How Government Policy Impacts Our Lives

The Greecehopper and the Ants

For those of a certain age, this Disney video will be familiar. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wM1DgihKHVI. Please give it a watch. For an individual, household, city, or sovereign nation, it really is not much more complicated than this. With so much practical good sense in the world, from at least the time of Aesop (who was, ironically, a Greek, writing 2,600 years ago), where have we gone wrong?  Are we not teaching? Or not learning? And what if there were no ants?  See Joseph Shattan’s...

Prohibition Created Criminals and Cost Tax Revenue. So Does The War on Drugs.

The effects of drugs and alcohol can be devastating.  In an earlier post (May 18, 2011) we made the case for legalizing drugs as the least bad of all the bad options.  If one could purchase drugs like one does alcohol, then all the crime and violence required to create, distribute, and pay for these drugs would instantly disappear. In that post we focused on the micro side, on doing away with the “pusher”, the last one hooked who must then push drugs onto others in order to pay for his or her...

The President’s Credit Rating

The President is out on the campaign trail taking credit for the late, slow, economic recovery that we are finally experiencing. It’s like a delivery room doctor claiming that without him or her, there could be no baby. In fact, to add some extra hyperbole, it’s even worse.  Given the President’s steady prescriptions of contraception by regulation, all night binges of spending, and threatened abortion by add-on taxation, it’s a miracle that there is a baby at all. Is it possible that we’re...

The Morning After Pill for Obamacare

I’m not sure how the Catholic Church’s revolt against its principles being trampled by the central government will play out.  But here is a reflection. As simply as I can understand it, Obama’s first position was: Here is what you have to do, whether you like it or not, and you have to pay for it. Obama’s “compromise” is: Here is what you have to do, whether you like it or not, and everyone else has to pay for it. The second half of the second position is ridiculous. It implies that the only...

Economic Democracy

Any method of allocating resources other than the free market price system ultimately leads to tyranny. Yet the Occupy Wall Street Non-Leaders, presumably opposed to tyranny, have said many times that they want a “democratic economy”. There simply is no such thing. It’s impossible. The only alternative to prices is force: either political force, business leverage (big business/unions or political cronies/monopolies), or violence. In those environments the winners are not those with the best...

Size Matters

I believe that many of our worst and very real problems are caused by the size of government, some businesses and some unions—they are all too big. Economies of Scale make sense, to a point.  But Too Big to Fail, or close to it, makes no sense.  Because then the interlocking elites who keep these big three in power benefit from “cozitition”, not competition. We should move quickly to break up the big banks.  And reimpose the Glass-Steagall Act’s separations on bank activities.  And perhaps...

Tinkering With Business

When I was a graduate student in London right after the earth cooled, 1968-1970, Harold Wilson was the Prime Minister, and Keynesian Economics ruled his Labor Party from Cambridge.  At London School of Economics the teaching was more ChicagoSchool, so our professors watched and reported regularly on economic policies. In a smaller nation, about one third the size of Texas with 50 million people, policies took effect quickly and had measurable consequences. I remember that the government would...

I’ve Read Good Essays, but This May Be the Bastiat

Thanks to a personal introduction from Gene Tullio (https://facebook.com/gtullio1), I’ve discovered the French economic philosopher Frederic Bastiat and his great work, The Law, originally published in 1850. As with my late-in-life reading of F. A. Hayek, I am embarrassed that I had never heard of Bastiat, and embarrassed that no one that I can recall either at UNC or LSE ever mentioned either man while I was earning two degrees. Anyway, Bastiat has it right on the profound connection between...

The Addictors: How Much Pain?

I am wrestling with and may change my position on legalizing drugs, which I never would have imagined just a few years ago.  Let me explain. Addictions, when acted upon, usually hurt people, cost a lot, and destroy relationships. The worst addictors today appear to be drugs, alcohol, pornography, and gambling. For different people each of these can be debilitating and destructive.  The addict knows it.  But he or she goes ahead anyway—that is the definition of an addiction—unless transformed...

The Time Bomb of a Nation without Fathers

Over the last several years I’ve worried about the underappreciated critical value of fathers to families, but a recent experience has multiplied that concern exponentially. Up until now I’ve been concerned about two situations: 1. In societies where multiple current wives are permitted, the problem is the competition between the children of the various wives, all vying for the attention and approval of the aloof father. Some are pegged as winners in this contest, and others as losers. In our...

FREE E-Book

"TEN LIES AND TEN TRUTHS" - 2nd edition. Please tell us where to send your book.

  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Your Subscription

You are subscribing to future posts and newsletters. I value your privacy and would never spam you. You may unsubscribe at any time.

Please see our Privacy Policy:

| Privacy Policy 2018

Social Networks

Blog Archives