"Liberal Dilemma" by Andrew Roth at Club for Growth:
"A 67-year-old anti-trust law in Pennsylvania is preventing Wal-Mart from selling $4 generic drugs. Instead, over four dozen different drugs have to be sold for at least $9.
So...if you're a liberal, what side of the argument do you support? Do you defend Wal-Mart (God forbid) and repeal the law so that people can get their much-needed drugs at "an everyday" low price?
Or do you side with the mom-and-pop pharmacies that supposedly can't compete against the big, bad Wal-Mart?"
"Self-Parody: Pessimistic Bias in the Media" by Bryan Caplan at Econlog:
"I while back I argued that it's easy to detect media bias from headlines alone. A recent NYT piece on life expectancy makes my point for me better than I ever could. The facts: U.S. life expectancy for all income levels rose. The headline: "Gap in Life Expectancy Widens for the Nation."
What's next: "Glass is Half Empty, Experts Say"?"
The article says this:
"Life expectancy for the nation as a whole has increased, the researchers said, but affluent people have experienced greater gains, and this, in turn, has caused a widening gap."
And attributes some of the "widening" to this:
"Doctors can detect and treat many forms of cancer and heart disease because of advances in medical science and technology. People who are affluent and better educated are more likely to take advantage of these discoveries.
Smoking has declined more rapidly among people with greater education and income.
Lower-income people are more likely to live in unsafe neighborhoods, to engage in risky or unhealthy behavior and to eat unhealthy food."
To which Russ Roberts at Cafe Hayek says this:
"Does anyone think that rising life expectancy is really a birthright [as mentioned in the article]?
If you go sky-diving every week without a parachute or even with one, you don't live as long as the average. If you smoke a lot and eat too much, you might not live as long as the average"
"The Fed Must Strengthen the Dollar" WSJ op-ed by John Chapman:
"The bottom line is this: the Fed should bury its errant Phillips Curve framework, and cease attempts to fine-tune perfect balance between inflation and recession. It should halt further rate cuts and soon begin a series of interest rate increases.
As for the risk of further credit-market blow-ups, the Fed's new lending facilities and the discount window are more appropriate tools for case-by-case illiquidity issues than blunt interest-rate mechanisms.
Neither current market imbalances nor the longer-term threat posed by moral hazard can be eradicated easily. And the considerable fiscal challenges facing the U.S. economy are not the responsibility of the central bank. But inflation and an unstable dollar are mortal enemies of prosperity. With inflation, millions are burdened by cost-of-living increases, real profit contraction, capital decumulation, and an inability to easily make contracts, calculate entrepreneurially, or invest."
I'm opposed to anyone in any kind of government capacity trying to "fine tune" anything. Milton Friedman proposed that the Federal Reserve be abolished in favor of a mechanical increase in the quantity of money over time. (He probably said it in several places, but I heard it here.) Doing so would get people out of money creation and provide for a more stable supply.
"Photo Finish" WSJ editorial:
"The Supreme Court ruled yesterday that states can mandate photo identification at the polls without violating the Constitution. The ruling in Crawford v. Marion County Election Board is a big deal, and not merely because it continues a welcome trend on the Court of deferring to elected bodies."
This is the news.
"Those opposing the Indiana statute, including the ACLU, Acorn, the Brennan Center and other liberal activist groups argued that ID laws impose an undue burden and disenfranchise some voters. The petitioners argued that even though Indiana offers free photo ID to qualified voters, the documents needed to obtain an ID – such as a birth certificate – could require payment or be an inconvenience.
Justice John Paul Stevens, writing for the majority, replied that such burdens are limited to a small percentage of the population and are offset by the benefit of reducing fraud. Furthermore, he noted, the law accommodates indigent voters or anyone who shows up on Election Day without proper ID by allowing provisional ballots to be cast. Those votes are counted if the voter can produce valid identification within 10 days of the election."
This is some of the commentary. I don't have a problem with these voter ID laws. Admittedly, I don't know how bad voter fraud actually is. (John Fund, also with the WSJ believes it is. For example, he says: "In 1982, inspectors estimated as many as one in 10 ballots cast in Chicago during that year's race for governor to be fraudulent for various reasons, including votes by the dead...St. Louis, Mo., officials found that in 2006 over 1,000 addresses listed on its registrations didn't exist.) I don't, however, believe being required to go down to the DMV is an undue burden to obtain an ID.
To me, though, if obtaining an ID is that much of a burden, I think that is a problem. That is especially so if these are people who would like to drive but are unable to because of the pain of getting a license. This probably sounds cynical, but I'd rather have someone able to drive when they want to drive than vote when they want to vote. Granted, this is more of a theoretical argument because I'd bet that most people who want to drive will drive whether they have a license or not, but having one's own transportation is such a huge leap forward in standard of living, to me at least, it trumps the benefit of feeling good about yourself when you "let your your voice be heard". There are probably several things like this that people can do to help increase the standard of living for the poor.
To me the question is why is this such a burden to overcome? Generally, the poor tend to vote with a certain party because that party has chosen to make the redistribution of money from the rich to the poor one of its main planks. I've heard of a lot of these voter registration drives. I've also heard of vans picking up loads of people to bring them to the polling station. Maybe they aren't keen on having to add another step to the process of getting these people to vote. I guess I'm not sold on the virtue of the people who do this. I'm sure some are legitimately concerned , but I'm suspicious of their motives. Are they motivated by a desire to see people exercise their right to vote, regardless of who it is for, or are they motivated because the votes will likely be cast for those of a particular party?
Taken a step further, what if those doing the rounding up really believe that a vote for a candidate in that party is truly in the best interests of the person being rounded up: does that make it OK? On the way to the polling station, do they provide a balanced assessment of the issues? (My assumption is that they don't have a knowledge of the issues. If they did and still needed to be rounded up, implying they weren't going to go otherwise, did they care about the issues? If they didn't care about the issues and weren't going to vote without prodding, why are they even voting?) My guess is that they don't get briefed on the issues any more than given a reason to vote for the person who represents the particular party.
"Environmental Disasters" by Arnold Kling at Econlog:
"According to Iain Murray's new book, the worst disasters come from environmental policy. It is remarkable the magnitude of the harm caused by government relative to the harm caused by the private sector from which it protects us. My co-blogger cites the number of people murdered by Stalin as an example of government-caused harm that is very difficult for the private sector to top.
Here are some more comparisons to consider:
1. The total death and illness caused by all of the chemical pollution ever created vs. the death and illness caused by the ban on DDT.
2. The GDP lost due to consumption of illegal drugs vs. the GDP lost due to the drug war.
3. The deprivation and suffering caused by predatory lending and other subprime mortgage shenanigans vs. that caused by biofuel mandates.
I think that as the world gets more complex and interdependent, we will see government activism cause ever-greater harm, because the unintended consequences become harder to predict, or even to trace when they do occur. "
"A 67-year-old anti-trust law in Pennsylvania is preventing Wal-Mart from selling $4 generic drugs. Instead, over four dozen different drugs have to be sold for at least $9.
So...if you're a liberal, what side of the argument do you support? Do you defend Wal-Mart (God forbid) and repeal the law so that people can get their much-needed drugs at "an everyday" low price?
Or do you side with the mom-and-pop pharmacies that supposedly can't compete against the big, bad Wal-Mart?"
"Self-Parody: Pessimistic Bias in the Media" by Bryan Caplan at Econlog:
"I while back I argued that it's easy to detect media bias from headlines alone. A recent NYT piece on life expectancy makes my point for me better than I ever could. The facts: U.S. life expectancy for all income levels rose. The headline: "Gap in Life Expectancy Widens for the Nation."
What's next: "Glass is Half Empty, Experts Say"?"
The article says this:
"Life expectancy for the nation as a whole has increased, the researchers said, but affluent people have experienced greater gains, and this, in turn, has caused a widening gap."
And attributes some of the "widening" to this:
"Doctors can detect and treat many forms of cancer and heart disease because of advances in medical science and technology. People who are affluent and better educated are more likely to take advantage of these discoveries.
Smoking has declined more rapidly among people with greater education and income.
Lower-income people are more likely to live in unsafe neighborhoods, to engage in risky or unhealthy behavior and to eat unhealthy food."
To which Russ Roberts at Cafe Hayek says this:
"Does anyone think that rising life expectancy is really a birthright [as mentioned in the article]?
If you go sky-diving every week without a parachute or even with one, you don't live as long as the average. If you smoke a lot and eat too much, you might not live as long as the average"
"The Fed Must Strengthen the Dollar" WSJ op-ed by John Chapman:
"The bottom line is this: the Fed should bury its errant Phillips Curve framework, and cease attempts to fine-tune perfect balance between inflation and recession. It should halt further rate cuts and soon begin a series of interest rate increases.
As for the risk of further credit-market blow-ups, the Fed's new lending facilities and the discount window are more appropriate tools for case-by-case illiquidity issues than blunt interest-rate mechanisms.
Neither current market imbalances nor the longer-term threat posed by moral hazard can be eradicated easily. And the considerable fiscal challenges facing the U.S. economy are not the responsibility of the central bank. But inflation and an unstable dollar are mortal enemies of prosperity. With inflation, millions are burdened by cost-of-living increases, real profit contraction, capital decumulation, and an inability to easily make contracts, calculate entrepreneurially, or invest."
I'm opposed to anyone in any kind of government capacity trying to "fine tune" anything. Milton Friedman proposed that the Federal Reserve be abolished in favor of a mechanical increase in the quantity of money over time. (He probably said it in several places, but I heard it here.) Doing so would get people out of money creation and provide for a more stable supply.
"Photo Finish" WSJ editorial:
"The Supreme Court ruled yesterday that states can mandate photo identification at the polls without violating the Constitution. The ruling in Crawford v. Marion County Election Board is a big deal, and not merely because it continues a welcome trend on the Court of deferring to elected bodies."
This is the news.
"Those opposing the Indiana statute, including the ACLU, Acorn, the Brennan Center and other liberal activist groups argued that ID laws impose an undue burden and disenfranchise some voters. The petitioners argued that even though Indiana offers free photo ID to qualified voters, the documents needed to obtain an ID – such as a birth certificate – could require payment or be an inconvenience.
Justice John Paul Stevens, writing for the majority, replied that such burdens are limited to a small percentage of the population and are offset by the benefit of reducing fraud. Furthermore, he noted, the law accommodates indigent voters or anyone who shows up on Election Day without proper ID by allowing provisional ballots to be cast. Those votes are counted if the voter can produce valid identification within 10 days of the election."
This is some of the commentary. I don't have a problem with these voter ID laws. Admittedly, I don't know how bad voter fraud actually is. (John Fund, also with the WSJ believes it is. For example, he says: "In 1982, inspectors estimated as many as one in 10 ballots cast in Chicago during that year's race for governor to be fraudulent for various reasons, including votes by the dead...St. Louis, Mo., officials found that in 2006 over 1,000 addresses listed on its registrations didn't exist.) I don't, however, believe being required to go down to the DMV is an undue burden to obtain an ID.
To me, though, if obtaining an ID is that much of a burden, I think that is a problem. That is especially so if these are people who would like to drive but are unable to because of the pain of getting a license. This probably sounds cynical, but I'd rather have someone able to drive when they want to drive than vote when they want to vote. Granted, this is more of a theoretical argument because I'd bet that most people who want to drive will drive whether they have a license or not, but having one's own transportation is such a huge leap forward in standard of living, to me at least, it trumps the benefit of feeling good about yourself when you "let your your voice be heard". There are probably several things like this that people can do to help increase the standard of living for the poor.
To me the question is why is this such a burden to overcome? Generally, the poor tend to vote with a certain party because that party has chosen to make the redistribution of money from the rich to the poor one of its main planks. I've heard of a lot of these voter registration drives. I've also heard of vans picking up loads of people to bring them to the polling station. Maybe they aren't keen on having to add another step to the process of getting these people to vote. I guess I'm not sold on the virtue of the people who do this. I'm sure some are legitimately concerned , but I'm suspicious of their motives. Are they motivated by a desire to see people exercise their right to vote, regardless of who it is for, or are they motivated because the votes will likely be cast for those of a particular party?
Taken a step further, what if those doing the rounding up really believe that a vote for a candidate in that party is truly in the best interests of the person being rounded up: does that make it OK? On the way to the polling station, do they provide a balanced assessment of the issues? (My assumption is that they don't have a knowledge of the issues. If they did and still needed to be rounded up, implying they weren't going to go otherwise, did they care about the issues? If they didn't care about the issues and weren't going to vote without prodding, why are they even voting?) My guess is that they don't get briefed on the issues any more than given a reason to vote for the person who represents the particular party.
"Environmental Disasters" by Arnold Kling at Econlog:
"According to Iain Murray's new book, the worst disasters come from environmental policy. It is remarkable the magnitude of the harm caused by government relative to the harm caused by the private sector from which it protects us. My co-blogger cites the number of people murdered by Stalin as an example of government-caused harm that is very difficult for the private sector to top.
Here are some more comparisons to consider:
1. The total death and illness caused by all of the chemical pollution ever created vs. the death and illness caused by the ban on DDT.
2. The GDP lost due to consumption of illegal drugs vs. the GDP lost due to the drug war.
3. The deprivation and suffering caused by predatory lending and other subprime mortgage shenanigans vs. that caused by biofuel mandates.
I think that as the world gets more complex and interdependent, we will see government activism cause ever-greater harm, because the unintended consequences become harder to predict, or even to trace when they do occur. "
"Greater Regulation of Financial Markets? Becker" Gary Becker on the Becker-Posner Blog:
"In evaluating the need for greater financial regulation, one should also not forget that the American economy greatly outperformed the European and Japanese economies during the past 25 years. Might that not be related in part to the fact that the United States led the way with major financial innovations like investment banks, hedge funds, futures and derivative markets, and private equity funds that were only lightly regulated? An infrequent period of financial turmoil may be the price that has to be paid for more rapid growth in income and low unemployment. Rapid income and employment growth might be worth an occasional period of turmoil especially if they do not lead to prolonged slowdowns in the real part of the economy. So far the effects on GDP and employment have not been severe, although the financial distress is not yet completely over.
Nevertheless, a few important regulatory changes are probably warranted. For the first time the Fed allowed investment banks access to its federal funds window, and the Fed guaranteed $29 billion worth of mortgage-backed assets to induce J.P. Morgan to take over that investment company. Since these types of Fed actions would likely be repeated in the event of future financial turmoil, investment banks would have an incentive to take on additional risk since they can reasonably expect to be helped out by the Fed in the future. For this reason it might be desirable for the government to impose upper bounds on the permissible ratios of assets to equity held by investment banks. The ratio of assets to the equity of the five leading investment banks did increase greatly from about 23 in 2004 to the highly leveraged level of 30 in 2007."
Posner adds the following:
"Perhaps what the savings and loan and now the broader financial-industry crises reveal is the danger of partial deregulation. Full deregulation would entail eliminating both government deposit insurance (especially insurance that is not experience-rated or otherwise proportioned to risk) and bailouts. Partial deregulation can create the worst of all possible worlds, as the western energy crisis may also illustrate, by encouraging firms to take risks secure in the knowledge that the downside risk is truncated."
I admit that if the government is to be seen as being on the hook, regulations probably need to be in place to limit the risks to the taxpayer. The better alternative, however, is full deregulation in such a way that relieves the government of all risk of loss. Let it be born by those who assume it. But now the debate isn't between current options, but between options that might have existed two months ago.
"Vouching for Vouchers" Washington Post editorial (HT: Club for Growth):
"In making education his top priority, D.C. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty has been guided by one principle: Children trump politics. It's an idea that Mr. Fenty might want to expound on when he goes to Capitol Hill this week to defend funding for the city's unique school voucher program. Political ideology and partisan gamesmanship should not be allowed to blow apart the educational hopes of hundreds of D.C. children. Congress must respect the judgment of District leaders in giving parents a choice in one of the most crucial aspects of their children's lives...
Of all the arguments against vouchers, the most pernicious is that they hurt public schools. Never mind that D.C. public schools benefit financially from the funding formula. Public schools failed long before vouchers were even conceived of, and no less an authority than D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee dismisses that argument out of hand. As she told the Wall Street Journal, "I would never, as long as I am in this role, do anything to limit another parent's ability to make a choice for their child. Ever." Let's hope Congress feels that same compunction."
"A Closer Look at Stadium Subsidies" by Dennis Coates at The American (HT: Club for Growth):
"Of course, even if the benefits of stadiums and arenas cover the subsidies, the subsidies still may not be sound policy. First, there may be enormous variation in the distribution of the consumption and public-good benefits. It is clear that not all citizens in a community benefit equally from the presence of professional sports franchises in their city. Indeed, because the tax revenues used for the subsidies are often generated from lotteries and sales taxes whose burden falls disproportionately on the poor, while the consumption benefits go mostly to relatively wealthy sports fans, the net benefits are distributed regressively. Second, we should consider the net benefits to the community of alternative uses of the funds spent subsidizing sports facilities. Good policy means using the money where the net benefit is greatest, not simply where the net benefit is positive. That’s something state and local governments should keep in mind before pledging millions of dollars to fund the next new stadium project. And it’s something Congress should remember when evaluating the future of U.S. tax policy."
After listening to this podcast, I've been opposed to government subsidies for sports stadiums. Government effectively artificially keeps ticket prices low, spreading out the cost of attending the events over everyone else in the city. I'm a baseball fan and love going to Braves games, but I don't think it's right that those of us going to the games are subsidized by those who aren't going to games.
"A Closer Look at Stadium Subsidies" by Dennis Coates at The American (HT: Club for Growth):
"Of course, even if the benefits of stadiums and arenas cover the subsidies, the subsidies still may not be sound policy. First, there may be enormous variation in the distribution of the consumption and public-good benefits. It is clear that not all citizens in a community benefit equally from the presence of professional sports franchises in their city. Indeed, because the tax revenues used for the subsidies are often generated from lotteries and sales taxes whose burden falls disproportionately on the poor, while the consumption benefits go mostly to relatively wealthy sports fans, the net benefits are distributed regressively. Second, we should consider the net benefits to the community of alternative uses of the funds spent subsidizing sports facilities. Good policy means using the money where the net benefit is greatest, not simply where the net benefit is positive. That’s something state and local governments should keep in mind before pledging millions of dollars to fund the next new stadium project. And it’s something Congress should remember when evaluating the future of U.S. tax policy."
After listening to this podcast, I've been opposed to government subsidies for sports stadiums. Government effectively artificially keeps ticket prices low, spreading out the cost of attending the events over everyone else in the city. I'm a baseball fan and love going to Braves games, but I don't think it's right that those of us going to the games are subsidized by those who aren't going to games.
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