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Big Government Archive

Monday

13

January 2014

0

COMMENTS

Notable Quotations

Written by , Posted in Big Government, Economics & the Economy, Free Markets, The Nanny State & A Regulated Society

Simon Lester, “The Good Old Days of Global Poverty:”

Protectionism takes a lot of money from everyone, in order to give concentrated benefits to a small group of politically connected interest groups. This is the kind of policy that is usually condemned by both the left and right. In the case of the trade debate, however, some well-respected opinion leaders seem OK with such policies. Why is that? My best guess is that it taps into an emotional “us versus them” worldview. It isn’t really about economics at all. It’s about patriotism and nationalism. “They” are bad. “We” are good. So let’s punish them, even if in doing so we are really punishing us.

Jacob Sullum, “Do You Drink Too Much? Don’t Ask the CDC:”

Why does the CDC say “at least 38 million” Americans drink too much? Because it maintains that “drinking too much” includes not just so-called binge drinking but several other categories as well. If you are a man who consumes 15 or more drinks in a week or a woman who consumes eight or more, you drink too much. …If you are a woman, the CDC does not want to hear about how you limit yourself to one drink every day except Saturday, when you have two, thereby exceeding the government’s arbitrary limit. …And don’t even try to point out the lack of evidence that light to moderate drinking during pregnancy harms fetuses. The CDC has decreed that all these patterns of drinking are excessive, and its only challenge now is convincing the rest of us.

Colin Grabow, “If You Think Communism Is Bad For People, Check Out What It Did To The Environment:”

In addition to being an advocate for an ideology directly responsible for tens of millions of non-war deaths and untold human misery, Myerson has revealed himself as something of an ignoramus concerning communism’s shocking record on environmental issues. Not only a blight on the human condition, communism’s impact on the planet’s ecology has proven consistently ghastly.

 

Friday

10

January 2014

0

COMMENTS

Reducing Political Power is the Only Defense Against Its Abuse

Written by , Posted in Big Government

The latest political scandal, the so-called Bridge-gate, to consume the media involves revelations that a top aid to New Jersey Governor Chris Christie deliberately jammed traffic in the district of a mayor who refused to endorse Christie’s reelection. It’s nice that the media is obsessed with something – abuse of political power- that actually matters for once, though I can’t help but wonder where they were when the National Park Service was using the government shutdown as an excuse to harass citizens for the purpose of scoring political points  for the administration against Congress. And it’s worth noting that there’s already been 17 times more coverage on the big three networks for Christie’s scandal than there has been in the last six months for the IRS, a major instance of political abuse that has yet to be fully resolved.

It’s unclear at this point whether Christie ordered or knew of his staffer’s actions, but that’s a political question that will sort itself out. I’m more interested in the policy implications.

As political payback goes Bridge-gate is rather weak sauce. David Boaz notes that it pails in comparison to the more open and direct abuses of Progressive hero FDR:

FDR knew the rule, “Never pick a fight with a man who buys ink by the barrel.” He wasn’t so squeamish when it came to retailers who defied his preferences. Sewell Avery, chairman of the big catalog company Montgomery Ward, opposed labor unions, Roosevelt’s New Deal, and Roosevelt’s re-election. In 1944 Avery refused FDR’s order to extend his company’s labor contracts to avoid a strike. Roosevelt ordered the War Department to seize the offices of Montgomery Ward. Attorney General Francis Biddle flew to Chicago to oversee the army’s physical removal of Avery from his office, as the photo shows.

FDR was in fact a godfather of sorts when it comes to the abuse of political power. Aside from being wasteful and ineffective, the massive spending and public works programs he established during the Great Depression were routinely used to reward political allies and punish opponents. He hardly invented the practice of political patronage, but he drastically increased its scale and impact.

We’ve since witnessed numerous other examples of political abuse, from Richard Nixon to J. Edgar Hoover. Each case demonstrated in its own way the dangers of concentrating too much political power in a single person.  Indeed, the only sure fire way to reduce the abuse of power is to reduce the amount of power itself. The less power any one individual or group is able to wield, the fewer cases of abuse we will witness. And the key to reducing political power is to reduce the size and scope of government itself.

Friday

10

January 2014

0

COMMENTS

Notable Quotations

Written by , Posted in Big Government, Economics & the Economy

Richard Rahn, “Fumbling the crystal ball:”

I am reasonably confident in saying the world is headed for a major financial crisis, because the numbers show that most large economies are projected to further increase their debt-to-gross domestic product ratios this year, which are already at record-high global levels. However, I cannot forecast with a high probability (nor do I know others who can) when this financial crisis will occur.

A forecast that the world will have a new major financial crisis is really a forecast that the world’s political leaders are incapable or unwilling to make the necessary changes to avoid the crisis (e.g., substantially reducing government spending). If a new Margaret Thatcher or Ronald Reagan suddenly came forward, or if current leaders of major countries decided to make the necessary changes, my forecast of the crisis would become less likely.

Chris Edwards, “Why Is the Federal Government So Wasteful?”

There is no straightforward, technocratic way to “reinvent” the federal government to make it work with a decent amount of efficiency. Some of these problems can be reduced to an extent, but as long as the federal government is as large as it is, it will sadly continue wasting hundreds of billions of dollars from misallocation, mismanagement, and other problems.

The only real solution to the ongoing waste in the federal government is to downsize it.

Don Boudreaux, “Perhaps They’re All Unconsciously Biased:”

A perennial “Progressive” nostrum is the notion that other people’s consciousness must be “raised.”  A powerful belief among “Progressives” seems to be that there are only two possible reasons why someone might disagree with “Progressives’” plans to reconstruct society with government force: either the disagreeable person has a financial stake in publicly expressing disagreement or the disagreeable person suffers a “bias” that must be “corrected” by “consciousness-raising” or “awareness” campaigns.

 

Wednesday

1

January 2014

0

COMMENTS

Redistribution and the Human Prosperity Deniers

Written by , Posted in Big Government, Economics & the Economy, Liberty & Limited Government

Writing for the Washington Examiner, Randolph May highlights President Obama’s recent declaration that that income inequality is the “defining challenge of our time.” May harkensd back to Alexis de Tocqueville’s prescient warnings in Democracy in America:

Tocqueville argued that a democratic regime, by the sheer force of the majoritarian canon it embodies, would ceaselessly move in the direction of striving for ever greater degrees of what he called “equality of condition.”

This continual push for more equality of condition would lead inexorably to an ever-increasing encroachment of government authority at the expense of individual freedom.

We’ve witnessed just such an encroachment and it appears to be accelerating despite vast growth in overall human prosperity. That’s the thrust of a piece by Marian Tupy that challenges overly pessimistic accounts of the state of the world:

The dystopian world that Francis describes, without citing a single statistic, is at odds with reality. In appealing to our fears and pessimism, the pope fails to acknowledge the scope and rapidity of human accomplishment—whether measured through declining global inequality and violence, or growing prosperity and life expectancy.

The thesis of Evangelii Gaudium is simple: “unbridled” capitalism has enriched a few, but failed the poor…

Just how free the free market really is today is debatable. The United States is perceived as the paragon of free-market capitalism. And yet over the last two decades, according to Wayne Crews of the libertarian Competitive Enterprise Institute, Washington has issued 81,883 regulations—or nine per day. Maybe the marketplace should be regulated less, and maybe it should be regulated more. But unbridled it is not.

…

As for the negative consequences of “trickle-down” economics that the pope bemoans, let’s look at them in turn.

First, consider inequality. Academic researchers—from Xavier Sala-i-Martin of Columbia University, to Surjit Bhalla, formerly of the Brookings Institution and Rand Corporation, to Paolo Liberati of the University of Rome—all agree that global inequality is declining. That is because 2.6 billion people in China and India are richer than they used to be.

…Paradoxically, the shrinking of the global inequality gap was only possible after India and China abandoned their attempts to create equality through central planning. By allowing people to keep more of the money they earned, the Chinese and Indian governments incentivized people to create more wealth. Allowing inequality to increase at home, in other words, diminished inequality globally. And global inequality, surely, is the statistic that should most concern the leader of a global religion.

Tupy is also the editor of new Cato Institute project HumanProgress.org, which documents the dramatic improvements in human well-being that have taken place primarily over the last century. The site is needed because public perception is much more negative than reality, driven by cynical politicians who conjure ever more reasons to continue expanding government, as well as their own power.

Speaking of prosperity deniers, Donald Boudreaux recently provided a list of salient questions to ask of redistribution’s proponents, questions which they are unlikely able to answer. Here’s a sample:

Do you not worry that creating government power today to take from Smith and give to Jones — simply because Smith has more material wealth than Jones — might eventually be abused so that tomorrow, government takes from Jones and gives to Smith simply because Smith is more politically influential than Jones?

Suppose that Jones chooses a career as a poet. Jones treasures the time he spends walking in the woods and strolling city streets in leisurely reflection; his reflections lead him to write poetry critical of capitalist materialism. Working as a poet, Jones earns $20,000 annually. Smith chooses a career as an emergency-room physician. She works an average of 60 hours weekly and seldom takes a vacation. Her annual salary is $400,000. Is this “distribution” of income unfair? Is Smith responsible for Jones’ relatively low salary? Does Smith owe Jones money? If so, how much? And what is the formula you use to determine Smith’s debt to Jones?

I highly recommend reading the rest of Boudreaux’s piece. And if you happen to favor redistribution, I suggest you try answering the questions and seeing if you still do.

Friday

27

December 2013

0

COMMENTS

Overgovernment: Foreign Follies Edition

Written by , Posted in Big Government, Economics & the Economy, The Nanny State & A Regulated Society

Federal, state and local governments within the United States are all prone to overgovernment, and the problem has certainly gotten worse as government has grown in recent years. But they still lack in bureaucratic prowess compared to their foreign counterparts, as evidenced in part by these two recent stories on international governmental excess.

In France, kindness is a fine-able offense. Or at least it is for bar owners who allow their customers to demonstrate consideration by bringing empty glasses back to the bar:

French officials have fined a pub in Brittany €9,000 for “undeclared labour” after a customer returned some empty glasses to the bar.

For customers at the Mamm-Kounifl concert-café in Locmiquélic, carrying drinks trays and used glasses back to the bar was a polite tradition.

But for social security agency URSAFF, it was also an infringement of labour laws because customers were acting like waiters, French local newspaper Le Télégramme reported.

Surprisingly, some commentators on the story actually sided with the government! They share the fallacious reasoning behind the law, which supposedly exists to protect labor, i.e. jobs. Doing a task that another could be paid to do, in other words, is seen as a threat to their employment. But where does one draw the line with this sort of thinking? Should I be fined for mowing my own lawn instead of hiring a lawn care service? For cleaning my own house instead of hiring a maid? Or, in the case of New Jersey, pumping my own gas? Any activity we engage in for ourselves could be performed by another, thus creating a “job.” But does pursuing employment growth in this fashion make economic sense?

Ultimately, what this comes down to is an erroneous understanding many have regarding the nature of employment. Jobs don’t exist to fulfill demand for employment. Jobs exist when something needs doing. Production is the goal and employment is a byproduct. After all, if we could produce all that we needed without working, would that not be the ideal world? Reducing productivity to increase employment thus defeats the purpose of work and makes us all unnecessarily poorer in the process.

Labor is finite, while that which can be labored over is for all practical purposes infinite. The challenge, and where governments typically fail and thereby cause unemployment, is in having a system which encourages the entrepreneurial exploration of new products and services. Innovations that enhance productivity, whether it be ATM’s, automated cashiers, or even the realization that customers can return their own empty glasses (nevermind that such hardly represents the sum total of a server’s job), are not the cause of long-term unemployment. Innovations that allow us to make more for less, or free labor from doing one task so that it may be allowed to do another instead, make us richer and should be encouraged. Discouraging innovations in order to “protect jobs” is economic backwardness.

Moving from France to Denmark, we find a case of excessive nannyism (Hat-tip: Cato@Liberty):

…scientists have now discovered that too much of the most commonly used type of cinnamon, cassia, can cause liver damage thanks to high levels of coumarin, a natural ingredient found in the spice.

…As a result, the EU has laid down guidelines for the maximum content of coumarin in foodstuffs – 50mg per kg of dough in traditional or seasonal foods that are only consumed occasionally, and 15mg per kg of dough in what it terms as everyday fine baked goods.

Last month, the Danish food authority ruled that the nation’s famous cinnamon swirls were neither traditional nor seasonal, thus limiting the quantity of cinnamon that bakers are allowed to use, placing the pastry at risk – and sparking a national outcry that could be dubbed the great Danish bake strop.

The president of the Danish Bakers’ Association, Hardy Christensen, said: “We’ve been making bread and cakes with cinnamon for 200 years. Then suddenly the government says these pastries are not traditional? I have been a baker for 43 years and never come across anything like this – it’s crazy. Using lower amounts of the spice will change the distinctive flavour and produce less tasty pastries. Normally, we do as we’re told by the government and say OK, but now it’s time to take a stand. Enough is enough.”

Anything taken in sufficient quantities can be hazardous to one’s health. This is especially true of government.

Monday

2

December 2013

0

COMMENTS

Most Prudent Congress Ever?

Written by , Posted in Big Government, Media Bias

USA today reported that the current Congress has hit “new productivity lows” (Hat-tip: Reason):

Congress is on track to beat its own low record of productivity, enacting fewer laws this year than at any point in the past 66 years.

It’s a continuing slide of productivity that began in 2011, after Republicans recaptured the House majority in the 2010 elections, and the ability to find common ground has eluded the two parties while the legislative to-do list piles up.

The 112th Congress, covering 2011-12, emerged as the least productive two-year legislating period on record, while 2013 is on track to become the least productive single year in modern history.

Stories such as this do a lot to illustrate the assumptions of journalists that don’t explicitly make it into their reporting (some might consider it, dare I say, bias). The obvious, and also foolish, assumption behind this rather typical approach to legislative reporting is the belief that laws are fundamentally positive in nature, and therefore the more the merrier. Put another way, the Congress which passes the most laws is also seen as the most productive.

We could challenge this assumption by highlighting the plethora of laws passed in recent years that have been anything but productive (Obamacare, Dodd Frank, etc.), but I don’t want to get into the legislative weeds. I’d rather just point out that the logic behind concern-trolling Congressional productivity is internally inconsistent. If, as they presume, legislation is de facto positive and productive, then we should expect the need for new legislation to decrease over time. Since the purpose for passing legislation is, or ought to be, to solve actual problems, there should be fewer and fewer things we need solving over time as more and more laws are passed. In which case, articles like this would not be written.

But the reality is that legislation is not always productive. Sometimes it fails to solve an issue, or creates more problems than it solves. This is why the same people who take the statist view of legislation still implicitly acknowledge there remain a great many problems to solve. The realization that legislation can be either productive or unproductive, rather, should caution against reacting to problems by rushing through legislation without due consideration of the full ramifications of any proposed solutions. Looked at this way, the same evidence USA Today used to declare the current Congress to have “the least productive single year in modern history” can be used to say that is has been the most prudent in modern history.

Obviously, it’s not really so simple. Contrary to the logic of the article, Congress does not operate in a vacuum. Laws must also be signed by the President before enacted into law. Fewer laws are thus to be expected in a split government, as the two branches will agree on fewer issues when controlled by different parties. In this way, we see in practice the theory of our system of checks and balances: it sometimes forces politicians into behaving prudently despite their best efforts and intentions to the contrary.

Tuesday

26

November 2013

0

COMMENTS

Overgovernment: Total Recall Edition

Written by , Posted in Big Government, The Nanny State & A Regulated Society

General Government Motors is recalling 18,941 Chevy Camaros for violating Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard No. 208, reports Heritage’s The Foundry. Surely the issue with the cars must be one of life and death, and for which we should profusely thank our government overloads for saving us from. Right?

Does anyone believe that? Surely not anyone who has followed the Overgovernment series. No, the horrible violation for which GM had to recall almost 20,000 cars at significant expense was for airbag warning labels that might peel.

This is no small matter, evidently. If the air bag warning label detaches from the visor, the driver and front seat passenger may not be warned of the risks of air bag deployment. Or so goes the reasoning for the adhesion edict. But even when warned via visor label, a driver and front seat passenger have little choice about air bag deployment, since the potentially dangerous equipment is required by the NHTSA itself.

In other words, General Motors is required under NHTSA rules to initiate a recall of 18,941 vehicles because of a danger created by other NHTSA rules. Perhaps it is regulators who should come with a warning label.

The nanny state, ladies and gentlemen.

Tuesday

12

November 2013

0

COMMENTS

Taxpayers Will Lose the Battle of the Energy Cronies

Written by , Posted in Big Government, Energy and the Environment, Free Markets

Senate Democrats are on a green energy blitz, reports Michael Bastasch of the Daily Caller:

Sens. Tom Udall of New Mexico and Mark Udall of Colorado introduced a bill last week that would require that 25 percent of the country’s power come from renewable energy sources by 2025.

Another bill introduced by Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Ed Markey would require the country to get 25 percent of its power from renewable sources by 2025. Like the Udall bill, the Markey legislation would allow companies to purchase renewable energy credits to comply with the mandate. Companies that don’t comply would be forced to pay a fine.

Mandates like this, which includes the individual mandate in Obamacare, are always sold as benefiting consumers. The truth, however, is that consumers only get the benefit of higher prices and fewer choices. The real winners are the politically connected producers of the goods which consumers are being forced to purchase.

However, renewable energy mandates have been criticized for raising energy costs across the country. Earlier this year, conservative state legislators in 16 states led an effort to repeal or weaken state mandates, arguing they raised energy costs.

Natural gas prices, they argue, have plummeted and can provide cheaper, more reliant energy than solar and wind.

While natural gas certainly appears to be the better choice for consumers at the moment, there’s no guarantee it will remain so. As Veronique de Rugy has pointed out, the natural gas industry has thus sought their own crony handouts to help solidify their position. The point is thus not that natural gas should be favored over so-called renewables, but that neither should receive government handouts.

Government energy mandates are a waste of taxpayers dollars and a means only to favor industries that fit the preferences of politicians. The market should be left alone so that it may instead reflect the needs and desires of consumers.

Wednesday

16

October 2013

0

COMMENTS

Notable Quotations

Written by , Posted in Big Government, Liberty & Limited Government

Chris Edwards, “Budget Battles Highlight Importance of Federalism:”

Outside of the military, the federal government is mainly just a giant cash transfer machine, vacuuming up taxpayer earnings and redistributing them to individuals, businesses, nonprofit groups, and state/local governments through more than 2,000 subsidy programs.

***

Brink Lindsey, “Kludgeocracy’s Lessons for Libertarians:”

The sad truth – sad, that is, for people like me – is that small-government rhetoric is much more popular than actual small-government policies. American public opinion, I’m sorry to say, is pretty comfortable with big government; it’s just not very comfortable with how comfortable it is.

***

Niall Ferguson, “Krugtron the Invincible, Part 3”

“For too long, Paul Krugman has exploited his authority as an award-winning economist and his power as a New York Times columnist to heap opprobrium on anyone who ventures to disagree with him. Along the way, he has acquired a claque of like-minded bloggers who play a sinister game of tag with him, endorsing his attacks and adding vitriol of their own. I would like to name and shame in this context Dean Baker, Josh Barro, Brad DeLong, Matthew O’Brien, Noah Smith, Matthew Yglesias and Justin Wolfers. Krugman and his acolytes evidently relish the viciousness of their attacks, priding themselves on the crassness of their language.”

Friday

11

October 2013

0

COMMENTS

Overgovernment: When Nannies Collide

Written by , Posted in Big Government, Culture & Society, The Nanny State & A Regulated Society

This episode of Overgovernment brings us Nanny on Nanny action. When anti-Obesity nannies meet “for the children!” nannies in a fight to the death, who shall leave their field of battle victorious? Let’s find out:

…Different agencies often act at cross-purposes with each other.

For a relatively minor but remarkably revealing example of the latter, look at the story of the U.S. Postal Service destroying an entire run of stamps  “after receiving concerns from the President’s Council on Fitness, Sports & Nutrition over alleged “unsafe” acts depicted on three of the stamps.”

What were these unsafe activities?  Binge drinking?  Smoking?  Juggling machetes while skydiving?  Attempting to purchase an attractive health insurance plan without the firm guidance of government “navigators?”

No, the stamps were printed to honor First Lady Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move!” vanity project for youthful physical fitness… The three Stamps of Doom depicted “a cannonball dive, skateboarding without kneepads and a headstand without a helmet,” according to the Postal Blog.

Did you know your child was required to don a helmet before performing a headstand?  Well, now you do.  And if you’re going to let them climb on a skateboard without kneepads, you might as well order up a kid-sized coffin and start making funeral arrangements.

The USPS apparently also looked darkly upon stamps showing “a batter without a batting helmet, a girl balancing on a slippery rock, and a soccer player without kneepads or shin pads,” but they weren’t horrifying enough to trigger the kill order.

In this epic battles of the nannies, the nannies won. America, as usual, lost.

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About Me

profileI serve as Vice President of the Center for Freedom and Prosperity, a non-profit think tank dedicated to preserving tax competition and free markets. This site features my personal views, which are not reflective of CF&P.

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