Dog Gone

Help the planet and trade in your dog for a new Land Cruiser.

Your Tax Dollars At Work

This is hilarious and sad at the same time. In a fit of bipartisanship, Congress has seen fit to take your tax dollars and spend it on subsidizing the production of rum and racetracks. I guess there are worse kinds of stimulus – I guess we’re lucky that they didn’t fund whorehouses and opium dens. It’s hard not to think of Congress as a band of pirates – and incompetent pirates at that. Shiver me timbers.

Business Basics

Arnold Kling offers a very short, amusing, and insightful view of what happened to the economy and the government’s response. How true, how funny.

There are larger issues here. All businesses spend money now in order to make money in the future. Sometimes they miscalculate. Sometimes they miscalculate due to sheer foolishness, but more often the assumptions behind their calculation change: new technologies arise, public tastes change, competitors do something clever, or governments change the rules. All of these things happen all of the time, making business (and the jobs produced by business) a risky proposition. Perfectly valid business plans can be undone by events.

We don’t want to impede technological improvement or new business ideas that benefit us. We can’t do much about public taste. We can, however, realize that every change in governance harms some business and some jobs. The change may be well intentioned, even beneficial for almost everyone. Nevertheless, some are always harmed. This is why “business conservatives” prefer government to proceed slowly and cautiously. This is why there is so much concern about the message coming from Team Obama: sweeping changes are being proposed. The impact of change is being hotly debated, but one thing is certain: any change damages someone and a bad change can damage lots of people.

We are all suffering through a government induced train wreck. Maybe we should proceed with caution and at least delay the next one.

Food Rationing

Sometimes humor works better than argument. This piece applies the logic of nationalized health care to food. Hilarious! Actually, I’d rather see the government ration food more than health care (if that was the choice). Given time, Team Obama might get around to it.

Insight with a Laugh

Sometimes things are best understood by remembering a story. It’s better if the story is amusing.

I found two examples, both related to what’s happening in the economy. The first explains the current financial crisis and bailout. The second explains the bigger economic problem caused by overall government policy. Read them for insight with a laugh.

The Coming Bailout

I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. This blog entry (and comments) make me want to do some of both.

Experienced VP Wanted

There’s lots of talk these days about how much experience a VP candidate needs to have. I wonder what experience people think is required. So, I was amused to find this analysis of earlier VP candidates and their experience level. This includes the 1972 Democratic nomination of Sargent Shriver, whose main qualifications was being married to JFK’s sister, having run the Peace Corps, and having served as ambassador to France. That sets the bar pretty low. But read them all and find the interesting note that the Vice Presidency was created as an afterthought to solve a specific political problem.

UPDATE: Some readers interpretted the above as a critique of Sargent Shriver. That’s not my intent. My criticism is that the emphasis placed on particular kinds of experience (which Shriver happened to lack) is wrong.

Sand In The Gears

Most commentary on the news, and particularly politics, is remarkably dull. But this is funny. Sigh. I wish I could write like that. Heck, I wish I could think like that!

Spending Priorities

The Democrats have a point: if we weren’t spending so much money in Iraq, we’d have a lot more to give to millionaire farmers!

Defying the Laws of Nature

It seems that a lot of governmental units in Minnesota are having trouble hiring senior administrators. The reason is the our clever legislature imposed salary caps for government employees. Guess what? Qualified applicants can find higher paying jobs in the open market. This is what happens with salary caps. The consequence is that many governmental functions are being administered by people who aren’t really qualified. Want to see a real mess? Imagine what would happen if we capped CEO pay!

Of course, it works are both ends of the spectrum. Setting price minimums is as dangerous as setting price maximums. Only a few politicians seem to recognize this, but at least one who did gave a funny speech in Congress.

Prices are a way of communicating information that encourages good decision making. Mess with prices and you distort the information and get less informed decisions. Whether it’s the minimum wage, price supports, salary caps, rent controls, or anti-gouging laws, any distortion of free market pricing leads to  misallocation of resources, making us all a little poorer.