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.”

Boulder’s “Climate Action Plan”: inefficient, ineffective

This was printed in the Boulder Daily Camera on Saturday, January 14, 2012.

The Boulder City Council’s website touts a “Climate Action Plan” as one of its primary goals. “The current goal is equivalent to the Kyoto Protocol target – to reduce emissions to a level seven percent below 1990 levels by 2012,” it says. With the city’s carbon tax set to end early next year, it’s worth asking: Is reducing carbon dioxide emissions the best way to respond to global warming?

Reviewing analysis by retired NCAR Senior Scientist Tom Wigley, Boulder’s University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) states that even if the “industrialized and nearly industrialized countries called upon to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the protocol … continued to abide by Kyoto’s limits” through 2100, global average temperatures would be at most 0.38 degrees Fahrenheit less than midpoint warming projections. Put in perspective, global temperatures decreased by this amount between 1900 and 1910, according to NASA.

Given this tiny effect, I’m not surprised that expert climate economists commissioned by the Copenhagen Consensus Center ranked emission reductions last among cost-effective responses to climate change. More efficient methods, listed at FixTheClimate.com, include adaptation, climate engineering, and carbon storage technologies.

With or without global warming, people — especially those in developing nations –face threats from extreme temperature, coastal flooding, hurricanes, malaria, poverty, starvation, and water stress. While global warming may increase these risks, scholars including Indur Goklany and Bjorn Lomborg convincingly argue that directly reducing these threats and promoting prosperity save more lives at lower cost than attempts involving emissions reductions.

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.

Romney is lame, young Rs like Ron Paul equally, might like Gary Johnson more if he got any press

This article originally appeared in the Boulder Daily Camera on October 22, 2011.

“Unlike the incumbent, I won’t make the economy worse, I won’t keep spending us to the brink of fiscal catastrophe, and I won’t lie to you.” That’s what a Republican candidate should declare to defeat Barack Obama, writes Reason magazine’s editor-in-chief.  Can the GOP front-runner Mitt Romney assert this credibly?

Like a typical Republican politician, Romney talks a good game about effectively reforming costly fraud-ridden government dependency programs. But he opposes cuts to the military’s bloated budget. He claims to support repealing ObamaCare, but still defends the failing state-level version of Obamacare that he signed into law in Massachusetts. Worse yet, in 2007, Romney said that for national health care policy, “What you have to do is what we did in Massachusetts.”

Compare Romney’s proposals to the bold fiscal plan of candidate Ron Paul, who tied Romney for first in a Reason-Rupe survey of young Republicans. Paul’s plan would eliminate the budget deficit in three years by cutting government jobs, spending, and taxes, while eliminating foreign “aid,” corporate subsidies, burdensome regulations, five unconstitutional federal departments, and the dollar’s money monopoly.

More than Ron Paul, many young voters might prefer former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson. His fiscal policy resembles Paul’s, while he is more pro-liberty on gay marriage and immigration. But TV networks have unjustly excluded Johnson from polls and debates despite his strong polling relative to invited candidates. The “Gary Johnson rule,” says the campaign website, is to continuously shift debate eligibility criteria to exclude candidates named Gary Johnson.

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: A Democratic Party fund-raiser

The Denver Post has published my op-ed in opposition to Colorado Proposition 103. It begins:

Do you want government to throw even more of your tax dollars at Colorado teachers unions and their pet politicians, or do you actually want better education for children in Colorado?

Proposition 103 is about throwing money. Sponsored by Rep. Rollie Heath, D-Boulder, and endorsed by Colorado’s largest teachers union, the initiative would increase income tax rates by 8 percent and sales tax rates by 3.4 percent — both for five years.

But decades of increasing school funding has not increased student test scores. It has created jobs for teachers and revenue for their unions that almost exclusively support Democratic politicians. These politicians sustain tax-funded schools as a monopolistic cartel that squashes competition and limits choice for parents and taxpayers.

Read the rest of the article at the Denver Post: Proposition 103 is about more money for the teachers union.

Thanks to Ben Degrow for pointing me to data sources, and to Ari Armstrong for suggesting key revisions.

For some of the references in the article, see this post: Colorado Proposition 103: More tax dollars for schools does not improve kids’ education.

 

 

Paul Krugman’s space aliens won’t create jobs, repealing health control law will

This article was printed in the Boulder Daily Camera on September 10, 2011 in response to this question:

What do you think will help decrease unemployment and underemployment? What role do you think the government can, or should, play in encouraging job growth?

Space aliens attack!  Nobel laureate economist Paul Krugman says we need scientists to “fake an alien threat.”   ”A massive buildup to counter” the threat, real or not, would end the economic slump “in eighteen months,” he said. Dr. Krugman unwittingly shows how loony Keynesian economic “stimulus” schemes are.

As an EconStories rap explains: “If every worker was staffed in the army and fleet, we’d have full employment and nothing to eat. Jobs are a means, not the ends in themselves. People work to live better, to put food on the shelves. Real growth means production of what people demand. That’s entrepreneurship not your central plan.”

Repealing parts or all of last year’s health control law [HR 3590] would encourage real growth. One-third of small business owners sited the law’s requirements as the greatest or second greatest “obstacle to hiring more employees,” reports a recent U.S. Chamber of Commerce survey. Three of four business owners “somewhat agreed” that the law “makes it harder … to hire more employees.”

For example, the law compels employers to buy insurance for full-time employees.  In response, half of surveyed employers said they would “change their workforce strategy so that fewer employees work 30 hours or more a week,” reports Mercer consultants.

Is it merely coincidence that private-sector jobs growth stalled after health “reform” passed?  Economist James Sherk shows that in the fifteen months before “reform,” average monthly job growth exceeded 67,000 jobs. Since then, it has plummeted to around 6,500 jobs per month. Don’t blame alien abductions.

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Thanks to Grace-Marie Turner for her article: Repealing Health Care Legislation Will Create Jobs. That’s where I first read about a few of the health care bill references above.

 

My advice to college students

This article was printed in the Boulder Daily Camera on August 27 2011 in response to the question:

What advice would you offer to today’s college freshmen, or college-aged young people? What words of advice do you wish you would have received at that age?

My friend Alex thought he wanted to be a software engineer. As a CU-Boulder student, he majored in computer science.  Since loved philosophy, he majored in that, too.

With computer science, Alex ensured he would graduate with marketable job skills. This may sounds obvious but apparently many students don’t share this view. According to economist Richard Vedder, “30 percent of the working college graduates in the U.S. … have jobs that do not require a college degree.”

By his senior year, Alex realized that instead of becoming a software engineer, he preferred a career in academia as a philosopher. He is currently completing his philosophy PhD at a top-ranked philosophy department.

So what’s my advice?  Choose an enjoyable “money” major that gives you marketable skill. If you’re most passionate about this major, great.  But if you’re more passionate about a less job-oriented field, make this your “fun” major or minor.

Pursue your “money” major as a backup, but also explore how to create a career doing what you love. Know who your heroes: people you admire, be they entrepreneurs, scholars, or artists. Learn their career paths. Talk to professors and alumni to figure out the next step toward emulating your heroes.

You might end up choosing a profession based on the “money” major while remaining a weekend amateur in your “fun” major.  But so long as it’s a conscious choice, rather than “doing what’s practical,” you won’t regret it. “Amateur” derives from the Latin “to love,” after all.

Debt ceiling & reducing deficit without raising taxes

The Daily Camera asks: Lawmakers in Washington continue to be divided about raising the $14.3 trillion debt ceiling, which faces a deadline of Aug. 2, the day the Treasury Department says it will lose borrowing authority. Meanwhile budget talks regarding possible tax increases and debt reduction continue. What do you think?

My response:

Debt ceiling? What debt ceiling?  ”In the last 10 years, Congress has raised the debt ceiling 10 times,” notes economist Veronique de Rugy.

The real problem is excessive government spending that has created the huge debt. Spending has increased more than 60% in the past ten years.  ”43 cents of every dollar spent is borrowed,” de Rugy estimates.  According to USDebtClock.org, the federal debt exceeds $46,000 per U.S. citizen.

This spending is unsustainable and hazardous. The Congressional Budget Office warns of ” lower income growth” and risk of a “sudden fiscal crisis” that requires “spending cuts or tax increases more drastic and painful than those that would have been necessary had the adjustments come sooner.”  Taxation and government borrowing crowds out investment in private capital. This diverts “resources that could be used more productively. … U.S. companies are less likely to build new plants, conduct research, and hire people,” de Rugy explains.

As a remedy, Reason magazine suggests a “19 Percent Solution,” which refers to typical levels of tax revenue relative to GDP. The plan would balance the budget without raising taxes by reducing spending by less than 4% annually for ten years.

Since entitlement programs drive much of federal spending, these cuts will be unlikely so long as people see the programs as moral. But as forced charity, these entitlement programs are immoral. Charity can be virtuous, but there’s no virtue in being forced to donate to a charity, or empowering politicians to force others to do so.

This was originally published in the Boulder Daily Camera on July 16 2011.