To Whom Success Is Due

Recent statements by Obama have gotten a lot of (well deserved) attention already. As usual when Obama tells us what he really thinks, we Conservatives are just too stoopeed to comprehend the point, or we are taking the remarks out of context. Right. Well, what does Obama mean when he says “You didn’t build that”? Apparently his point was simply that people cannot take all the credit for their own success. But such a statement is totally vacuous if it is not meant to make a political point. So what is the political point? The political point is that successful people owe their success to the fact that the government made their success possible, and, therefore, they have a special obligation to pay the government for the services it provided them. This point is still vacuous, however, because it is basically an argument for a progressive income tax which, in case you haven’t noticed, is the existing government policy. In terms of what Obama would like to do with that policy, he has said that the wealthiest should pay more: in other words, according to Obama, the wealthiest are not currently paying income taxes in proportion to the extent to which they benefit from the services that government provides. But that is false: those with the highest incomes pay a greater portion of the overall revenue from income taxes than their share of the national income. The other possible political point is that the government needs to provide certain services. Again, vacuous: the government can provide necessary services, it also might “provide” many unnecessary ones. What services that only the government can provide does Obama want? Which ones are the “bad guys” trying to do away with? The answer to both questions is none. There are a great many unnecessary services that the government “provides” and many such services that Obama wants to create or expand (or has).

But, let’s deal, in a philosophical manner, with these points in a bit more detail. Obama says people owe their success (at least some of it) to great teachers or roads and bridges. These are government services, it is surely true that people may benefit from these services. But do the successful disproportionately benefit from these services? Put another way, why is life unfair? I have t0 admit I am a bit amused to learn that Leftists do not believe that some people succeed and others fail because of a cruel and angry God in whom they do not believe. It turns out it’s teachers. Yes, teachers choose to make some people successful and others not; in fact we may make a general statement that government services discriminate systematically to make certain people successful and others not. One has to wonder, if government services are so profoundly biased and unfair, why we would want the government to be the provider of services at all. Well, either that or one cannot attribute a few people’s success to services provided to people who failed, too. But on a less facetious level, it is worth noting that, in a capitalist economy, one would not have obligations to those who have provided services or goods for one’s use. One pays the price the offerer asks for their services-or one demonstrates how little one actually desires the service by not bothering. It is by forcing some services to be done through the government that you create a situation where someone “owes” another party for their services, but does not pay. Who are the greatest beneficiaries, and to whom is the most owed? The answers are, the government’s friends, and the governments enemies. Are there services which only the government can provide? The first that springs to mind is national defense. But every person benefits equally from that crucial service, and yet about half of the people pay nothing for this service (crucial point here: for this service. While Social Security and other things that payroll taxes pay for are arguably not necessary services, such taxes are in-arguably not supposed to pay for national defense). I would certainly agree that people should pay for services they receive. If such services cannot be provided by private entities (cannot does not mean the same thing as “currently not” as Leftists inevitably interpret this) the solution to this problem is called user fees, or in the case of services which a person may not choose to forgo a head tax-not a progressive income tax. In point of fact, however, Leftists do not agree with the principle that people should pay if they receive a service-they strongly reject this proposition as unfair when it applies to making those people who they like pay for things Leftists think should be given to them for free. But a more fundamental problem is that, even if they were being serious in proposing such a principle, the Left believes a great many things must be done by the government, that frankly don’t need to be. We might be able to maintain true fairness (those who benefit, pay), if we adopted the aforementioned principle and then had the government provide most services, but never as well as the private sector could. In fact in many cases it would only remain “those who benefit, pay” in the sense that many would not benefit at all and therefore have no obligation. But more importantly, people would not decide for themselves if they were in the group of those who benefit, and pay, as in the capitalist economy; the people who would benefit, and pay, would be arbitrarily determined by the government-the only difference from the current situation being that the government cannot make those who benefit and those who pay two different groups of people. The real alternative is capitalism.

Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all. We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Then the socialists say that we want no religion at all. We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain.

~Frédéric Bastiat

Right AND Wrong

Much has been made of the alleged “apostasy” of the Romney campaign from the talking points among Republicans, whose campaign strategy to turn the disastrous and wrong Supreme Court decision into a big get out the vote drive was t0 jump on the Court declaring the mandate a tax. What can I say? For once, I agree with Mitt Romney. It shouldn’t have been declared a tax, any proper analysis of the law would have struck it down as an unconstitutional penalty; the fact of the matter is, however, that even when the Supreme Court is wrong, the government is bound to it’s interpretation of the law. So the way I look at it, Obamacare went into the Court an unconstitutional penalty, and left, along with the shredded remains of the Constitution, as a “constitutional” tax, as rewritten by our nation’s latest greatest legislator, John  Roberts.

So why doesn’t any of the media including Fox or WSJ, ask Obama why, if he really believes he didn’t sign a middle class tax hike into law, he doesn’t ask John Roberts to reconsider and declare his law unconstitutional? Why is it that the Obama administration is being allowed to get away with trying to have it both ways and the Republicans are being given a hard time? Even if we go with the media narrative, the we are left to conclude that Romney is an independent thinker who doesn’t just say what other Republicans tell him to, but the Democrats are much smarter because they are all on the same page with different Democrats, but each individual Democrat is not on the same page with him or herself! Baffling!

Madison in Tatters

The Supreme Court has, as I am sure many of you are aware, narrowly upheld Obamacare against constitutional challenge. Many say that this isn’t too big a deal, if we just elect Republicans to the Presidency and Senate, and hold the House, we can repeal it and it does not matter what the Court said because Congress has the power to undo what it has the power to do. This is incredibly shortsighted and fails to grasp that what the Court has done, in effect, is fundamentally alter the nature of the American government. Not merely this decision, but the recent decision to tell the States they cannot decide for themselves how to sentence juvenile murderers, and the decision to tell the States that they cannot maintain their sovereign status even if fully compliant with federal law. Moreover, the Court has just engaged in a clear case of violating the separation of powers among the co-equal branches of the federal government. Has there ever been a more clear case of legislating from the bench? I doubt it. Even the majority opinion concedes their reading of the individual mandate as a tax is not “straightforward” nor is it the most “natural” reading, but on the basis of “precedent” points out it doesn’t have to be an easy reading-if they can go out of their way to save a poorly written law, precedent says they should. The dissenting opinion rightly sees this as quite the stretch, as not only did the government, but also the majority, agree that it was not a tax “for purposes of” the Anti-Injunction Act (that is, the ruled it not a tax for the issue of legal standing) the law is clearly written so that this alleged “tax” is a penalty, a distinction that makes the whole difference as to whether the mandate passes muster. The issue is clearly expounded upon by the dissent. The majority’s opinion is baffling, beyond being wrong.

Truly this is the death Madison’s Federalist vision. Every element of restraint on the government’s power is now gone. The government may now undertake to compel any action of Americans under the power to tax-not merely health insurance, but to use an example given by majority opinion author Roberts, a mandate to purchase energy efficient windows, could be enforced by a “tax.” What the government cannot compel of people is unclear because frankly, it really has no limits any longer. Under penalty of “taxation” under penalty of criminal prosecution, anything may now be required of Americans by their own government. None of this is likely to ever be undone. Congresses will come and go, but in the modern era, Supreme Court cases are essentially forever.

On The Nature Of Campaign Arguments

By now many of you are aware that the Democrat party and the Obama campaign in particular are attacking the private sector experience of the Republican nominee. They are saying that the goal of working in private equity is to make profit, and not to create jobs, moreover, that Bain Capital destroyed jobs in a few cases to make profit for itself. They moreover assert that this is different from the job of a President, which they say is essentially to create jobs for everyone, presumably even if they must do so at a loss. Well, they are right about one thing: there is no similarity whatsoever between the job of the President of the United States and a business man. But it would be one thing if (as their defenses assert is the case, but clearly is not) they merely were asserting that being in private equity does not uniquely qualify a person to be President. In point of fact, the Democrat argument is that being in private equity (in fact, being in the private sector!) uniquely disqualifies a person from ever being President presumably unless they absolve themselves of their sin of profit seeking by attacking it while in the public sector, so surely the Republican nominee has paid his penance! But oh well. The nature of the arguments aside, it is certainly true that the Republicans are missing the most compelling argument for their nominee by incorrectly claiming that private sector experience uniquely qualifies one to be President (if that were true, I should expect to see the Republican party nominate Warren Buffet, but I doubt that he would run against his good friend and ideological ally Obama), indeed the only argument that can be made for the most far-left Republican nominee in over a century: he’s not Obama. That should be more than enough.

Free to Lose

It is truly a testament to how ridiculous anti-capitalists are that they are now complaining about companies both when they lose money and when they make “too much”. So JP Morgan loses a couple billion dollars, and there are calls for the government to increase regulations because, I don’t know, losing money is bad and therefore shouldn’t be legal. Really.

Okay, a remedial course in basic economics is a general good recommendation for any politician, since most badly need it: I don’t think even a “liberal” economist would dispute that the way Capitalism is supposed to work is that people will tend to act in such a way as to make more money, because loss of money is a disincentive to behavior that causes loses. It is literally logically absurd to suggest that the behavior that leads to loss of money needs to be punished by the government: the loss of money is the punishment for such behavior and results from no government regulation.

What is especially ridiculous about this is that anti-capitalist actions after the 2008 crash prevented the disincentive of failure (the ultimate loss, reserved for the most egregious of errant business practices) from actually taking place. They not only didn’t disapprove of business making mistakes by doing so, they actively encouraged businesses to make mistakes! The only thing consistent aspect of their behavior is that they have continually stood in opposition to whatever they think would happen without them. They either desperately want to be relevant, or just revel in disrupting the natural order of a free economy. Whether they are trying to do so or not, the real point is that distortions of the natural market signals leads to malinvestment, inefficiency, and failure. At which point the anti-capitalists pretend that they haven’t disrupted the economy, and blame the failure on a unregulated, free market, and proceed to intervene even further.

Of Vice (Presidents) and Men.

Hey everyone, I’m back. I had computer meltdown and school so I haven’t posted in some time.

Well, today we are going to be talking about who, in my opinion, should (or should not) be the Vice Presidential nominee of the Republican party. Can anyone repair the damage done by the decision of the establishment to nominate their worst candidate since Benjamin Harrison? Unfortunately, the answer to that last question is “Probably not” but some choices would be markedly worse than others.

By far the worst options come from among the United States Senate. While strictly speaking there is some logic to picking a Senator (namely that the role of the Vice President when the President is not very incapacitated or dead is to be, in effect, a “extra” Senator who normally has no voting role, save to break a tie) the fact of the matter is that if something were to happen to the President, the person who would assume the role would (in general) have no executive experience save observational experience from working alongside the President. That alone is reason enough to doubt the wisdom of a VP choice from the Senate, but not enough to absolutely preclude it. However, there are reasons why all Senators should be out of consideration. First, suppose a conservative Senator were chosen (especially a younger, newer member from oh, say, Florida) this would rob the people of that State of a conservative voice in the Senate to stand up to the President’s anti-capitalist agenda, and drastically shorten and probably end the political career of said VP pick. Alternately, suppose a leftist were chosen to court independent voters: this is redundant even putting aside that this logic doesn’t work in the first place. More than that, the Republicans must understand that they can’t take conservative votes for granted. The only positive to a leftist VP candidate is that when the ticket inevitably goes down in flames it should be impossible to deny the reality that leftist Republicans don’t win elections, and even that morbid prospect is hollow when you realize that the establishment has never acknowledged the overwhelming evidence that already exists. No, the conservative wing of the Republican party must survive this election to either rebuild whatever is left of America after another Obama term or for a primary challenge-I’ll be damned if I see any Presidential reelections any time soon. So the only real options are either a conservative Governor, or someone from outside of current government. Of these options, a Governor is the best direction to go. But one must be careful here: sometimes the fact that a Governor is outspoken and Republican is mistaken for making that Governor a conservative. If, for example, you are thinking of Republicans near the Mason-Dixon line, you may be thinking of a good choice, but only if you are on the south side of it. Ask yourself, “is this guy everyone thinks is so conservative actively trying to keep coal out of his state” if you are assuming the answer is no, as many of you who think you’ve got the perfect pick are, check again, because you are wrong. Please don’t misunderstand, some amount of leftism is to be expected of Northeast Republicans: if we want to have any power in the region we must tolerate that, at least for now. But what is necessary there should stay there. We can continue to like those Republicans if they stay where their beliefs pass for conservative. All of you fans of a certain Republican governor may find you don’t like him as much as you thought you did when he is fighting for capn’trade as VP.

Now, I think I have given enough clues for the astute to discern which of two highly talked about prospects for the VP slot I am specifically trying to argue desperately against. But at this point, there is a disturbingly high chance that either of those choices is going to be the pick. The future of America is very bleak for the coming five years and I am seriously considering talking to one of those crazy libertarian groups about their artificial islands where they intend to establish capitalist paradises. It seems highly preferable to continuing to live in a country governed by anti-capitalists.

For the Record

I haven’t been posting in a long time and I won’t be starting again for a while, but I have something I need to say. You may be hearing, if you’ve been listening to the radio lately (and perhaps TV?) ads by the Gingrich “super PAC” describing a site you should go to if you don’t like Romney. You might not have even known it was a Gingrich supporting ad; it doesn’t say so, but if you have been paying attention it’s not hard to figure out which organizations are supporting who. Anyway, the name of the site might sound familiar: it seems to have taken the same inspiration from a certain Reagan speech that inspired this blog’s name. Well I have to just say:

Don’t confuse the two sites! If you’ve gotten here because you were searching for the site but didn’t quite remember what it was called and this came up on the 200th or some Google page and you somehow missed the correct site…a who am I kidding? No chance you came across this site first is there?

Well, anyway, for the record, I am in no way affiliated with the Gingrich campaign or any campaign supporting PAC.

Oh, and in case people have been wondering, I haven’t been around because my computer suffered from a massive failure due to some serious malware problems. I had to salvage what I could and have it wiped clean. This took much longer than it should have because I couldn’t do it myself. Anyway, now that I have lost so much but got the computer running again…I am busy with school and stuff. So I will be returning in totality, eventually. But not for a while.