Google's Project 100 gives 100 reasons to switch to another company
When Google announced
Project 100, it seemed like an ambitious project to drive innovation. Instead of rewarding the inventors, even in the execution of this project, they were going to give the creative talent the satisfaction of seeing their project funded. Now, however,
the preliminary winners have been unveiled and its a shameful and disgusting display of ideology over substance. Not a single thing on their list seemed to escape the orbit of their ridiculously left-wing worldview.
With a nation at 17% unemployment, there was nothing that drove business, there was nothing that was going to give jobs. Google was founded to ostensibly not do evil but also to digitize the world's information and make it accessible. This is not an ideological goal as much as it is a purely economic one: the reduction of the costs of information. It's an economically egalitarian statement, one not matched by the politically elitist priorities of the topics chosen by their politburo of idea screeners. These projects will not help real people as much as they will function to assuage white guilt among google programmers. Rather than helping people in Peoria, Google wants to curry popularity in Greenwich Village.
That said let me disclose the self-interest,
I submitted a very basic idea for a smarter traffic light that would streamline busy intersections to accomodate the laws of inertia to control traffic patterns. This idea may be dumb, but I think it reflects a sincerity about dealing with the real issues that people face rather than the day's latest fad featured in Mother Jones. I shouldn't have expected more, but for some reason, with google, I did.
Labels: Economics, ideas
"So far Mr. Obama has used his personally exciting presidency for initiatives that are spending public money on a scale not seen since ancient Egypt."
This great WSJ article, entitled "Obama's America: Too Fat to Fail" was an excellent piece on the unbelievable molestation of the market and the wonderboys Obama has hired to 'fix' the economy who will undoubtedly only end up wrecking it further.
Government is not the solutions to our problems, government is the problem.
Labels: Democrats, Detroit, Economics, obama
Immune to hypocrisy, history and anti-trust: the Government
It's hilarious that Tim Geithner can get up and say that some business like AIG is "too big to fail" and convince lawmakers to bail out the preferred business/industry of the day. Businesses becoming too big to fail used to be called control of the market, and subject to the anti-trust laws that mandated their separation. Not central banks of course, but those 'other industries'
such as telephones in 1982. That these companies got so large that they became 'too big to fail' seems, as well, like a failure on the part of government to adequately enforce the already existing anti-trust laws. The government's monopoly over the money supply is beyond question, but when other countries point out the obvious and don't want to keep financing Uncle Sam's perpetual debts, Geithner can talk about a global currency in one breath, saying both that he'd oppose it
but telling others he'd support it.
Such is the madness, the Washington circus.
Labels: bailout, Economics, fiat money, obama
Debate Judging: Group Discussion and the Stimulus/Bailouts
I recently had the opportunity to judge a debate tournament at Shrewsbury High School, where I occasionally help out. One new Forensics event is called "Group Discussion" where 6 students take a topic and the judge decides which one of them handles and controls a group discussion the best. It seems like a very modern, PC and lame event, but in practice it was neat to see. Having judged the event, though, there were a few thoughts that helped me understand how the economics of the bailout appear to the common man. It was shocking, for instance, that all the students agreed in the necessity for both the bailout and the stimulus package. Even some who had obviously read several libertarian tracts and even mentioned the gold standard, still said government action was needed. There was also an absence of principles guiding their actions, which I suppose is to be expected, but was frustrating to watch. They had a very singular and short-term focus on getting past this immediate economic situation and not really questioning what underpinnings caused this situation. It was also frustrating that no one really took the role of the contrarian. Three students, in fact, were virtually silent through the presentation and I kept hoping that at least one of them would try to take the role of the spoiler. The solutions, even to accept the necessity for government action, were all very within-the-box and uncreative -- there were no big ideas, no one took any risks. I understand economics isn't the most exciting field, but I was still hoping to see a spark in one of them to the point where they took an idea and ran with it - instead it was largely predictable: more education, more money to teachers, the new deal was key to getting out of the depression, more regulation, etc. etc. etc. -- it was hard to restrain myself and say what a cesspool of money most school districts are, that government is ridiculously inefficient and that government caused this crisis. Perhaps I was hoping for too much. I have been so thrilled by the high caliber of the Shrewsbury High students that perhaps my standards were artificially high; I had a good time and enjoyed the day so I should not complain at all, but it was interesting to see what kind of messages are getting across to students in this current crisis.
Labels: Economics, education, media, media bias, messaging
Bailouts and Stimuluses and Messaging
I had the thought that the recent bank bailouts and stimuluses really amount to a new form of corporate welfare - and these new welfare queens are even less worthy than the welfare queens of time past. We get upset when John Thain redecorates his office to the tune of millions, just as we rightly get upset when poverty mama spends her assistance checks on game systems, new shoes and expensive jewelry. Obviously there's a greater moral wrong when the businessman, who is supposed to be disciplined and moral, makes these kind of lapses, but our righteous anger ought to be channeled in such a way as to have a similar welfare reform as we did in 1996 for a corporate welfare reform of 2009 to start allowing companies to fail, and remove the rent-seeking regulations on smaller companies to take up the slack when giants like Sh*ttybank (Citibank) and Skank of America (Bank of America) fall.
Labels: Congress, Economics, messaging, obama, Pelosi
Delaying children because of the economy
Considering that so much of the economy is perception, and the media has hit a constant drumbeat of pessimism, one feels lucky that there are any children running around at all. But this
bad story about declining birthrates,
coupled with Nancy Pelosi's idiocy that birth control promotes economic growth shows that people forget the economy isn't driven by robots or equipment, but by people: their innovation, ideas, hard work, labor, time, capital and training. The economy is a word that reflects the collective work of millions of people, and when we abort people away, when we contracept future generations and children, we artificially constrict our economy and our progress. Society thrives on children, on workers, on artists and engineers: on the 'unwanted' kid who works hard and raises a nice family and works his hands to the bone to make a good life for himself. Why have we forgotten that it is great to be alive, and great to be with people? Our resources are infinite if we continue to unleash the potential God gave man through reason, time and the many resources abundant all over.
Labels: abortion, children, contraception, Democrats, Economics, policy
Article: The Education Hoax
Does the price of higher education justify itself when considered against its value?
Probably not, says this recent Forbes article.
Labels: campuses, college, Economics, education
Why raising the gas tax could be a good thing
Wired puts out
this article which seems silly at first. But they make an interesting comment a little bit into the article -- that it would then be wise to make a corresponding cut in payroll taxes. Now, at first this seems like quite the silly proposition-- just a displacement of current tax. But the gas tax is paid by everyone -- the unemployed, the poor, and the over 50% of Americans who pay no tax. So in reality this is the most regressive of all tax systems, and honestly, the most fair. If we're going to embark on a brave new world of construction projects, the least we can do is to free up other parts of the economy so that we don't have the economic efficiency of the Soviet Union. Displacing "progressive" taxation onto more "regressive" taxation making it flatter, simpler and more 'equitable' is honestly a great way to do that.
The only downside of course is that we all know once they raise the gas tax they won't really cut the payroll taxes. But it's a nice thought in the abstract.
Labels: Economics, media, taxes
The bailout blame game
Harry Reid just called off the Senate vote on an automotive bailout, and let's not forget that the Democrats control the Congress. When I was in Detroit, I heard the local NPR take callers who tried, even still, to blame Republicans for the lack of a car bailout. Yet, no one notices the obvious: that when the unions and the manufacturing industry blithely gives its votes, repeatedly, to Democrats that they get taken advantage of --
as seen by the Democrats' internal power struggle displacing Cong. Dingell in favor of Henry Waxman. The Democrats are carving up the auto industry, fat on the votes of unions who don't know better, and busy serving their real masters: the environmentalists.
Labels: Congress, Democrats, Detroit, Economics, policy
Economic chaos: Libertarian confusions
Citigroup is close to a firesale. GM and Chrysler are close to insolvency, and who are we to blame? A former boss chided me once for a lack of faith in the economy, saying that his think tank friends assured him that the fundamentals of the economy were strong. My libertarian friends' faith in the markets are not swayed. And while, yes, the world will not explode from this crisis, it will continue to be aggravated as long as the government intervention and control artificially prop up inefficient industries. The banks made bad loans due to government signals that credit would be forever extended, and the car companies comply with unreasonable regulations and live off of government subsidies and sentimentalism despite their union contracts ensuring their non-competitiveness with other car producers. We face, again, a crisis of government and yet Washington is only talking about increasing regulation. My friends' faith in the market is misplaced only because they think we have a market-based economy, and don't see that we really have a government-based one.
Labels: Detroit, Economics, policy
Detroit: Mitt Romney and I actually kind of agree
Mitt Romney wrote a recent editorial in the New York Times with some thoughts on the automotive bailout, and, other than having the government invest in research, I thought his words were surprisingly resonant and sound.
Labels: Detroit, Economics, policy
The decline of American car manufacturing
George Will has some very good observations on the future of the American automotive industry, and how the impending bailout will only stall economic recovery.
Labels: Detroit, Economics
Slate: Getting it wrong as usual
Daniel Gross at Slate wrote an article "
What's the Matter with Greenwich?" in which he tries to answer the question as to why the Republicans are losing the upper class. And in so doing, he presents a classic straw man that gets knocked down with another false notion: that the social conservatism is driving away the upper class. This is just classic leftist piling on during Republican defeat. This is a careful application of a stupid narrative: that conservatism lost on Tuesday and not the incompetent campaign of John McCain.
The truth is, contrary to popular opinion, that the Republicans have never been a successful advocate for the wealthiest Americans. One need only look at the Senators with the greatest wealth to see that liberal Democrats are always the wealthiest. Sure, being wealthy lends one's self to rationally pursue conservative economics but by the virtue of being rich one gets to loose themselves of the economic truths that got them rich.
John McCain is pro-amnesty, he was a war hero, he was adored at one point by the press, he was not a radical, did not talk about religion, and was not friendly to the gun groups or the pro-life groups. He was very pro-homosexual. So, what, exactly, is the substantive point of Daniel Gross other than to confuse the truth and twist the narrative to suit his purposes?
It would be accurate to say and observe that the wealthiest now have their own social agenda-- pursuing silly things like "environmentalism" even when the science and common sense don't add up, or "inequality" between inherently unequal things, postracial nonsense and other inanities. The left has figured out, aided and abetted by their media allies, how to dupe the rich into voting against their interests. Congratulations to the left for finding this magic elixir and potent political recipe, but don't expect me to buy the bull on why it's happening and find a way to blame conservatives who have nothing to do with it.
Slate is completely disreputable.
Labels: Economics, election, media bias, society
$35 trillion dollars worth of "choices"
Since 1970,
researchers estimate that abortion has cost $35 trillion to the economy. When you consider the senseless slaughter of millions, and the lives that those children would have had... the many researchers, chemists, lawyers, doctors, mothers, fathers, teachers, construction workers, bankers, soldiers, nurses... you start to realize what abortion-on-demand has done just in economic terms. The spiritual costs, the mental and emotional costs, I would guess, are much larger than the sticker shock on the $35 trillion number. We will never know how much pain this innocent slaughter has cost us.
Labels: abortion, Economics, policy
Economics Histrionics
The
UK Telegraph, more accurately Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, writes about the end of economic time here. And while I think, definitely, that this crisis has the opportunity to be the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, and I suppose that economically it already is, it will take government mismanagement to create a crisis worse than the Great Depression. Only government can cause massive changes in value and wealth. But, government has a possible solution: slash spending and encourage wealth-development and job creation:
1. Eliminate the capital gains taxes
2. Allow for oil and energy exploration
3. Fast-track approvals for nuclear power plants and oil refineries
4. Slash all needless government programs like NASA, FCC, privatize their services, and extend property rights into the areas formerly controlled by the state. That means, tangibly, to extend property rights into space, or permanently sell the airwaves.
5. Raise the Social Security retirement age to 75, add in part of the legislation to have it slowly raise to 80 in 15 years.
6. Means-test Social Security
7. End the federal highway fund, and put the burden back on the states where it belongs
8. Institute a graduated flat tax to save the costs of compliance
9. Sell the national parks
10. Rescind many/most EPA regulations
11. Means-test public education (i.e. if your family earns over 200k a year, then you don't get free government education)
12. Sell off/privatize most state universities
13. Pass Senator Coburn's health care bill to make health care cheaper and more efficient
14. Cut any program that doesn't clearly add value to the country
Simple enough.
Labels: budget, Economics, policy, politics
How to win friends and influence enemies: Nancy Pelosi-style
Nancy Pelosi's speech during the bailout is being partially blamed for its defeat. Her speech is idiotic, it's irresponsible. It demonstrates absolutely zero understanding of budgeting, of monetary policy and of economics in general. She launches into these broad statements, never mentioning the real causes of the crisis, nor real solutions. She talks about Clinton surpluses, as though they were indicative of anything but the tech bubble. And in many ways that false wealth created during that time, which later got dumped into the housing market after the tech bubble burst, which later got dumped into commodities after the housing bubble burst, is the real cause of this crisis. We have an inflationary time-bomb of fiat money floating in the system consuming chunks of our economy as we try to keep the lid on inflation by just moving it around and not taking the several years to just cook it off through a painful recovery. It'll either come out through a recession, inflation or both, and yet there's no one willing to admit that there's an appropriate amount of reckoning we need to accept. Possible, real, solutions would include cutting spending/entitlements, lowering corporate and/or capital gains taxes to promote growth or some other pro-growth agenda rather than trying to rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic. Nothing coming from Washington and the Pelosi crowd even comes close to these two basic principles, and so we're in for quite a ride as this slow-motion train wreck continues. The worst thing they could do is enact some "baulout" or "reforms" that further encourage bad behavior on both the part of lenders and borrowers, and yet that's all they seem intent on doing. Punish the good and reward the bad? As someone else mentioned, welcome to Washington.
Labels: bailout, Economics, policy, politics
Busting Budgetary Bailouts: An Alternative
If the federal government is going to blow through $700 billion in order to bail out these reckless banks, then why not offset that expense with the sale of other government assets? The federal government has a series of things it could do to raise capital to justify these expenses, and if this is as important as they claim it is, then it ought to justify getting rid of wasteful spending.
The CATO Institute has a nice convenient list of what government could sell to raise $81 billion right away, and shed about $5 billion in annual commitments. There's even
a handy guide from CATO about how to trim $300 billion from the federal budget with relatively little pain.
Labels: budget, Economics, government, policy, politics
George W. Bush and his Economic Destruction: "Compassionate" American Socialism
Leave it to Bush to bring about economic devastation, the legacy of compassionate conservatism is apparently that the 'compassion' is really code for 'I drown your economy in the bathtub when no one's looking'
We are going to see a 30% reduction in the quality of life, in the cost of essentials, over the next year and we won't even realize it. We are being strangled financially and when these costs rise, we'll wonder, "why did our rent just go up 30%" or "why did a gallon of milk get so expensive" and not wonder whether it has to do with the reduced purchasing power of the dollar.
Let us list out our various crises that King George has handled with such expert care:
1. Energy Crisis - no new plants = increased costs of production
2. Iraq Occupation - lots of good men overseas, huge costs = higher govt spending causing greater debt which causes inflation, and 250k men abroad means those wages aren't working within the civilian economy
3. Immigration Crisis - too many illegals = decreased wages, strained social services, higher taxes
4. Oil Crisis - regulations kill production and preventing new development = increased costs of production, inflationary pressures
5. Insurance Crisis - bad mortgages cause major investment houses to approach bankruptcy = possible spread of the insolvency to other banks, constriction in credit causing businesses to stop expansions and halt economic growth, bailing out the banks will cause a larger national debt which is a strong inflationary pressure, as well as the added inflationary pressure of the defaults on the economy
6. Mortgage Loan Crisis - lotsa bad loans = increase in foreclosures and people losing their homes, causes banks to go insolvent, puts individuals in higher-paying apartments which will cut into their disposable income causing less purchasing and a general economic slowdown
7. Healthcare Crisis - antiquated laws and enough socialism to kill the market forces = increasing inflationary pressures as healthcare costs skyrocket thanks to a total lack of political will to implement very basic reforms such as those proposed by Senator Coburn.
coming soon:
7.
Collapsing Dollar - inflationary pressures cause the value of the dollar to keep falling = we'll be selling companies in this country for pennies on the dollar in order to get foreign capital, most of the businesses in this country will become foreign-owned, our exports will also increase and imports decrease thanks to an inability to buy anything globally due to our weak dollar and while this sounds good on the surface we import so many things that it will ultimately drive up the costs of production even further.
8.
Entitlements Crisis - not enough babies = Social Security and Medicare bankruptcy, either old people will be bankrupt or on welfare, and medical costs will skyrocket as the demand overwhelms supply
Labels: Bush, Economics, policy, politics
Economic Destruction
The recent news over the past few days about the bankruptcy at Lehman, and the
falling stock prices, and the banking crisis should reach every American and produce a state of near-panic. The housing crisis isn't going away, and it's spreading to other industries and other aspects of the economy.
And I have come to a conclusion that I don't like: that whatever the merits of the Iraqi liberation and stabilization effort, our country simply cannot afford to keep it going and sustain the occupation. We ought to end our occupation as soon as possible and transition to a new government and withdraw the forces. We simply cannot afford as a nation to continue spending at the level at which we have become accustomed.
Solutions:
1- End the war in Iraq and Afghanistan
2- Remove our foreign presence from major military operations in Germany, Japan
3- Remove all restrictions to new energy creation (nukes, offshore, ANWR, anything)
4- Enforce a balanced budget amendment
5- Start drastically cutting social services and paring down the size of government
6- Privatize and sell off as many federal assets/liabilities as possible (the post office and Amtrak come to mind)
7- End the madness of promoting homeownership to those who aren't responsible enough to sustain it
Sadly, I don't think we have the political willpower for any of these, no matter how desperately needed.
Labels: Economics, foreign policy, iraq, policy, politics, war
Nationalization is Socialism in every country but this one.
The Treasury department has now
effectively nationalized Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, as this very lengthy Wall Street Journal article explains. And the rationale for this is that no one wants to default on these loans and start foreclosing on houses where loans shouldn't have been approved in the first place. If you want to read between the lines as to what this means, you'll have to consult
the always prescient Steve Sailer, who explains that
this is the "diversity recession" caused by foolish loans to those who were completely unqualified to handle them, but who benefited from having the right skin color. And now, after assuming this debt, the government gets to make another crisis within a current one, by writing loans to these clowns, and taking equity within the companies. Not only is the federal bank a perpetual donor, it is now going to be an owner. This will have disastrous consequences for the financial industry later on.
And we ought to be more outraged and more alarmed by this. We would call it socialism or nationalization elsewhere. The long history of antipathy towards Fidel Castro stemmed in no small part from his nationalization of industries in Cuba in 1959, we effectively okayed the assassination of
Allende in Chile in 1973 when he moved to nationalize industries there and institute socialism. And I don't point these things out in order to castigate them, rather, quite appropriately, to demonstrate how serious it is when this nationalization effort happens. It affects an entire country, it screws up the financial industry, and it throws economies into chaos. The US foreign policy gets criticism from all sides, but I don't think it's legitimate when it undertook actions to stabilize the world and provide the security for countries to keep doing business. A Pax Americana based on trade and free markets is at least a predictable, stable and a relatively fair one. But now, we are clearly in the midst of a rule by emotional appeal to the masses, mob rule.
When
Hugo Chavez nationalizes foreign industries, it's appropriately labeled socialism. When we nationalize our own financial industry to protect it against a preferred political class of voters, a de facto ruling elite (noting that the actual ruling elite simply relies on this class of voters), it's... somehow different.
When Bush
promises "
universal home ownership" in his state of the union, who was he appealing to? He was promising wealth from the homeowners to those who didn't have the means to own one. It was a power-play, and socialism. It is mindless "equity" in the most base of material ways. We think, "houses" and say, "happy" but we don't wonder whether the same things that cause a man to be in debt or financially unstable might cause him to lack the stability needed to keep that house. Or the many people in this country whose jobs are too transient to be in one place long enough for a 20-30 year mortgage. I recall discussing this aspect of Bush's policies with conservative friends, and everyone came back to the same essentially liberal line: that all our minority problems will just go away, crime will finally come down, education will go up, drug use will go away, when minorities are "invested" and are part of this great "ownership society" and feel like "stockholders" in their community.
How silly. How naive. And how foolish of myself that I didn't see through those arguments.
We are reaping what we have sown. We elected a soft socialist who didn't want "the soft bigotry of low expectations" and proclaimed how "compassionate" he was, and despite all the hype and hope, and the hyped hope, we got what it really was: socialism, just in small doses. Shame on us for not seeing this for what it truly was, and for trying to buy our way out of racial discord. The result will no doubt be more chaos and instability in the financial markets, and bring about more racial discord when these homes finally default, and will lead to greater government control over the economy which will, again, promote more inefficiencies and economic uncertainty.
Labels: Bush, Economics, government, policy, politics, race
The roads to serfdom and bankruptcy ought to be renamed Bush Blvd.
Apparently
the Fed is talking about taking over Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. Welcome to the socialist state given to us by President Bush and the Federal Reserve. No one is held to blame, no one is even properly condemned for this mess, and the entire economy and taxpayers end up footing the bill, potentially nearly doubling the national debt in one stroke by assuming the $5 trillion in debt held by the two. Granted, most of that won't sour, but the implications are staggering, and the involvement by the government into the economy is perpetual. That this is even being discussed makes my stomach turn at the thought of a Bush presidency. One cannot allow a country to be systemically taken apart as his most inept and incompetent administration has, and not be repulsed by the staggering idiocy of his advisers and himself. This President is even more foolish than the worst of his leftist detractors, and will ensure the financial ruin of this country through the reckless budgets he has agreed to, and the reckless spending he has proposed, and these reckless policies which are destroying the economy. Such is the cost of easy money from the Fed, and
insane lending mandates to cover borrowers who cannot afford them or keep a job long enough to make consistent payments.
Labels: Bush, Economics, race
