil ban would be history? If Newt were Speaker instead of Nancy, Congress would have presented a repeal of that ban for the President to sign on the same day he lifted the Executive moratorium.
And oil dropped by the biggest one-day percentage in some 16 years -- second big drop this week. This on the day after the President ended the moratorium. But we're told lifting the ban would not affect oil prices for years to come.
If Duke Cunningham, Jack Abramhoff and Mark Foley could sink the Republican majority in 2006, this issue -- Democratic obstinacy on offshore drilling -- could sink the Democratic majority. Did any of you see the electoral disaster for Republicans at this point in the summer of 2006? A steady drumbeat of criticism could do in the Congress who has overseen the doubling of oil prices and refused to respond.
Saturday, July 12, 2008
Interesting lectures at Mises.org
I just listened to a very interesting lecture called Rothbard as Historian that derided the use of GDP alone to gauge the health of the economy. You can hear it in the podcast available from Mises.org.
The relevant comments come about 25 minutes into the lecture. The issue is that much of GDP is gov't spending and gov't spending is a net drag on the economy (given that its revenue subtracts from economy in nearly equal amount as it spends). What Rothbard suggested is that we measure Private Product Remaining (which the gov't does not measure) which is GDP minus what the gov't takes out.
The lecturer, Thomas Woods, uses 1946 as an example. It supposedly was a bad year looking only at GDP figures. GDP dropped because wartime spending ended. GDP would lead you to believe the previous years were better, but in fact WW2 was not a time of great prosperity. True, unemployment was low (11 million people were in the military and some of them died -- this was not an ideal situation). In fact, lots of goods were rationed during the war. People were scraping by -- they had money, but nothing to buy. In 1946 soldiers came back, re-took their old jobs when they could (9 million of them) and replaced the less productive, less skilled people who had been doing this job (women, young and the very old). Is it reasonable to believe that productivity shrank by 22% in that year as GDP would indicate?
Rothbard claims that the only spending decisions that help when measuring the economy are voluntary transactions (rather than gov't controlled spending) because these are the only ones we can be reasonably sure are made to increase the individual's well-being. Private output increased by 30% in 1946 -- we've never had a year over year improvement as good as that. And, people living in 1946 will tell you that the American economy did very well that year, even though the standard economic measurements would have you believe it was catastrophic.
Mises.org is an extraordinary online resource. The lectures are quite Libertarian, so you'll hear about Rand, Rothbard, Mises, Hayek, etc. They like to take swipes (and outright attacks) against the Iraq War. I part company with them concerning foreign policy, but the economic thought is compelling.
You can find there a lecture entitled Senior Economics Seminar by Mark Thornton which examines the fallacies of alcohol and drug prohibition. It got me thinking. My son used a product which was adulterated and it killed him. He used it properly. If this were a legal product sold at Wal-Mart, his mother would be able to sue the manufacturer and probably Wal-Mart and definitely whoever it was who mishandled the product for wrongful death. Who is going to support her in her old age now that her only child has died? But because the product was an illegal narcotic and because it was sold only in an illegal market, none of the normal legal protections are available. In all likelihood, if narcotics were openly sold at a profit-making store (maybe not Wal-Mart), the capitalists who maintained that market would make sure the product was safe when used properly, lest they lose their profits through product liability lawsuits.
The relevant comments come about 25 minutes into the lecture. The issue is that much of GDP is gov't spending and gov't spending is a net drag on the economy (given that its revenue subtracts from economy in nearly equal amount as it spends). What Rothbard suggested is that we measure Private Product Remaining (which the gov't does not measure) which is GDP minus what the gov't takes out.
The lecturer, Thomas Woods, uses 1946 as an example. It supposedly was a bad year looking only at GDP figures. GDP dropped because wartime spending ended. GDP would lead you to believe the previous years were better, but in fact WW2 was not a time of great prosperity. True, unemployment was low (11 million people were in the military and some of them died -- this was not an ideal situation). In fact, lots of goods were rationed during the war. People were scraping by -- they had money, but nothing to buy. In 1946 soldiers came back, re-took their old jobs when they could (9 million of them) and replaced the less productive, less skilled people who had been doing this job (women, young and the very old). Is it reasonable to believe that productivity shrank by 22% in that year as GDP would indicate?
Rothbard claims that the only spending decisions that help when measuring the economy are voluntary transactions (rather than gov't controlled spending) because these are the only ones we can be reasonably sure are made to increase the individual's well-being. Private output increased by 30% in 1946 -- we've never had a year over year improvement as good as that. And, people living in 1946 will tell you that the American economy did very well that year, even though the standard economic measurements would have you believe it was catastrophic.
Mises.org is an extraordinary online resource. The lectures are quite Libertarian, so you'll hear about Rand, Rothbard, Mises, Hayek, etc. They like to take swipes (and outright attacks) against the Iraq War. I part company with them concerning foreign policy, but the economic thought is compelling.
You can find there a lecture entitled Senior Economics Seminar by Mark Thornton which examines the fallacies of alcohol and drug prohibition. It got me thinking. My son used a product which was adulterated and it killed him. He used it properly. If this were a legal product sold at Wal-Mart, his mother would be able to sue the manufacturer and probably Wal-Mart and definitely whoever it was who mishandled the product for wrongful death. Who is going to support her in her old age now that her only child has died? But because the product was an illegal narcotic and because it was sold only in an illegal market, none of the normal legal protections are available. In all likelihood, if narcotics were openly sold at a profit-making store (maybe not Wal-Mart), the capitalists who maintained that market would make sure the product was safe when used properly, lest they lose their profits through product liability lawsuits.
Sunday, May 18, 2008
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
A defense of polygamy
In an article criticizing polygamy, Rich Lowry of National Review states:
Here is my response:
Lowry's thesis is that polygamy is inherently anti-democratic, but not all polygamy is coercive. There are remedies to the faults he lists (e.g. require that all wives after the first be over a certain age, or that in plural marriages the man cannot be more than 10 years older than his wife if she is under a certain age), as well as some he missed (i.e. the chief problem with bigamy is that one or both of the cuckolded spouses is usually not aware of the other marriage -- require consent of all spouses before approving a subsequent marriage and you have truly democratized polygamy).
In other words, the institution could be reformed in such a way as to increase women's choices. But Lowry does not want to reform it, he wants to abolish it. His aim is not really to condemn it for cause, but to condemn it as offensive to his tradition and to look for cause to justify his bias.
I have no truck with polygamy (more correctly, polygyny -- polyandry, the other form of polygamy, empowers women). I can barely serve one wife, much less take on another (and as any devoted spouse knows, marriage is mutual servitude). But I know that some women who would otherwise go manless in a monogamous society would get married if polygyny were legal. I also know that some women prefer the company of their husband's other wives (lots of available babysitters). Polygamy does not have to take on the bizarre forms that it does when society shuns it and shoves its practitioners into the shadows.
In short, I think Lowry's case against polygyny is intellectually wanting. It reminds me of the case against gay marriage, which is said to weaken real marriage. From what I can see, it merely redefines the word "marriage" in an objectionable way. There is nothing about long-term loving gay relationships that anyone despises -- anyone accept those who despise gay sex first and foremost. Most people would accept the desire of gay couples to formalize their relationships through something like marriage, even if they dislike having the word co-opted.
So to say that such relationships damage other relationships fails for lack of a causal connection. There's a stronger case that heterosexual plural marriages put heterosexual single marriages at risk, for the reason Lowry mentions in his essay: men compete for available women. But this reason founders on the problem of the great abundance of available women (and men).
Close to 40% of American adults are not married. Moreover, nearly 90% of the population age 45 and older has been married at least once. By age 55, that ratio rises to 95%. That tells me that many of those who are not married, wish to do so, but choose not to. Those who choose not to be married do not do so because of a shortage of available partners. Perhaps there is a lack of desirable partners or perhaps they have better things to do.
And the fact is, legalized polygamy would increase the number of available partners. Men and women would be free to join an existing marriage.
Finally, I think we fool ourselves if we think that people forgo their urge for multiple partners by consenting to society's monogamous fiat. People commit adultery and this leads to divorce. In at least some of those cases, polygamy could keep the original marriage intact, and that would, in my opinion, be an improvement over divorce.
Lowry claims that polygamy undermines free choice. In fact, it is the prohibition of polygamy that constrains free choice.
Polygamy is fundamentally inconsistent with our values as a society...
Here is my response:
Lowry's thesis is that polygamy is inherently anti-democratic, but not all polygamy is coercive. There are remedies to the faults he lists (e.g. require that all wives after the first be over a certain age, or that in plural marriages the man cannot be more than 10 years older than his wife if she is under a certain age), as well as some he missed (i.e. the chief problem with bigamy is that one or both of the cuckolded spouses is usually not aware of the other marriage -- require consent of all spouses before approving a subsequent marriage and you have truly democratized polygamy).
In other words, the institution could be reformed in such a way as to increase women's choices. But Lowry does not want to reform it, he wants to abolish it. His aim is not really to condemn it for cause, but to condemn it as offensive to his tradition and to look for cause to justify his bias.
I have no truck with polygamy (more correctly, polygyny -- polyandry, the other form of polygamy, empowers women). I can barely serve one wife, much less take on another (and as any devoted spouse knows, marriage is mutual servitude). But I know that some women who would otherwise go manless in a monogamous society would get married if polygyny were legal. I also know that some women prefer the company of their husband's other wives (lots of available babysitters). Polygamy does not have to take on the bizarre forms that it does when society shuns it and shoves its practitioners into the shadows.
In short, I think Lowry's case against polygyny is intellectually wanting. It reminds me of the case against gay marriage, which is said to weaken real marriage. From what I can see, it merely redefines the word "marriage" in an objectionable way. There is nothing about long-term loving gay relationships that anyone despises -- anyone accept those who despise gay sex first and foremost. Most people would accept the desire of gay couples to formalize their relationships through something like marriage, even if they dislike having the word co-opted.
So to say that such relationships damage other relationships fails for lack of a causal connection. There's a stronger case that heterosexual plural marriages put heterosexual single marriages at risk, for the reason Lowry mentions in his essay: men compete for available women. But this reason founders on the problem of the great abundance of available women (and men).
Close to 40% of American adults are not married. Moreover, nearly 90% of the population age 45 and older has been married at least once. By age 55, that ratio rises to 95%. That tells me that many of those who are not married, wish to do so, but choose not to. Those who choose not to be married do not do so because of a shortage of available partners. Perhaps there is a lack of desirable partners or perhaps they have better things to do.
And the fact is, legalized polygamy would increase the number of available partners. Men and women would be free to join an existing marriage.
Finally, I think we fool ourselves if we think that people forgo their urge for multiple partners by consenting to society's monogamous fiat. People commit adultery and this leads to divorce. In at least some of those cases, polygamy could keep the original marriage intact, and that would, in my opinion, be an improvement over divorce.
Lowry claims that polygamy undermines free choice. In fact, it is the prohibition of polygamy that constrains free choice.
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