Economics & Finance

Rose Friedman, “Advocate of Freedom”

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rose-friedman

Jay already had a post up. But I decided a picture, and a link to the University of Chicago obituary were in order.

Her most important contribution was the 1980 book Free to Choose, which she co-wrote with her husband, and the accompanying 10-part PBS series. Both were highly successful— the book topped the best-seller list for five weeks — and had a profound impact on public discussions of freedom. At a time when the nation’s confidence was at an all-time low, Free to Choose helped restore America’s faith in liberty[.]

One reason these times are as bad as they are is that even good people are terribly ignorant about freedom, including economic freedom, and what it means, and how it works, and what it means to lose it. Revisiting the popular work of Milton and Rose Friedman, and introducing other people to it who were not even born when Free to Choose was on television, could do a lot of good.

Eric Holder wants the American people, a nation of cowards, as he calls us, to have a national conversation about race.

I propose instead that the American people have a national conversation about freedom.

Amazingly, the entire Free to Choose TV show, all ten episodes, is available for free, here.

You can get a used paperback copy of the book for a penny (+ postage).

I am going to re-read it before the turn of the year.

Volunteers of America

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Via American Digest, via Instapundit.

We need someone with good photoshop skilz to come up with a logo for the Conservative Revolutionary Front (CRF).

This Has Got To Be a Typo

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From Sweetness and Light [h/t Instapundit]:

And speaking of jobs, according to the Southern Policy Center (a 501c3 “charity”) 990 forms as reported, they received  $33,526,228 in 2007. The same form reports that their net assets or fund balances in 2007 were  $219,551,849.

Holy farken snit! What the hell is a charity group doing with assets of $219 million dollars on an income of 33 million? What good could they possibly do by sitting on that kind of money?

People need to spend more time researching organizations before they donate. People expect the money they donate to be put to work helping the causes they support, not shoveled into a bank vault somewhere to build up corporate assets. How many people would donate their hard-earned money if they knew that the Southern Policy Center was already sitting on $219 million?

It might be time for a law that requires non-profits to publish their income, assets and even the pay of their top executives in every donation solicitation.

Why We Think We Can’t Afford Health Care

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In 1900, most people walked to work, school, shopping and socializing. The percentage of the average household’s budget devoted to transportation was so low that the Census bureau didn’t even bother to collect data on it. Today, the average household spends 21% of its budget on transportation. It’s the second biggest single cost after housing yet people take such spending for granted and easily factor it in to their personal budgets. We do so because transportation costs rose slowly over the course of the last half century while other costs, such as food, decreased. Decade after decade we gradually became used to spending more and more for transportation till now the average middle-class family easily accepts spending several thousand dollars a year in transportation costs.

As a thought experiment, imagine that for some reason people never had to individually pay the cost of their own transportation.

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The Dangers of Decompartmentalized Health Care Spending

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So the Democrats have a problem convincing senior citizens that socialized medicine won’t diminish the already dubious quality of care they receive through Medicare. [h/t Instapundit]

Seniors no doubt base this suspicion in large part on their 50+ adult years of watching politicians over-promise and under-deliver. They probably remember back to 1965 when Medicare itself was sold as a cost-saving measure, and today we’re told it’s going to bankrupt the government unless we socialize 15% of the economy. They no doubt wonder how long it will be before Obama’s ideological descendants will tell us that Obama’s miracle plan is a disaster than can only be solved by more socialism.

Seniors have another reason to be nervous. Obama’s plan will put them in direct competition with everyone else for health care spending.

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