Saturday, April 23, 2016
So much for free speech
Here is a link to George Will's column "Scientific silencers on the left are trying to shut down climate skepticism".
A snippet.
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Authoritarianism, always latent in progressivism, is becoming explicit. Progressivism’s determination to regulate thought by regulating speech is apparent in the campaign by 16 states’ attorneys general and those of the District of Columbia and the Virgin Islands, none Republican, to criminalize skepticism about the supposedly “settled” conclusions of climate science.
Four core tenets of progressivism are: First, history has a destination. Second, progressives uniquely discern it. (Barack Obama frequently declares things to be on or opposed to “the right side of history.”) Third, politics should be democratic but peripheral to governance, which is the responsibility of experts scientifically administering the regulatory state. Fourth, enlightened progressives should enforce limits on speech (witness IRS suppression of conservative advocacy groups) in order to prevent thinking unhelpful to history’s progressive unfolding.
Progressivism is already enforced on campuses by restrictions on speech that might produce what progressives consider retrograde intellectual diversity. Now, from the so-called party of science, a.k.a. Democrats, comes a campaign to criminalize debate about science.
A snippet.
-------------------------------------
Authoritarianism, always latent in progressivism, is becoming explicit. Progressivism’s determination to regulate thought by regulating speech is apparent in the campaign by 16 states’ attorneys general and those of the District of Columbia and the Virgin Islands, none Republican, to criminalize skepticism about the supposedly “settled” conclusions of climate science.
Four core tenets of progressivism are: First, history has a destination. Second, progressives uniquely discern it. (Barack Obama frequently declares things to be on or opposed to “the right side of history.”) Third, politics should be democratic but peripheral to governance, which is the responsibility of experts scientifically administering the regulatory state. Fourth, enlightened progressives should enforce limits on speech (witness IRS suppression of conservative advocacy groups) in order to prevent thinking unhelpful to history’s progressive unfolding.
Progressivism is already enforced on campuses by restrictions on speech that might produce what progressives consider retrograde intellectual diversity. Now, from the so-called party of science, a.k.a. Democrats, comes a campaign to criminalize debate about science.
Capitalism is the great anti-pollutant
A column by Don Boudreaux puts industrial pollution in perspective - most of what you hear about it is verbal pollution.
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In July 1924, Calvin Coolidge Jr., the Presdient’s 16-year-old son, died of an infection from a toe blister he got playing tennis on the White House lawn. The bacteria that took young Calvin’s life is staphylococcus aureus, known as “staph.”
Bacteria are one of history’s most lethal contaminants. They’ve incapacitated and killed untold millions of people throughout the millennia, perhaps most famously 700 years ago when the Black Death plagued Europe, Asia, and Africa. This bacteria killed an estimated 20 percent of the world’s population in the 14th century. Yet, as young Coolidge’s fate shows, within the lifetimes of some still alive bacteria remained extraordinarily dangerous even to the wealthiest people on Earth.
No longer. While bacteria still cause some deaths especially in poor countries, those of us in market economies are largely protected from this terrible environmental pollutant.
Keep this happy fact in mind on Earth Day. Contrary to popular myth, the environment over the past 200 years has become less polluted and toxic for humans.
Were health-care products such as antibiotics, antibacterial ointments, and inexpensive clean and disposable bandages available 92 years ago, Calvin Coolidge Jr., would have escaped the bacterial pollution that killed him. Factories and vehicles used to produce and distribute these items use energy, and dispense waste. But capitalist production and consumption are not destroying a pristine Eden. Instead, capitalist production and consumption are replacing more immediate and more lethal forms of environmental pollution for less immediate and less lethal forms.
We denizens of modern market economies are today largely free not only of the filth of lethal staph infections, but also of other up-close and dangerous pollutants that our ancestors routinely endured, or died of. We sleep, in sturdy buildings, on beds that rest on hard floors beneath hard roofs. Our pre-industrial ancestors did not. Save for the tiny fraction of people in the nobility and clergy, nearly everyone slept in flimsy huts on dirt floors beneath thatched roofs. (Sometimes these dirt floors would be strewn with hay, thresh, to make them less unpleasant.)
Not only were thresh-strewn dirt floors obvious sources of regular up-close pollution of a sort that is unknown to a typical first-world person today, thatched roof themselves were ferments of filth. They kept out rain and cold less effectively than our modern dwellings. Worse, they were home to rats, mice, birds, spiders, hornets, and other animals, which would drop their own wastes onto the huts’ inhabitants. They were also highly flammable.
Of course these pre-industrial huts contained no running water or indoor plumbing. Daily bathing and other routines of personal hygiene that we moderns take for granted were largely unknown to most before the industrial revolution.
For heat in the winter families would bring farm animals into the huts, especially at night. To shield themselves from the droppings of these farm animals, each of these families would cut a trench in the floor across the width their hut. They’d sleep on the side of the trench opposite where the animals slept. Unfortunately, the trench did little to protect the family from whatever insects the animals brought into the huts with them.
With no refrigeration, pre-industrial people had great difficulty keeping their foods fresh and safe. This reality is one reason why starvation and malnutrition were far more common before the industrial revolution than they have been since.
Refrigeration is another means by which we modern folk protect ourselves from bacterial pollution. Other such means are the inexpensive canning of foods, disposable plastic wraps and bags, and household detergents and cleansers.
Each of these modern amenities, from the justly celebrated antibiotics in our medicine cabinets to the unjustly ignored hard roofs above our heads, is an anti-pollutant made possible only by capitalist innovation and methods of production and distribution.
To focus only on the kinds of pollution generated by free markets while being blind to the kinds of pollution eradicated by free markets is not only to miss half of the picture; it is to miss the most important half. All things considered, capitalism has eliminated far more and far worse pollutants than it has generated.
---------------------------------------
In July 1924, Calvin Coolidge Jr., the Presdient’s 16-year-old son, died of an infection from a toe blister he got playing tennis on the White House lawn. The bacteria that took young Calvin’s life is staphylococcus aureus, known as “staph.”
Bacteria are one of history’s most lethal contaminants. They’ve incapacitated and killed untold millions of people throughout the millennia, perhaps most famously 700 years ago when the Black Death plagued Europe, Asia, and Africa. This bacteria killed an estimated 20 percent of the world’s population in the 14th century. Yet, as young Coolidge’s fate shows, within the lifetimes of some still alive bacteria remained extraordinarily dangerous even to the wealthiest people on Earth.
No longer. While bacteria still cause some deaths especially in poor countries, those of us in market economies are largely protected from this terrible environmental pollutant.
Keep this happy fact in mind on Earth Day. Contrary to popular myth, the environment over the past 200 years has become less polluted and toxic for humans.
Were health-care products such as antibiotics, antibacterial ointments, and inexpensive clean and disposable bandages available 92 years ago, Calvin Coolidge Jr., would have escaped the bacterial pollution that killed him. Factories and vehicles used to produce and distribute these items use energy, and dispense waste. But capitalist production and consumption are not destroying a pristine Eden. Instead, capitalist production and consumption are replacing more immediate and more lethal forms of environmental pollution for less immediate and less lethal forms.
We denizens of modern market economies are today largely free not only of the filth of lethal staph infections, but also of other up-close and dangerous pollutants that our ancestors routinely endured, or died of. We sleep, in sturdy buildings, on beds that rest on hard floors beneath hard roofs. Our pre-industrial ancestors did not. Save for the tiny fraction of people in the nobility and clergy, nearly everyone slept in flimsy huts on dirt floors beneath thatched roofs. (Sometimes these dirt floors would be strewn with hay, thresh, to make them less unpleasant.)
Not only were thresh-strewn dirt floors obvious sources of regular up-close pollution of a sort that is unknown to a typical first-world person today, thatched roof themselves were ferments of filth. They kept out rain and cold less effectively than our modern dwellings. Worse, they were home to rats, mice, birds, spiders, hornets, and other animals, which would drop their own wastes onto the huts’ inhabitants. They were also highly flammable.
Of course these pre-industrial huts contained no running water or indoor plumbing. Daily bathing and other routines of personal hygiene that we moderns take for granted were largely unknown to most before the industrial revolution.
For heat in the winter families would bring farm animals into the huts, especially at night. To shield themselves from the droppings of these farm animals, each of these families would cut a trench in the floor across the width their hut. They’d sleep on the side of the trench opposite where the animals slept. Unfortunately, the trench did little to protect the family from whatever insects the animals brought into the huts with them.
With no refrigeration, pre-industrial people had great difficulty keeping their foods fresh and safe. This reality is one reason why starvation and malnutrition were far more common before the industrial revolution than they have been since.
Refrigeration is another means by which we modern folk protect ourselves from bacterial pollution. Other such means are the inexpensive canning of foods, disposable plastic wraps and bags, and household detergents and cleansers.
Each of these modern amenities, from the justly celebrated antibiotics in our medicine cabinets to the unjustly ignored hard roofs above our heads, is an anti-pollutant made possible only by capitalist innovation and methods of production and distribution.
To focus only on the kinds of pollution generated by free markets while being blind to the kinds of pollution eradicated by free markets is not only to miss half of the picture; it is to miss the most important half. All things considered, capitalism has eliminated far more and far worse pollutants than it has generated.
In
July 1924, Calvin Coolidge Jr., the Presdient’s 16-year-old son, died
of an infection from a toe blister he got playing tennis on the White
House lawn. The bacteria that took young Calvin’s life is staphylococcus
aureus, known as “staph.”
Bacteria are one of history’s most lethal contaminants. They’ve incapacitated and killed untold millions of people throughout the millennia, perhaps most famously 700 years ago when the Black Death plagued Europe, Asia, and Africa. This bacteria killed an estimated 20 percent of the world’s population in the 14th century. Yet, as young Coolidge’s fate shows, within the lifetimes of some still alive bacteria remained extraordinarily dangerous even to the wealthiest people on Earth.
No longer. While bacteria still cause some deaths especially in poor countries, those of us in market economies are largely protected from this terrible environmental pollutant.
Keep this happy fact in mind on Earth Day. Contrary to popular myth, the environment over the past 200 years has become less polluted and toxic for humans.
Were health-care products such as antibiotics, antibacterial ointments, and inexpensive clean and disposable bandages available 92 years ago, Calvin Coolidge Jr., would have escaped the bacterial pollution that killed him. Factories and vehicles used to produce and distribute these items use energy, and dispense waste. But capitalist production and consumption are not destroying a pristine Eden. Instead, capitalist production and consumption are replacing more immediate and more lethal forms of environmental pollution for less immediate and less lethal forms.
We denizens of modern market economies are today largely free not only of the filth of lethal staph infections, but also of other up-close and dangerous pollutants that our ancestors routinely endured, or died of. We sleep, in sturdy buildings, on beds that rest on hard floors beneath hard roofs. Our pre-industrial ancestors did not. Save for the tiny fraction of people in the nobility and clergy, nearly everyone slept in flimsy huts on dirt floors beneath thatched roofs. (Sometimes these dirt floors would be strewn with hay, thresh, to make them less unpleasant.)
Not only were thresh-strewn dirt floors obvious sources of regular up-close pollution of a sort that is unknown to a typical first-world person today, thatched roof themselves were ferments of filth. They kept out rain and cold less effectively than our modern dwellings. Worse, they were home to rats, mice, birds, spiders, hornets, and other animals, which would drop their own wastes onto the huts’ inhabitants. They were also highly flammable.
Of course these pre-industrial huts contained no running water or indoor plumbing. Daily bathing and other routines of personal hygiene that we moderns take for granted were largely unknown to most before the industrial revolution.
For heat in the winter families would bring farm animals into the huts, especially at night. To shield themselves from the droppings of these farm animals, each of these families would cut a trench in the floor across the width their hut. They’d sleep on the side of the trench opposite where the animals slept. Unfortunately, the trench did little to protect the family from whatever insects the animals brought into the huts with them.
With no refrigeration, pre-industrial people had great difficulty keeping their foods fresh and safe. This reality is one reason why starvation and malnutrition were far more common before the industrial revolution than they have been since.
Refrigeration is another means by which we modern folk protect ourselves from bacterial pollution. Other such means are the inexpensive canning of foods, disposable plastic wraps and bags, and household detergents and cleansers.
Each of these modern amenities, from the justly celebrated antibiotics in our medicine cabinets to the unjustly ignored hard roofs above our heads, is an anti-pollutant made possible only by capitalist innovation and methods of production and distribution.
To focus only on the kinds of pollution generated by free markets while being blind to the kinds of pollution eradicated by free markets is not only to miss half of the picture; it is to miss the most important half. All things considered, capitalism has eliminated far more and far worse pollutants than it has generated.
- See more at: http://www.unionleader.com/Another-View-Donald-Boudreaux-Capitalism-is-the-great-anti-pollutant#sthash.TgxAgTJn.dpuf
Bacteria are one of history’s most lethal contaminants. They’ve incapacitated and killed untold millions of people throughout the millennia, perhaps most famously 700 years ago when the Black Death plagued Europe, Asia, and Africa. This bacteria killed an estimated 20 percent of the world’s population in the 14th century. Yet, as young Coolidge’s fate shows, within the lifetimes of some still alive bacteria remained extraordinarily dangerous even to the wealthiest people on Earth.
No longer. While bacteria still cause some deaths especially in poor countries, those of us in market economies are largely protected from this terrible environmental pollutant.
Keep this happy fact in mind on Earth Day. Contrary to popular myth, the environment over the past 200 years has become less polluted and toxic for humans.
Were health-care products such as antibiotics, antibacterial ointments, and inexpensive clean and disposable bandages available 92 years ago, Calvin Coolidge Jr., would have escaped the bacterial pollution that killed him. Factories and vehicles used to produce and distribute these items use energy, and dispense waste. But capitalist production and consumption are not destroying a pristine Eden. Instead, capitalist production and consumption are replacing more immediate and more lethal forms of environmental pollution for less immediate and less lethal forms.
We denizens of modern market economies are today largely free not only of the filth of lethal staph infections, but also of other up-close and dangerous pollutants that our ancestors routinely endured, or died of. We sleep, in sturdy buildings, on beds that rest on hard floors beneath hard roofs. Our pre-industrial ancestors did not. Save for the tiny fraction of people in the nobility and clergy, nearly everyone slept in flimsy huts on dirt floors beneath thatched roofs. (Sometimes these dirt floors would be strewn with hay, thresh, to make them less unpleasant.)
Not only were thresh-strewn dirt floors obvious sources of regular up-close pollution of a sort that is unknown to a typical first-world person today, thatched roof themselves were ferments of filth. They kept out rain and cold less effectively than our modern dwellings. Worse, they were home to rats, mice, birds, spiders, hornets, and other animals, which would drop their own wastes onto the huts’ inhabitants. They were also highly flammable.
Of course these pre-industrial huts contained no running water or indoor plumbing. Daily bathing and other routines of personal hygiene that we moderns take for granted were largely unknown to most before the industrial revolution.
For heat in the winter families would bring farm animals into the huts, especially at night. To shield themselves from the droppings of these farm animals, each of these families would cut a trench in the floor across the width their hut. They’d sleep on the side of the trench opposite where the animals slept. Unfortunately, the trench did little to protect the family from whatever insects the animals brought into the huts with them.
With no refrigeration, pre-industrial people had great difficulty keeping their foods fresh and safe. This reality is one reason why starvation and malnutrition were far more common before the industrial revolution than they have been since.
Refrigeration is another means by which we modern folk protect ourselves from bacterial pollution. Other such means are the inexpensive canning of foods, disposable plastic wraps and bags, and household detergents and cleansers.
Each of these modern amenities, from the justly celebrated antibiotics in our medicine cabinets to the unjustly ignored hard roofs above our heads, is an anti-pollutant made possible only by capitalist innovation and methods of production and distribution.
To focus only on the kinds of pollution generated by free markets while being blind to the kinds of pollution eradicated by free markets is not only to miss half of the picture; it is to miss the most important half. All things considered, capitalism has eliminated far more and far worse pollutants than it has generated.
- See more at: http://www.unionleader.com/Another-View-Donald-Boudreaux-Capitalism-is-the-great-anti-pollutant#sthash.TgxAgTJn.dpuf
In
July 1924, Calvin Coolidge Jr., the Presdient’s 16-year-old son, died
of an infection from a toe blister he got playing tennis on the White
House lawn. The bacteria that took young Calvin’s life is staphylococcus
aureus, known as “staph.”
Bacteria are one of history’s most lethal contaminants. They’ve incapacitated and killed untold millions of people throughout the millennia, perhaps most famously 700 years ago when the Black Death plagued Europe, Asia, and Africa. This bacteria killed an estimated 20 percent of the world’s population in the 14th century. Yet, as young Coolidge’s fate shows, within the lifetimes of some still alive bacteria remained extraordinarily dangerous even to the wealthiest people on Earth.
No longer. While bacteria still cause some deaths especially in poor countries, those of us in market economies are largely protected from this terrible environmental pollutant.
Keep this happy fact in mind on Earth Day. Contrary to popular myth, the environment over the past 200 years has become less polluted and toxic for humans.
Were health-care products such as antibiotics, antibacterial ointments, and inexpensive clean and disposable bandages available 92 years ago, Calvin Coolidge Jr., would have escaped the bacterial pollution that killed him. Factories and vehicles used to produce and distribute these items use energy, and dispense waste. But capitalist production and consumption are not destroying a pristine Eden. Instead, capitalist production and consumption are replacing more immediate and more lethal forms of environmental pollution for less immediate and less lethal forms.
We denizens of modern market economies are today largely free not only of the filth of lethal staph infections, but also of other up-close and dangerous pollutants that our ancestors routinely endured, or died of. We sleep, in sturdy buildings, on beds that rest on hard floors beneath hard roofs. Our pre-industrial ancestors did not. Save for the tiny fraction of people in the nobility and clergy, nearly everyone slept in flimsy huts on dirt floors beneath thatched roofs. (Sometimes these dirt floors would be strewn with hay, thresh, to make them less unpleasant.)
Not only were thresh-strewn dirt floors obvious sources of regular up-close pollution of a sort that is unknown to a typical first-world person today, thatched roof themselves were ferments of filth. They kept out rain and cold less effectively than our modern dwellings. Worse, they were home to rats, mice, birds, spiders, hornets, and other animals, which would drop their own wastes onto the huts’ inhabitants. They were also highly flammable.
Of course these pre-industrial huts contained no running water or indoor plumbing. Daily bathing and other routines of personal hygiene that we moderns take for granted were largely unknown to most before the industrial revolution.
For heat in the winter families would bring farm animals into the huts, especially at night. To shield themselves from the droppings of these farm animals, each of these families would cut a trench in the floor across the width their hut. They’d sleep on the side of the trench opposite where the animals slept. Unfortunately, the trench did little to protect the family from whatever insects the animals brought into the huts with them.
With no refrigeration, pre-industrial people had great difficulty keeping their foods fresh and safe. This reality is one reason why starvation and malnutrition were far more common before the industrial revolution than they have been since.
Refrigeration is another means by which we modern folk protect ourselves from bacterial pollution. Other such means are the inexpensive canning of foods, disposable plastic wraps and bags, and household detergents and cleansers.
Each of these modern amenities, from the justly celebrated antibiotics in our medicine cabinets to the unjustly ignored hard roofs above our heads, is an anti-pollutant made possible only by capitalist innovation and methods of production and distribution.
To focus only on the kinds of pollution generated by free markets while being blind to the kinds of pollution eradicated by free markets is not only to miss half of the picture; it is to miss the most important half. All things considered, capitalism has eliminated far more and far worse pollutants than it has generated.
- See more at: http://www.unionleader.com/Another-View-Donald-Boudreaux-Capitalism-is-the-great-anti-pollutant#sthash.TgxAgTJn.dpuf
Bacteria are one of history’s most lethal contaminants. They’ve incapacitated and killed untold millions of people throughout the millennia, perhaps most famously 700 years ago when the Black Death plagued Europe, Asia, and Africa. This bacteria killed an estimated 20 percent of the world’s population in the 14th century. Yet, as young Coolidge’s fate shows, within the lifetimes of some still alive bacteria remained extraordinarily dangerous even to the wealthiest people on Earth.
No longer. While bacteria still cause some deaths especially in poor countries, those of us in market economies are largely protected from this terrible environmental pollutant.
Keep this happy fact in mind on Earth Day. Contrary to popular myth, the environment over the past 200 years has become less polluted and toxic for humans.
Were health-care products such as antibiotics, antibacterial ointments, and inexpensive clean and disposable bandages available 92 years ago, Calvin Coolidge Jr., would have escaped the bacterial pollution that killed him. Factories and vehicles used to produce and distribute these items use energy, and dispense waste. But capitalist production and consumption are not destroying a pristine Eden. Instead, capitalist production and consumption are replacing more immediate and more lethal forms of environmental pollution for less immediate and less lethal forms.
We denizens of modern market economies are today largely free not only of the filth of lethal staph infections, but also of other up-close and dangerous pollutants that our ancestors routinely endured, or died of. We sleep, in sturdy buildings, on beds that rest on hard floors beneath hard roofs. Our pre-industrial ancestors did not. Save for the tiny fraction of people in the nobility and clergy, nearly everyone slept in flimsy huts on dirt floors beneath thatched roofs. (Sometimes these dirt floors would be strewn with hay, thresh, to make them less unpleasant.)
Not only were thresh-strewn dirt floors obvious sources of regular up-close pollution of a sort that is unknown to a typical first-world person today, thatched roof themselves were ferments of filth. They kept out rain and cold less effectively than our modern dwellings. Worse, they were home to rats, mice, birds, spiders, hornets, and other animals, which would drop their own wastes onto the huts’ inhabitants. They were also highly flammable.
Of course these pre-industrial huts contained no running water or indoor plumbing. Daily bathing and other routines of personal hygiene that we moderns take for granted were largely unknown to most before the industrial revolution.
For heat in the winter families would bring farm animals into the huts, especially at night. To shield themselves from the droppings of these farm animals, each of these families would cut a trench in the floor across the width their hut. They’d sleep on the side of the trench opposite where the animals slept. Unfortunately, the trench did little to protect the family from whatever insects the animals brought into the huts with them.
With no refrigeration, pre-industrial people had great difficulty keeping their foods fresh and safe. This reality is one reason why starvation and malnutrition were far more common before the industrial revolution than they have been since.
Refrigeration is another means by which we modern folk protect ourselves from bacterial pollution. Other such means are the inexpensive canning of foods, disposable plastic wraps and bags, and household detergents and cleansers.
Each of these modern amenities, from the justly celebrated antibiotics in our medicine cabinets to the unjustly ignored hard roofs above our heads, is an anti-pollutant made possible only by capitalist innovation and methods of production and distribution.
To focus only on the kinds of pollution generated by free markets while being blind to the kinds of pollution eradicated by free markets is not only to miss half of the picture; it is to miss the most important half. All things considered, capitalism has eliminated far more and far worse pollutants than it has generated.
- See more at: http://www.unionleader.com/Another-View-Donald-Boudreaux-Capitalism-is-the-great-anti-pollutant#sthash.TgxAgTJn.dpuf
Freedom
From Thomas Sowell's 1980 book "Knowledge and Decisions".
Freedom is . . . above all, the right of ordinary people to find elbow room for themselves and a refuge from the rampaging presumptions of their "betters."
Freedom is . . . above all, the right of ordinary people to find elbow room for themselves and a refuge from the rampaging presumptions of their "betters."
Sunday, April 17, 2016
The Middle Class is Shrinking - Hooray!
The discussions in the media about how poor off the middle class is now than it was before typically ignore a variety of factors that imply the opposite conclusion.
One common media "shocker" is that the middle class has shrunk, i.e., that the percentage of households in the middle class has declined. Here is a snippet from themoneyillusion.com that suggests that you cannot trust the media's statistics.
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The Financial Times has a diagram showing that less than 50% of Americans are now viewed as “middle income”. Elsewhere I’ve pointed out that almost 90% of Americans self-identify as middle class, so these stories are highly misleading. Here I’d like to point to another problem with the analysis:
Do you see the problem? The main reason that the middle income group has shrunk is that more and more Americans have incomes above the (arbitrary) cut-off point, and fewer and fewer are either “middle income” or poor.
The middle class is shrinking because we are becoming better off.
Tuesday, April 12, 2016
An Example of Government Over-Regulation in Housing
Here is an example from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development of Government regulation in housing that illustrates the inability of Government to apply common sense, fairness, or logic in regulating our lives.
You are deluded if you think that we live in a free country.
A snippett.
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Across the United States, African Americans and Hispanics are arrested, convicted and incarcerated at rates disproportionate to their share of the general population. Consequently, criminal records-based barriers to housing are likely to have a disproportionate impact on minority home seekers. While having a criminal record is not a protected characteristic under the Fair Housing Act, criminal history-based restrictions on housing 0pportunities violate the Act if, without justification, their burden falls more often on renters or other housing market participants of one race or national origin over another (i.e., discriminatory effects liability). Additionally, intentional discrimination in violation of the Act occurs if a housing provider treats individuals with comparable criminal history differently because of their race, national origin or other protected characteristic (i.e., disparate treatment liability).
A housing provider violates the Fair Housing Act when the provider’s policy or practice has an unjustified discriminatory effect, even when the provider had no intent to discriminate. Under this standard, a facially-neutral policy or practice that has a discriminatory effect violates the Act if it is not supported by a legally sufficient justification. Thus, where a policy or practice that restricts access to housing on the basis of criminal history has a disparate impact on individuals of a particular race, national origin, or
other protected class, such policy or practice is unlawful under the Fair Housing Act if it is not necessary to serve a substantial, legitimate, nondiscriminatory interest of the housing provider, or if such interest could be served by another practice that has a less discriminatory effect.
But housing providers that apply a policy or practice that excludes persons with prior convictions must still be able to prove that such policy or practice is necessary to achieve a substantial, legitimate, nondiscriminatory interest. A housing provider that imposes a blanket prohibition on any person with any conviction record – no matter when the conviction occurred, what the underlying conduct entailed, or what the convicted person has done since then – will be unable to meet this burden.
You are deluded if you think that we live in a free country.
A snippett.
-------------------------------
Across the United States, African Americans and Hispanics are arrested, convicted and incarcerated at rates disproportionate to their share of the general population. Consequently, criminal records-based barriers to housing are likely to have a disproportionate impact on minority home seekers. While having a criminal record is not a protected characteristic under the Fair Housing Act, criminal history-based restrictions on housing 0pportunities violate the Act if, without justification, their burden falls more often on renters or other housing market participants of one race or national origin over another (i.e., discriminatory effects liability). Additionally, intentional discrimination in violation of the Act occurs if a housing provider treats individuals with comparable criminal history differently because of their race, national origin or other protected characteristic (i.e., disparate treatment liability).
A housing provider violates the Fair Housing Act when the provider’s policy or practice has an unjustified discriminatory effect, even when the provider had no intent to discriminate. Under this standard, a facially-neutral policy or practice that has a discriminatory effect violates the Act if it is not supported by a legally sufficient justification. Thus, where a policy or practice that restricts access to housing on the basis of criminal history has a disparate impact on individuals of a particular race, national origin, or
other protected class, such policy or practice is unlawful under the Fair Housing Act if it is not necessary to serve a substantial, legitimate, nondiscriminatory interest of the housing provider, or if such interest could be served by another practice that has a less discriminatory effect.
But housing providers that apply a policy or practice that excludes persons with prior convictions must still be able to prove that such policy or practice is necessary to achieve a substantial, legitimate, nondiscriminatory interest. A housing provider that imposes a blanket prohibition on any person with any conviction record – no matter when the conviction occurred, what the underlying conduct entailed, or what the convicted person has done since then – will be unable to meet this burden.
Free Trade vs. Protectionism
Robert Higgs has it right.
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Nearly everyone recognizes that murder, robbery, burglary, assault, battery, extortion, and fraud are wrong, and a strong argument may be made that if a government is to exist, it should occupy itself in preventing these wrongs and punishing those who perpetrate them.
But if I am simply buying from or selling to someone outside the national borders, what possible grounds may be advanced in justice to warrant the use of state force against me for doing so? To say that people should be punished merely for trading freely, by means of taxes or prohibitions, and threatened with prison terms if they violate prohibitionist laws, is an outrageous moral proposal, wholly apart from its economic counterproductivity. The "protectionists" and the state acting on their behalf are the true criminals here, not those who peacefully buy from and sell to whatever trading partners they choose.
Yet certain politicians and millions of their supporters shamelessly and publicly proclaim their desire for such blatantly immoral and genuinely criminal action by the government. What next? Will these same "protectionists" support killing off their competitors or herding them into concentration camps?
----------------------------
Nearly everyone recognizes that murder, robbery, burglary, assault, battery, extortion, and fraud are wrong, and a strong argument may be made that if a government is to exist, it should occupy itself in preventing these wrongs and punishing those who perpetrate them.
But if I am simply buying from or selling to someone outside the national borders, what possible grounds may be advanced in justice to warrant the use of state force against me for doing so? To say that people should be punished merely for trading freely, by means of taxes or prohibitions, and threatened with prison terms if they violate prohibitionist laws, is an outrageous moral proposal, wholly apart from its economic counterproductivity. The "protectionists" and the state acting on their behalf are the true criminals here, not those who peacefully buy from and sell to whatever trading partners they choose.
Yet certain politicians and millions of their supporters shamelessly and publicly proclaim their desire for such blatantly immoral and genuinely criminal action by the government. What next? Will these same "protectionists" support killing off their competitors or herding them into concentration camps?
Monday, April 04, 2016
Don Boudreaux's Open Letter to Donald Trump
Don makes points that I have made repeatedly - but writes better than I do.
The same or similar points apply to the other presidential candidates.
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11 February 2011
Mr. Donald Trump
New York, NY
Dear Mr. Trump:
Congratulations on your successful talk at the recent CPAC gathering. Please, though, indulge me as I ask you a few questions.
You promise that, as U.S. President, you won’t raise taxes. But you also promise to obstruct trade between Americans and the Chinese, presumably by raising tariffs. Because tariffs are simply taxes on imports, you can’t avoid raising taxes if you raise tariffs. So will you or will you not raise taxes?
You advocate, not free trade, but “fair trade.” Can you define “fair trade”? If I voluntarily buy from Mr. Lee and Mr. Lee voluntarily sells to me, can such an exchange ever be unfair? Both parties to the exchange presumably gain, while the only people who lose are Mr. Lee’s competitors. Given your claim that the billions of dollars worth of profits that you’ve earned are evidence of your own remarkable “intelligence and abilities,” surely you don’t wish to tilt the playing field in favor of domestic producers, for to do so would be to give these producers unfair advantages in winning the patronage of American consumers. Any profits they make under such unfair circumstances wouldn’t be evidence of intelligence and ability but, rather, of political connections and monopoly power. Wouldn’t such protection from competition be unfair?
You assert that “We are rebuilding China because we buy their products.” What do the Chinese do with the dollars that we use to buy their products? Do they burn these dollars or otherwise not use them commercially? (If so, is that bad?) If the Chinese do not burn their dollars, then they (or other foreigners with whom the Chinese deal) must use these dollars either to buy American products or to invest in the U.S. economy (or both). To the extent that foreigners buy our products, by your reckoning they must be “rebuilding” America. To the extent that foreigners invest in America, they are – what? Do such investments harm America? Does foreign investment in America not help to “rebuild” America? If not, why not?
I’m interested to know your answers.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Professor of Economics
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030
The same or similar points apply to the other presidential candidates.
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11 February 2011
Mr. Donald Trump
New York, NY
Dear Mr. Trump:
Congratulations on your successful talk at the recent CPAC gathering. Please, though, indulge me as I ask you a few questions.
You promise that, as U.S. President, you won’t raise taxes. But you also promise to obstruct trade between Americans and the Chinese, presumably by raising tariffs. Because tariffs are simply taxes on imports, you can’t avoid raising taxes if you raise tariffs. So will you or will you not raise taxes?
You advocate, not free trade, but “fair trade.” Can you define “fair trade”? If I voluntarily buy from Mr. Lee and Mr. Lee voluntarily sells to me, can such an exchange ever be unfair? Both parties to the exchange presumably gain, while the only people who lose are Mr. Lee’s competitors. Given your claim that the billions of dollars worth of profits that you’ve earned are evidence of your own remarkable “intelligence and abilities,” surely you don’t wish to tilt the playing field in favor of domestic producers, for to do so would be to give these producers unfair advantages in winning the patronage of American consumers. Any profits they make under such unfair circumstances wouldn’t be evidence of intelligence and ability but, rather, of political connections and monopoly power. Wouldn’t such protection from competition be unfair?
You assert that “We are rebuilding China because we buy their products.” What do the Chinese do with the dollars that we use to buy their products? Do they burn these dollars or otherwise not use them commercially? (If so, is that bad?) If the Chinese do not burn their dollars, then they (or other foreigners with whom the Chinese deal) must use these dollars either to buy American products or to invest in the U.S. economy (or both). To the extent that foreigners buy our products, by your reckoning they must be “rebuilding” America. To the extent that foreigners invest in America, they are – what? Do such investments harm America? Does foreign investment in America not help to “rebuild” America? If not, why not?
I’m interested to know your answers.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Professor of Economics
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030
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