Apr 08

Social Security Continues to Impoverish Seniors: 1 in 3 Will Live in Poverty in Response to the Program

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Social Security is a program that takes money from poor people and transfers it to richer people. To the extent that America is defined by class structure (which can be debated), the poor tend to start working earlier in life, to pay into Social Security (and Medicare) longer, and to die younger. The rich tend to start working at older ages, to work fewer years, and to live longer. Thus Social Security is a massive transfer from the poor to the rich.

Additionally, people change their behavior in response to the program. They save less, invest less, work less safe, and retire earlier.

Now we read that 1 in 3 seniors will be living in poverty in the future. The link is here.

The MSN Money article places most of the blame on employers, who have become less likely to offer retirement benefits. U.S. Corporations now face the world’s highest corporate tax rates and additional burdens from the Obamacare program.

Apr 06

New York Times: College tuition costs have skyrocketed in spite of exponential government spending on higher education

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The Easter weekend 2015 New York Times published a daring opinion piece by law professor Paul Campos, “The Real Reason College Tuition Costs So Much.” In the essay, Professor Campos demolishes the official conventional wisdom regarding government funding for higher education:

ONCE upon a time in America, baby boomers paid for college with the money they made from their summer jobs. Then, over the course of the next few decades, public funding for higher education was slashed. These radical cuts forced universities to raise tuition year after year, which in turn forced the millennial generation to take on crushing educational debt loads, . . .

This is the story college administrators like to tell when they’re asked to explain why, over the past 35 years, college tuition at public universities has nearly quadrupled, to $9,139 in 2014 dollars. It is a fairy tale in the worst sense, in that it is not merely false, but rather almost the inverse of the truth.

In fact, as Campos writes, government funding of higher education has exploded over the past 40 years.

In other words, far from being caused by funding cuts, the astonishing rise in college tuition correlates closely with a huge increase in public subsidies for higher education. If over the past three decades car prices had gone up as fast as tuition, the average new car would cost more than $80,000.

Apr 06

“A Record of Total Failure”: Government Funding of Universities Has Produced a LOWER Percentage of Poor People in College

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Why are taxpayers forced to OWN universities? Upon what logic do governments claim that owning colleges and universities is necessary? Especially when there are thousands of private-sector colleges and universities?

The only plausible answer is that government-owned or supported colleges meet the needs of the poor in ways that private-sector colleges do not.

But Professor Richard Vedder, writing in the National Review April 2, 2015, writes that government funding of colleges and universities has failed to provide ANY SIGNIFICANT improvement in college access for the poor.

Here, the record is one of total failure: A smaller percentage of recent college graduates come from the bottom quartile of the income distribution today than was the case in 1970, when federal student-assistance programs were in their infancy.

Apr 06

Government Temperature Predictions Are Averaging 2 to 5 Times Greater than Reality

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University of Alabama in Huntsville climatologist John Christy compared 102 government-funded climate model predictions with actual temperature data and found that “their response to CO2 on average is 2 to 5 times greater than reality.” Here is the link.

Apr 03

Pro-Government Extremist Website Outraged That More People Trust Private-Sector Scientists Than Government-Funded Scientists

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Salon.com, a government-cheerleader website that generally offers a steady stream of elitist, socialist, and pro-government extremist content, is shocked and outraged over new polling data that reveals Americans have a healthy skepticism toward government “climate science.” Salon.com staff writer Lyndsey Abrams writes that

Most strange, from these results, is that the largest proportion of respondents — 45 percent — say they trust non-government scientists and educators, while only 13 percent trust the U.S. government.

Abrams finds it shocking that after many centuries of government-imposed genocide, deception, false-flag violence and massacres, people tend to view the governments that purport to rule over them with distrust and skepticism.

Apr 03

Economist Robert Wenzel: Water is Just Like Any other Commodity; If Markets Were Free, Prices Would Quickly Eliminate Scarcity

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Because governments have generally taken over control of water, consumers are confused and often oblivious to the true costs of the commodity. Municipalities sometimes divert BILLIONS OF DOLLARS taken from taxpayers into water delivery systems; yet consumers view their tapwater as “free.”

If private sector entrepreneurs were allowed to provide water in a free market, price adjustments would quickly eliminate episodes of scarcity. And MOST PEOPLE WOULD HAVE ACCESS TO CLEANER, HEALTHIER WATER FOR LESS MONEY THAN THEY PAY NOW. According to noted economist Robert Wenzel:

[W]ater is just like any other commodity, if you price it below market clearing levels, you will have shortages.

If you allow market prices, shortages disappear. When you have market prices, incentive is provided for development of new sources of water and the price acts as a disciplinary force against “waste.”

Robert Wenzel, editor of the Economic Policy Journal, continues:

Yesterday, Brown, as Governor acted, and declared the “first ever statewide mandatory water reductions.” “Hello, Venezuela,” I thought to myself. But when I turned to the governor’s press release, it said this:

“The Governor’s order calls on local water agencies to adjust their rate structures to implement conservation pricing, recognized as an effective way to realize water reductions and discourage water waste.”

Yes, there was a lot of nonsense in the release and the water sector should be privatized, but that said, it is quite impressive that Brown recognizes the problem as a pricing problem.

Jerry Brown for President of Venezuela! I say.

Apr 03

Except for rich, Americans’ incomes fell last year

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Washington (AFP) – Most Americans’ incomes have fallen for two straight years, but the richest 20 percent saw theirs rise, a new Labor Department report showed Thursday. A combination of government policies, especially government licensing laws that keep as many as 30 percent of adult males from working in rewarding professions, along with rising government-imposed healthcare costs, continues to ensure that Americans of the lowest classes face difficulties in the labor force. The story is found at this link.

Apr 01

Almost A Hundred Peer-Reviewed Studies Establish Correlations between Minimum-Wage Laws and Unemployment Rates

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When politicians vote to impose or raise minimum wages, they put poor people out of work and INCREASE poverty. No one has ever calculated how many economic studies establish the correlation between minimum-wage laws and unemployment rates. But the number is in the many dozens and probably in the hundreds.

Minimum wage laws have done nothing to limit poverty in any sector and have actually increased poverty in many areas, especially in the poorest communities. The unemployment generated by such laws is linked with increased rates of mental illness, suicide, homicide, divorce, and deaths from heart disease, stroke, and cirrhosis of the liver.

Source: Roger Roots, “When Laws Backfire,” American Behavioral Scientist, Vol. 47 No. 11, July 2004, pages 1376, 1378.

Apr 01

Federal “Cybercrime” Investigators Seek Total Power over Internet; Are Caught Engaging in Online Identity Theft, Online Blackmail, Online Money Laundering, etc.

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About a month ago, federal prosecutors successfully prosecuted an internet entrepreneur for launching a lucrative anonymous cyber exchange known as “the Silk Road.” FBI agents supposedly worked to investigate and shut down the free-exchange web network for several years. Federal efforts against “the Silk Road” exchange were accompanied by a massive across-federal-agencies offensive promoting more government power over the internet to stop “cybercrime” and “cyberterror.”

It has now been revealed that FBI agents “investigating” the Silk Road exchange were actually siphoning millions of dollars to their own secret, hidden accounts, and were blackmailing suspects. A lewrockwell.com report on this scandal is here.

Mar 31

The Data Are In: Increased Government Role in Health Care Leads to Lower Quality of Life For Most Americans

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We all know health care prices have increased faster than the rate of inflation every year for more than 40 years, due to Medicare, Medicaid (and in the past couple years), the “Affordable Care Act.” Such government enactments increase demand without increasing supply, causing prices to rise. If markets were allowed to be free, health care prices would quickly come down, just as they have come down in other, non-government-controlled industries such as the computer industry.

Data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics now show that these government interventions are leading to a LOWER QUALITY OF LIFE for most Americans. The graph above, prepared by the folks at “Political Calculations,” a data-analysis think tank, show that Americans are spending less on entertainment than they did in the past–because Americans increasingly need these funds to pay for higher-cost health care.

The real level of average annual total consumer expenditures has not significantly changed in the last 30 years. See this link. And the increase in health insurance costs from 2009 onward as a consequence of the Affordable Care Act is in large part being paid for by Americans cutting back on their expenditures for other categories of consumer goods and services.

This direct evidence strongly indicates that Obamacare, as the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is more popularly known, has directly led to a decline in the quality of life of American consumers since its passage, as American consumers are now much less able on average to consume other goods and services to the same extent they were prior to the passage of the law.