Here is WW's column.
WW is Professor of Economics at George Mason University.
WW is on target.
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President Donald Trump reportedly asked why the U.S. is “having all these people from shithole countries come here.” I think he could have used better language, but it’s a question that should be asked and answered. I have a few questions for my fellow Americans to consider. How many Norwegians have illegally entered our nation, committed crimes and burdened our prison and welfare systems? I might ask the same question about Finnish, Swedish, Welsh, Icelanders, Greenlanders and New Zealanders. The bulk of our immigration problem is with people who enter our country criminally from Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean, Africa and the Middle East. It’s illegal immigrants from those countries who have committed crimes and burdened our criminal justice and welfare systems. A large number of immigrants who are here illegally — perhaps the majority are law-abiding in other respects — have fled oppressive, brutal and corrupt regimes to seek a better life in America.
In the debate about illegal immigration, there are questions that are not explicitly asked but can be answered with a straight “yes” or “no”: Does everyone in the world have a right to live in the U.S.? Do Americans have a right to decide who and under what conditions a person may enter our country? Should we permit foreigners landing at our airports to ignore U.S. border control laws just as some ignore our laws at our southern border? The reason those questions are not asked is that one would be deemed an idiot for saying that everyone in the world has a right to live in our country, that Americans don’t have a right to decide who lives in our country and that foreigners landing at our airports have a right to just ignore U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents.
Immigration today, even when legal, is different from the immigration of yesteryear. People who came here in the 19th century and most of the 20th century came here to learn our language, learn our customs and become Americans. Years ago, there was a guarantee that immigrants came here to work, because there was no welfare system; they worked, begged or starved. Today, there is no such assurance. Because of our welfare state, immigrants can come here and live off taxpaying Americans.
There is another difference between today and yesteryear. Today, Americans are taught multiculturalism throughout their primary, secondary and college education. They are taught that one culture is no better or worse than another. To believe otherwise is criticized at best as Eurocentrism and at worst as racism. As a result, some immigrant groups seek to bring to our country the cultural values whose failures have led to the poverty, corruption and human rights violations in their home countries that caused them to flee. As the fallout from President Trump’s indelicate remarks demonstrates, too many Americans are afraid and unwilling to ask which immigrant groups have become a burden to our nation and which have made a contribution to the greatness of America.
Very unfortunate for our nation is that we have political groups that seek to use illegal immigration for their own benefit. They’ve created sanctuary cities and states that openly harbor criminals — people who have broken our laws. The whole concept of sanctuary cities is to give aid, comfort and sympathy to people who have broken our laws. Supporters want to prevent them from having to hide and live in fear of discovery. I’d ask whether, for the sake of equality before the law, we should apply the sanctuary concept to Americans who have broken other laws, such as robbers and tax evaders.
We should not fall prey to people who criticize our efforts to combat illegal immigration and who pompously say, “We’re a nation of immigrants!” The debate is not over immigration. The debate is over illegal immigration. My sentiments on immigrants who are here legally and who want to become Americans are expressed by the sentiments in Emma Lazarus’ poem “The New Colossus,” which is on a plaque inside the Statue of Liberty and in part says, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”
Tuesday, January 30, 2018
Trump is growing the economy - Krugman is wrong again
Richard Epstein gets it right on the economy and Paul Krugman.
Richard A. Epstein, the Peter and Kirsten Bedford Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, is the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law, New York University Law School, and a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago.
Igniting economic growth, as the Trump administration’s policies are doing, is not as straightforward as it sounds because it is easy to make spectacular mistakes in judgment if caught in the grip of Keynesian economic theory. A day after Barack Obama’s 2008 election, the Dow plunged by almost 500 points. On the day of Trump’s election, the economist Paul Krugman wrote with his legendary overconfidence: “If the question is when markets will recover, a first-pass answer is never.” The Federal Reserve, he added, could not cut rates again to forestall the anticipated recession—and the Trump administration would only make matters worse because it was “ignorant of economic policy.” But the Dow soared by 250 points.
Krugman’s basic mistake is that he wants to use monetary and fiscal policy to shift income and wealth away from investment to consumption, or indeed vice versa. The theory is that only government stimulation can make up for the chronic shortage of private investment, given the general lack of confidence in market institutions. This approach falsely assumes that some omniscient policymaker knows best how to make and implement a collective decision about the appropriate balance between investment and consumption. But there are several errors with this way of thinking.
First, this approach ignores the uncertainty that comes when a government agency makes a policy decision that is later reversed by a change in leadership, such as when Obama succeeded George W. Bush. The inevitable discontinuities in public policy complicate the efforts of private firms to engage in long-term planning. The resulting uncertainty permeates all market transactions.
Second, the Krugman approach insists that major investment decisions in new technologies, roads, bridges and tunnels should be made collectively, not separately, even though each individual has far greater knowledge of his or her personal preferences, which can, if need be, implemented through professional advisors. There is no dangerous collective action problem from bottom-up decisions that needs to be countered by some supposed government expert. Even, perhaps especially, on macroeconomic affairs, policymakers should heed the Hayekian injunction that dispersed sources of private knowledge will outperform centralized diktats.
Third, many Keynesians belittle the importance of low taxation as a means to drive economic growth. In truth, all income, capital gains, and excise taxes take a chunk out of the gains from a voluntary exchange, which the government then gives to some third party. Taxation thus slows down the frequency and velocity of these transactions, resulting in an immediate reduction in output, which can be offset socially only if the taxes in question bolster the sensible infrastructure needed to support these transactions—not just more government pork. The initial round of corporate cuts have already produced the desired effect by spurring repatriation of cash held overseas by American corporations, stimulating foreign investment in search of greater profits, and resulting in wage and employment boosts as companies hire more personnel to fund their anticipated expansions. One can quibble about the size of these effects, but not about their overall direction.
Fourth, the Krugmans of the world overlook the importance of systematic deregulation in the overall scheme of things. Taxation and regulation should be understood as close substitutes for each other. Thus, regulations that stabilize business transactions, like those requiring certain transactions that are binding to be in writing and publicly recorded, will generally advance commerce. But other forms of regulation will block and distort private transactions without producing any offsetting gains. Changes in the regulatory climate are quickly reflected in overall stock market performance.
Many claim that Trump’s policies stem from his frustration with government intervention into his business affairs. But if that’s the case, so what? Private market actors care little about his personal motivation—what they care about is not having to brace themselves for another numbing round of regulation. Their planning horizons become longer and clearer, allowing them to shift resources from lobbying and compliance work into productive activities. These early stock market gains will be infectious, as others join the parade. Ironically, Keynes was right that “animal spirits”—his vivid term for collective social expectations—really matter. The recent climb in GDP, after years of the Obama administration treating slow growth as the new normal, suggests that regulatory policy, not technological limitations, were the greatest obstacle to growth during those lean years.
The contrast between the Obama and the Trump administration is illustrated by some key policy shifts with respect to key government agencies. Administrative discretion in the Obama years led to aggressive enforcement of statutes and regulations in banking, civil rights, education, environment, finance, labor, pharmaceuticals, and much more. None of these various sector initiatives can individually have the same global reach as a change in tax or monetary policy. But their cumulative effect does have a huge impact on the overall behavior of private firms.
The Trump administration’s regulatory cutbacks reinforce a global positive perception that no government inspector will come knocking on a firm’s door, demanding to examine documents and interrogate key employees. It takes no Congressional action for the Trump administration to ramp down executive enforcement of existing laws and regulations, just as it took no Congressional authorization to ratchet up enforcement under Obama. It is, therefore, welcome that Trump officials like Betsy DeVos have not only rescinded some of the worst Obama administration guidelines, such as those concerning Title IX sexual harassment cases, but also have insisted on using a fuller notice and comment system to draft new regulations. And better still—foolish efforts, such as Energy Secretary Rick Perry’s attempt to subsidize coal, have been killed off, in this instance by a Federal Energy Commission that knew better.
This overall approach pays large dividends. To take one example—on a topic on which I have worked as an industry consultant—compare the Obama administration’s willful obstruction of the approval of the Dakota Access Pipeline with the Trump administration’s approach. The permitting process lets government administrators either speed up or shut down a particular activity. In December 2016, the Army Corps of Engineers had approved the Dakota Access Pipeline, only for the Obama administration to flout the rule of law by overriding the Corps’ technical judgment for nakedly political reasons, ordering a full scale environmental impact statement that could easily have taken years to complete, knowing full well that the billions of dollars already invested in the nearly completed pipeline could quickly go to waste. To its great credit, the Trump administration reversed that decision early on by Executive Order, and allowed the standard approval process to run its course without political intervention.
A year later, the results are clear to see. The pipeline is up and running without a hitch. Its hefty direct revenues are only part of the overall picture. In addition, the pipeline’s operations have already generated huge environmental benefits by cutting dramatically the amount of oil shipped by rail and truck. Using dedicated facilities in controlled environments to ship crude oil is far safer than transporting it in these mixed-use modes of transportation. Secure and reliable shipment also induces drilling companies to increase their levels of production, knowing that their crude oil can go to market. The higher volume of activity increases the demand for both labor and equipment as new facilities open up in North Dakota. At the opposite end of the distribution system, cheaper and more reliable energy sources trigger increases in activities in industries too diffuse to catalogue. All the while, the higher profits and wages create additional tax revenues that, wisely used, can improve the physical and social infrastructure that support these activities.
In sum, the decision to open up an essential pipeline facility generates social gains that go far beyond the direct gains to the owners of the venture. Under the Obama administration, the same process worked in reverse. The decision to block pipeline approval necessarily produced economic stagnation while increasing the level of environmental risk by blocking new and safer technology.
Given all of this, today’s positive growth cycle should be sustainable to the extent that it rests on productivity gains. The so-called Keynesian multiplier was thought to be a justification for ramping up public expenditures, many of which were inefficient. But that multiplier effect works far better in the private sector, where there is more assurance that any initial venture will spur new ventures that will in turn generate more positive returns. The past year has resulted in a fundamental transformation in business expectations. But we should remember that it is only those policies that brought about prosperity that can maintain it.
Richard A. Epstein, the Peter and Kirsten Bedford Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, is the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law, New York University Law School, and a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago.
It is sad to see a brilliant intellect, like Krugman, succumb to an emotional agenda.
-----------------------------------------
I discovered my genuine confidence in the sustainability of the current economic growth cycle when I recommended to my 27-year-old Uber driver that he invest some portion of his wages in a diversified index fund. Although the stock market will surely ease off its current pace, it nevertheless should prove far more profitable than standard money market funds with their puny returns. The good news is that the current trend likely will not fizzle out anytime soon thanks to several key factors, including lower taxes and deregulation.Igniting economic growth, as the Trump administration’s policies are doing, is not as straightforward as it sounds because it is easy to make spectacular mistakes in judgment if caught in the grip of Keynesian economic theory. A day after Barack Obama’s 2008 election, the Dow plunged by almost 500 points. On the day of Trump’s election, the economist Paul Krugman wrote with his legendary overconfidence: “If the question is when markets will recover, a first-pass answer is never.” The Federal Reserve, he added, could not cut rates again to forestall the anticipated recession—and the Trump administration would only make matters worse because it was “ignorant of economic policy.” But the Dow soared by 250 points.
Krugman’s basic mistake is that he wants to use monetary and fiscal policy to shift income and wealth away from investment to consumption, or indeed vice versa. The theory is that only government stimulation can make up for the chronic shortage of private investment, given the general lack of confidence in market institutions. This approach falsely assumes that some omniscient policymaker knows best how to make and implement a collective decision about the appropriate balance between investment and consumption. But there are several errors with this way of thinking.
First, this approach ignores the uncertainty that comes when a government agency makes a policy decision that is later reversed by a change in leadership, such as when Obama succeeded George W. Bush. The inevitable discontinuities in public policy complicate the efforts of private firms to engage in long-term planning. The resulting uncertainty permeates all market transactions.
Second, the Krugman approach insists that major investment decisions in new technologies, roads, bridges and tunnels should be made collectively, not separately, even though each individual has far greater knowledge of his or her personal preferences, which can, if need be, implemented through professional advisors. There is no dangerous collective action problem from bottom-up decisions that needs to be countered by some supposed government expert. Even, perhaps especially, on macroeconomic affairs, policymakers should heed the Hayekian injunction that dispersed sources of private knowledge will outperform centralized diktats.
Third, many Keynesians belittle the importance of low taxation as a means to drive economic growth. In truth, all income, capital gains, and excise taxes take a chunk out of the gains from a voluntary exchange, which the government then gives to some third party. Taxation thus slows down the frequency and velocity of these transactions, resulting in an immediate reduction in output, which can be offset socially only if the taxes in question bolster the sensible infrastructure needed to support these transactions—not just more government pork. The initial round of corporate cuts have already produced the desired effect by spurring repatriation of cash held overseas by American corporations, stimulating foreign investment in search of greater profits, and resulting in wage and employment boosts as companies hire more personnel to fund their anticipated expansions. One can quibble about the size of these effects, but not about their overall direction.
Fourth, the Krugmans of the world overlook the importance of systematic deregulation in the overall scheme of things. Taxation and regulation should be understood as close substitutes for each other. Thus, regulations that stabilize business transactions, like those requiring certain transactions that are binding to be in writing and publicly recorded, will generally advance commerce. But other forms of regulation will block and distort private transactions without producing any offsetting gains. Changes in the regulatory climate are quickly reflected in overall stock market performance.
Many claim that Trump’s policies stem from his frustration with government intervention into his business affairs. But if that’s the case, so what? Private market actors care little about his personal motivation—what they care about is not having to brace themselves for another numbing round of regulation. Their planning horizons become longer and clearer, allowing them to shift resources from lobbying and compliance work into productive activities. These early stock market gains will be infectious, as others join the parade. Ironically, Keynes was right that “animal spirits”—his vivid term for collective social expectations—really matter. The recent climb in GDP, after years of the Obama administration treating slow growth as the new normal, suggests that regulatory policy, not technological limitations, were the greatest obstacle to growth during those lean years.
The contrast between the Obama and the Trump administration is illustrated by some key policy shifts with respect to key government agencies. Administrative discretion in the Obama years led to aggressive enforcement of statutes and regulations in banking, civil rights, education, environment, finance, labor, pharmaceuticals, and much more. None of these various sector initiatives can individually have the same global reach as a change in tax or monetary policy. But their cumulative effect does have a huge impact on the overall behavior of private firms.
The Trump administration’s regulatory cutbacks reinforce a global positive perception that no government inspector will come knocking on a firm’s door, demanding to examine documents and interrogate key employees. It takes no Congressional action for the Trump administration to ramp down executive enforcement of existing laws and regulations, just as it took no Congressional authorization to ratchet up enforcement under Obama. It is, therefore, welcome that Trump officials like Betsy DeVos have not only rescinded some of the worst Obama administration guidelines, such as those concerning Title IX sexual harassment cases, but also have insisted on using a fuller notice and comment system to draft new regulations. And better still—foolish efforts, such as Energy Secretary Rick Perry’s attempt to subsidize coal, have been killed off, in this instance by a Federal Energy Commission that knew better.
This overall approach pays large dividends. To take one example—on a topic on which I have worked as an industry consultant—compare the Obama administration’s willful obstruction of the approval of the Dakota Access Pipeline with the Trump administration’s approach. The permitting process lets government administrators either speed up or shut down a particular activity. In December 2016, the Army Corps of Engineers had approved the Dakota Access Pipeline, only for the Obama administration to flout the rule of law by overriding the Corps’ technical judgment for nakedly political reasons, ordering a full scale environmental impact statement that could easily have taken years to complete, knowing full well that the billions of dollars already invested in the nearly completed pipeline could quickly go to waste. To its great credit, the Trump administration reversed that decision early on by Executive Order, and allowed the standard approval process to run its course without political intervention.
A year later, the results are clear to see. The pipeline is up and running without a hitch. Its hefty direct revenues are only part of the overall picture. In addition, the pipeline’s operations have already generated huge environmental benefits by cutting dramatically the amount of oil shipped by rail and truck. Using dedicated facilities in controlled environments to ship crude oil is far safer than transporting it in these mixed-use modes of transportation. Secure and reliable shipment also induces drilling companies to increase their levels of production, knowing that their crude oil can go to market. The higher volume of activity increases the demand for both labor and equipment as new facilities open up in North Dakota. At the opposite end of the distribution system, cheaper and more reliable energy sources trigger increases in activities in industries too diffuse to catalogue. All the while, the higher profits and wages create additional tax revenues that, wisely used, can improve the physical and social infrastructure that support these activities.
In sum, the decision to open up an essential pipeline facility generates social gains that go far beyond the direct gains to the owners of the venture. Under the Obama administration, the same process worked in reverse. The decision to block pipeline approval necessarily produced economic stagnation while increasing the level of environmental risk by blocking new and safer technology.
Given all of this, today’s positive growth cycle should be sustainable to the extent that it rests on productivity gains. The so-called Keynesian multiplier was thought to be a justification for ramping up public expenditures, many of which were inefficient. But that multiplier effect works far better in the private sector, where there is more assurance that any initial venture will spur new ventures that will in turn generate more positive returns. The past year has resulted in a fundamental transformation in business expectations. But we should remember that it is only those policies that brought about prosperity that can maintain it.
Monday, January 29, 2018
Climate vs. Climate Alarm
Here is a link to a paper by Richard S. Lindzen Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
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I hope that what has been shown demonstrates that increasing CO2 and greenhouse warming are not at all indicative of alarm, and that there is ample evidence that the system is not particularly sensitive. Moreover, the high sensitivity of some current models would render the stability of the earth over 4.5 billion years dubious. Engineers have long recognized this and generally avoid feedback factors greater than about 0.1.
RL's paper provides a useful perspective that the climate alarmists ignore.
Here are a few excerpts.
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The public perception of the climate problem is somewhat schizophrenic. On the one hand, the problem is perceived to be so complex that it cannot be approached without massive computer programs. On the other hand, the physics is claimed to be so basic that the dire conclusions commonly presented are considered to be self-evident.
Consistent with this situation, climate has become a field where there is a distinct separation of theory and modeling. Commonly, in fluid mechanics, theory provides useful constraints and tests when applied to modeling results. This has been notably absent in current work on climate.
In this talk, I will try to show how the greenhouse effect actually works using relatively simple basic concepts. We will see that the greenhouse effect, itself, presents little cause for alarm from increasing levels of CO2 since the effect is modest. Concern is associated with the matter of feedbacks that, in models, lead to amplified responses to CO2. Considerations of basic physics (as opposed to simply intercomparing models) suggests that current concerns are likely to be exaggerated. A variety of independent arguments all lead to the same conclusion.
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I hope that what has been shown demonstrates that increasing CO2 and greenhouse warming are not at all indicative of alarm, and that there is ample evidence that the system is not particularly sensitive. Moreover, the high sensitivity of some current models would render the stability of the earth over 4.5 billion years dubious. Engineers have long recognized this and generally avoid feedback factors greater than about 0.1.
Gun free zones kill people, including schoolchildren
John Lott and Thomas Massie in the New York Daily News.
--------------------------------------------
Before knowing almost anything about last Tuesday's mass public shooting at a high school in Kentucky, gun control advocates were once again calling for more gun control. The horrible attack at the Marshall County High School killed two 15-year-olds and 14 others wounded.
One thing is certain: Neither changes in background checks nor assault weapons bans would have prevented this attack. The killer was already too young to even qualify to go through a background check and he didn't use that type of weapon.
Within hours of the attack, before we even knew how the shooter had obtained the gun, former Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords declared the lesson to be that we "must strengthen our gun laws."
One of us, Congressman Massie from Kentucky, has proposed legislation that takes a different approach. The "Safe Students Act" would repeal parts of the federal criminal code that prohibit the possession of a firearm in a school zone. That would make it easier for adults with concealed handgun permits to defend themselves and students.
There seems to be a particular fear of allowing concealed handguns on school property. For example, last year, Kentucky Center for School Safety executive director Jon Akers said that his state's proposed school carry bill "scares me." He argued: "The only people who should be carrying guns at a school are law enforcement officers."
The problem is that stationing police in all schools is incredibly costly. Only about four out of every 10 public schools have at least one safety officer who carries a gun all or part of the time. Police are very important in the fight against crime, but stopping mass public shootings is an incredibly difficult job. An officer's uniform is like a neon sign saying, "Shoot me first."
Concealed carry comes with the benefit that attackers won't know who is armed, and won't know who they need to attack first.
Allowing teachers and staff to carry concealed handguns is nothing new in the United States, and there haven't been any problems. Prior to the early 1990s, there were no state laws specifically restricting concealed carry on K-12 property.
Twenty-five states now allow teachers and staff to carry guns, though the rules vary. Alabama, Utah, New Hampshire, and parts of Oregon allow teachers and staff to carry. Other states leave it to the discretion of the superintendent or school board. In Ohio, at least 40 school districts allow teachers to carry. Unfortunately, current federal law makes it ambiguous that even if a state law specifically allows someone with a concealed handgun permit to carry on school property, they may still be subject to federal prosecution. Massie has run into this concern from people across the country.
"From what I've seen in Utah, [school insurance] rates have not gone up because of guns being allowed," says Curt Oda, former president of the Utah Association of Independent Insurance Agents. Nor do other states appear to have seen increased insurance costs.
The only accidental discharge by a permit holder on K-12 property occurred in Utah in 2014 and resulted in only a very minor injury. This doesn't count off-hours firearms training on school grounds.
Some people fear that permit holders won't respond well, and perhaps accidentally shoot an innocent person. However, police have never accidentally shot a permit holder. Nor has a permit holder ever shot a bystander. To the contrary, they have recently stopped dozens of would-be mass public shootings in malls, churches, schools, universities and towns.
The term "gun-free zone" is what should really make people nervous, since police virtually always arrive after an attack has occurred.
Since 1950, all but six mass public shootings in America have occurred where citizens are banned from carrying guns. In Europe, which has suffered three of the four worst K-12 school shootings in history, every single mass public shooting has occurred in a gun-free zone. Unsurprisingly, killers try to avoid armed resistance.
Killers consciously select defenseless targets. Just look at the statements by the attackers in the 2015 Charleston, S.C., church shooting and the 2012 theater shooting in Aurora, Colorado. Last year, an ISIS sympathizer planned to massacre a church in Detroit. The FBI recorded him saying, "It's easy, and a lot of people go there. Plus people are not allowed to carry guns in church."
Would you put a "Gun-Free Zone" sign on your home? Likely not. We also should not do so on our schools. We need to protect the children and teachers in our country, not advertise their vulnerability.
--------------------------------------------
Before knowing almost anything about last Tuesday's mass public shooting at a high school in Kentucky, gun control advocates were once again calling for more gun control. The horrible attack at the Marshall County High School killed two 15-year-olds and 14 others wounded.
One thing is certain: Neither changes in background checks nor assault weapons bans would have prevented this attack. The killer was already too young to even qualify to go through a background check and he didn't use that type of weapon.
Within hours of the attack, before we even knew how the shooter had obtained the gun, former Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords declared the lesson to be that we "must strengthen our gun laws."
One of us, Congressman Massie from Kentucky, has proposed legislation that takes a different approach. The "Safe Students Act" would repeal parts of the federal criminal code that prohibit the possession of a firearm in a school zone. That would make it easier for adults with concealed handgun permits to defend themselves and students.
There seems to be a particular fear of allowing concealed handguns on school property. For example, last year, Kentucky Center for School Safety executive director Jon Akers said that his state's proposed school carry bill "scares me." He argued: "The only people who should be carrying guns at a school are law enforcement officers."
The problem is that stationing police in all schools is incredibly costly. Only about four out of every 10 public schools have at least one safety officer who carries a gun all or part of the time. Police are very important in the fight against crime, but stopping mass public shootings is an incredibly difficult job. An officer's uniform is like a neon sign saying, "Shoot me first."
Concealed carry comes with the benefit that attackers won't know who is armed, and won't know who they need to attack first.
Allowing teachers and staff to carry concealed handguns is nothing new in the United States, and there haven't been any problems. Prior to the early 1990s, there were no state laws specifically restricting concealed carry on K-12 property.
Twenty-five states now allow teachers and staff to carry guns, though the rules vary. Alabama, Utah, New Hampshire, and parts of Oregon allow teachers and staff to carry. Other states leave it to the discretion of the superintendent or school board. In Ohio, at least 40 school districts allow teachers to carry. Unfortunately, current federal law makes it ambiguous that even if a state law specifically allows someone with a concealed handgun permit to carry on school property, they may still be subject to federal prosecution. Massie has run into this concern from people across the country.
"From what I've seen in Utah, [school insurance] rates have not gone up because of guns being allowed," says Curt Oda, former president of the Utah Association of Independent Insurance Agents. Nor do other states appear to have seen increased insurance costs.
The only accidental discharge by a permit holder on K-12 property occurred in Utah in 2014 and resulted in only a very minor injury. This doesn't count off-hours firearms training on school grounds.
Some people fear that permit holders won't respond well, and perhaps accidentally shoot an innocent person. However, police have never accidentally shot a permit holder. Nor has a permit holder ever shot a bystander. To the contrary, they have recently stopped dozens of would-be mass public shootings in malls, churches, schools, universities and towns.
The term "gun-free zone" is what should really make people nervous, since police virtually always arrive after an attack has occurred.
Since 1950, all but six mass public shootings in America have occurred where citizens are banned from carrying guns. In Europe, which has suffered three of the four worst K-12 school shootings in history, every single mass public shooting has occurred in a gun-free zone. Unsurprisingly, killers try to avoid armed resistance.
Killers consciously select defenseless targets. Just look at the statements by the attackers in the 2015 Charleston, S.C., church shooting and the 2012 theater shooting in Aurora, Colorado. Last year, an ISIS sympathizer planned to massacre a church in Detroit. The FBI recorded him saying, "It's easy, and a lot of people go there. Plus people are not allowed to carry guns in church."
Would you put a "Gun-Free Zone" sign on your home? Likely not. We also should not do so on our schools. We need to protect the children and teachers in our country, not advertise their vulnerability.
So, what's the story on Black unemployment?
Black unemployment is at its lowest level since about about 2000. Trump takes credit for this. His opponents point out that it has been declining since about 2010 and credit Obama.
Here is the Black unemployment record.
It looks like Trump's opponents have a case.
Here is the Black labor force participation rate for the same period.
Black labor force participation declined from 2000 to about 2014 and then began to rise in about 2015. That story favors Trump's supporters.
Which of the records tells the story correctly? Most likely the Black labor force participation rate, because the Black unemployment rate does not reflect people who have given up (officially) looking for work, which understates the true unemployment rate.
factcheck.org missed this tidbit.
Here is the Black unemployment record.
It looks like Trump's opponents have a case.
Here is the Black labor force participation rate for the same period.
Black labor force participation declined from 2000 to about 2014 and then began to rise in about 2015. That story favors Trump's supporters.
Which of the records tells the story correctly? Most likely the Black labor force participation rate, because the Black unemployment rate does not reflect people who have given up (officially) looking for work, which understates the true unemployment rate.
factcheck.org missed this tidbit.
Saturday, January 27, 2018
Government costs you money - to protect special interests
An example of how Government costs you money to protect special interests.
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After 10 years running Sungevity, I recently completed a tour visiting solar companies in and around the U.S., Europe, Asia and Australia. I am pleased to report the residential solar industry is thriving around the world -- everywhere except right here in the U.S.
The reason for this is startlingly simple: American consumers are being charged over two times more for solar than is the average consumer overseas. That’s USD $10,000 more for a typical 5-kilowatt residential solar system. The panels are the same -- so what on earth is going on?
The answer: red tape.
Here in the land of technology leadership and free-market enterprise, American regulation has more than doubled the cost of solar.
The regulation comes in three un-American guises: permitting, code and tariffs -- and together they are killing the U.S. residential market. Modernizing these regulations, primarily at the local and state level, is the greatest opportunity for U.S. solar policy in 2018.
How protectionism hurts more than it helps
Here is George Will in the Washington Post.
GW is mostly on target.
Fettering trade prevents people from trading among themselves to their mutual advantage and replaces it with trading that lessens the mutual advantage.
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Like Horatius at the bridge, or the boy who stood on the burning deck whence all but he had fled, or the Dutch boy who saved the city by putting his finger in the dike — pick your analogous heroism — the Trump administration acted this last week to stanch the flood of foreign-made washing machines that are being imported because Americans want them. The stanching will be accomplished by quotas and stiff (up to 50 percent) tariffs, which are taxes collected at the border and paid by U.S. consumers. Americans also will pay higher prices for washing machines made domestically by Whirlpool, which sought this protectionism, from which it instantly profited: In Monday’s after-hours trading, Whirlpool’s stock rose 3 percent. When protectionism is rampant, no bad deed goes unrewarded.
The washing machine drama about “putting (a faction of) America first” cannot be industrial policy — government rather than the market picking winners and losers. And it cannot be government redistribution of wealth. And it cannot be crony capitalism. It cannot be those things, because Republicans oppose those things and control policymaking.
Next, and soon, will come a government decision about the problem, as our protectors see it, of menacingly inexpensive steel imports, concerning which the administration is pretending to deliberate. The charade of thinking will end with the imposition of yet more steel tariffs/taxes, joining the 149 (some as high as 266 percent) already targeting many of the more than 110 countries and territories from which the United States imports steel. Twenty-four of the existing duties target Chinese steel, which is less than 3 percent of U.S. steel imports. America’s supposedly embattled steel industry is producing more than it did during World War II, and every year in this decade more than 10 percent of U.S.-made steel goods has been exported.
Imposition of the new tariffs/taxes will be done solely by the president, exercising discretion granted to presidents by various laws, including one passed in December 1974, when Congress evidently thought that Watergate, then fresh in memory, had taught that presidents were not sufficiently imperial. Then, as now, Congress seemed to think it had more important things to do than set trade policy.
In his new book “Clashing Over Commerce,” Dartmouth economist Douglas A. Irwin explains that the steel industry was a powerful advocate of protectionism until the 1892 opening of Minnesota’s Mesabi iron ore range, which gave steel producers cost advantages that turned their attention to export markets. The industry’s trade problems began when, in July 1959, the United Steelworkers shut domestic steel production down for 116 days — the longest industrial strike in U.S. history — and steel-consuming industries found alternative suppliers and materials. Desperate management purchased labor peace with increased wages that by the 1980s were 95 percent higher than the average in manufacturing, and soon U.S. steel was priced out of foreign markets. Intermittently since then, the industry has sought and received protection.
In 2002, President George W. Bush imposed tariffs that caused steel prices to surge, costing more jobs in steel-using industries than then existed in steel-making. (Today there are upward of seven times more steel-using than steel-making jobs.) The tariffs cost $400,000 a year for every steel-making job saved, and cost $4 billion in lost wages. Especially hard hit in 2002 were three states — Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania — that in 2016 voted for today’s protectionist president.
In June, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who became a billionaire by plunging into the steel industry simultaneously with Bush offering it succor, said that “since we are the world’s largest importer of steel, we’re the main victim of the overcapacity” in the global steel industry. This puzzled George Mason University’s Don Boudreaux, who wondered “just how our being the world’s largest buyer of steel makes us victims of the alleged overcapacity.”
Fomenting spurious anxieties about national security is the first refuge of rent-seeking scoundrels who tart up their protectionism as patriotism when they inveigle government into lining their pockets with money extracted from their fellow citizens. Sugar producers are ludicrously protected in the name of “food security.” Most U.S. steel imports come from four important allies: Canada, South Korea, Mexico and Brazil. The coming steel tariffs/taxes will mean that defense dollars will buy fewer ships, tanks and armored vehicles, just as the trillion infrastructure dollars the administration talks about will buy fewer bridges and other steel-using projects. As Henry George said, with protectionism a nation does to itself in peacetime what an enemy tries to do to it in war.
GW is mostly on target.
Fettering trade prevents people from trading among themselves to their mutual advantage and replaces it with trading that lessens the mutual advantage.
-------------------------------------------------
Like Horatius at the bridge, or the boy who stood on the burning deck whence all but he had fled, or the Dutch boy who saved the city by putting his finger in the dike — pick your analogous heroism — the Trump administration acted this last week to stanch the flood of foreign-made washing machines that are being imported because Americans want them. The stanching will be accomplished by quotas and stiff (up to 50 percent) tariffs, which are taxes collected at the border and paid by U.S. consumers. Americans also will pay higher prices for washing machines made domestically by Whirlpool, which sought this protectionism, from which it instantly profited: In Monday’s after-hours trading, Whirlpool’s stock rose 3 percent. When protectionism is rampant, no bad deed goes unrewarded.
The washing machine drama about “putting (a faction of) America first” cannot be industrial policy — government rather than the market picking winners and losers. And it cannot be government redistribution of wealth. And it cannot be crony capitalism. It cannot be those things, because Republicans oppose those things and control policymaking.
Next, and soon, will come a government decision about the problem, as our protectors see it, of menacingly inexpensive steel imports, concerning which the administration is pretending to deliberate. The charade of thinking will end with the imposition of yet more steel tariffs/taxes, joining the 149 (some as high as 266 percent) already targeting many of the more than 110 countries and territories from which the United States imports steel. Twenty-four of the existing duties target Chinese steel, which is less than 3 percent of U.S. steel imports. America’s supposedly embattled steel industry is producing more than it did during World War II, and every year in this decade more than 10 percent of U.S.-made steel goods has been exported.
Imposition of the new tariffs/taxes will be done solely by the president, exercising discretion granted to presidents by various laws, including one passed in December 1974, when Congress evidently thought that Watergate, then fresh in memory, had taught that presidents were not sufficiently imperial. Then, as now, Congress seemed to think it had more important things to do than set trade policy.
In his new book “Clashing Over Commerce,” Dartmouth economist Douglas A. Irwin explains that the steel industry was a powerful advocate of protectionism until the 1892 opening of Minnesota’s Mesabi iron ore range, which gave steel producers cost advantages that turned their attention to export markets. The industry’s trade problems began when, in July 1959, the United Steelworkers shut domestic steel production down for 116 days — the longest industrial strike in U.S. history — and steel-consuming industries found alternative suppliers and materials. Desperate management purchased labor peace with increased wages that by the 1980s were 95 percent higher than the average in manufacturing, and soon U.S. steel was priced out of foreign markets. Intermittently since then, the industry has sought and received protection.
In 2002, President George W. Bush imposed tariffs that caused steel prices to surge, costing more jobs in steel-using industries than then existed in steel-making. (Today there are upward of seven times more steel-using than steel-making jobs.) The tariffs cost $400,000 a year for every steel-making job saved, and cost $4 billion in lost wages. Especially hard hit in 2002 were three states — Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania — that in 2016 voted for today’s protectionist president.
In June, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who became a billionaire by plunging into the steel industry simultaneously with Bush offering it succor, said that “since we are the world’s largest importer of steel, we’re the main victim of the overcapacity” in the global steel industry. This puzzled George Mason University’s Don Boudreaux, who wondered “just how our being the world’s largest buyer of steel makes us victims of the alleged overcapacity.”
Fomenting spurious anxieties about national security is the first refuge of rent-seeking scoundrels who tart up their protectionism as patriotism when they inveigle government into lining their pockets with money extracted from their fellow citizens. Sugar producers are ludicrously protected in the name of “food security.” Most U.S. steel imports come from four important allies: Canada, South Korea, Mexico and Brazil. The coming steel tariffs/taxes will mean that defense dollars will buy fewer ships, tanks and armored vehicles, just as the trillion infrastructure dollars the administration talks about will buy fewer bridges and other steel-using projects. As Henry George said, with protectionism a nation does to itself in peacetime what an enemy tries to do to it in war.
Thursday, January 25, 2018
Sadly, the Constitution is only a piece of paper
Judge Andrew Napolitano at Townhall.com
AN is on target. The Constitution is in shreds.
----------------------------------------------
During the past three weeks, Congress passed and President Donald Trump signed into law vast new powers for the NSA and the FBI to spy on innocent Americans and selectively to pass on to law enforcement the fruits of that spying.
Those fruits can now lawfully include all fiber-optic data transmitted to or in the United States, such as digital recordings of all landline and mobile telephone calls and copies in real time of all text messages and emails and banking, medical and legal records electronically stored or transmitted.
All this bulk surveillance had come about because the National Security Agency convinced federal judges meeting in secret that they should authorize it. Now Congress and the president have made it the law of the land.
This enactment came about notwithstanding the guarantee of the right to privacy -- the right to be left alone -- articulated in the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution and elsewhere. Though the surveillance expansion passed the Senate by just one vote, it apparently marks a public policy determination that the Constitution can be ignored or evaded by majority consent whenever it poses an obstacle to the government's purposes.
The language of the Fourth Amendment is an intentional obstacle to the government in deference to human dignity and personal liberty. It reads: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
This specific language was expressly written to prevent the bulk suspicionless surveillance that the British government had used against the colonists. British courts in London issued general warrants to British soldiers in America, authorizing them to search wherever they wished and seize whatever they found. These warrants were not based on probable cause, and they did not describe the place to be searched or the people or things to be seized.
The Colonial reaction to the British use of general warrants was to take up arms and fight the American Revolution.
Last week, Congress and the president chose to ignore our history and the human values underlying the right to privacy. Those values recognize that the individual pursuit of happiness is best actualized in an atmosphere free from the government's prying eyes. Stated differently, the authors and ratifiers of the Fourth Amendment recognized that a person is not fully happy when being watched all the time by the government.
Yet the constitutional values and timeless lessons of history were not only rejected by Congress but also rejected in ignorance, and the ignorance was knowingly facilitated by the members of the House Intelligence Committee.
Here is the back story.
The recent behavior of the leadership of the House Intelligence Committee constitutes incompetence at best and misconduct in office at worst. The leadership sat on knowledge of NSA and FBI surveillance abuses that some committee members have characterized as "career-ending," "jaw-dropping" and "KGB-like," while both houses of Congress -- ignorant of what their 22 House Intelligence Committee colleagues knew -- voted to expand NSA and FBI surveillance authorities.
Stated differently, the 22 members of the committee knowingly kept from their 500 or so congressional colleagues incendiary information that, had it been revealed in a timely manner, would certainly have affected the outcome of the vote -- particularly in the Senate, where a switch of just one vote would have prevented passage of this expansion of bulk surveillance authorization.
Why were all members of Congress but the 22 on this committee kept in the dark about NSA and FBI lawlessness? Why didn't the committee reveal to Congress what it claims is too shocking to discuss publicly before Congress voted on surveillance expansion? Where is the outrage that this information was known to a few in the House and kept from the remainder of Congress while it ignorantly voted to assault the right to privacy?
The new law places too much power in the hands of folks who even the drafters of it have now acknowledged are inherently unworthy of this trust. I argued last week that House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes was up to something when he publicly attacked the trustworthiness of the NSA and FBI folks whose secret powers he later inexplicably voted to expand. Now we know what he was talking about.
What can be done about this?
The House Intelligence Committee should publicly reveal the contents of its four-page report that summarizes the NSA and FBI abuses. If that fails, a courageous member of the committee should go to the floor of the House -- as Sen. Dianne Feinstein once took the CIA torture report to the floor of the Senate -- and reveal not just the four-page report but also the underlying data upon which the report is based. Members of Congress enjoy full immunity for anything said on the House or Senate floor, yet personal courage is often in short supply.
But there is a bigger picture here than House Intelligence Committee members sitting on valuable intelligence and keeping it from their colleagues. The American people are entitled to know how the government in whose hands we have reposed the Constitution for safekeeping has used and abused the powers we have given to it. The American people are also entitled to know who abused power and who knew about it and remained silent.
Does the government work for us, or do we work for the government? In theory, of course, the government works for us. In practice, it treats us as children. Why do we accept this from a government to which we have consented? Democracy dies in darkness. So does personal freedom.
AN is on target. The Constitution is in shreds.
----------------------------------------------
During the past three weeks, Congress passed and President Donald Trump signed into law vast new powers for the NSA and the FBI to spy on innocent Americans and selectively to pass on to law enforcement the fruits of that spying.
Those fruits can now lawfully include all fiber-optic data transmitted to or in the United States, such as digital recordings of all landline and mobile telephone calls and copies in real time of all text messages and emails and banking, medical and legal records electronically stored or transmitted.
All this bulk surveillance had come about because the National Security Agency convinced federal judges meeting in secret that they should authorize it. Now Congress and the president have made it the law of the land.
This enactment came about notwithstanding the guarantee of the right to privacy -- the right to be left alone -- articulated in the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution and elsewhere. Though the surveillance expansion passed the Senate by just one vote, it apparently marks a public policy determination that the Constitution can be ignored or evaded by majority consent whenever it poses an obstacle to the government's purposes.
The language of the Fourth Amendment is an intentional obstacle to the government in deference to human dignity and personal liberty. It reads: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
This specific language was expressly written to prevent the bulk suspicionless surveillance that the British government had used against the colonists. British courts in London issued general warrants to British soldiers in America, authorizing them to search wherever they wished and seize whatever they found. These warrants were not based on probable cause, and they did not describe the place to be searched or the people or things to be seized.
The Colonial reaction to the British use of general warrants was to take up arms and fight the American Revolution.
Last week, Congress and the president chose to ignore our history and the human values underlying the right to privacy. Those values recognize that the individual pursuit of happiness is best actualized in an atmosphere free from the government's prying eyes. Stated differently, the authors and ratifiers of the Fourth Amendment recognized that a person is not fully happy when being watched all the time by the government.
Yet the constitutional values and timeless lessons of history were not only rejected by Congress but also rejected in ignorance, and the ignorance was knowingly facilitated by the members of the House Intelligence Committee.
Here is the back story.
The recent behavior of the leadership of the House Intelligence Committee constitutes incompetence at best and misconduct in office at worst. The leadership sat on knowledge of NSA and FBI surveillance abuses that some committee members have characterized as "career-ending," "jaw-dropping" and "KGB-like," while both houses of Congress -- ignorant of what their 22 House Intelligence Committee colleagues knew -- voted to expand NSA and FBI surveillance authorities.
Stated differently, the 22 members of the committee knowingly kept from their 500 or so congressional colleagues incendiary information that, had it been revealed in a timely manner, would certainly have affected the outcome of the vote -- particularly in the Senate, where a switch of just one vote would have prevented passage of this expansion of bulk surveillance authorization.
Why were all members of Congress but the 22 on this committee kept in the dark about NSA and FBI lawlessness? Why didn't the committee reveal to Congress what it claims is too shocking to discuss publicly before Congress voted on surveillance expansion? Where is the outrage that this information was known to a few in the House and kept from the remainder of Congress while it ignorantly voted to assault the right to privacy?
The new law places too much power in the hands of folks who even the drafters of it have now acknowledged are inherently unworthy of this trust. I argued last week that House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes was up to something when he publicly attacked the trustworthiness of the NSA and FBI folks whose secret powers he later inexplicably voted to expand. Now we know what he was talking about.
What can be done about this?
The House Intelligence Committee should publicly reveal the contents of its four-page report that summarizes the NSA and FBI abuses. If that fails, a courageous member of the committee should go to the floor of the House -- as Sen. Dianne Feinstein once took the CIA torture report to the floor of the Senate -- and reveal not just the four-page report but also the underlying data upon which the report is based. Members of Congress enjoy full immunity for anything said on the House or Senate floor, yet personal courage is often in short supply.
But there is a bigger picture here than House Intelligence Committee members sitting on valuable intelligence and keeping it from their colleagues. The American people are entitled to know how the government in whose hands we have reposed the Constitution for safekeeping has used and abused the powers we have given to it. The American people are also entitled to know who abused power and who knew about it and remained silent.
Does the government work for us, or do we work for the government? In theory, of course, the government works for us. In practice, it treats us as children. Why do we accept this from a government to which we have consented? Democracy dies in darkness. So does personal freedom.
Tuesday, January 23, 2018
A lesson on trade
Here is a letter to Trump from Don Boudreaux.
DB's economic analysis is correct, but misses some mitigating factors. For example:
It is unlikely that Trump fails to understand trade - having attended Wharton. However, most voters fail to understand trade, so you can't get elected by telling them the truth about trade.
It is desirable to maintain productive capacity in the US because you may not always have access to foreign productive capacity. For example, is it a good idea to have foreign aircraft manufacturers undersell US aircraft manufacturers to the point that the latter cannot produce the best military aircraft?
"unfair" trade directed against US firms benefits US citizens at the expense of foreigners (assuming the US Government does not interfere). For example, if foreigners sell us their washing machines for free, we benefit because we get something for nothing and the foreigners get nothing for something. The dislocation of domestic washing machine workers to other jobs is painful, but does not change that fact. The problem is that foreigners will be able to take advantage of us after they have destroyed our domestic washing machine capability. There is a case to be made for Trump's demand for "fair" trade that academics typically ignore.
Here is the letter.
-------------------------------------------
23 January 2018
Mr. Donald Trump
1600 Pennsylvania Ave., NW
Washington, DC 20500
Mr. Trump:
I wasn’t joking yesterday when I wrote to you that my washing machine is broken and that a repairman was to come today to fix it. Well, the repairman came. He tells me that the difficulty and monetary cost of fixing the machine are prohibitively high. He recommends buying a new washer.
So, a new washer will be bought.
Because of your punitive tax on Americans who buy new washers assembled outside of the United States or Canada, the price that I’ll pay for the new washer will be higher than it would have been without this punitive tax on me and other Americans who buy new washers. (After all, raising the prices of new washers sold in the U.S. is the whole point of your tariff.) And of course the prices of new washers rose the moment the tariff was announced: when announced, the scarcity of new washers in the U.S. immediately rose relative to demand.
I don’t know – no one does – the exact amount by which the price to be paid for the new washer will be higher than the price that would have been paid in the absence of your punitive tax on buyers of new washers. But, again, that price will certainly be higher. This fact means, in turn, that some money that I would have spent or invested elsewhere will now not be spent or invested. I cannot say just where, but simple arithmetic reveals the truth of my claim. Perhaps a restaurant meal that I would have bought will go unbought as I dine in one evening instead of dining out. Perhaps one night I’ll watch an older movie on Netflix rather than go to see a new movie at a theater. More likely, in my case, my savings account will have fewer dollars in it than otherwise – which means that my bank will have fewer dollars to lend to someone who wants to buy a new Ford pick-up truck, or lend to an entrepreneur who needs additional liquidity to keep his small business afloat.
Because of your tariff, some businesses somewhere in the American economy will suffer unnecessarily lower demands for their outputs, or get fewer dollars for investment. Because of your tariff, some outputs somewhere in the American economy will be lower than otherwise. Because of your tariffs, some people will lose, or not get, jobs that they otherwise would not lose or would get. Because of your tariff, some other people will not get pay raises that they would otherwise have gotten.
And, thanks to you, the cost to all of us Americans of laundering our clothes will be higher.
Yet I don’t doubt that you and your troupe of crony-capitalist protectionists will bleat about how your punitive taxes on American consumers will make Americans more prosperous.
It’s preposterous, sir – and disgusting.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Professor of Economics
and
Martha and Nelson Getchell Chair for the Study of Free Market Capitalism at the Mercatus Center
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030
DB's economic analysis is correct, but misses some mitigating factors. For example:
It is unlikely that Trump fails to understand trade - having attended Wharton. However, most voters fail to understand trade, so you can't get elected by telling them the truth about trade.
It is desirable to maintain productive capacity in the US because you may not always have access to foreign productive capacity. For example, is it a good idea to have foreign aircraft manufacturers undersell US aircraft manufacturers to the point that the latter cannot produce the best military aircraft?
"unfair" trade directed against US firms benefits US citizens at the expense of foreigners (assuming the US Government does not interfere). For example, if foreigners sell us their washing machines for free, we benefit because we get something for nothing and the foreigners get nothing for something. The dislocation of domestic washing machine workers to other jobs is painful, but does not change that fact. The problem is that foreigners will be able to take advantage of us after they have destroyed our domestic washing machine capability. There is a case to be made for Trump's demand for "fair" trade that academics typically ignore.
Here is the letter.
-------------------------------------------
23 January 2018
Mr. Donald Trump
1600 Pennsylvania Ave., NW
Washington, DC 20500
Mr. Trump:
I wasn’t joking yesterday when I wrote to you that my washing machine is broken and that a repairman was to come today to fix it. Well, the repairman came. He tells me that the difficulty and monetary cost of fixing the machine are prohibitively high. He recommends buying a new washer.
So, a new washer will be bought.
Because of your punitive tax on Americans who buy new washers assembled outside of the United States or Canada, the price that I’ll pay for the new washer will be higher than it would have been without this punitive tax on me and other Americans who buy new washers. (After all, raising the prices of new washers sold in the U.S. is the whole point of your tariff.) And of course the prices of new washers rose the moment the tariff was announced: when announced, the scarcity of new washers in the U.S. immediately rose relative to demand.
I don’t know – no one does – the exact amount by which the price to be paid for the new washer will be higher than the price that would have been paid in the absence of your punitive tax on buyers of new washers. But, again, that price will certainly be higher. This fact means, in turn, that some money that I would have spent or invested elsewhere will now not be spent or invested. I cannot say just where, but simple arithmetic reveals the truth of my claim. Perhaps a restaurant meal that I would have bought will go unbought as I dine in one evening instead of dining out. Perhaps one night I’ll watch an older movie on Netflix rather than go to see a new movie at a theater. More likely, in my case, my savings account will have fewer dollars in it than otherwise – which means that my bank will have fewer dollars to lend to someone who wants to buy a new Ford pick-up truck, or lend to an entrepreneur who needs additional liquidity to keep his small business afloat.
Because of your tariff, some businesses somewhere in the American economy will suffer unnecessarily lower demands for their outputs, or get fewer dollars for investment. Because of your tariff, some outputs somewhere in the American economy will be lower than otherwise. Because of your tariffs, some people will lose, or not get, jobs that they otherwise would not lose or would get. Because of your tariff, some other people will not get pay raises that they would otherwise have gotten.
And, thanks to you, the cost to all of us Americans of laundering our clothes will be higher.
Yet I don’t doubt that you and your troupe of crony-capitalist protectionists will bleat about how your punitive taxes on American consumers will make Americans more prosperous.
It’s preposterous, sir – and disgusting.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Professor of Economics
and
Martha and Nelson Getchell Chair for the Study of Free Market Capitalism at the Mercatus Center
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030
A blood test for colon cancer
From practiceupdate.com
Italics are mine.
--------------------------------------------
January 20, 2018—San Francisco—A liquid biopsy that identifies circulating tumor cells (CTCs) in the bloodstream can detect colorectal cancer at an early stage, with accuracy ranging from 84 to 88%.
This finding of a large-scale evaluation of the test was reported at the 2018 Gastrointestinal Cancer Symposium, from January 18 – 20.
Wen-Sy Tsai, MD, of Linkou Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan, explained that most studies of CTCs have been able to detect late-stage colorectal cancer. The present evaluation is one of the first clinical studies to show that CTCs can be useful for detecting early-stage disease.
According to Dr. Tsai, these findings may present an option for patients who are hesitant to undergo a screening colonoscopy or are not comfortable returning stool-based test kits.
A total of 620 participants over age 20 years who presented for routine colonoscopy or had been diagnosed with confirmed colorectal cancer were enrolled. Based on colonoscopy and biopsy, 438 subjects were found to harbor either adenomatous polyps or early- to late-stage colorectal cancer. The remaining, comparison group exhibited no signs of precancerous growths or colorectal cancer.
From each of the 620 enrollees, 2 mL of blood was tested for CTC analysis through routine blood draw. Blood samples were processed using the CMx platform, an assay that captures rare CTCs such as those found in early-stage cancer on a lipid-coated chip that mimics human tissue. In blinded analysis, results of these assays were then compared with colonoscopy results.
In prior studies, this assay was found to detect very small numbers of CTCs, even at the level of one CTC per billion blood cells found in most polyps.
Dr. Tsai and colleagues focused on specificity of the liquid biopsy, noting that low specificity, or a high rate of false-positive results, would discourage the use of the screen for many individuals.
Specificity was 97.3%. Sensitivity ranged from 77% for detection of CTCs in precancerous lesions, to 87% for stage 1 - 4 cancers. Accuracy was high and ranged from 84% to 88% between precancerous and cancerous samples. Accuracy was superior to that of fecal occult blood testing.
According to coinvestigator Ashish Nimgaonkar, MD, of Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, survey results indicate that of patients who are reluctant to undergo colonoscopy, more than 80% would consider a blood test over stool-based tests. Dr. Nimgaonkar also indicated that the potential cost of this test is less than $100 and would be affordable, which is the number one barrier to screening.
Dr. Nimgaonkar also noted that colonoscopy would still be the gold standard diagnostic test and would be needed for tumor or polyp sample removal if an individual tests positive for CTCs.
The authors plan to validate CTC testing in the general population in Taiwan and conduct studies in the US as well. They speculate that the technology used in this study could potentially be used with other solid tumors.
Nancy Baxter, MD, PhD, of St. Michael’s Hospital, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, noted that current screening options are uncomfortable and inconvenient for patients, causing Americans to lag behind government screening goals. She hypothesized that a blood test may improve screening rates and colorectal cancer detection at earlier stages that are more likely to be cured with appropriate treatment.
Italics are mine.
--------------------------------------------
January 20, 2018—San Francisco—A liquid biopsy that identifies circulating tumor cells (CTCs) in the bloodstream can detect colorectal cancer at an early stage, with accuracy ranging from 84 to 88%.
This finding of a large-scale evaluation of the test was reported at the 2018 Gastrointestinal Cancer Symposium, from January 18 – 20.
Wen-Sy Tsai, MD, of Linkou Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan, explained that most studies of CTCs have been able to detect late-stage colorectal cancer. The present evaluation is one of the first clinical studies to show that CTCs can be useful for detecting early-stage disease.
According to Dr. Tsai, these findings may present an option for patients who are hesitant to undergo a screening colonoscopy or are not comfortable returning stool-based test kits.
A total of 620 participants over age 20 years who presented for routine colonoscopy or had been diagnosed with confirmed colorectal cancer were enrolled. Based on colonoscopy and biopsy, 438 subjects were found to harbor either adenomatous polyps or early- to late-stage colorectal cancer. The remaining, comparison group exhibited no signs of precancerous growths or colorectal cancer.
From each of the 620 enrollees, 2 mL of blood was tested for CTC analysis through routine blood draw. Blood samples were processed using the CMx platform, an assay that captures rare CTCs such as those found in early-stage cancer on a lipid-coated chip that mimics human tissue. In blinded analysis, results of these assays were then compared with colonoscopy results.
In prior studies, this assay was found to detect very small numbers of CTCs, even at the level of one CTC per billion blood cells found in most polyps.
Dr. Tsai and colleagues focused on specificity of the liquid biopsy, noting that low specificity, or a high rate of false-positive results, would discourage the use of the screen for many individuals.
Specificity was 97.3%. Sensitivity ranged from 77% for detection of CTCs in precancerous lesions, to 87% for stage 1 - 4 cancers. Accuracy was high and ranged from 84% to 88% between precancerous and cancerous samples. Accuracy was superior to that of fecal occult blood testing.
According to coinvestigator Ashish Nimgaonkar, MD, of Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, survey results indicate that of patients who are reluctant to undergo colonoscopy, more than 80% would consider a blood test over stool-based tests. Dr. Nimgaonkar also indicated that the potential cost of this test is less than $100 and would be affordable, which is the number one barrier to screening.
Dr. Nimgaonkar also noted that colonoscopy would still be the gold standard diagnostic test and would be needed for tumor or polyp sample removal if an individual tests positive for CTCs.
The authors plan to validate CTC testing in the general population in Taiwan and conduct studies in the US as well. They speculate that the technology used in this study could potentially be used with other solid tumors.
Nancy Baxter, MD, PhD, of St. Michael’s Hospital, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, noted that current screening options are uncomfortable and inconvenient for patients, causing Americans to lag behind government screening goals. She hypothesized that a blood test may improve screening rates and colorectal cancer detection at earlier stages that are more likely to be cured with appropriate treatment.
Sunday, January 21, 2018
S***Hole country analysis
S***Hole countries are S***Holes because the people who run them have S***Hole ideas about how to run a country.
For many S***Hole countries, voters elected people with S***Hole ideas about how to run a country.
These countries are S***Holes because too many of their voters have S***Hole ideas about how to run a country.
Beware the followers of the likes of Bernie Sanders.
For many S***Hole countries, voters elected people with S***Hole ideas about how to run a country.
These countries are S***Holes because too many of their voters have S***Hole ideas about how to run a country.
Beware the followers of the likes of Bernie Sanders.
Unequal justice under the law
Here is a column by Jonathan Turley, the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University.
Even in a city with a notoriously fluid notion of truth, Clapper’s false testimony was a standout. Clapper appeared before the Senate to discuss surveillance programs in the midst of a controversy over warrantless surveillance of the American public. He was asked directly, “Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions, or hundreds of millions of Americans?” There was no ambiguity or confusion and Clapper responded, “No, sir. … Not wittingly.” That was a lie and Clapper knew it when he said it.
Later, Clapper said that his testimony was “the least untruthful” statement he could make. That would still make it a lie of course but Clapper is a made guy. While feigned shock and disgust, most Democratic leaders notably did not call for his prosecution. Soon Clapper was back testifying and former president Obama even put Clapper on a federal panel to review the very programs that he lied about in Congress. Clapper is now regularly appearing on cable shows which, for example, used Clapper’s word as proof that Trump was lying in saying that there was surveillance of Trump Tower carried out by President Barack Obama. CNN and other networks used Clapper’s assurance without ever mentioning that he previously lied about surveillance programs.
The expiration of the statute of limitations for Clapper will have the benefit of conclusively establishing that some people in this city are above the law. In a 2007 study, author P.J. Meitl found that “[a]lmost no one is prosecuted for lying to Congress.” Indeed, he found only six people convicted of perjury or related charges in relation to Congress, going back to the 1940s.
The problem is not that the perjury statute is never enforced. Rather it is enforced against people without allies in government. Thus, Roger Clemens was prosecuted for untrue statements before Congress. He was not given the option of giving the “least untruthful” answer.
Another reason for the lack of prosecutions is that the perjury process is effectively rigged to protect officials accused of perjury or contempt before Congress. When an official like Clapper or Nielsen is accused of lying to Congress, Congress first has to refer a case to federal prosecutors and then the administration makes the decision whether to prosecute its own officials for contempt or perjury. The result has almost uniformly been “declinations” to even submit such cases to a grand jury. Thus, when both Republicans and Democrats accused CIA officials of lying to Congress about the torture program implemented under former president George W. Bush, not a single indictment was issued.
For Clapper, the attempt to justify his immunity from prosecution has tied officials into knots. After Clapper lied before Congress and there was a public outcry, Clapper gave his “least untruthful answer” justification. When many continued to demand a prosecution, National Intelligence general counsel Robert Litt insisted that Clapper misunderstood the question. Still later, Litt offered a third rationalization: that Clapper merely forgot about the massive surveillance system. That’s right. Clapper forgot one of the largest surveillance (and unconstitutional) programs in the history of this country. Litt did not explain why Clapper himself said that he knowingly chose the “least untruthful answer.” Litt added, “It was perfectly clear that he had absolutely forgotten the existence of the … program … We all make mistakes.”
Indeed, this is a “mistake” that is viewed as something of a mission in Washington. While most people view saying the “least untruthful” thing as the definition of a lie, Clapper was actually staking out a moral high ground in Washington. He actually tried to lie a little when he could have lied a lot. In a city where the moral high ground is measured in centimeters, this passes for honesty.
The Clapper standard will now set the bar for perjury at an almost unreachable height. Here you had an official about a massive surveillance program that was widely viewed as grossly unconstitutional. He then admitted that he made an “untruthful” statement. That however is not sufficient for even submitting a case to a grand jury. In Washington, the determinative question is not the perjury but the perjurer.
So, for all of the other criminal defense attorneys in the Beltway, let me be the first to say “Happy Anniversary, James.” That may sound disingenuous but it is the least untruthful thing I can come up with.
JT is on target.
---------------------------------------------
Former National Intelligence Director James Clapper is about celebrate one of the most important anniversaries of his life. March 13th will be the fifth anniversary of his commission of open perjury before the Senate Intelligence Committee. More importantly, it also happens to be when the statute of limitationsruns out — closing any possibility of prosecution for Clapper. As the clock runs out on the Clapper prosecution, Democrats like Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) have charged that Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen committed perjury when she insisted that she could not recall if President Donald Trump called Haiti and African countries a vulgar term. The fact is that perjury is not simply tolerated, it is rewarded, in Washington. In a city of made men and women, nothing says loyalty quite as much as lying under oath. Even in a city with a notoriously fluid notion of truth, Clapper’s false testimony was a standout. Clapper appeared before the Senate to discuss surveillance programs in the midst of a controversy over warrantless surveillance of the American public. He was asked directly, “Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions, or hundreds of millions of Americans?” There was no ambiguity or confusion and Clapper responded, “No, sir. … Not wittingly.” That was a lie and Clapper knew it when he said it.
Later, Clapper said that his testimony was “the least untruthful” statement he could make. That would still make it a lie of course but Clapper is a made guy. While feigned shock and disgust, most Democratic leaders notably did not call for his prosecution. Soon Clapper was back testifying and former president Obama even put Clapper on a federal panel to review the very programs that he lied about in Congress. Clapper is now regularly appearing on cable shows which, for example, used Clapper’s word as proof that Trump was lying in saying that there was surveillance of Trump Tower carried out by President Barack Obama. CNN and other networks used Clapper’s assurance without ever mentioning that he previously lied about surveillance programs.
The expiration of the statute of limitations for Clapper will have the benefit of conclusively establishing that some people in this city are above the law. In a 2007 study, author P.J. Meitl found that “[a]lmost no one is prosecuted for lying to Congress.” Indeed, he found only six people convicted of perjury or related charges in relation to Congress, going back to the 1940s.
The problem is not that the perjury statute is never enforced. Rather it is enforced against people without allies in government. Thus, Roger Clemens was prosecuted for untrue statements before Congress. He was not given the option of giving the “least untruthful” answer.
Another reason for the lack of prosecutions is that the perjury process is effectively rigged to protect officials accused of perjury or contempt before Congress. When an official like Clapper or Nielsen is accused of lying to Congress, Congress first has to refer a case to federal prosecutors and then the administration makes the decision whether to prosecute its own officials for contempt or perjury. The result has almost uniformly been “declinations” to even submit such cases to a grand jury. Thus, when both Republicans and Democrats accused CIA officials of lying to Congress about the torture program implemented under former president George W. Bush, not a single indictment was issued.
For Clapper, the attempt to justify his immunity from prosecution has tied officials into knots. After Clapper lied before Congress and there was a public outcry, Clapper gave his “least untruthful answer” justification. When many continued to demand a prosecution, National Intelligence general counsel Robert Litt insisted that Clapper misunderstood the question. Still later, Litt offered a third rationalization: that Clapper merely forgot about the massive surveillance system. That’s right. Clapper forgot one of the largest surveillance (and unconstitutional) programs in the history of this country. Litt did not explain why Clapper himself said that he knowingly chose the “least untruthful answer.” Litt added, “It was perfectly clear that he had absolutely forgotten the existence of the … program … We all make mistakes.”
Indeed, this is a “mistake” that is viewed as something of a mission in Washington. While most people view saying the “least untruthful” thing as the definition of a lie, Clapper was actually staking out a moral high ground in Washington. He actually tried to lie a little when he could have lied a lot. In a city where the moral high ground is measured in centimeters, this passes for honesty.
The Clapper standard will now set the bar for perjury at an almost unreachable height. Here you had an official about a massive surveillance program that was widely viewed as grossly unconstitutional. He then admitted that he made an “untruthful” statement. That however is not sufficient for even submitting a case to a grand jury. In Washington, the determinative question is not the perjury but the perjurer.
So, for all of the other criminal defense attorneys in the Beltway, let me be the first to say “Happy Anniversary, James.” That may sound disingenuous but it is the least untruthful thing I can come up with.
Congressional Leaders hoisted on their own petard
Don Boudreaux's letter to Congressional Leaders.
DB scores again.
-------------------------------------------
21 January 2018
Rep. Paul Ryan, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, Sen. Mitch McConnell, Sen. Charles Schumer
Capitol Hill
Washington, DC
Congressional Leaders:
The theory – one to which you undoubtedly subscribe – is that the United States government bestows real and vital benefits upon us Americans in exchange for the taxes that we pay. If this theory is correct, the current closure of much of the U.S. government denies to us many of these benefits.
Will you, therefore, reduce our tax bills accordingly? After all, why should we pay for services and goods that we do not receive? I’m not obliged to pay my physician for services that she withholds from me. Likewise, I’m not obliged to pay for a restaurant meal that is never served to me. Ditto for services not rendered to me by my dry cleaner, not rendered to me by my appliance repairman, not rendered to me by my auto mechanic, and not rendered to me by any of the many other individuals and firms who refuse, for whatever reason, to serve me in exchange for what I would otherwise pay them. Furthermore, if any of these merchants nevertheless attempted to forcibly extract from me payment for services not rendered, he or she would be rightly regarded as a common criminal and imprisoned.
Especially because you are, as they say, “public servants,” you of all people don’t wish to behave as common criminals. I therefore request – actually, demand – that you adjust my and every other taxpayer’s tax bill downward so that we are not charged for services not rendered.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Professor of Economics
and
Martha and Nelson Getchell Chair for the Study of Free Market Capitalism at the Mercatus Center
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030
DB scores again.
-------------------------------------------
21 January 2018
Rep. Paul Ryan, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, Sen. Mitch McConnell, Sen. Charles Schumer
Capitol Hill
Washington, DC
Congressional Leaders:
The theory – one to which you undoubtedly subscribe – is that the United States government bestows real and vital benefits upon us Americans in exchange for the taxes that we pay. If this theory is correct, the current closure of much of the U.S. government denies to us many of these benefits.
Will you, therefore, reduce our tax bills accordingly? After all, why should we pay for services and goods that we do not receive? I’m not obliged to pay my physician for services that she withholds from me. Likewise, I’m not obliged to pay for a restaurant meal that is never served to me. Ditto for services not rendered to me by my dry cleaner, not rendered to me by my appliance repairman, not rendered to me by my auto mechanic, and not rendered to me by any of the many other individuals and firms who refuse, for whatever reason, to serve me in exchange for what I would otherwise pay them. Furthermore, if any of these merchants nevertheless attempted to forcibly extract from me payment for services not rendered, he or she would be rightly regarded as a common criminal and imprisoned.
Especially because you are, as they say, “public servants,” you of all people don’t wish to behave as common criminals. I therefore request – actually, demand – that you adjust my and every other taxpayer’s tax bill downward so that we are not charged for services not rendered.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Professor of Economics
and
Martha and Nelson Getchell Chair for the Study of Free Market Capitalism at the Mercatus Center
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030
Saturday, January 20, 2018
An example of economic analysis
Here is an example of economic analysis by Steve Landsburg that is impressive in its simplicity, power, and surprise.
This kind of economic insight is typical of SL.
SL is on target.
Enjoy.
----------------------------------------------------
GOOD INTENTIONS; BAD POLICY
I learn from Scott Sumner’s blog that in many California cities, residents with past marijuana convictions will jump to the head of the line for licenses to sell the drug legally — this by way of compensating them for past persecution.
Scott approves. I don’t, for two reasons:
First, if you want to compensate people for past persecution, the right way to do it is with cash, not by misallocating productive resources. If there must be licenses, they should be allocated to those who can use them most efficiently, regardless of any past history.
Second, drug dealers have never been the primary victims of anti-drug laws. They can’t be, because there is free entry and exit from that industry. Anti-drug enforcement leads to exit, which in turn leads to higher profits for those who remain — and the exit continues until the profits are high enough to compensate for the risks. One way to think about this: All those “persecuted” drug dealers were, in effect, employing the government to stifle their competition, and paying a fair price for that privilege in the form of occasionally being convicted and punished themselves.
The primary victims of anti-drug legislation are potential consumers who were deterred by artificially high prices. How do you compensate those victims? You can’t. In a population of 1000 people who have never used drugs, it’s quite impossible to identify the 200 or 300 or 400 who would have happily indulged if only the price had been lower.
This is one more reason to be diligent against bad legislation generally. Even if you believe the legislation will eventually be repealed, attempts to compensate the victims are likely to be misdirected, misguided, and socially harmful.
This kind of economic insight is typical of SL.
SL is on target.
Enjoy.
----------------------------------------------------
GOOD INTENTIONS; BAD POLICY
I learn from Scott Sumner’s blog that in many California cities, residents with past marijuana convictions will jump to the head of the line for licenses to sell the drug legally — this by way of compensating them for past persecution.
Scott approves. I don’t, for two reasons:
First, if you want to compensate people for past persecution, the right way to do it is with cash, not by misallocating productive resources. If there must be licenses, they should be allocated to those who can use them most efficiently, regardless of any past history.
Second, drug dealers have never been the primary victims of anti-drug laws. They can’t be, because there is free entry and exit from that industry. Anti-drug enforcement leads to exit, which in turn leads to higher profits for those who remain — and the exit continues until the profits are high enough to compensate for the risks. One way to think about this: All those “persecuted” drug dealers were, in effect, employing the government to stifle their competition, and paying a fair price for that privilege in the form of occasionally being convicted and punished themselves.
The primary victims of anti-drug legislation are potential consumers who were deterred by artificially high prices. How do you compensate those victims? You can’t. In a population of 1000 people who have never used drugs, it’s quite impossible to identify the 200 or 300 or 400 who would have happily indulged if only the price had been lower.
This is one more reason to be diligent against bad legislation generally. Even if you believe the legislation will eventually be repealed, attempts to compensate the victims are likely to be misdirected, misguided, and socially harmful.
Self-Government: Not here
Here is Don Boudreaux's September 2000 column in the Freeman.
DB is on target.
--------------------------------------------------
DB is on target.
--------------------------------------------------
Friday, January 19, 2018
So what if China slows or halts purchases of U.S. Treasuries
Some perspective.
·
The US imports (buys) more things from China
than China imports (buys) from the US, a trade deficit for the US.
·
The US sends more dollars to China to pay for
its imports from China than China sends to the US to pay for its imports from
the US.
·
China uses the excess dollars to buy US
Treasuries (pieces of paper) (to keep it simple, I am ignoring China’s
purchases of US things that do not get sent to China, e.g., real estate).
·
The US Treasury spends the excess dollars on
things that are consumed in the US, e.g., pays government bureaucrats and
others who buy consumer goods.
·
The US gets the benefit of the excess dollars in
the form of worthwhile products and services (except, to some extent,
Government “products and services”).
China gets pieces of paper.
Suppose the trade deficit continues as before and that China
stops buying US Treasuries. What happens
to the excess dollars? Here are some
possibilities.
·
China keeps them in a vault.
The excess dollars are worthless to
China. The US Treasury does not get
them, hence cannot spend them. The US
loses the benefit of the excess dollars spent by Government. However, if the US could be sure that China would
never cash in the excess dollars, the US Government could simply print new
dollars in the amount of the excess dollars and continue to spend as before. Too bad China won’t do this.
·
China buys other US debt, e.g., Corporate bonds.
Corporations probably would use the
money in a way that benefits US citizens more than what Government spending
would – this is good.
The US Government may be forced to
reduce spending to avoid inflation – this is good.
The US Government could issue the
same amount of debt as it would have to China, but sell it to others – this could
lead to the same undesired outcomes the US faces now, e.g., growing Government
debt and inflation.
Most likely, the US would be better
off because the US Government might be forced to control spending.
·
China buys other countries’ debt.
This reduces the problem to what
the other countries’ do with the excess dollars, which is the same problem as
what China would do with them.
·
China buys US products, including those exported
to China and others that are not, e.g. real estate.
The US is worse off than before. China gets worthwhile goods and services and
the US get pieces of paper.
Cardiologists and statistics
Here is the conclusion of a paper in a professional cardiology journal that is inconsistent with its results. Keep in mind that MDs are seldom statisticians.
In this AF cohort, the authors demonstrated that the CHA2DS2-VASc score was not static, and that most patients with AF developed ≥1 new stroke risk factor before presentation with ischemic stroke. The Delta CHA2DS2-VASc score, reflecting the change in score between baseline and follow-up, was strongly predictive of ischemic stroke, reflecting how stroke risk in AF is a dynamic process due to increasing age and incident comorbidities.
The mean baseline CHA2DS2-VASc score was 1.29, which increased to 2.31 during the follow-up, with a mean Delta CHA2DS2-VASc score of 1.02. The CHA2DS2-VASc score remained unchanged in only 40.8% of patients. Among 4,103 patients who experienced ischemic stroke, 89.4% had a Delta CHA2DS2-VASc score ≥1 compared with only 54.6% in patients without ischemic stroke, and 2,643 (64.4%) patients had ≥1 new-onset comorbidity, the most common being hypertension. The Delta CHA2DS2-VASc score was a significant predictor of ischemic stroke that performed better than baseline or follow-up CHA2DS2-VASc scores, as assessed by the C-index and the net reclassification index.
In this AF cohort, the authors demonstrated that the CHA2DS2-VASc score was not static, and that most patients with AF developed ≥1 new stroke risk factor before presentation with ischemic stroke. The Delta CHA2DS2-VASc score, reflecting the change in score between baseline and follow-up, was strongly predictive of ischemic stroke, reflecting how stroke risk in AF is a dynamic process due to increasing age and incident comorbidities.
Here are the paper's results that led to the authors' conclusion.
The mean baseline CHA2DS2-VASc score was 1.29, which increased to 2.31 during the follow-up, with a mean Delta CHA2DS2-VASc score of 1.02. The CHA2DS2-VASc score remained unchanged in only 40.8% of patients. Among 4,103 patients who experienced ischemic stroke, 89.4% had a Delta CHA2DS2-VASc score ≥1 compared with only 54.6% in patients without ischemic stroke, and 2,643 (64.4%) patients had ≥1 new-onset comorbidity, the most common being hypertension. The Delta CHA2DS2-VASc score was a significant predictor of ischemic stroke that performed better than baseline or follow-up CHA2DS2-VASc scores, as assessed by the C-index and the net reclassification index.
Here is the problem.
The authors' conclusion is of the form Probability of Stroke given High Delta exceeds Probability of Stroke given Low Delta. These are the probabilities of interest.
The authors' results are of the form Probability of High Delta given Stroke exceeds Probability of Low Delta given Stroke.
These two probability sets are different. The latter does not imply the former.
Here is a hypothetical example where the Probability of a Stroke given a High Delta is lower than the Probability of a Stroke given a Low Delta, yet the Probability of a High Delta given a Stroke is higher than the Probability of a Low Delta given a Stroke.
Suppose a sample of 100 people where 80 have a high delta and 20 have a low delta. Suppose the probability of a stroke given a high delta is 30% and the probability of a stroke give a low delta is 80%. Then 24 of the high delta people have strokes and 16 of the low delta people have strokes, for a total of 40 strokes. Of the people suffering a stroke, 60% had a high delta and 40% had a low delta.
Government regulation is not intended to benefit you
Most people think that Government regulation is, mostly, intended to benefit citizens. The reality is that it mostly ends up preventing competition - thereby reducing employment opportunities and raising consumer prices.
Here is an excerpt from a TownHall article by Ed Feulner.
EF is on target.
For comparison, a commercial pilot license requires only about 250 flight hours.
--------------------------------------------------
Few things could be more American than volunteering to help others. So it’s a shame when our altruism is thwarted by another, far more lamentable American trait: big government.
Juan Carlos Montes de Oca knows firsthand.A cosmetology student from Tucson, Montes de Oca felt inspired when he heard about a barber in London who donated haircuts to the homeless on his days off. So he decided to do the same for homeless veterans in Arizona.
He did this free of charge, of course, to give the veterans a better appearance and a more positive outlook when applying for jobs.“Out of the kindness of my heart,” he told a reporter. “Out of the memory of my mom, because she lost her hair.”
Well, we can’t have that, can we? So to the rescue rides what the Arizona Republic referred to as “the hair police” – theArizona State Board of Cosmetology. It turns out Montes de Oca was giving these haircuts despite the fact that he hadn’t graduated from cosmetology school. He was giving these cuts to homeless vets … without a license.
What a monster. Grab the torches and pitchforks!
It seems you can’t just set up shop and start shearing locks in the Grand Canyon state, no matter how talented you may be. Astate law requires 1,000 hours of training at a state-licensed school.
Montes de Oca wasn’t the first Arizona resident to run afoul of government overseers. As Republic reporter Kristin Haubrich noted:
“A dozen years ago, they swooped down on a 23-year-old Glendale woman who was braiding the hair of African-Americans. The cosmetology cops informed Essence that she’d have to get a license to do that which she’d been doing since she was 13 years old.
“To get that license, she would have to take 1,600 hours of classes at a state-approved cosmetology school, paying tuition of $10,000 or more to learn everything from how to cut and curl to how to manicure and massage. Everything, that is, but how to braid hair.”
The state legislature passed a law to fix this, but then along came the case of Juana, a 24-year-old eyebrow threader. She had been doing this kind of work for eight years, but the “cosmetology cops” told her she’d have to stop. Only a licensed aestheticiancould do such work.
Juana, the Republic reported, would “need 600 hours of state-approved classes, learning everything from laser safety to Botox theory, from how to apply chemical peels and how to tint eyelashes. Everything, that is, but how to remove hair with a thread.”
It took a long fight and a lawsuit to get that requirement fixed. But you can never rest easy where government is concerned -- as soon as you pluck one bureaucratic weed, another starts growing in its place.
Here is an excerpt from a TownHall article by Ed Feulner.
EF is on target.
For comparison, a commercial pilot license requires only about 250 flight hours.
--------------------------------------------------
Few things could be more American than volunteering to help others. So it’s a shame when our altruism is thwarted by another, far more lamentable American trait: big government.
Juan Carlos Montes de Oca knows firsthand.A cosmetology student from Tucson, Montes de Oca felt inspired when he heard about a barber in London who donated haircuts to the homeless on his days off. So he decided to do the same for homeless veterans in Arizona.
He did this free of charge, of course, to give the veterans a better appearance and a more positive outlook when applying for jobs.“Out of the kindness of my heart,” he told a reporter. “Out of the memory of my mom, because she lost her hair.”
Well, we can’t have that, can we? So to the rescue rides what the Arizona Republic referred to as “the hair police” – theArizona State Board of Cosmetology. It turns out Montes de Oca was giving these haircuts despite the fact that he hadn’t graduated from cosmetology school. He was giving these cuts to homeless vets … without a license.
What a monster. Grab the torches and pitchforks!
It seems you can’t just set up shop and start shearing locks in the Grand Canyon state, no matter how talented you may be. Astate law requires 1,000 hours of training at a state-licensed school.
Montes de Oca wasn’t the first Arizona resident to run afoul of government overseers. As Republic reporter Kristin Haubrich noted:
“A dozen years ago, they swooped down on a 23-year-old Glendale woman who was braiding the hair of African-Americans. The cosmetology cops informed Essence that she’d have to get a license to do that which she’d been doing since she was 13 years old.
“To get that license, she would have to take 1,600 hours of classes at a state-approved cosmetology school, paying tuition of $10,000 or more to learn everything from how to cut and curl to how to manicure and massage. Everything, that is, but how to braid hair.”
The state legislature passed a law to fix this, but then along came the case of Juana, a 24-year-old eyebrow threader. She had been doing this kind of work for eight years, but the “cosmetology cops” told her she’d have to stop. Only a licensed aestheticiancould do such work.
Juana, the Republic reported, would “need 600 hours of state-approved classes, learning everything from laser safety to Botox theory, from how to apply chemical peels and how to tint eyelashes. Everything, that is, but how to remove hair with a thread.”
It took a long fight and a lawsuit to get that requirement fixed. But you can never rest easy where government is concerned -- as soon as you pluck one bureaucratic weed, another starts growing in its place.
Thursday, January 18, 2018
One reason why I never contributed to my Alma Mater
Here is Don Boudreaux's July 2000 column in the Freeman.
DB is on target - but too optimistic - as subsequent events have shown.
My college classmates were not as extreme as the Columbia College students portrayed in the column. However, while being mostly really nice people, they were mostly elitists who did not appreciate what they didn't know and who thought nothing of forcing others to live as they saw fit for their own good.
I would be rich if only it were possible to arbitrage by buying these people for what they are worth and selling them for what they think they are worth.
----------------------------------------------------
In March, ABC Television presented “You Can’t Say That!”—another illuminating program by John Stossel. In it, he documented the distressing intolerance that many Americans have for the opinions of others, and a corresponding acceptance of policies that infringe the freedoms of thought and speech.
In one scene, several students at Columbia University are shown contemptuously telling Stossel that they have the right to verbally obstruct Ward Connerly, an opponent of affirmative action who spoke at their school. Stossel asked these students who had given them the power to interfere.
“I’m taking that power, actually,” was the answer offered by a young woman who was clearly proud of her and her cohorts’ obstruction of what would otherwise have been a peaceful exchange of ideas between Connerly and other students who wished to hear him.
At first I was angry with these students. But my anger soon turned to pity. How sad that these students are so certain of their own omniscience. Being so cocksure will keep them from ever learning and growing.
I cheered myself up by reflecting that these young people are unlikely to remain so convinced of their own omniscience. As soon as they must find jobs, each will quickly show more tolerance for others—the reason is that anyone who doesn’t is unlikely to succeed professionally or even to retain any lasting friendships. Decent and productive people gain nothing by associating with those rendered uncivilized by their arrogance.
To succeed in life requires a general respect for others, a Socratic recognition that each of us is far more ignorant than informed, and a broad tolerance for opinions with which we disagree. Those who lack these traits never grow. Their mistaken belief in their own superiority shields them from learning. The ironic result is that those who are most sure of their greater wisdom and knowledge are far more foolish and ignorant than those of us who understand the limits of our own knowledge.
That these students will soon find it necessary to grow more humble heartened me.
“But wait,” my thinking progressed. “What if they seek employment, not in the private sector where such arrogance is intolerable, but in some government bureaucracy shielded from competition?” I can well imagine any of these young people working as a regional administrator for the Department of Housing and Urban Development, as a staff attorney for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, or as any one of a number of government functionaries who get to play god with other people’s money and lives. Far from curing arrogance, such government jobs reinforce it.
Gratefully, we live in what is still largely an open society where most decision-making authority is decentralized. If I don’t like the attitude of an employee, I can fire him; if an employee doesn’t like the way I treat him, he can quit; if you dislike the deal that Radio Shack offers you on one of its radios, you can go to Circuit City; if Circuit City doesn’t like the price you offer for one of its radios, it can offer to sell it to someone else.
Contrary to much popular wisdom, the ability of free people to make their own decisions unrestrained by government interference doesn’t lead to arbitrary and capricious choices. Instead, each person outside of political settings improves his lot in life by acting in ways beneficial not only to himself but to those with whom he interacts. If I fire an employee for reasons that are purely malicious, I suffer. I lose a good employee and, in consequence, my profits fall. Other employers with more sense will line up to hire any good people whom I fire capriciously.
Focusing the consequences of decisions on those who make them—as the free market does so well—doesn’t totally eliminate careless and malevolent behavior in private markets, but it surely keeps it to a minimum. More relevantly, it keeps such undesirable behavior scarcer than it would be if political decision-making supplanted private decision-making. Political decision-making is an especially fertile source of arbitrary and capricious decisions.
To see why, imagine one of these arrogant young Columbia students starting, say, a software firm. Perhaps in pursuit of her prejudices, she initially hires people based exclusively on their skin color. She soon finds her balance sheet in the red. If she has any sense at all, she overcomes her arrogance and learns. She learns that she must hire people according to their talent and not according to irrelevant characteristics. The market’s requirement that she interact voluntarily with others compels her to grow smarter, more humble, more aware, more productive, more civilized. She becomes a better person. (If she refuses to overcome her arrogance, her continued business losses ensure that she won’t long remain in a position to make important decisions.)
But now imagine this young woman, not in America, but in a highly centralized society–say, today’s Cuba. Imagine her gaining influence with the party apparatchiks. For purely political reasons, she is given power to decide how thousands of people will live. Her success depends on pleasing only a handful of high government officials and not at all on her ability or willingness to act in ways that better the lives of the multitude of people subject to her authority.
Because ordinary people in such a centralized society are unable to remove themselves from her influence, she gets no meaningful feedback about whether or not her actions help or hurt them. And even if she did get such feedback, she could safely ignore it. Her position and power depend only on how well she pleases party bosses and not on how well she pleases the great majority of people whose lives her actions directly affect. In this setting, this woman will remain as arrogant, as imperious, as ignorant, and as uncivilized as she is as a student.
An important virtue of free markets is that they convert most arrogant, ignorant, and self-absorbed young people into modest, intelligent, and productive adults. A related virtue is that those few people who refuse to break the chains of their own ignorance never reap the full rewards of civilization.
My guess—certainly, my sincere hope—is that the overbearing students interviewed recently by John Stossel will, in time, grow civilized. If so, they’ll look back on their behavior in college with embarrassment. But watch out if these students instead gain political power, for rather than civilize them, such power will cement their ignorance and prevent them from becoming productive members of civil society.
DB is on target - but too optimistic - as subsequent events have shown.
My college classmates were not as extreme as the Columbia College students portrayed in the column. However, while being mostly really nice people, they were mostly elitists who did not appreciate what they didn't know and who thought nothing of forcing others to live as they saw fit for their own good.
I would be rich if only it were possible to arbitrage by buying these people for what they are worth and selling them for what they think they are worth.
----------------------------------------------------
In March, ABC Television presented “You Can’t Say That!”—another illuminating program by John Stossel. In it, he documented the distressing intolerance that many Americans have for the opinions of others, and a corresponding acceptance of policies that infringe the freedoms of thought and speech.
In one scene, several students at Columbia University are shown contemptuously telling Stossel that they have the right to verbally obstruct Ward Connerly, an opponent of affirmative action who spoke at their school. Stossel asked these students who had given them the power to interfere.
“I’m taking that power, actually,” was the answer offered by a young woman who was clearly proud of her and her cohorts’ obstruction of what would otherwise have been a peaceful exchange of ideas between Connerly and other students who wished to hear him.
At first I was angry with these students. But my anger soon turned to pity. How sad that these students are so certain of their own omniscience. Being so cocksure will keep them from ever learning and growing.
I cheered myself up by reflecting that these young people are unlikely to remain so convinced of their own omniscience. As soon as they must find jobs, each will quickly show more tolerance for others—the reason is that anyone who doesn’t is unlikely to succeed professionally or even to retain any lasting friendships. Decent and productive people gain nothing by associating with those rendered uncivilized by their arrogance.
To succeed in life requires a general respect for others, a Socratic recognition that each of us is far more ignorant than informed, and a broad tolerance for opinions with which we disagree. Those who lack these traits never grow. Their mistaken belief in their own superiority shields them from learning. The ironic result is that those who are most sure of their greater wisdom and knowledge are far more foolish and ignorant than those of us who understand the limits of our own knowledge.
That these students will soon find it necessary to grow more humble heartened me.
“But wait,” my thinking progressed. “What if they seek employment, not in the private sector where such arrogance is intolerable, but in some government bureaucracy shielded from competition?” I can well imagine any of these young people working as a regional administrator for the Department of Housing and Urban Development, as a staff attorney for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, or as any one of a number of government functionaries who get to play god with other people’s money and lives. Far from curing arrogance, such government jobs reinforce it.
Gratefully, we live in what is still largely an open society where most decision-making authority is decentralized. If I don’t like the attitude of an employee, I can fire him; if an employee doesn’t like the way I treat him, he can quit; if you dislike the deal that Radio Shack offers you on one of its radios, you can go to Circuit City; if Circuit City doesn’t like the price you offer for one of its radios, it can offer to sell it to someone else.
Contrary to much popular wisdom, the ability of free people to make their own decisions unrestrained by government interference doesn’t lead to arbitrary and capricious choices. Instead, each person outside of political settings improves his lot in life by acting in ways beneficial not only to himself but to those with whom he interacts. If I fire an employee for reasons that are purely malicious, I suffer. I lose a good employee and, in consequence, my profits fall. Other employers with more sense will line up to hire any good people whom I fire capriciously.
Focusing the consequences of decisions on those who make them—as the free market does so well—doesn’t totally eliminate careless and malevolent behavior in private markets, but it surely keeps it to a minimum. More relevantly, it keeps such undesirable behavior scarcer than it would be if political decision-making supplanted private decision-making. Political decision-making is an especially fertile source of arbitrary and capricious decisions.
To see why, imagine one of these arrogant young Columbia students starting, say, a software firm. Perhaps in pursuit of her prejudices, she initially hires people based exclusively on their skin color. She soon finds her balance sheet in the red. If she has any sense at all, she overcomes her arrogance and learns. She learns that she must hire people according to their talent and not according to irrelevant characteristics. The market’s requirement that she interact voluntarily with others compels her to grow smarter, more humble, more aware, more productive, more civilized. She becomes a better person. (If she refuses to overcome her arrogance, her continued business losses ensure that she won’t long remain in a position to make important decisions.)
But now imagine this young woman, not in America, but in a highly centralized society–say, today’s Cuba. Imagine her gaining influence with the party apparatchiks. For purely political reasons, she is given power to decide how thousands of people will live. Her success depends on pleasing only a handful of high government officials and not at all on her ability or willingness to act in ways that better the lives of the multitude of people subject to her authority.
Because ordinary people in such a centralized society are unable to remove themselves from her influence, she gets no meaningful feedback about whether or not her actions help or hurt them. And even if she did get such feedback, she could safely ignore it. Her position and power depend only on how well she pleases party bosses and not on how well she pleases the great majority of people whose lives her actions directly affect. In this setting, this woman will remain as arrogant, as imperious, as ignorant, and as uncivilized as she is as a student.
An important virtue of free markets is that they convert most arrogant, ignorant, and self-absorbed young people into modest, intelligent, and productive adults. A related virtue is that those few people who refuse to break the chains of their own ignorance never reap the full rewards of civilization.
My guess—certainly, my sincere hope—is that the overbearing students interviewed recently by John Stossel will, in time, grow civilized. If so, they’ll look back on their behavior in college with embarrassment. But watch out if these students instead gain political power, for rather than civilize them, such power will cement their ignorance and prevent them from becoming productive members of civil society.
Wednesday, January 17, 2018
The Selfishness of the Unselfish
Here is Don Boudreaux's June 2000 column in the Freeman.
DB is on target.
Dogooders are, by and large, selfish and tyrannical.
------------------------------------------------------------------
Several years ago, I encountered a woman at a cocktail party in Atlanta who was active in that city’s historical-preservation movement. To make conversation, I asked why she thought that stricter historical-preservation regulations were required.
“Because greedy developers tear down too many old and beautiful homes or renovate them in ways that destroy their historical integrity” she replied.
“Why do you call these developers ‘greedy’?” I asked.
“Because they care only about money. They don’t care about beauty or history,” she answered.
“But because they build houses to make money they must take account of the tastes and demands of their customers, who either cannot afford or do not want to live in historically accurate old houses. What’s wrong with that?”
“Everything!” she shot back. “Most home buyers today have dreadfully bad taste.”
“I’m curious: what kind of home do you live in?” I inquired.
“An 1893 Victorian, perfectly restored,” she answered proudly.
I regret that my desire to avoid confrontation caused me then to mumble a limp reply and fade off to fetch another glass of wine.
But the exchange is instructive. Amazingly, this woman believed herself to represent the forces of good and altruism in a battle against the forces of evil and greed. And I bet that if the local newspaper had written a story about her efforts on behalf of historical preservation, she would have been portrayed as a modern Joan of Arc. But it is she who is the truly greedy one. Not only was she blithely willing to impose her own tastes on others, but the policies she championed—by reducing the supply of housing in Atlanta—conveniently increased the value of her own home. She was eager to use government to force countless other people—in exchange for nothing from her—to subsidize her aesthetic sensibilities and to enhance her balance sheet.
That’s genuine greed.
Sadly, the attitude of my acquaintance in Atlanta is merely one small case in a widespread epidemic that might be called “the selfishness of the unselfish.” The selfishness of the unselfish is found whenever the self-proclaimed enemies of greed bemoan, with one breath, the base motivations that allegedly drive capitalism, and then, with their next breath, propose policies that are monuments to vulgar selfishness.
The most easily spotted strain of this disease is that which compels its host to level charges of greed against others merely as a means of clearing the way for government policies that serve the host’s own narrow self-interest. This is the strain that infected my acquaintance in Atlanta: she liked old homes and hypocritically called “greedy” anyone who built any home that she disliked.
This is the strain that also triggers protectionism, minimum-wage legislation, and any number of other policies that materially benefit some people at the expense of others. Perhaps surprisingly, much of modern-day environmental policy is of this sort.
Consider that many of today’s environmentalists are among the most vocal opponents of “capitalist greed.” But environmental policies too often provide benefits to environmentalists (for example, protecting land from development so that it is available for hiking) at the expense of consumers who would benefit from the greater supply of goods and services that would be available were it not for these output-reducing policies.
My point here is not that preserving some land from development is undesirable. Rather, it is that those who advocate such environmental policies in the name of opposing “capitalist greed” are themselves motivated by their own greed. And it is an especially galling greed. Not only are those who are motivated by it blind to their own avarice, but they—unlike entrepreneurs—satisfy their selfishness through force. They use government to take from others and give to them. Entrepreneurs, in contrast, satisfy their self-interest by giving things of value in exchange for what they receive from consumers.
The other strain of the “selfishness of the unselfish” disease is a bit (but just a bit) harder to spot. This strain does not lead its hosts to advocate harmful policies that bestow material benefits on them. Instead, it simply encourages its hosts selfishly to emote rather than to think rationally about various policies.
It is much more difficult to study an issue and to think it through thoroughly than to react emotionally. Reacting emotionally is a cheap way to strut your sensibilities in front of others as well as to avoid the often arduous intellectual challenge of learning the relevant details, studying the alternative theories, and weighing all the pros and cons before reaching a conclusion. Doing this hard work requires diligence. To express an opinion without undertaking this effort is supremely selfish, for to do so is to steal the gratification that comes with “taking a stand” without paying the price of assuring that the stand taken is sound.
Consider, for example, the well-meaning nineteenth-century reformers who sought to improve immigrant housing in America by mandating higher housing quality.
The kinds of reforms being promoted in the nineteenth century did not expand the slum-dwellers’ options but reduced them. Since better housing mandated by law cost more money, immigrant slum-dwellers now had to devote a higher percentage of their incomes toward purchasing more expensive housing with features that would be more pleasing to third-party observers, rather than make the trade-offs that they themselves would have preferred with their own money.*
These reformers selfishly indulged in campaigns that made them feel good about themselves, without bothering to explore the full consequences of the schemes they foisted on innocent third parties. While the reformers got good press and a warm sense of self-satisfaction, the welfare of immigrants deteriorated as a consequence of these reformers’ selfish indulgence of their own thoughtless notions of reality.
The same is true of today’s “reformers” who clamor for banning imports of goods made in factories that employ children. These reformers selfishly enjoy the rush of satisfaction that comes from moral posturing without once stopping to trace the consequences of the policies they advocate.
Pay attention to the protestations of those who demand greater government involvement in the economy—particularly those who bemoan the greed that allegedly characterizes capitalism. You’ll find that almost always the most outspoken opponents of greed are its greatest patrons.
DB is on target.
Dogooders are, by and large, selfish and tyrannical.
------------------------------------------------------------------
Several years ago, I encountered a woman at a cocktail party in Atlanta who was active in that city’s historical-preservation movement. To make conversation, I asked why she thought that stricter historical-preservation regulations were required.
“Because greedy developers tear down too many old and beautiful homes or renovate them in ways that destroy their historical integrity” she replied.
“Why do you call these developers ‘greedy’?” I asked.
“Because they care only about money. They don’t care about beauty or history,” she answered.
“But because they build houses to make money they must take account of the tastes and demands of their customers, who either cannot afford or do not want to live in historically accurate old houses. What’s wrong with that?”
“Everything!” she shot back. “Most home buyers today have dreadfully bad taste.”
“I’m curious: what kind of home do you live in?” I inquired.
“An 1893 Victorian, perfectly restored,” she answered proudly.
I regret that my desire to avoid confrontation caused me then to mumble a limp reply and fade off to fetch another glass of wine.
But the exchange is instructive. Amazingly, this woman believed herself to represent the forces of good and altruism in a battle against the forces of evil and greed. And I bet that if the local newspaper had written a story about her efforts on behalf of historical preservation, she would have been portrayed as a modern Joan of Arc. But it is she who is the truly greedy one. Not only was she blithely willing to impose her own tastes on others, but the policies she championed—by reducing the supply of housing in Atlanta—conveniently increased the value of her own home. She was eager to use government to force countless other people—in exchange for nothing from her—to subsidize her aesthetic sensibilities and to enhance her balance sheet.
That’s genuine greed.
Sadly, the attitude of my acquaintance in Atlanta is merely one small case in a widespread epidemic that might be called “the selfishness of the unselfish.” The selfishness of the unselfish is found whenever the self-proclaimed enemies of greed bemoan, with one breath, the base motivations that allegedly drive capitalism, and then, with their next breath, propose policies that are monuments to vulgar selfishness.
The most easily spotted strain of this disease is that which compels its host to level charges of greed against others merely as a means of clearing the way for government policies that serve the host’s own narrow self-interest. This is the strain that infected my acquaintance in Atlanta: she liked old homes and hypocritically called “greedy” anyone who built any home that she disliked.
This is the strain that also triggers protectionism, minimum-wage legislation, and any number of other policies that materially benefit some people at the expense of others. Perhaps surprisingly, much of modern-day environmental policy is of this sort.
Consider that many of today’s environmentalists are among the most vocal opponents of “capitalist greed.” But environmental policies too often provide benefits to environmentalists (for example, protecting land from development so that it is available for hiking) at the expense of consumers who would benefit from the greater supply of goods and services that would be available were it not for these output-reducing policies.
My point here is not that preserving some land from development is undesirable. Rather, it is that those who advocate such environmental policies in the name of opposing “capitalist greed” are themselves motivated by their own greed. And it is an especially galling greed. Not only are those who are motivated by it blind to their own avarice, but they—unlike entrepreneurs—satisfy their selfishness through force. They use government to take from others and give to them. Entrepreneurs, in contrast, satisfy their self-interest by giving things of value in exchange for what they receive from consumers.
The other strain of the “selfishness of the unselfish” disease is a bit (but just a bit) harder to spot. This strain does not lead its hosts to advocate harmful policies that bestow material benefits on them. Instead, it simply encourages its hosts selfishly to emote rather than to think rationally about various policies.
It is much more difficult to study an issue and to think it through thoroughly than to react emotionally. Reacting emotionally is a cheap way to strut your sensibilities in front of others as well as to avoid the often arduous intellectual challenge of learning the relevant details, studying the alternative theories, and weighing all the pros and cons before reaching a conclusion. Doing this hard work requires diligence. To express an opinion without undertaking this effort is supremely selfish, for to do so is to steal the gratification that comes with “taking a stand” without paying the price of assuring that the stand taken is sound.
Consider, for example, the well-meaning nineteenth-century reformers who sought to improve immigrant housing in America by mandating higher housing quality.
The kinds of reforms being promoted in the nineteenth century did not expand the slum-dwellers’ options but reduced them. Since better housing mandated by law cost more money, immigrant slum-dwellers now had to devote a higher percentage of their incomes toward purchasing more expensive housing with features that would be more pleasing to third-party observers, rather than make the trade-offs that they themselves would have preferred with their own money.*
These reformers selfishly indulged in campaigns that made them feel good about themselves, without bothering to explore the full consequences of the schemes they foisted on innocent third parties. While the reformers got good press and a warm sense of self-satisfaction, the welfare of immigrants deteriorated as a consequence of these reformers’ selfish indulgence of their own thoughtless notions of reality.
The same is true of today’s “reformers” who clamor for banning imports of goods made in factories that employ children. These reformers selfishly enjoy the rush of satisfaction that comes from moral posturing without once stopping to trace the consequences of the policies they advocate.
Pay attention to the protestations of those who demand greater government involvement in the economy—particularly those who bemoan the greed that allegedly characterizes capitalism. You’ll find that almost always the most outspoken opponents of greed are its greatest patrons.
My Grandaughter
Karoline Sandvig: MAAC Female Field Peformer of the Week.
Here is a Link1
Here is an article.
Women’s Field Performer of the Week
Karoline Sandvig, Rider
Sr., West Windsor, NJ/West Windsor Plainsboro HS South
Karoline Sandvig takes home her third-straight MAAC Female Field Performer of the Week with her performance at the Saint Thomas Aquinas College Spartan Invitational. The senior recorded a personal best weight throw distance of 17.66 meters, which is now the top distance in the MAAC. Sandvig qualified for the ECAC Championships with her performance.
Here is a Link1
Here is an article.
Women’s Field Performer of the Week
Karoline Sandvig, Rider
Sr., West Windsor, NJ/West Windsor Plainsboro HS South
Karoline Sandvig takes home her third-straight MAAC Female Field Performer of the Week with her performance at the Saint Thomas Aquinas College Spartan Invitational. The senior recorded a personal best weight throw distance of 17.66 meters, which is now the top distance in the MAAC. Sandvig qualified for the ECAC Championships with her performance.
Walter Williams gets it right on the Electoral College
Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University.
WW is on target.
Rule by simple majority is an invitation to subjugation of the minority by the majority.
-----------------------------------------------
Hillary Clinton blamed the Electoral College for her stunning defeat in the 2016 presidential election in her latest memoirs, “What Happened?” Some have claimed that the Electoral College is one of the most dangerous institutions in American politics. Why? They say the Electoral College system, as opposed to a simple majority vote, distorts the one-person, one-vote principle of democracy because electoral votes are not distributed according to population.
To back up their claim, they point out that the Electoral College gives, for example, Wyoming citizens disproportionate weight in a presidential election. Put another way, Wyoming, a state with a population of about 600,000, has one member in the U.S. House of Representatives and two members in the U.S. Senate, which gives the citizens of Wyoming three electoral votes, or one electoral vote per 200,000 people. California, our most populous state, has more than 39 million people and 55 electoral votes, or approximately one vote per 715,000 people. Comparatively, individuals in Wyoming have nearly four times the power in the Electoral College as Californians.
Many people whine that using the Electoral College instead of the popular vote and majority rule is undemocratic. I’d say that they are absolutely right. Not deciding who will be the president by majority rule is not democracy. But the Founding Fathers went to great lengths to ensure that we were a republic and not a democracy. In fact, the word democracy does not appear in the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution or any other of our founding documents.
How about a few quotations expressed by the Founders about democracy? In Federalist Paper No. 10, James Madison wanted to prevent rule by majority faction, saying, “Measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority.” John Adams warned in a letter, “Remember Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There never was a Democracy Yet, that did not commit suicide.” Edmund Randolph said, “That in tracing these evils to their origin, every man had found it in the turbulence and follies of democracy.” Then-Chief Justice John Marshall observed, “Between a balanced republic and a democracy, the difference is like that between order and chaos.”
The Founders expressed contempt for the tyranny of majority rule, and throughout our Constitution, they placed impediments to that tyranny. Two houses of Congress pose one obstacle to majority rule. That is, 51 senators can block the wishes of 435 representatives and 49 senators. The president can veto the wishes of 535 members of Congress. It takes two-thirds of both houses of Congress to override a presidential veto. To change the Constitution requires not a majority but a two-thirds vote of both houses, and if an amendment is approved, it requires ratification by three-fourths of state legislatures. Finally, the Electoral College is yet another measure that thwarts majority rule. It makes sure that the highly populated states — today, mainly 12 on the East and West coasts, cannot run roughshod over the rest of the nation. That forces a presidential candidate to take into consideration the wishes of the other 38 states.
Those Americans obsessed with rule by popular majorities might want to get rid of the U.S. Senate, where states, regardless of population, have two senators. Should we change representation in the House of Representatives to a system of proportional representation and eliminate the guarantee that each state gets at least one representative? Currently, seven states with populations of 1 million or fewer have one representative, thus giving them disproportionate influence in Congress. While we’re at it, should we make all congressional acts be majority rule? When we’re finished with establishing majority rule in Congress, should we then move to change our court system, which requires unanimity in jury decisions, to a simple majority rule?
My question is: Is it ignorance of or contempt for our Constitution that fuels the movement to abolish the Electoral College?
WW is on target.
Rule by simple majority is an invitation to subjugation of the minority by the majority.
-----------------------------------------------
Hillary Clinton blamed the Electoral College for her stunning defeat in the 2016 presidential election in her latest memoirs, “What Happened?” Some have claimed that the Electoral College is one of the most dangerous institutions in American politics. Why? They say the Electoral College system, as opposed to a simple majority vote, distorts the one-person, one-vote principle of democracy because electoral votes are not distributed according to population.
To back up their claim, they point out that the Electoral College gives, for example, Wyoming citizens disproportionate weight in a presidential election. Put another way, Wyoming, a state with a population of about 600,000, has one member in the U.S. House of Representatives and two members in the U.S. Senate, which gives the citizens of Wyoming three electoral votes, or one electoral vote per 200,000 people. California, our most populous state, has more than 39 million people and 55 electoral votes, or approximately one vote per 715,000 people. Comparatively, individuals in Wyoming have nearly four times the power in the Electoral College as Californians.
Many people whine that using the Electoral College instead of the popular vote and majority rule is undemocratic. I’d say that they are absolutely right. Not deciding who will be the president by majority rule is not democracy. But the Founding Fathers went to great lengths to ensure that we were a republic and not a democracy. In fact, the word democracy does not appear in the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution or any other of our founding documents.
How about a few quotations expressed by the Founders about democracy? In Federalist Paper No. 10, James Madison wanted to prevent rule by majority faction, saying, “Measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority.” John Adams warned in a letter, “Remember Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There never was a Democracy Yet, that did not commit suicide.” Edmund Randolph said, “That in tracing these evils to their origin, every man had found it in the turbulence and follies of democracy.” Then-Chief Justice John Marshall observed, “Between a balanced republic and a democracy, the difference is like that between order and chaos.”
The Founders expressed contempt for the tyranny of majority rule, and throughout our Constitution, they placed impediments to that tyranny. Two houses of Congress pose one obstacle to majority rule. That is, 51 senators can block the wishes of 435 representatives and 49 senators. The president can veto the wishes of 535 members of Congress. It takes two-thirds of both houses of Congress to override a presidential veto. To change the Constitution requires not a majority but a two-thirds vote of both houses, and if an amendment is approved, it requires ratification by three-fourths of state legislatures. Finally, the Electoral College is yet another measure that thwarts majority rule. It makes sure that the highly populated states — today, mainly 12 on the East and West coasts, cannot run roughshod over the rest of the nation. That forces a presidential candidate to take into consideration the wishes of the other 38 states.
Those Americans obsessed with rule by popular majorities might want to get rid of the U.S. Senate, where states, regardless of population, have two senators. Should we change representation in the House of Representatives to a system of proportional representation and eliminate the guarantee that each state gets at least one representative? Currently, seven states with populations of 1 million or fewer have one representative, thus giving them disproportionate influence in Congress. While we’re at it, should we make all congressional acts be majority rule? When we’re finished with establishing majority rule in Congress, should we then move to change our court system, which requires unanimity in jury decisions, to a simple majority rule?
My question is: Is it ignorance of or contempt for our Constitution that fuels the movement to abolish the Electoral College?
Tuesday, January 16, 2018
Puns
I just found out I'm colorblind. The diagnosis came completely out of the purple.
I saw an ad for burial plots - the last thing I need.
Two blondes were driving to Disneyland. The sign said, "Disneyland left". So, they started crying and went home.
Don't worry about the bird flu - it's tweetable.
Did you hear about the kidnapping at school? It's okay, he woke up.
A termite walked into the bar and asked "Where is the bar tender?"
eBay is useless. I looked up lighters. All they had was 13,749 matches.
The French eat snails because they don't like fast food.
The difference between a poorly dressed man on a bicycle and a nicely dressed man on a tricycle is a tire.
I used to be addicted to soap, but I'm clean now.
Leopards can't play hide and seek - they are always spotted.
Don't spell "part" backwards - it's a trap.
I have a few jokes about unemployed people but it doesn't matter - none of them work.
To the mathematician who thought up zero - thanks for nothing.
Sign language is handy.
R.I.P boiled water - you are mist.
A clown opened a door for me - nice jester.
I saw an ad for burial plots - the last thing I need.
Two blondes were driving to Disneyland. The sign said, "Disneyland left". So, they started crying and went home.
Don't worry about the bird flu - it's tweetable.
Did you hear about the kidnapping at school? It's okay, he woke up.
A termite walked into the bar and asked "Where is the bar tender?"
eBay is useless. I looked up lighters. All they had was 13,749 matches.
The French eat snails because they don't like fast food.
The difference between a poorly dressed man on a bicycle and a nicely dressed man on a tricycle is a tire.
I used to be addicted to soap, but I'm clean now.
Leopards can't play hide and seek - they are always spotted.
Don't spell "part" backwards - it's a trap.
I have a few jokes about unemployed people but it doesn't matter - none of them work.
To the mathematician who thought up zero - thanks for nothing.
Sign language is handy.
R.I.P boiled water - you are mist.
A clown opened a door for me - nice jester.
Undocumented Immigrants - some data
From the Crime Prevention Research Center: John Lott's paper "Undocumented immigrants, U.S. Citizens, and Convicted Criminals in Arizona.
JL's paper can be found here.
Here is the Summary.
----------------------------------------------
Based on data from 1985 to 2017, undocumented immigrants are at least 142% more likely to be convicted of crime than other Arizonans.
JL's paper can be found here.
Here is the Summary.
----------------------------------------------
Based on data from 1985 to 2017, undocumented immigrants are at least 142% more likely to be convicted of crime than other Arizonans.
Undocumented immigrants tend to commit more serious crimes and serve 10.5% longer sentences than do U.S. citizens.
Undocumented immigrants are 163% more likely to be convicted of 1st degree murder than are U.S. citizens, 168% more likely to be convicted of 2nd degree murder, and 189.6% more likely to be convicted of manslaughter. Those three categories and negligent homicide added up to 987 convictions. Undocumented immigrants are also much more likely to commit sexual offenses against minors, sexual assault, DUI, and armed robbery.
Young convicts are especially likely to be undocumented immigrants. Undocumented immigrants born after June 15, 1981 are eligible for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). While undocumented immigrants from 15 to 35 years of age make up a little over two percent of the Arizona population, they make up almost 8% of the prison population. These immigrants also tend to commit more serious crimes.
Undocumented immigrant criminals are 45.4% more likely than other criminals to have been gang members, and 133% more likely to receive sentencing enhancements for being classified as dangerous.
These numbers may give an artificially low estimate of the share of crime committed by undocumented immigrants. Undocumented immigrants may commit many of their crimes against each other, and their victims may be afraid of calling the police or testifying at trial because of their undocumented status.
While undocumented immigrants are more likely to be convicted of crimes, they also exhibit extremely low recidivism and criminal history rates. Among criminals who are U.S. citizens, a small subset keeps going in and out of prison. Among undocumented immigrants, a much larger proportion go to prison once or twice and then never return to prison. 24.8% of U.S. citizens were admitted five or more times in the Arizona Department of Corrections, but that same number is only 2.95% for undocumented immigrants. The evidence suggests that these individuals leave Arizona after being incarcerated.
If undocumented immigrants committed crime nationally as they do in Arizona, in 2016 they would have been responsible for over 1,000 more murders, 5,200 rapes, 8,900 robberies, 25,300 aggravated assaults, and 26,900 burglaries.
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