Mar 20
If ever there were one graph showing how broken the U.S. government is, it is the graph above. The graph shows the current proposed Republican (“Grand Old Party”) budget in comparison to the Democrats’ suggested budget for the next decade. (Thanks to Daniel Mitchell of Townhall.com.) Both continue growing government significantly, however some economists hope that the GOP plan may grow government at a rate slower than the growth of U.S. G.D.P.
Mar 19
Why are taxpayers made to own or pay for government colleges and universities they do not attend? The only plausible explanation is that government-owned colleges somehow meet the needs of people in ways that private colleges do not.
There is scant support for such a proposition.
In fact, governmental support for higher education has actually backfired on its intended beneficiaries (if providing higher education to the poor is the intention).
“Frequently it will actually be the better-off who succeed in having themselves subsidized by the worse-off. Consider, for example, the almost universal practice of offering a ‘free’ university education, whereby the working class, whose children rarely attend universities, pay through taxation for the education of middle-class children!” Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Democracy: The God that Failed (2002, p. 97.))
A 2003 study showed that the most underrepresented group of Americans at the nation’s top universities is low-income Americans. Only 3% of freshmen at the top 146 most selective colleges came from the bottom quarter of U.S. households by income. Only 10% come from the bottom half (Anthony Carnevale of Educational Testing Service 2003//).
Mar 18
Roger Roots, J.D., Ph.D.
From Roger I. Roots, “When Laws Backfire: Unintended Consequences of Public Policy,” American Behavioral Scientist, Vol. 47 No. 11, July 2004, page 1382:
The unintended costs of welfare spending have rarely been compiled by academics. But research has shown that a substantial number of welfare recipients simply live in poverty by choice because of the attractiveness of welfare programs. During the mid-1980s, at least 5.7 million people—roughly one sixth of the population in poverty—were living in poverty by choice due to welfare (Goodman 1987). Each additional $1 million in welfare spending increased the poverty population by 250,000 people (Goodman 1987). Controlled experiments by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Serviced found that compared with similarly situated families not on welfare, families drawing welfare payments changed their behavior substantially.
The number of hours worked by husbands dropped 9 percent; by wives, 20 percent; by young male adults, an incredible 43 percent. The length of unemployment among husbands increased 27 percent; among wives it increased 42 percent, and for single female household heads it increased 60 percent. Divorce increased 36 percent among whites and 42 percent among blacks. (Goodman, 1987, p. 37).
Mar 18
In the words of the immortal Harry Browne, “Each government program carries within it the seeds of future programs that will be ‘needed’ to clean up the mess the first program creates.” (Why Government Doesn’t Work, 1995, p 17). Herbert Spencer remarked in 1850 that there was scarcely a bill introduced in the British Parliament that was not titled “An Act to Amend an Act,” the “Whereas’s” of which always heralded “on account of the miscarriage of previous legislation.” (Social Statics, 1850, p. 12).
“To mitigate distress [of the poor],” wrote Spencer, “the English people have sanctioned upward of one hundred acts in Parliament . . . each of them arising out of the failure or incompleteness of previous legislation. . . . What is the statute book but a record of such unhappy guesses?” (1850: . 11).
Mar 18
The town of New Carlisle, Ohio–just outside Dayton–has eliminated its police force and cut its funding for county sheriffs deputies substantially. Just as with other towns who have done the same, crime has dropped.
Mar 17
The U.S. Social Security program taxes most heavily on persons with low incomes, does not provide a fair return, and causes a massive transfer from the less well off to the better off. According to Milton and Rose Friedman, “the poor tend to pay [Social Security] taxes for more years and receive benefits for fewer years than the rich—all in the name of helping the poor!” (Free to Choose (1979 p. 97)). If the same program were implemented by a business in the private sector, it would be considered a criminal offense.
Mar 17
Herbert Spencer, one of the founders of sociology, pointed out in 1850 that the British Minimum Wage Act of 1773—passed due to pressure from English weavers who believed the law would help lift textile workers out of poverty—decimated the British textile industry only 20 years later. By 1793, “some four thousand looms would be brought to a stand in consequence of the trade going elsewhere.” Few if any of the unemployed weavers recognized that the minimum-wage legislation they so enthusiastically advocated just 20 years earlier was the cause of their impoverishment.
Herbert Spencer, Social Statics (1850), page 11.
Mar 17
It was recently reported that MSNBC’s government-cheerleading show “The Rachel Maddow Show” is now down to fewer than 100,000 worldwide viewers in the coveted 25-54 age range.
This news comes on the heels of disclosures by former NBC Senior Reporter Lisa Myers that NBC “news” producers worked hard to scuttle and suppress news stories showing that Obamacare was predicted to cause numerous Americans to lose their insurance.
It was revealed in 2010 that MSNBC {and the other “NBC”s} were secret recipients of government TARP bailout money in 2008, through their parent corporation, General Electric.
Mar 16
We all know government agencies are in the habit of scaring people into giving government more power. Now we read in Newsweek that NASA is now claiming that Californians will be out of water within one year.
Even if true, this NASA claim should be seen as an opportunity to private-sector entrepreneurs. Instead it will likely be repeated by climate alarmist in their incessant pleas for ever-more socialism.
Mar 16
Former vice president Al Gore spoke to a crowd at Austin’s “South-By-Southwest” Convention (“SXSW”) and told an audience on March 13, 2015 that the federal government should “punish climate-change deniers,” and that “politicians should pay a price for rejecting ‘accepted science.’”
No doubt Galileo is looking down on America from above and shaking his head.
