Do you remember what Candidate Trump's Healthcare Reform Plan looked like? I'll remind you that it was glorious. It was as if his campaign consultants hand-selected numerous Libertarian, free-market policies and listed them out in bullet points.
Anyone who has read Economics in One Lesson, or passed any Econ101 course cheered it. Unfortunately, it's long been forgotten. Of course it would necessarily be better than the current tripe which is funded by millions of dollars worth of insurance company lobbyists and currently debated on the Senate floor, but we won't even hear its merits debated in a public forum. Our legislation process has devolved intoyelling down one another with more and more politician's talking points. "Millions will Die" is obviously all that is needed to be said to defeat any change to the ObamaCare disaster. Not worth mentioning is other politician talking points such as "The average American Family will save $2500 annually under ObamaCare" and, of course, "If you like your doctor or plan, you can keep your doctor or plan."
An overview:
1. Completely repeal Obamacare. 2. Modify existing law that inhibits the sale of health insurance across state lines. 3. Allow individuals to fully deduct health insurance premium payments from their tax returns under the current tax system. 4. Allow individuals to use Health Savings Accounts (HSAs). 5. Require price transparency from all healthcare providers, especially doctors and healthcare organizations like clinics and hospitals. 6. Block-grant Medicaid to the states. 7. Remove barriers to entry into free markets for drug providers that offer safe, reliable and cheaper products. Either way, if you want to read a quick 4-page primer on health care reform, here it is. It's appealing because it was designed to lure you into voting for Trump. Unfortunately, once you're in power, ceding that power to the free market is a tougher task than any president can accomplish. President Trump should go back and demand legislators FULLY REPEAL ObamaCare and institute a concise version of this: Follow libertyLOL on your favorite social media sites:FacebookYoutube Tumblr Pintrest Countable: Government Made Simple Steemit blog on a blockchain Patreon Gab.ai libertyLOL's Liberty Blog RSS Feed We also run a couple twitterbots which provide great quotes and book suggestions: Murray Rothbard Suggests Tom Woods Suggests Jason Stapleton Suggests Progressive Contradictions MORE FROM LIBERTYLOL:
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Who should determine the course of our lives? There is no shortage of people who aim to control others, imposing their will and restricting choice through the force of government.
Self Control or State Control? You Decide by Dr. Tom G. Palmer is the Libertarian Book Club's selection for the month of May. Below is a curated selection of our thoughts and notable quotes from the book. Join our Facebook Group as we seek to learn more about Libertarianism. We are a monthly book club for anyone who wants to learn more about Libertarianism. We will discuss each book's chapter/section in separate posts, so everyone will be able to read along at their own pace. We typically also focus on books which are available for free so that everyone can participate. Chapter 1
I highlighted a good deal in this chapter and I'm sure everyone will excuse me for the heavy quote pasting.
"Free people are not subservient, but neither are they uncontrolled. They control themselves. Taking control of your life is an act of both freedom and responsibility" "Unsurprisingly, they consider freedom frightening. As a consequence, many have believed that order and virtue must be imposed at the expense of freedom. They equate responsibility with submission to the commands of others." "One can never legislate or choose the outcomes directly; all legislators or rulers can do is to change the incentives that participants in social interactions face. Thus, actions may be outlawed because the legislators think they're bad" I think this chapter does a nice job of explaining a few things: 1) My life is mine. Not anyone else's. I really enjoy endurance sports (MMA, bike touring, hiking marathons, and most recently the dreaded Barkley Marathon ("the race that eats its young"). I can not rely on government to keep me safe; it is my responsibility - and mine alone - to keep myself safe. If I'm stupid, then I reap the consequences for that, if I am smart; the benefits. 2) No victim, no crime. I hate drugs. Hate them. I don't want to be around them. I don't want to watch others do them. With that said, it is immoral for me to push this belief on to others, we must look at the proof that the law hasn't prevented drug usage (arguably, it's only gotten worse and created a violent black market around it). There are a few other highlights I liked quite a bit: "Self-control is never perfect, but state control is no improvement" "A harmonious society rests on respect for the freedom of each member" "The rules of the road facilitate the transportation of millions of people to millions of different destinations, all without a central power issuing commands to them; they're not perfect, but rather simple rules of the road help many millions of people to avoid collisions and arrive where they want to be every minute of every day" 'But without police at every street corner, why would anyone follow the law?', the statist asks. Simple: it's in everyone's best interest to follow the rues of the road. Chapter 2
Clearly, the nanny state and the desire to protect us all from ourselves is counter-productive. It seems that society can - and would - flourish much more in a society that allowed individuals to make their own choices.
"The Founding Fathers believed in the unalienable human right to liberty, but they knew it depended on personal responsibility. To be freed from a tyrant's rule, men had to be able to rule themselves: that truth seemed self-evident" "In workplaces, managers scoring high in self-control were rated more favorably by their subordinates as well as by their peers. People with good self-control seemed exceptionally good at forming and maintaining secure, satisfying attachments to other people. They were shown to be better at emphasizing with others and considering thing from other people's perspectives" "When she tested prisoners and then tracked them for years after their release, she found that the ones with low self-control were most likely to commit more crimes and return to prison" Chapter 3
As will be covered more in future chapters, the welfare state brings a host of problems: namely that it keeps the poor, poor.
I really don't like anti-welfare arguments centered around the belief of "they're just lazy" (this is as old as at least the Victorian period. Check out the TV mini-series "Victorian Slum House") as there is a lot more to it than that and the negatives of the welfare state expand much more than just that "some people are too lazy to work." As an aside, has anyone read The Human Cost of Welfare: How the System Hurts the People It's Supposed to Help"? "We are throwing these people a life preserver to keep them afloat, but not pulling them into the boat. They are effectively creating and perpetuating a dependent class". "One of the first things our welfare system does is make people poorer so that they may qualify for benefits. Qualifying for benefits means spending down assets and savings, and that includes vehicles, which is especially problematic". Chapter 5
This chapter breaks down how only Property Rights can prevent overfishing. "Fisheries using Individual Fishing Quotas (IFQs) in places ranging from Iceland to New Zealand have seen fish populations stabilize and even grow along with fishing incomes". But... but .... without fishing licenses controlled by the government, that's impossible!
Additionally, this chapter elaborates on some things Murray Rothbard wrote in New Liberty. "Environmental problems are generally conflicting claims over resources and how they are used. Property rights help to resolve those conflicts by providing a legal institution that prioritizes particular uses—the uses that the owner prioritizes, in the time frame that the owner chooses. For some environmental problems, such as chemical pollution in a self-contained lake, individual ownership of the land that includes the lake is likely to give the owner incentives to maintain the lake’s quality, either for his/her own consumption value or because pollution would reduce the market value of the property." Chapter 7
My favorite chapter thus far! Contrary to a point I made about an earlier chapter, this one does seem to advocate for a stateless society, or at least nearly so:
"It is often assumed that the Catholic Church, because of its social teaching, is committed to high levels of state intervention and regulation. However, in its most authoritative document on such matters, it states: "Another task of the state is that of overseeing and directing the exercise of human rights in the economic sector. However, primary responsibility in this area belongs not to the state but to individuals and to the various groups and associations which make up society.”" One wonders why in this quote "sole" could not replace "primary?" "The reaction to the financial crash of 2007–2008 provides an indication of how state regulatory institutions are created and operate. In the wake of the crash, tens of thousands of pages of regulations were written and promulgated. It was estimated that the Dodd–Frank Act in the United States, with its associated regulations, would come to thirty thousand pages. In 2011, some 14,200 new financial regulations were created worldwide. That trend was underway well before the financial crash. It is often asserted that there was a period of deregulation before the financial crash and that the crash was a consequence of deregulation. That is not so, certainly not in the United Kingdom." Not just in the US either. The evidence is quite strong that systems of state regulation have not been successful. Not only did the comprehensive systems of financial regulation that developed in the United Kingdom from 1986 and in the United States from the 1930s not prevent the financial crash, but in many ways they were contributory causes that exacerbated and spread the crisis globally. Many forms of mistaken and reckless behavior that led to the failures of banks and other financial institutions in 2007–2008 were encouraged by regulation." Boy, you can say that again. The dominant historical narrative suggests that, before the twentieth century, urban development was chaotic and that each property owner and developer could do what they wished without regard to the impact of their actions on anyone else. The result, supposedly, was terrible slums, and ugly unplanned development. (A visit to such places as Bath and Bloomsbury might raise doubts about that narrative, of course.)" I was in Bath about a year and a half ago and can confirm. I also love the point made on pages 89-90 how urban sprawl was caused by "muh roads" being taken over by government from private turnpike trusts. "Interestingly, the same people who advance that account also often complain about “suburban sprawl” in the United States without stopping to reflect that such “sprawl” is associated with and largely caused by governmental regulatory regimes. Complaints about the ugliness and poor quality of public and private buildings produced under the pre-1948 regime in Britain are also puzzling when one considers the poor quality of so many buildings that have been produced since that time." Chapter 10
"A free person makes her own choices and manages her own life; an unfree person's life is managed by someone else"
"We are free persons, rather than mere material objects, because we can be held accountable for our acts. We are distinguished as individuals by what we do - the very things for which we are responsible. Responsibility for our actions and the freedom to choose for ourselves foster social cooperation, coordination, and harmony, and when our freedom and responsibility are overridden, social order is disrupted and conflict replaces harmony." "...welfare states tax to provide (frequently monopolistically) through political means what could be provided and chosen voluntarily - from retirement income, to medical care, to housing, to education - and in the process induce people to reduce their savings, engage in riskier behavior, abandon voluntary mutual aid organizations, and pay less attention to securing their own well-being and that of their families and communities." "Replacing self-control with state control rarely generates any of the benefits claimed by its enthusiasts and always generates other, unintended, consequences." Overall
Self Control or State Control introduces the reader to a number of different concepts that they may not be aware of in which the State controls us and the life we wish to live for ourselves. Most of the 11 chapters are written by a different authors, but they all compliment one another well.
This book covers a range of topics, such as the welfare state (how and why it has failed), business regulations, will power, the philosophy of individualism, and others. Overall, I found the book to be an interesting read, and I really liked that each chapter contained numerous references (I'm quite the stickler for this. Without references, a book such as this isn't worth much). I think that this is a fantastic read for those that are new to Libertarianism, and I believe that it is especially good for those that are crossing over from a previously Left-wing ideology. 4½ stars overall, since I found some parts of the chapters discussing individualism to be somewhat dry. Still a great book and a suggested read! Follow libertyLOL on your favorite social media sites:FacebookYoutube Tumblr Pintrest Countable: Government Made Simple Steemit blog on a blockchain Patreon Gab.ai libertyLOL's Liberty Blog RSS Feed We also run a couple twitterbots which provide great quotes and book suggestions: Murray Rothbard Suggests Tom Woods Suggests Jason Stapleton Suggests Progressive Contradictions MORE FROM LIBERTYLOL:
Screw with healthcare, states begin to set up their own systems to best fit their individual populations, or not, as is best locally.
Defund Meals on Wheels and merely threaten Planned Parenthood and PBS and watch private charities pick up the slack. Pull out of global climate deal, individual cities make moves to align with their residents wishes on the matter. Trump has actually made Democrats support 'states rights' and think about owning guns and push for the succession of California. Apologies if I failed to preface this up front but by no means am I a fan of the current White House, and it's sure as hell not intentional on their part, but damn if there isn't some (present day) proof of concept going on here. Follow libertyLOL on your favorite social media sites:FacebookYoutube Tumblr Pintrest Countable: Government Made Simple Steemit blog on a blockchain Patreon Gab.ai libertyLOL's Liberty Blog RSS Feed We also run a couple twitterbots which provide great quotes and book suggestions: Murray Rothbard Suggests Tom Woods Suggests Jason Stapleton Suggests Progressive Contradictions MORE FROM LIBERTYLOL:
We all want to care about others. The 'Free College for All' narrative is rooted in the idea that we take care of others. But are we taking care of others by stealing from the masses to pay for College? What happens to the price of college if our subsidies for it increase? The price of college has increased DUE TO the persistent governmental interference in the market.
Politicians like Bernie Sanders can't wait to get in front of microphones and discuss how 'moral' it is for us to provide these services. Imagine that. It's moral to steal from your neighbor to provide college for free to others. But the moral argument should be made for those that are getting stolen from and for the future generations that have to pay the price of our generation's policies. The image below is the cliffnotes version of Bernie Sanders' "College For All" Act, basically just marketing. The full version of Bernie's plan (51 pages) takes some time to figure out how his policy proposal works.
My friend loves the idea, I responded to him that if we understand economics, then we know what we can expect to follow:
Throw 'free' money at colleges and then be amazed at why college costs increase and then throw more money at college and then be amazed so we throw more money at colleges and then costs increase so we have to throw more money... Each time we find that it is the government that is increasing the costs of college making it MORE necessary for government to get MORE involved and making it HARDER for families to afford it... Dangerous cycle. Government begets more government and creates more problems when it tries to solve problems. I offered to read the entirety of Sanders' bill if he would read Economics in one lesson, a quick read.
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His response? I am quite familiar with the Mises Institute and Hazlitt's One Lesson. However, I'm cautious of lessons from the 1940s! You and I just don't agree on what's important or of value.
"What's important or valuable" isn't free college and free health care. It's the kind of world and indebted nation you're leaving to your children. They own this debt that we're ignoring because we aren't mature enough to live within our means. But we can't do that because politicians use 'emotions' to keep themselves in power, at our expense.
Our politicians are like children who keep passing the buck off on others because they won't be in office when it fails and promising 'free' stuff gets votes. Economics is Timeless
If we were in the stone age, Economics in One Lesson would still apply. Hazlitt doesn't talk about the results of what happened in the 1940s, he talks about the things we are doing today.
Chapter 1: The Lesson: The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate hut at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups. Chapter 2: The Broken Window fallacy (economy runs on consumption), basically the reason The Fed is drowning us in free money and zero% interest rates. Chapter 3:The Blessings of Destruction fallacy explains why economies boom during wartime and why the US is at perpetual war because peace isn't profitable. (Let me know if this seems relevant today) Chapter 4 Public Works mean Taxes- talks about the ills of an economy when taxation is used for public works compared to the free markets ability to do the same without taxation. Not applicable? 40% of the US GDP today is money spent by the US Government. Chapter 5: Taxes Discourage Production - Read this chapter with the understanding that EVERYTHING today is taxed. And before it's taxed, the money you've gotten through labor (income) is taxed. The stuff you made is taxed from many ingredients that were taxed and the people who bought it from you were taxed when buying it. Rewritten today, this chapter is it's own book. Chapter 6: Credit Diverts Production- "Actually, you know what," I tell my friend, "feel free not to read it because it's written in the 40's. But that's a cop-out". He's got children, it's his and my job to make the world better for them. If we can't read one book and challenge me to read something that might challenge my worldview and then follow on with an adult conversation, then we both can't continue this virtue-signaling where we think we're being moral and 'looking out for folks'. Government growth and deficit-spending hurts those that can't voice an opinion against it - Our Children
His response will likely be that I don't value Free Education or Free Healthcare or Free unlimited safety nets for everyone. He'd think I was immoral for not supporting it. Quite the opposite. The moral argument is to remove government obstacles to the free market and charity to support these causes.
Prices are high where government interferes and over-regulates the most. Why do our health care costs rise while Breast Implants and Lasik eye procedure costs plummet (while the quality increases)? One is highly regulated by the government, the other is not. The Free Market is competing for people's dollars so costs go down and quality goes up. Additional Reading
How Government Regulations Made Healthcare So Expensive
Economic interventionism Third-Payer Problem, AKA "If I go to a restaurant and my tab is picked up by someone else (Insurance Company), then I'm ordering the steak". PRICE CEILINGS AND PRICE FLOORS, a CENGAGE lesson in microeconomics. Rent-seeking - Wikipedia Follow libertyLOL on your favorite social media sites:FacebookYoutube Tumblr Pintrest Countable: Government Made Simple Steemit blog on a blockchain Patreon Gab.ai libertyLOL's Liberty Blog RSS Feed We also run a couple twitterbots which provide great quotes and book suggestions: Murray Rothbard Suggests Tom Woods Suggests Jason Stapleton Suggests Progressive Contradictions MORE FROM LIBERTYLOL:
"Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of the day, but a series of oppressions, begun at a distinguished period, and pursued unalterably through every change of (politicians), too plainly prove a deliberate and systematic plan of reducing us all to slavery." -Thomas Jefferson
The problem with the news today is they no longer provide an objective look at what happened. Instead, they provide a biased point of view and then tell you what to think and how to feel about it.
Instead, I'll cover two competing views on Republican Representative Justin Amash's YES vote on the American Health Care Act (AHCA) and allow you to make up your own mind. Haven't read it yet? I'll post it at the bottom of the article in an effort to declutter. We'll first look at his decision and validate it against our Principle of "Constitutionalism". This allows us to determine whether the new AHCA bill is even valid, legal or constitutional. The second way to critique Representative Amash's decision and look at his reasoning. We can then determine if the new AHCA incrementally takes us 'Closer to Liberty' or 'Closer to Tyranny'. Is AHCA even Constitutional?
There is no gray area on this question. The AHCA Bill is either constitutional or it's not. If it's not, Rep Amash took an oath to uphold the constitution and failed by voting YES. A NO vote on an unconstitutional bill is a constitutional vote. A YES vote for an unconstitutional bill is an unconstitutional vote.
The argument from those who uphold this principle of Constitutionality will claim that we even if AHCA is incrementally better than ObamaCare, his vote on a law that violates the Constitution should be an automatic NO. They would also claim that just because this unconstitutional law is slightly better than the previous unconstitutional law, Libertarians have never been about voting for the lesser of two evils, Quite the opposite. So is AHCA unconstitutional? Again, I won't tell you what to think but reading more on it should color your favorability (or not) or Rep Amash's vote. No one has ever been able to clearly articulate to me why the Robert's precedent made ObamaCare constitutional so I'm not the guy to give legal advice. Might I suggest a couple great articles: Is Ryancare’s ‘Lapsed Coverage’ Surcharge Unconstitutional Under Roberts’s Obamacare Precedent? Why I voted NO on the American Health Care Act - Representative Andy Biggs
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Does AHCA Take us Closer to Liberty or Closer to Tyranny?
Those who support Rep Amash's YES vote because "AHCA is incrementally better than ObamaCare" will typically claim that they are 'realists' in the room. They understand that we won't wake up tomorrow living in a libertarian society with a perfectly Free Market Health Care system. They argue that libertarians have to do what we can, when we can, to reduce the size of government, even if incrementally.
Rep Amash knows that a NO vote doesn't repeal ObamaCare, it's the law of the land. Realistically, he notes, a YES vote can at least get us started in a new direction, one towards Liberty. This might be true even though I believe AHCA to be a monstrosity of legal code atop another monstrosity of legal code. The problem is that for for the past seven years, Republicans have run for Congress on a commitment to repeal Obamacare. And now, even though they claim this is it, they are only amending ObamaCare, retooling the subsidies, taking out the individual mandate, and ensuring the government is the one who maintains power of the health care market. The AHCA is bad politics for the Republicans and bad policy for Amash's name to be tied to. Why risk putting your name on a slightly better turd sandwich than the one you inherited? The one they all got elected on promising to repeal? The one they passed very clear Repeal Legislation on more than 50 times when they knew President Obama would just veto? It seems to me that allowing the ill-effects of government intervention into the health care market only empowers those calling for Single Payer, a death knell for individual liberty and one that ensures increased scope of government and decreased quality of product. My principles of Limited Government and Free Markets refuses to support AHCA. Part of me cheers knowing that it's not likely to pass the Senate in it's current form. Conclusion
This is a tough one. I'd love to hear your thoughts below on whether your support the AHCA because 'at least it's a slightly better turd sandwich' or if you'd prefer a NO vote on it because 'Repeal ObamaCare or NOTHING'.
Would you be happy living with ObamaCare for another few years in an attempt to try to get full repeal? I'm not optimistic that any power given to the government is one that you'll see them give back without a long fight and without multiple electoral consequences for politicians. Rep Justin Amash's Response
This is not the bill we promised the American people. For the past seven years, Republicans have run for Congress on a commitment to repeal Obamacare. But it is increasingly clear that a bill to repeal Obamacare will not come to the floor in this Congress or in the foreseeable future. Follow libertyLOL on your favorite social media sites:FacebookYoutube Tumblr Pintrest Countable: Government Made Simple Steemit blog on a blockchain Patreon Gab.ai libertyLOL's Liberty Blog RSS Feed We also run a couple twitterbots which provide great quotes and book suggestions: Murray Rothbard Suggests Tom Woods Suggests Jason Stapleton Suggests Progressive Contradictions MORE FROM LIBERTYLOL:
Both big-ticket news items out of the Trump administration today remain largely speculative in many ways, so it's too early to draw firm conclusions about them. That said, based on what I heard today, I want to offer a few points for consideration.
TAX CUTS: It is no secret that our corporate tax code is grossly uncompetitive. It is among the most expensive on the entire planet and is structured such that it discourages investing, hiring, and other key facets of a healthy economy. It discourages entrepreneurialism, encourages companies to move their headquarters to other countries, and creates an incentive for American corporations to leave large amounts of their cash overseas--cash that could be brought home and put to work in our own economy. This is what happens when you have a very archaic and outdated corporate tax system. When I say "outdated," I mean it literally: the U.S. is one of the last remaining developed countries with a world-wide tax system (meaning that money corporations earn around the world, not just the income they derive from the U.S., can be taxed here). Most of our peers got rid of world-wide tax systems decades ago. I agree with Trump: 15% is a reasonable corporate income tax rate. (There are strong arguments to be made for its elimination entirely, but that's for a post another day.) This is the hallmark of his plan, and I like it. I need to point out two grave concerns I have though. (1) It isn't clear that his plan will dramatically simplify the corporate tax code. Rates do need to come down, but that's far from the only problem. The code's complexity creates an additional tax in and of itself because complying with it is such an expensive legal and accounting endeavor. Any major reform must include simplifying and streamlining the tax code. (2) Trump said that he doesn't care about revenue, and this plan seems to bear that out. This is a plan that, when combined with Trump's high levels of proposed spending, would add mightily to our national debt. Any tax and spending plans Republicans pass through Congress MUST seek to reign in our exploding national debt. You cannot increase spending while cutting tax rates and narrowing the tax base. The base should be broadened, the rates lowered, and the spending brought to heel. There is a myth floating around the White House that cutting the corporate tax rate to 15% will lead to enough economic growth to offset tax revenue losses at current rates. That is not true. Cutting the corporate tax rate will lead to higher growth, but it will not lead to enough growth to stem the rising tide of national debt. (Corporate tax rates are but one of many headwinds our economy faces.) Any tax plan must be, at a minimum, revenue neutral and passed in conjunction with LOWER spending plans. Otherwise, you're essentially mortgaging your future for a little short-term relief. Additional government debt can quickly crowd out additional private investment, after all. NAFTA: Rumors are circulating that Trump may be planning to sign an executive order expressing our intent to leave NAFTA. This would be an error of historic proportions. It is a good idea to occasionally revisit old agreements. Our economy and the world in general are very different places than they were when NAFTA was negotiated. We should never consider economic frameworks to be entirely permanent. Thus, re-opening negotiations could be a very good idea. Re-negotiating and leaving are very, very different outcomes though. If we left NAFTA, three realities are absolutely certain to set in: (1) a small number of jobs would come back to the U.S.--far too few for most people even to know someone who held one of those new jobs; (2) far, far more jobs would simply be automated--no one would hold them; and (3) the prices that ALL Americans pay for many goods and some services would increase sharply. It wouldn't end there though. This would be catastrophic for Mexico and Canada and near-catastrophic for the U.S. Stock markets would be hammered. GDP growth would slow--possibly even reverse (which means lower standards of living for many people). Anyone who has a 401(k), an IRA, or simply invests a little in the stock market to plan for retirement would find his retirement calculus suddenly looking less rosy. The world is a different place today. Taking another look at NAFTA's terms is a good idea. As I said though, the world is a different place today, and whereas whether to join NAFTA was a good question in the 90's, two decades later, whether to leave it shouldn't even be up for discussion. Follow libertyLOL on your favorite social media sites:FacebookYoutube Tumblr Pintrest Countable: Government Made Simple Steemit blog on a blockchain Patreon Gab.ai libertyLOL's Liberty Blog RSS Feed We also run a couple twitterbots which provide great quotes and book suggestions: Murray Rothbard Suggests Tom Woods Suggests Jason Stapleton Suggests Progressive Contradictions MORE FROM LIBERTYLOL:
I’m tempted to say that statism is sort of like a cult. Proponents of socialism and other big-government ideologies have a dogmatic zeal that blinds them to reality. For instance, no nation has ever become rich with big government. But that doesn’t stop leftists from advocating in favor of higher taxes and more coercive redistribution. They are equally capable of rationalizing that economic misery in places such as Greece and Venezuela has nothing to do with bad policy, and you can even find a few zealots willing to defend basket cases such as Cuba and North Korea. So long as they don’t burn me at the stake for my heretical views, I guess I won’t get too agitated by their bizarre fetish for statism. But I will periodically mock them. And that’s the purpose of today’s column. We’ll start with this nice comparison between a capitalist grocery store and a socialist grocery store. I have no idea, by the way, if the lower image actually is a supermarket in a socialist country, but let’s not forget that a real-world version of this comparison is one of the reasons there’s no longer an Evil Empire. But the bad news about socialism is not limited to economic deprivation for the masses. The system also leads in many cases to totalitarianism (see this article by Marian Tupy, for example). Venezuela is a particularly poignant example. Once the richest nation in Latin America, it now is an economic laggard and also is a cesspool of oppression. Which makes this set of images from Reddit‘s libertarian page both funny and sad. As you might expect, Milton Friedman had some very pointed observations on this topic. The really good part starts shortly before 2:00. He explains very clearly that socialism is based on force and coercion. I’ve saved the best for last. The PotL sent me this collection of risky temptations and it perfectly captures the attitude of many statists. No matter how many times socialism has failed, they never learn the appropriate lesson. It just hasn’t been tried by the right people, they tell us. Or been imposed in the right circumstances. So they want us to give it one more try, just like a person with no willpower will eat one more bite of chocolate. Which is the same message you find here, here, and here. Incidentally, this analysis not only applies to socialism, as technically defined, but it also applies to redistributionism. Which is definitely more benign, but nonetheless produces bad results. The bottom line is that statism is a recipe for stagnation and free markets are a route to prosperity. Republished from International Liberty. Daniel J. MitchellDaniel J. Mitchell is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute who specializes in fiscal policy, particularly tax reform, international tax competition, and the economic burden of government spending. He also serves on the editorial board of the Cayman Financial Review. This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article. Follow libertyLOL on your favorite social media sites:FacebookYoutube Tumblr Pintrest Countable: Government Made Simple Steemit blog on a blockchain Patreon Gab.ai libertyLOL's Liberty Blog RSS Feed We also run a couple twitterbots which provide great quotes and book suggestions: Murray Rothbard Suggests Tom Woods Suggests Jason Stapleton Suggests Progressive Contradictions MORE FROM LIBERTYLOL:
JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon used his annual letter to shareholders to provide his outlook on a post-Brexit world, internal changes the company must adjust to, and give his thoughts on what is wrong in an otherwise amazing United States.
Bloomberg writes: Dimon, leader of world’s most valuable bank and a counselor to the new president, used his 45-page annual letter to shareholders on Tuesday to list ways America is stronger than ever -- before jumping into a much longer list of self-inflicted problems that he said was “upsetting” to write.
While I disagree with the notion that we MUST become more internationally collectivist, Dimon points out a lot of agreeable problems. Many of these are common sense to the rest of us, but are mostly ignored by the political class:
- Skyrocketing corporate taxes drive human capital and jobs overseas -Regulation is excessive in almost every industry -United States has wasted trillions in useless wars and requires a foreign policy overhaul -Failed immigration policy which fails to retain numerous much-needed advance degree holders -A Justice system that criminalizes American citizens with felonies, many times for only minor infractions -A housing market weighted down by bureaucratic layers and rules Finally, Dimon points out something that I'm very passionate about. Educating the populace. The Democratic, left-leaning populace, left to its own devices in 2016 overwhelmingly wanted a socialist to be their candidate at the same time that Venezuela burned. Dimon points out that people are losing their confidence in a system that has brought so many out of poverty. The free market is responsible for the most wealth created than any other system yet known to man. The U.S. is paying the price for bad decisions, and “something has gone awry in the public’s understanding of business and free enterprise,” -Jamie Dimon
The letter in it's entirety is embedded below.
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Trump Puts His Own Economic Agenda in Danger
Much has happened over the last week. It's worth considering where we are now. The week started off very badly for Donald Trump when Congressional testimony by the NSA, the FBI, and Trump's own DOJ finally laid bare what we already knew: his wiretapping claims were fabricated. He followed this testimony with a string of dishonest and/or misleading tweets, which served only to compound the problem for his administration. Then the apparent source of his "information" on wiretaps, Andrew Napolitano, was suspended indefinitely from Fox News--because of his false wiretapping claims. To make matters even worse, the FBI director not only indicated that Trump's tweets were fabricated, but he also publicly confirmed (for the first time) that Trump's campaign is under a criminal investigation. The situation had become so one-sided that Representative Nunes tried to throw Trump a little cover by claiming that Trump's team's communications had, in fact, been picked up by intelligence surveillance, an assertion that ran into trouble almost immediately. Nunes himself acknowledged that these collections were both "legal" and "incidental." The next day he found himself apologizing for handling the situation as he did, and the day after that, he walked back his comments overall. Now he just looks partisan and ridiculous. Aside from the fact that Trump ought to apologize to all of us for wasting so much time with this, the bottom line is that the allegations were false, and the Trump administration needed a success--badly. That's not what happened though. The most notable event--and probably the most consequential one as well--was the failure of Trump and establishment Republicans to replace Obamacare. The messaging that followed the bill's demise hasn't boded well for the future either. I was furious that this situation was handled as it was because I deeply believe that Obamacare MUST be replaced. Obamacare did nothing to address the rampant fraud in, especially, Medicare. By the Obama DHHS's own admission, it has raised health care costs above where they would otherwise have been. It levies additional taxes, and it locks millions of Americans into appallingly high premiums that are rising at an even more appalling rate. Replacing the Affordable Care Act (which, ironically, makes healthcare even more unaffordable for many) was and is a high priority of mine. The replacement bill needed to be one that took care of those who purchased health insurance on the ACA exchanges. It also needed to lessen the impact of our government's health care spending on our national debt. It had to protect those with pre-conditions, address fraud, and eliminate single-state monopolies. To accomplish lofty goals like this, two things were needed above all else: compromise and skilled negotiation. Unfortunately, neither of those occurred. An element of the modern Republican Party views any compromise with Democrats as weakness and borderline un-American, which ensures that any substantial reform we undertake faces a very up-hill climb to passage. They've forgotten the wisdom of the greatest modern Republican President (and one of the greatest overall), Ronald Reagan: he famously said that he'd be happy to get 70 or 80 percent of what he wanted and just come back for the rest later. In a further blow to Trump, who is a self-proclaimed "brilliant" negotiator, negotiation over the bill's contents went absolutely nowhere. It appears that Trump's idea of negotiation was to make only token changes to the bill and then to have Steve Bannon threaten, twist arms, and otherwise try to force Tea Party-style Republicans to vote for his flawed, establishment bill. (This is quite an empty threat coming from a President with fewer legislative achievements--none--than any other President at this point in a Presidency [even though his party controls both houses of Congress] and the lowest approval rating ever recorded for a President so early in a Presidency--37%.) The result was predictable: Trump and the establishment were defeated by the very strain of the Republican Party that worked to elect Trump in the first place, a result made all the more likely by Trump's demand that voting on the bill tax place on Friday before all potential avenues to reconciliation had been pursued. Trump's response in the aftermath has been, honestly, appalling. First, he blamed the Democrats, which is odd since the Democrats don't have enough votes to stop bills in the first place. Then he blamed Republicans, even though he himself is a Republican who was involved in crafting this bill. (Interpretation: "Everyone who isn't named Donald J. Trump is at fault. Everyone who is named Donald J. Trump is not at fault.") His position right now is to simply give up and stick with Obamacare. Really? Stick with Obamacare? Yes, his "great" plan now is to simply keep Obamacare "until it implodes" so that he can blame it on Democrats. Aside from the fact that it's difficult to imagine a more partisan position, it's even harder to imagine an outcome that would hurt more Americans or add more to our national debt than an Obamacare implosion. Our President is not paid to watch policies crash and burn. He is paid to proactively get ahead of problems and to fix them before they "implode." He and Republican Congressional leadership should role up their sleeves and get to work on a serious replacement bill right now. Instead, they say that they are going to tackle tax reform. I am on board with this as well. The national debt is my top issue, but tax reform is a close second (besides, the two are closely linked). The first step down this path was Trump's budget submission, yet much to Democrats' delight, his budget included no entitlement reform--none! What kind of conservative declines to try to reform entitlements? This amounts to trying to cut tax rates at the same time you're trying to increase spending. No thank you. We should be cutting both tax rates AND spending. I agree with the writer of the Bloomberg article I just shared here: when Trump was first elected, I felt that perhaps the best thing that would come of it is serious tax reform. I was confident about that. After observing what I have observed over the last two months--and especially over the last week--I must admit that my confidence in our enacting more-than-nominal tax and spending reform is no higher than 50%. Trump is not coming into that challenge from a position of strength. Nor, for that matter, is the GOP overall. This is crucial though, and I will remain hopeful. I'm sure that many Democrats stand ready to excoriate me for this last bit, but there are two positive developments that are worth mentioning. Voter ID laws, which I firmly support, appear to be making a comeback, most recently in Arkansas. Trump's DOJ is helping to facilitate this. Additionally, more than 500 companies are expected to bid on Trump's border wall--another policy of his that I support. (I may write more on these two policy items later, but before anyone rushes to tell me how hateful and discriminatory I am, perhaps you could ask first why I feel as I do--if I've not yet written a post about them, that is.) So maybe all isn't lost. Time will tell. Still, if we cannot reform our tax system or our spending, then I'm not sure how much the rest is worth anyway... One can hope. 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DMR: A large number of people were fired from their jobs after missing work to take part in the "day without immigrants" protests. They're surprised, which surprises me.
Their firings are not the result of politics; rather, they're the result of the normal operation of businesses. Companies have to make examples by holding people accountable, lest all employees start thinking that they can just fail to show up on any given day without consequence. If you're not incapacitated and simply decide that you don't want to go to work--especially for shift work and/or for time-sensitive positions--then you're running the risk of being fired. There's no exception for those who want to go protest. If you're going to miss work for any reason and do not use vacation time, sick leave, holidays, etc., then you're running the risk of being fired. Companies pay people to do jobs, not to protest. You protest on your own time. If you want to protest, do it on a day off. Do it on a holiday. Do it using vacation time. Don't do it on your company's dime, and DEFINITELY don't do it on the taxpayer dime. This idea that people are entitled to their jobs and paychecks when they miss work as long as they missed work for their own ideas about social justice must end. Take a look at your company's leave policy, to which you agreed when you accepted the job offer. I am confident that it doesn't say "vacation time must be used when you plan to miss work unless you plan to miss work to take part in any protest of your choosing." Companies are not welfare dispensaries. They're not entitlement institutions, and they're not "safe spaces." They're the real world: they're bottom-line organizations. You should be aware of this before you accept a job offer. If you want to protest, do it the right way. If you have no vacation time to use and it isn't a holiday, then don't protest unless you have the clear permission of your supervisor. This is also unfair to your co-workers who honored their obligations to be at work. They have to take up your slack when you're suddenly out of the office without permission or warning. That should be kept to a minimum and should never happen due to a reason like "I just preferred to do something else with my time today" (unless you're using your vacation time, which should have been de-conflicted). If your absence led to the closing of a business that day, then you probably harmed ALL of your co-workers, many of your customers, and the business itself. This is why companies can't tell all of their employees to feel free to miss work without warning whenever they want as long as they're out protesting. What are supervisors to do now, start taking roll call at all the local protests? That's ridiculous. If companies let employees get away with this, then you'd suddenly have many, many employees who could always find a good protest or two to attend somewhere. There would be those who'd never let a good protest go to waste. Jobs are not hobbies to which you show up only when you feel like doing so. This is not an anti-protest post. It's an anti-entitlement post. A person who can't imagine being fired for missing shift work without permission is a person who feels entitled to his job. There is a right and a wrong way to do everything worth doing. Go protest, but do it the right way. Follow libertyLOL on your favorite social media sites:FacebookYoutube Tumblr Pintrest Countable: Government Made Simple Steemit blog on a blockchain Patreon Gab.ai libertyLOL's Liberty Blog RSS Feed We also run a couple twitterbots which provide great quotes and book suggestions: Murray Rothbard Suggests Tom Woods Suggests Jason Stapleton Suggests Progressive Contradictions MORE FROM LIBERTYLOL:
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