Deflation: John Mauldin
Inflation: Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
Both of these well-written articles make for sobering reading. See also my March 2010 post an architect of hyperinflation.
Month: July 2010
Monkeywrenching Socialism – More inefficiency please
If we were more inefficient about passing spending legislation, the government would shrink and Congress would grow more powerful at the expense of the bureaucracy. States would also benefit as federalism is renewed. Take your average spending bill, let’s say the defense bill. In the interests of efficiency there are a number of programs that go on autopilot and just ride along, largely unexamined. These program lives are largely determined by the executive.
Instead of 1 bill, why not make it a thousand bills all dealing with much smaller subjects, ideally single line items? The system would have many advantages, not least of which the end of the disgusting practice of having vital spending held hostage, conditioned on passage of dubious items. Presidential vetoes would become meaningful threats.
A further advantage would be that the system would force Congressmen and Senators to prioritize. You pass important spending up front and the also-rans end up at the rear. When you run out of time at the end of the year, the least important spending automatically is zeroed out.
Executive departments end up having their very existence depending on the timely production of documents demanded by Congress. Stonewall Congress and you’re likely to find your program’s appropriation held up, perhaps to the end of the year and your own program’s budget death. Since the bills are pinpoint accurate, neighboring programs are not affected at all.
The system would also tend to push spending down to the state and lower levels. If there’s an issue that could possibly be handled by the states, it’s much safer there under this system. But 50 state competition provides its own check on state level socialism as some states refuse to go along and reap the benefits of increased in-migration and booming economies.
The only real challenge is how to elect a Speaker who would make the rule changes necessary to implement the system, forcing each Congressman to lay out their priorities, and illegalizing the practice of grouping spending items in mammoth bills that hide all sorts of chicanery.
What Did He Say?
Remember the 10 Russian spies that were recently returned to The Motherland? The people who had their lifestyles at least partially funded by the government that sent them over here to gather secrets?
Putin just said that they lived “tough lives”.
I think I’m tough enough to sign up for such duty. Just throwing it out there in case the US government has plans to send me off to a foreign land where I can shop, live in a nice house, go to cocktail parties, and fail to dig up any information that can’t be easily found with a 10 second Google search.
Is “Liberal Guilt” a Myth?
Conservatives and libertarians often refer to liberals, especially those of the modern “progressive” variety, as being motivated by guilt. This view has a long pedigree: Robert Frost once defined a liberal as someone so high-minded that he won’t take his own side in a quarrel.
At least as far as our current “progressives” go, I think this explanation of motivation is highly questionable. An essay by C S Lewis, written a little over 60 years ago, sheds some light on this matter.
During the late 1930s and up through the time when Lewis wrote (March 1940), there was evidently a movement among Christian youth to “repent” England’s sins (which evidently were thought to include the treaty of Versailles) and to “forgive” England’s enemies.
Young Christians especially..are turning to it in large numbers. They are ready to believe that England bears part of the guilt for the present war, and ready to admit their own share in the guilt of England…Most of these young men were children…when England made many of those decisions to which the present disorders could plausibly be traced. Are they, perhaps, repenting what they have in no sense done?
TV-Ad Random Thoughts
-I noticed that the ad for “Alteril” sleep aid ran immediately after the one for “5 Hour Energy”. There may be a message here.
-Dear poet.com: We do not owe you our hard-earned “American dollars”, you sanctimonious subsidy whores. Drop your sense of entitlement and make your product competitive if you want us to buy it. Why should American taxpayers pay off a bunch of lazy rent-seekers, driving up grain prices and making life harder for poor people everywhere, when we can buy our BTUs in petroleum form more cheaply. What do you have against people in Dubai, anyway? Unlike you they don’t get the US Congress to pick our pockets. And their hard-working ethos fits American values a lot better than does your sleazy whining PR attempt to guilt us into buying your overpriced fuel.
-Dear Land Rover: Your car looks like the fucking box it came in. Do you think we’re going to buy it just because you run ads with rock music every ten minutes on CNBC?
-The women in the Yoshi Blade ad are really annoying, especially the big blond chick with the onion. Maybe I shouldn’t say “annoying”, I should say “empowered”.
-Where are Carlton Sheets and Don Lapre when you need them? Today’s get-rich-quick infomercials just aren’t what they used to be, though Jeff Paul comes close.
-Dear Comcast: If you invested 10% as much in improving your service as you do in slick commercials to lure new customers you might not need the slick commercials. Everyone knows your service is awful. By running these endless TV ads you are really rubbing it in to your current customers. Great, you can simplify my bill as compared to AT&T. Do you think I care about that, given my certain knowledge that switching to your service would guarantee me repeated frustrating phone conversations with incompetent tech people to fix problems your own system caused? Idiots.