Apr 06
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
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
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
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
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
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
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.
Mar 30
The FINANCIAL TIMES magazine is out yesterday with a brilliant article by by Edward Luce, “The great American disconnect.” Luce points out that while lawmakers and politicians everywhere are seeking to tax, regulate, control, classify, limit, and stifle every aspect of American life, entrepreneurs in the tech sector and industry are still “trying to make cars fly, abolish human mortality and nurture robots with feelings.”
Do these dreamers not realize that their dreams can never take flight under the Orwellian climate of central planning, socialism and near-Soviet-level control that governments have imposed on American society? As Luce writes, “America’s politics is remarkable for its resistance to new ideas.” “The gap between Washington’s dearth of creativity,” he continues “and the ferment beyond is widening.”
Wherever one encounters private-sector innovation, one encounters problem-solving and potential avenues for expansion of life’s possibilities. Wherever one encounters government, he encounters violence, intimidation and obsession with licensing, registration and control.
Mar 28
It is an article of faith among trusters of government that free-market capitalism is hard on “the environment.” Yet by every measure–total pollution per-acre of land, pollution per-capita, pollution per unit of GDP, etc., socialist societies produce more pollution and greater destruction of the environment. The great economist Julian Simon had this to say:
Telling evidence is found in the economic comparison of North and South Korea, and of East and West Germany, and also of Taiwan and China. . . . The Communist countries use(d) much more energy and produce(d) much greater amounts of pollution both per person and per dollar of GNP. One might say that this is because the Communist countries were (are) poorer. But this relative poverty is itself part of the story: centrally controlled economies do less well economically, which is part of the reason they pollute more per unit of GNP, and even per capita.”
from Julian Simon’s “The Ultimate Resource 2” (1996), pages 306-07.
Mar 28
The White House’s April 10, 2013 Press Release on “Understanding the Threat of Global Climate Change” States that the federal government is diverting roughly 2.7 BILLION dollars taken from American taxpayers into “research” on manmade climate change. This is roughly the annual budget of states like Montana.
This may explain why so many university scientists claim to support the theory of catastrophic man-made-CO2-driven climate change. As columnist Paul Driessen points out, the federal science research budget provides NOTHING for research into non-human-caused climate change.
