Monthly Archives: April 2012

Just In Time To Wage War On Women

It started during the latest round of back and forth over the democrats creation of this silly “War On Women” meme.  An innocuous question surrounding the Lilly Ledbetter law and Romney’s support of it.  In fact, from an economic and fact based perspective, the Lilly Ledbetter act is not good legislation, women are not discriminated against in the marketplace and all this law does is reduce the incentive of businesses to hire more women.  This is exactly what we see when we require businesses to pay a minimum wage, and in reverse, when we see government force landlords to restrict rent.

However, this isn’t a debate on facts it’s a debate of politics.  And here is the headline I knew was coming:

Women make 77 cents for each $1 made by men

The only answer to this headline is:

Men are 11.5 Times More Likely To Die On The Job Than Women

Don’t let the headlines dominate the message.

Tax Revenues Year Over Year

Did you know that there are two ways to increase revenues generated from taxation?

If you’re liberal, we’ll forgive you for not knowing very much about things like economics:

You can either increase the rate at which you tax the population or you can increase the amount of money the population has.

One of those things results in bringing in more money to the federal government.  The other results in being labelled a class warrior.

I just posted that the federal government is set to receive a 6.51% raise.  And with the updated numbers I can understand that the government is upset with its raise.  After all, since 1941, the average increase in revenues to the federal government is a healthy 9.54%.  Even going back to a much more recent 20 year history we are seeing a 4.14% increase, and that’s including the negative 16.60% turkey we saw in 2009.

The fact is this, if you wanna increase revenue, then focus on increasing revenue.  Grow the economy, embrace business and celebrate capitalism.  On the other hand, if you wanna use the tax code to redistribute wealth in the name of raising revenue, be honest about that.

Reducing The Cost of Health Insurance

One of the contributors to the price of medical care is the price of malpractice insurance.  And with a simple change in tort laws that price of malpractice has diminished:

RALEIGH – The state’s second largest medical malpractice insurer has cut its premiums in response to the effects of tort reform laws in North Carolina and other states as well as to put it on a more competitive footing.

Mag Mutual Insurance Co. has cut doctors’ premiums by an average of 7.4 percent for 2012, North Carolina Department of Insurance spokeswoman Kerry Hall says. The company calls 3 percentage points of that a “tort reform credit.”

There’s a whole bunch of ways top reduce the cost of medical care besides forcing young healthy people to buy a product they don’t want or even need.

Taxes: The Left Wins – I Lose

I have been waging a continuous war on taxes and increasing them.  I personally think that the best way to cause our elected officials to reduce the size of government is to reduce the amount of money we give ’em.  Those on the left feel that the best way to balance the budget is to INCREASE taxes.  Now,  unless they are pure Marxists who simply will not accept any other form of economic structure than that of transferring money from the wealthy to the poor, what my friends are saying is that we need to increase taxes to increase REVENUE.

The more money IN, the better off the budget/deficit will be.

Sadly, for the second year in a row and for the last 24 out of 30 years, the left has succeeded in growing revenue.  In 2011 the United States Federal government will have taken in $2.3035 trillion.  This represents a 6.51% increase year over year 2010.

If I’m lucky I can achieve my goal of shrinking government in 2012 but it doesn’t look good.  The Tax Policy Center is calling for a 2012 tax receipt increase of  $165.1 billion in 2012.  And it only looks to get worse year over year after that.

Sigh.

People Who Are Bad At Money Don’t Have Money

Poverty in the United States is a problem.  When folks are poor they are less healthy, receive less education and are more likely to raise children who are poor themselves.  And there are a lot of noble efforts to curb poverty in the US.  Much of that effort is, of course, centered on taking money from people who have it and giving it to other people who don’t.

There are schools of thought that say, “The wealthy are able to give their children unfair advantages.  We need to remedy this unfairness by proxy; giving money to the children of the poor.”

Not surprisingly, I don’t agree with this.

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The Best Of Times


Watching the Twins today. Had a great moment with my 6 year-old kid. Earlier in the weekend we began exploring what a batting average is. I explained it this way:

If Jeter has an average of .312 it means that if he has 1,000 chances to get a hit or get an out, he gets a hit 312 times.

As we watched the Twins some freakin’ guy named Clete steps to the plate for the hometown 9.  The child laughs at Clete’s .000 AVG 0 HRS 0 RBIS line.  Just as I say, “If  ‘ol Clete here were to get 1,000 chances to get a hit, he’d get ZERO of ….”

And then the bastard goes yard on me. Me boy fell out laughing. How cool is it that he got that?

Then he asked me if I thought the Twins would win now that we were up 3-2. I said, “No.” He said, “Why not daddy?” to which I replied, “Cause we’re a horrible ballclub son.”

He just nodded and said, “Yup.”

I just saw that we lost 4-3.

Gedankenexperimente

Do you ever have that great moment or feeling when you finally find the name for that thing you think other people think makes you a weirdo?

I do and I found it the other day:

A while back, Sam introduced us to Trolley Problems. I refer to Trolley Problems as a proper noun, since it’s a category of thought-experiments (Gedankenexperimente) that I will be using to test our moral intuitions vis-à-vis euvoluntary exchange.

And it’s real:

A thought experiment or Gedankenexperiment (from German) considers some hypothesis, theory, or principle for the purpose of thinking through its consequences. Given the structure of the experiment, it may or may not be possible to actually perform it, and, in the case that it is possible for it to be performed, there need be no intention of any kind to actually perform the experiment in question. The common goal of a thought experiment is to explore the potential consequences of the principle in question.

Ahhh, it makes all the difference just to know.

 

The Left’s War On Women: They Can’t Stop

This is an amazing experience.   See, normally it’s the left drumming up “victim” scenarios and propping themselves up on the strength of the populist message with not an iota of policy behind it.  This has resulted in the right trying to stand for the tough but correct choices required to manage a country.  For ever it’s been the the democrats setting up these faux stories and then watching the republicans just whack away at vapor.  Again.  Again and again.

I’ve been amazed at how well it works, how enticing that “whacking” can be and then, finally, why the right allows itself to get stuck time and time again.

Now it know; it’s human nature.  See, it’s happening again.

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Two Things I Didn’t Know Until Today

Casually reading this morning.  Came across two things:

  1. Apparently prostitution is legal in the area of Columbia that the Secret Service agents were at when they did what they did.
  2. Barack Obama is really traveling in an effort to raise cash:

As of March 6, Mr. Obama has participated in 191 fundraisers, already topping the re-election cycle totals of George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, who held 167 and 173 fundraisers, respectively,

Yikes!

Obama, to date, has ALREADY held more fundraisers than Dubya and Bubba did the WHOLE of their re-election efforts.  As I was cleaning the house today I had to smile at the irony of these two stories being related to each other in my mind.

Voter Fraud Made East Courtesy Eric Holder

Without comment: