Posts Tagged ‘Public Choice’

Obamacare Overseer Michelle Snyder, Chief Operating Officer at CMS, ‘Retires’

Wednesday, January 1st, 2014

The Last Embassy: Obamacare Overseer Michelle Snyder, Chief Operating Officer at CMS, ‘Retires’.

People should donate more if they want results

Thursday, June 6th, 2013

A congressman caught being honest.

Income Inequality Matters

Tuesday, March 26th, 2013

Roger Koppl in a nicely done piece.

I should memorize this paragraph for the next dinner party:

Liberal political theory tells us to expect that sort of thing as a sort of disease to which the body politic is subject under representative democracy. Our presumption, then, should be that much of the inequality of any epoch is produced by tariffs, licensing restrictions, bailouts, and other specific acts of governments. Most of the time the game is rigged more or less. (The trick of constitutional design is to minimize this evil bathwater without tossing out freedom or democracy.) The more a society’s income distribution is determined by politics and not markets, the more it will be skewed away from whatever pattern would emerge in a less fettered market economy. And in general, that skew will be toward greater inequality. As the political component grows, we can expect power to be concentrated in fewer and fewer hands and income distribution be more and more unequal. If political power is growing, we should strongly suspect that some of the rich are using the state to squeeze money from most of the poor.

My friends on the left keep thinking it’s all about the people in charge. They don’t seem to be able to grasp the notion that it is the system they really should be complaining about and working to change.

 

Amazon and UPS

Monday, March 25th, 2013

Also, in light of Doug’s comment linked to in the post below. What will Amazon’s robo delivery trucks do to the UPS driver? Are they going to be out jobs too?

I think if I were UPS, I would be very worried about the development of robo delivery trucks.

Worried, or be in on the development of robo delivery trucks.

Or, and I’m pretty confident predicting that this is what they’ll actually do, be at the forefront of the lobbying effort to keep driverless vehicles off the street.

H.L. Mencken

Friday, January 18th, 2013

Government is a broker in pillage, and every election is a sort of advance auction in stolen goods.

via Mark Perry at Carpe Diem.

There are several more. Go read the whole thing.

The Grumpy Economist: Fiscal cronyism

Friday, January 4th, 2013

The Grumpy Economist: Fiscal cronyism.

Read the whole thing. Well, maybe not, if you’re planning on having a good weekend.

Revolving door

Wednesday, January 2nd, 2013

The Grumpy Economist: Revolving door.

The Instapundit recommends tax rates of 50% on any income over the salary of the last government job.

Since I am on the outside of all this deal making and have to, you know, actually make my customers happy, I get pissed at this stuff. Members of both Team Coke and Team Pepsi do this shit.

Cut welfare to sports

Saturday, December 15th, 2012

Cut welfare to sports.

I was aware of sports team owners being able to depreciate their player’s contracts and deduct the salaries as an operating expense, since Mrs. White Rock used to work in accounting at a local professional sports team. But you really need to go read the whole article to get a sense of the nonsense of pro sports subsidies.

The article also touches on college sports.

Gaahhh!

Update: I want it understood that when the author of the article says that tax exempt stadium bonds cost the treasury money he’s wrong, but it doesn’t change his overall point by much. One industry should not be favored over another. And pro sports seems to be a particularly bad industry to choose to subsidize if public policy goals at to help/grow the middle class.

Dinocrat: Taxes and behavior

Monday, December 10th, 2012

Dinocrat: Taxes and behavior.

Unfuckingbelievable. Well, no it’s really not so unbelievable. It is just so typical of our ruling elites.

Another thing that bothers me

Sunday, December 2nd, 2012

A Solution Exists…I Can Quit Any Time | askblog.

Arnold Kling on U.S. deficit spending:

The mainstream views in the United States on deficit spending now lie somewhere in between, “We can quit at any time, but now is not the time” and “We never have to quit.”

Have a nice day.

If you don’t have a frame of reference, the debt problem doesn’t mean much to you. One trillion dollars is roughly $9,500 per household. Given a published $16 trillion debt, an estimated $4 trillion in unfunded public employee pensions, and an unknown amount that the federal government is committed to in social security and medicare, my children will be starting their adult lives with a debt of over $190,000 of taxes for government programs they have not benefited from.

As a society, we are awful for sticking our youth with this bill.