Obama’s State of the Union: You’re just part of his “blueprint”

This originally was published in the Boulder Daily Camera on Saturday, January 28, 2012.

For refutations of the President’s flawed claims and statist economic plans, see the Cato Institute‘s website, blog, and YouTube channel.  Regarding Obama’s “Buffett tax” on millionaires, the Associated Press explains that the wealthiest Americans already “pay a lot more taxes than the middle class,” including secretaries

To understand Obama’s statist fervor, ask yourself: Are you a machine cog?  Surely not. But like many politicians, Obama disagrees, at least tacitly. How? Linguist George Lakoff explains how metaphors are key to understanding political discourse.  In his speech, the President expressed his desire to “lay out a blueprint for an economy.”  At least twice he’s mentioned starting a health care “system” from “scratch.” This speaks volumes.

“The economy” refers to people producing and exchanging goods and services. In a freed economy, government respects people’s right to trade voluntarily. But Obama sees the economy as a machine to be manufactured, or a cake to be baked.

Obama has the same conceit that better economists have warned about for centuries. Describing the “man of system,” Adam Smith wrote: “He seems to imagine that he can arrange … members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges … pieces upon a chess-board.” “Socialists look upon people as raw material to be formed into social combinations,” wrote French economist Frederic Bastiat in 1853. Or, as 1974 Nobel laureate F.A. Hayek wrote, “The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.”

Tim Tebow: Fans should thank home school equal access laws

This article was printed in the Boulder Daily Camera on December 17, 2011.

No one would be talking about Tim Tebow’s football excellence had the Florida legislature acted differently when Tebow was nine years old. In 1996 the legislature allowed home-schooled students like Tebow to participate in local public school sports programs.

In high school, Pro Bowl line-backer Jason Taylor also benefited from such home-school friendly policies. But in college the NCAA revoked Taylor’s football scholarship for reasons related to his home schooling. In 1994 he successfully challenged the decision and regained the scholarship. After this case, reports ESPN, the NCAA streamlined eligibility requirements for home-schooled athletes.

In a 2007 ESPN interview, Taylor spoke out in support equal access for home-schooled athletes: “It’s important to let the kids know, and the people who are holding the kids back know, that there’s a lot of kids with a lot of potential.  … They just need a chance. … It’s a problem when you have sixteen states in our country that say it’s OK to play and the other 34 still have a problem with it. … Look, the parents are still paying tax dollars. If [the students] can’t play in the school system, then give the tax money back.”

The Tebow family has lent their name to TimTebowBIll.com, which advocates legislation “to allow homeschooled students equal access to sports and extracurricular activities” in Alabama. According to the site, Colorado is among 24 states that now allow equal access, while 15 have introduced legislation.

Jared Polis on U.S. Postal Service: end its “monopolistic protections and special treatment”

This originally appeared in the Boulder Daily Camera on December 3, 2011 in response to this question: The United States Postal Service is facing major financial constraints, and it is forecasting a record $14.1 billion loss for fiscal 2012. … What do you think the USPS should do?

Break free, USPS! Leave your over-protective and controlling parent: the U.S. government. Yes, the perks are nice. The Feds grant you monopolies on mail delivery and mailbox access. They exempt you from costs such as vehicle licensing, parking tickets, threats of antitrust suits, and taxes on sales, income, and property. The fifteen billion dollar U.S Treasury credit line is nice, too.

But Federal controls cripple you. The Feds make you deliver mail almost everywhere, six days a week, while restricting your ability to increase prices. Freedom to adjust prices and deliver on fewer days would save billions annually. Three of four Post Offices lose money. But U.S. Code prohibits closing them “solely for operating at a deficit,” and Congress must approve any layoffs.

Further, you must pre-fund your retirees’ health benefits, which your Postmaster General says is “effectively bankrupting” you. Yes, USPS retirees get health benefits! As your website says, “federal statutes hamper [your] ability to craft a market-based benefits package.” Indeed. DownsizingGovernment.org describes how your employees enjoy a “postal pay premium” between 20% and 35% compared to comparable private-sector employees.

USPS, listen to what Rep. Jared Polis, D-Boulder, wrote ten years ago. Ending “monopolistic protections and special treatment enjoyed by USPS” would “benefit … postal customers, postal employees, and businesses in the delivery sector. … Unless we unshackle USPS and allow it to leverage its infrastructure effectively as a normal privately owned company, then USPS will sadly fade away as it becomes increasingly irrelevant in the marketplace.”

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Thanks to Ari Armstrong for the Jared Polis reference.

Technocrats violate our right to buy and sell incandescent light bulbs

This letter appeared in the November 2011 print and on-line issue of APS News, the newsletter of the American Physical Society, the world’s second largest organization of physicists.

Physicist-turned-Congressman Rush Holt supports legislation banning conventional incandescent light bulbs (Back Page, August/September APS News). His statements about the legislation are misleading. Worse yet, his support of the ban embodies an elitism that supplants people’s right to choose with authoritarian dictates of a technocratic ruling class.

To the Wall Street Journal‘s claim that “Washington will effectively ban the sale of conventional incandescent light bulbs,” Holt glibly replies, “This was, of course, untrue. No type of light bulb was banned.” Sure, the legislation does not ban all incandescents, but it does ban conventional ones, as the Journal claims. The legislation will “make current 100-watt bulbs obsolete” and such bulbs will “disappear from store shelves,” reports the New York Times.

To justify the ban, Dr. Holt narrowly defines efficiency to mean only energy efficiency. But the most “efficient” light bulb best achieves the user’s purpose. Energy efficiency is important, but so are an appealing color spectrum, quickly reaching full brightness, low-cost dimming, and tolerance to vibration and heat.

The Congressman also decries proposals to repeal the bulb ban, as it could undermine Congress’s “tradition of supporting innovation.”  But when companies spend money to satisfy government demands, they invest less on innovation to satisfy perceived customer demand.

Businesses in relatively free markets innovate just fine. Consumer electronics is an obvious example, but product packaging has also become more efficient. Soda cans use less metal, while bottled beverage manufacturers advertise bottles using less plastic or petroleum-free plant-based plastics.

Meanwhile, the bulb ban exemplifies “innovative” ways for bulb makers to increase profits through political pull. Conventional bulbs are a “ubiquitous commodity” with a “negligible” profit margin, the New York Times magazine recently noted.  “No amount of subsidy or ‘green’ branding has managed to woo consumers away from Edison’s bulb.” So the lighting industry endorsed new efficiency standards that force consumers to buy more expensive products.

“We are taking away a choice that continues to let people waste their own money,” quipped Energy Secretary Steven Chu, a Nobel laureate in physics. Even if this is true, wasting one’s own money is every person’s right. Moreover, if a consumer has good reasons to prefer conventional incandescent bulbs, buying them is not wasteful. What’s wasteful is being forced to buy less desirable alternatives.

A physics PhD and a high-profile government job is not a moral sanction to violate consumers’ right to choose.

Prop. 103 supporters: You can still donate more of your own earnings to tax-funded schools

This article was printed in the Boulder Daily Camera on November 5, 2011.

To paraphrase Mark Twain: Don’t let funding schools interfere with funding students’ education. Boulder Senator Rollie Heath was behind the defeated Proposition 103, the proposed tax increase for Colorado’s tax-funded schools. “I just don’t know how far in education cuts we’ll have to do before people realize what we’re doing,” he told the Daily Sentinel after the election.

Heath implies that increasing school funding improves students’ education. Where’s the evidence?  As I documented in a recent Denver Post op-ed, national standardized test scores for 17-year-olds have been essentially flat since the early ’70s, while real-dollar per-pupil spending has doubled since then.

Increased spending didn’t increase test scores, but it increased teacher employment. Since the early ’70s student-to-teacher ratios decreased by almost a third. Employment in K-12 schools doubled, though student enrollment increased by just 10%.

Prop. 103 was really a Democratic Party fundraiser. Hiring more teachers sends more tax revenue to teachers unions. The unions almost exclusively support Democrat politicians, who when elected push for higher school taxes, and hence more money for unions that supported their campaign. These politicians also oppose school choice, and hence protect tax-funded schools as a monopolistic cartel.

Don’t fret if you supported Prop. 103. You’re still free to donate more of your earnings to tax-funded schools. You just can’t force others to do so.  But if you really care about quality education, you should support efficient schools that provide quality education at low cost, rather than letting politicians determine where your money goes.

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Update:  Oddly, the website for the Boulder Valley School District does not make it easy for people to donate to the district itself or specific schools. But the District has received more than $2 million in annual donations. I did find the following:

• a donation page for Summit Middle School (Boulder County)
• CrayonsToCalculators.org
• Education Foundation of St. Vrain Valley

Prop. 103 results, Colorado election

As of 8 PM Tuesday it looks like Colorado Proposition 103 will not pass.  The Denver Post declared the measure “dead.” Channel 7 reports only 35% “yes” and 65% “no” with almost half of the precincts reporting. 9 News has similar results.

For why this is good news, see my article in the Denver Post: Colorado Proposition 103: More tax dollars for school helps unions & Dem. party, but not students.  For a version with more Colorado data and contributions from education policy analyst Ben DeGrow, see: Proposition 103: More Tax Dollars for Schools Makes No Sense.

In terms of cost to taxpayers, see this Summit Daily op-ed by economists Barry W. Poulson and John D. Merrifield : Prop 103: What Is The Cost To Colorado Taxpayers?, based on this analysis.

Note that Prop 103′s supporters raised more than $600,000 to promote it, while the opposition raised around $25,000. That’s a ratio of 24:1. (This doesn’t count Compass Colorado’s contributions.)

Thanks to this People’s Press Collective post for the Denver Post declaration and link to the funding info.

 

Should Americans Support the Tea Party or Occupy Wall Street?

Tom G. Palmer responds:

“I’m an American underwater in debt and with a stagnant income. Which group should I support: the Tea Party or Occupy Wall Street?”

The Tea Party has a coherent message: Stop the bailouts, stop the cronyism, and stop swindling today’s voters with empty promises and sinking future generations under mountains of debt.

What caused the crisis, the indebtedness, the unemployment, the stagnation?

In his post, Palmer explains how federal policies are to blame for what Occupy Wall Street protests. “The Occupiers have the wrong address. The subprime crisis was designed in Washington, not New York,” he writes. Read the whole post:

Should Americans Support the Tea Party or Occupy Wall Street?

See also:

• Wall Street Protesters Half Right, by John Stossel
• The Moral Foundations of Occupy Wall Street: An illustrated guide to the signs at Zuccotti Park, by Jonathan Haidt.

Colorado Proposition 103: What it will cost taxpayers

Economists Barry W. Poulson and John D. Merrifield have analyzed what Colorado Proposition 103 would cost taxpayers. They summarized the study in an op-ed published in the Summit Daily. An excerpt:

[T]he total cost to Coloradans of Proposition 103 is estimated between $4.8 billion and $6.0 billion. The total cost per household is estimated between $2,169 and $2,711.

The higher tax and consequent reduction in economic growth will reduce job opportunities in Colorado. Proposition 103 will cost between 7,400 and 11,600 jobs.

Read the whole article: Prop 103: What Is The Cost To Colorado Taxpayers?

See also:

• Colorado Proposition 103: More tax dollars for school helps unions & Dem. party, but not students, Denver Post (my article)
• Prop 103 means fewer jobs, less income, by Wayne Laugesen, CO Springs Gazette
• An Analysis Of Proposition 103, by Penn Pfiffner

Occupy Wall Street, corporate greed, income equality, and democracy

A version of this article originally appeared in the Boulder Daily Camera on October 8, 2011:

“What do we want?  We don’t know!  When do we want it? Now!” This could be the chant of the “Occupy” protests on Wall Street and in other cities.  “If protesters don’t list demands, will they get anything?,” asks a headline in the Christian Science Monitor.

Ending “corporate greed” is a likely demand. The phrase appears over 200 times on Occupywallst.org, a primary “Occupy” website that lacks clear demands. Adbusters’ “Occupy” page has posters criticizing financial services firms involved in the mortgage crisis.

Blaming “corporate greed” for the financial crisis is misguided. In a free market, greedy profit seeking requires vigilantly catering to what consumers want. But as Thomas Sowell, Johan Norberg, and Jeffrey Friedman have described, the housing and financial markets were quite unfree. Firms were not responding to true consumer demand, but to demand perversely distorted by gobs of “regulation” and politically motivated legislation.

Adbusters describes Wall Street as America’s “financial Gomorrah” and wants to end money’s influence on Washington politicians. If protesters don’t like corporations influencing politicians, they should ask politicians to stop meddling in corporations’ affairs.  As P.J. O’Rourke observes: “When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators.” People have the right to voluntarily exchange goods and services. Protesters should demand that politicians oppose and repeal legislation that violates this right.

Income inequality is also a popular subject on Occupywallst.org. But a producer has the right to her earnings from voluntary trade, regardless of her income level relative to others.  The “democracy” advocated by self-proclaimed “we are the 99%” protesters would declare that a mob-rule majority is entitled to wealth earned by a productive minority.

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See also: Occupy Wall Street: Beyond the Caricatures, Reason.com

Colorado Proposition 103 would hurt working families, kill jobs

In the Grand Junction Free Press, Ari and Linn Armstrong write:

Proposition 103, the tax hike brought to this fall’s ballot by Boulder Democrat Rollie Heath and the teachers’ unions, is really about taking more money out of the pockets of working families to enrich those unions. Throwing more tax dollars at government-run schools hardly would improve the quality of education.

Read the whole article: Prop. 103 would hurt working families, kill jobs.