Politics

May 20, 2013

The Political Suicide

By Don Kirk in Politics, Prosperity vs. Poverty

David Crane in Bloomberg today argues for Jerry Brown, California’s governor, to work to repeal Proposition 13, the hugely popular initiative that limited increases in real estate taxes to 1% on pre-Prop properties. The map above shows the scale of the vote for Prop 13, something Jerry Brown is well aware of since he opposed Prop 13 as the Golden State’s governor back in 1978. The approving vote was a tidal wave, and it is hard to believe Governor Brown will try to swim against this tide a second time in his long career.

A house does not generate revenue, but a farm does. The farm house is a working business which can tap a revenue stream to pay property taxes; the residential home cannot. When inflation (government-created) in the 1970′s sent property values and taxes skyrocketing, people saw their annual tax bills increase beyond their mortgage payments, effectively impoverishing many homeowners. Prop 13 was the taxpayer’s revolt against government-inflation generating increased government-revenues at the expense of the family home. Mr. Crane, economic advisor to former Governor Schwarzenegger, wants this taxpayer revolt reversed, and bravely volunteers Governor Brown to lead the charge against Prop 13.

Mr. Brown has been down this anti-taxpayer road before, and he still has the scars. He is much too bright a politician to make the same mistake twice.

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April 21, 2013

There was a Crooked Man…

By Don Kirk in Crony Capitalism Insidious Socialism, Democratic Capitalism/Democratic Socialism

Why is crony socialism always known as crony capitalism? When socialist elites and insiders profit personally from market institutions, why is this only called, ‘crony capitalism,’ and not ‘crony socialism’? Why are only capitalists “greedy,” when actually socialists are just as opportunistic and ‘greedy’?

Slovenia is a case in point. Formerly part of soviet Yugoslavia, Slovenia is the prosperous country which divides the impoverished formerly socialist nations of the soviet bloc from the wealthy Western nations to its north and west. What distinguishes Slovenia from other former soviet countries is that it had not dismantled its socialist institutions–such as the national banks–and turned them into competitive private institutions. Fully half of institutional Slovenia is state-owned, which means they are state-subsidized, and subsidy means taxpayers pay for unproductive and uncompetitive enterprises that would otherwise fail. Always, always, always, state-subsidized enterprises are repositories of either incompetent or corrupt privileged elites; insiders who pocket taxpayers’ monies in the name of ‘national pride’ or ‘socialist solidarity’ or ‘public investment.’

Slovenia’s banks are in trouble. No kidding. What a surprise. The government has already bailed them out once, and now it appears the first bailout did not come with reforms, so still another bailout is necessary. But so long as the banks are state-controlled enterprises, the taxpayers of Slovenia will find that bailing out their nationalized/socialized banks will never end. Too understandably, calls for privatizing the banks are bitterly opposed by large companies whose management benefits personally by banks being state-owned, instead of competitive.

Whether capitalist or socialist, monopolies are marked by rising costs and falling value, and Slovenia’s banks are no exception. So why are crooked socialist companies and corrupt socialist managers known as ‘greedy capitalists’?

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April 5, 2013

Propaganda Unemployment

By Don Kirk in Ethics, Politics

The ‘propaganda rate’ of unemployment (the U3 number) fell to 7.6% last month by refusing to include the many hundreds of thousands of Americans out of work who have become so discouraged for so long that they finally gave up looking for a job (the U5 number). All such people are truly unemployed, but the government doesn’t include them in the payroll numbers because excluding them serves the propaganda purpose of the government report. If the U.S. reported an honest number (U5), national unemployment would be 8.9%.

According to Business Insider, the reason unemployment is reported down while the number of unemployed is up, is due to the worst labor participation rate in 34 years:

Labor force participation rate

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February 20, 2013

Debt Debacle

By Don Kirk in Economics, Ethics, Politics

Economist Brad Schiller has an Op-Ed in today’s Washington Times detailing the 200 year history of federal government debt in the United States. As troublesome as the nation’s debt history has been, wars and depressions et al, it is getting much worse. Rapidly worse. Debt is now 100% of GDP and still climbing.

Dr. Schiller points out that every attempt by Congress during the past thirty years to bring government debt under control has failed. Debt limits were established, only to be ignored by the expedient of raising the limit…77 consecutive times. Deficit limits were fixed, only to be completely ignored. Republicans ran up record deficits during Mr. Reagan’s presidency; Democrats have new record deficits under Mr. Obama.

Tax increases are one way to pay down government debt, but the increases instead are used to finance new and existing spending. Spending cuts are another method of paying down debt, but neither political party is capable of making the substantial cuts required because they both use spending as the tool to get themselves re-elected.

Here’s a pragmatic possible solution. “No Firing, No Hiring” of federal non-military employment; gradually and incrementally “Freeze, Shrink & Shift” duplicating federal expenditures to the States (such as the federal departments of Agriculture and Interior), since the States are mandated to balance their budgets; and restore the United States to a top-five ranking in Economic Liberties so that natural economic growth slowly pays down the debt. If a Balanced Budget Amendment is a political impossibility, then certainly a Presidential Line-Item Veto Amendment should be implemented.

But if 200 years of national debt problems teach us anything, it is that without accountability for the President and Congress for fiduciary irresponsibility, the debt problems will continue. The debt debacle is a problem of toothless ethics. We need an amendment to the Constitution which fires Congress or impeaches the President for fiduciary irresponsibility.

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January 4, 2013

Not Nostradamus, but…

By Don Kirk in Democratic Capitalism/Democratic Socialism, Political Theory

This classic 1942 WWII book is the source of Schumpeter’s famous description of capitalism as “creative destruction.” In capitalism, the economy is made up of millions of hard-working people trying to attract the customers of competing firms by offering lower prices or higher quality or better service or greater utility on like products and services. The capitalist is trying to ‘destroy’ his competitors and the result is the tremendous benefit to consumers: competition lowers prices, improves quality, and spurs innovation.

Schumpeter believed that socialism would eventually win over capitalism because, thinking much like Marx, capitalism contains the seeds of its own destruction. Successful firms buy out or eliminate their competitors, so eventually ‘competitive capitalism’ becomes ‘corporate capitalism.’ Under corporate capitalism competition declines, rent-seeking from government protects market share as profit margins erode, and the entire dynamism of capitalism collapses into a torpid corporatist State.

Schumpeter believed that there would be a transition stage between capitalism and socialism. Let’s call it, ‘democratic socialism,’ where the means of production are not yet state-owned but where the private means of production are taxed to supply both social redistribution of income and finance a welfare state. This transition stage from capitalism to socialism would have several features, but the four most notable features are that interest rates would approach zero, firms would sit on their cash because of the lack of superlative profitable investment opportunities, the “socializing” values of corporate managers would replace the risk-taking values of competitive entrepreneurship, and bourgeois family values would “disintegrate.”

Those four features exactly describe today’s American economy. Real interest rates are now at their historical lows at effectively zero, the amount of corporate hoarded cash is already in the trillions, for the first time in its history more Americans work for large managed corporations than small entrepreneurial firms, and the collapse of the American family has been an ongoing study in sociology for decades. If Schumpeter is an accurate predictor, then the 16-year back-to-back, consecutive Keynesian (Fabian Socialism) presidencies of Republican George Bush and Democrat Barrack Obama will likely be recognized as the start of the 21C transition stage of American capitalism to American socialism.

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January 1, 2013

Bipartisan Big Government

By Don Kirk in Politics

Well, there’s bipartisanship, and then there is ‘bipartisanship.’ The Senate just approved, by a bipartisan vote of 89 to 8, the President’s tax increases as part of a pact to avoid going off the “fiscal cliff” of automatic sequestrations.

No broadening of the tax base, as suggested by the Simpson-Bowles Bipartisan Commission. No reduction of entitlements or discretionary spending, as recommended by the bipartisan Simpson-Bowles. No reform of the tax code, despite the bipartisan call by Simpson-Bowles.

The President appointed Simpson-Bowles, and he charged them with coming up with bipartisan ideas to help get the U.S. government out of its fiscal calamity. Not a single recommendation has even been attempted.

With the Senate vote, the complete rejection of the bipartisan Simpson/Bowles is bipartisan.

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December 19, 2012

Propaganda as Science

By Don Kirk in Ethics, Ideo/theologies, Ideological Legal-Corruption, Left-Liberalism, Politics

These are two views of gun use in mass murder in the United States. It’s not exactly lying with statistics, but note the ideological discrepancy. The Mother Jones chart is from a Left-liberal media, and measures “spree” killings of four or more people. The bottom chart is from Northeastern University criminologist, Dr. James Allen Fox, and measures all mass murders using guns.

Mother Jones is committed to the democratic socialist agenda of gun control, so they use an accurate chart of increasing ‘spree’ mass murders. The criminologist has no ideological agenda, so his accurate chart reflects no increase if the measure is gun use in mass murder overall.

They are both honest charts of empirical data. But the careful selection of the data in the first chart makes an agenda, so its filtered and slanted use is propaganda, not science.

Typical. All too typical. Not exactly corrupt, but legally-corrupt it is.

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December 18, 2012

Happy Parents, Happy Children

By Don Kirk in Ethics, Life-Flourishing vs Life-Extinguishing, Politics, Prudent, Pragmatic Pluralism, Social Regress & Social Progress

The Washington Post is running another article about the collapse of the middle class today, particularly mentioning the collapse of marriage since the 1960′s. The statistics are deeply worrisome, since family collapse falls upon innocent children. 40% of families have no father in the home, 50% of marriages end in divorce, and fully 70% of black children are born out of wedlock. It’s hard not to conclude that our consumer culture promotes sexuality while it derides family values.

Divorce rates are up, but then, doesn’t that also measure people breaking out of unhappy marriages? So perhaps the growing divorce rate is not the true problem. And children born out of wedlock does not mean that the parents are neglecting to raise the children, although certainly marriage represents a better measure of the commitment by parents.

But the worst problem of the multi-faceted sociology is fatherless families. Why do courts order sole custody to either parent in divorce cases where there is no threat or history of violence or abuse? Why is there no court-mandated counseling of the divorcing parents of the corrosive effect of ‘parental alienation’ upon their children? How many of abandoned children are originally unwanted pregnancies?

It’s not likely that the culture of sexuality is going to change soon. But preventing unwanted children–our prisons are bulging with adults who were unwanted children–should be as much a male responsibility as a female prevention.

Why not have vasectomies subsidized? Any male between the ages of 18 to 48 could have a taxpayer-financed vasectomy at a Planned Parenthood or university medical school clinic. The out-patient facility would have a relationship with a sperm bank which would charge the man $100 a year to maintain his frozen sperm samples, should he decide later to marry and have children. If he declines to pay the annual storage fee or when he reaches age 50, the sperm sample is destroyed.

It costs $1,000 to $1,500 for an out-patient vasectomy. The annual cost to taxpayers of warehousing felons is thirty to fifty times as much. So, for a one-time cost to the taxpayers of $1,500, they save upwards of $600,000 in future costs for each ten-year incarceration.

The man’s sexuality is not impaired in the least, women have confidence that birth-control is more than the ‘forgotten’ condom, the entire pro-abortion and pro-life political movements lose the air out their ideological balloons of bombastic hate, and the taxpayers save a fortune.

Best of all, in the entire culture the American children who are born are wanted. This suggestion will do nothing to solve the problems associated with divorce, yet educating parents about divorce’s dynamic of parental alienation–how about as part of the marriage licensing?–will definitely benefit the children of divorce. But just imagine what our culture would be like if every child was wanted by both loving parents, whether married or not?

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December 6, 2012

Confucius Said…

By Don Kirk in Democratic Capitalism/Democratic Socialism, Economics, Prosperity vs. Poverty

The comparative rates of growth and decline of GDP and employment in the top and bottom five of the world’s 300 largest cities, courtesy of the Brookings Institute by way of the ‘Markets & Data’ blog of the Economist magazine. It’s interesting that the collapse in real estate in Las Vegas during the two years of the Great Recession has wiped out the superior economic growth of Sin City’s 27 year boom.

It’s more than interesting that China’s 32 year boom continues. Pundits and critics obsess about China’s recent ‘slowdown,’ but clearly the “slowdown” is to rates of growth that every other nation in the world would love to have. Greece and Spain should import some Chinese thinking about increasing their economic liberties by regional deregulation (1979), establishing enterprise zones (1980), and accepting peasant self-direction in agriculture (1978).

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November 20, 2012

Crash & Burn

By Don Kirk in Conservatism, Philosophy of Freedom, Politics

My Sony Vaio crashed and burned two weeks ago. Put it into Best Buy for repairs and flew off to the piney woods of Georgia. When I returned to the Sierras, the Vaio was still not repaired. Gave them an effin’ Microsoft recovery disk and trudged home, still married to Windows Office and Word.

Best Buy then called to come pick up the ‘recovered,’ repaired computer. Got it home and turned it on. All I had was a blank, black page with a lonely blinking cursor. Took the effin’ Vaio back to effin’ Best Buy, bringing them–again!–the back-up hard drive they did not ever use to restore my data.

On the third trip, today I picked up the effin’ Vaio. Clearly I can now operate, but the email and ‘Favorites’ are still waiting to be restored. After the same thing happened at around the same time-length of ownership to all three different computers I have owned, I am convinced the computer manufacturers have built two-year obsolescence into their products.

Congratulations to Mr. Obama and the Democratic Party for winning two weeks ago. Obviously, they did not run their successful campaign using a Vaio computer. Condolenses to Mr. Romney and the Republicans, but until conservatives decide to agree with John Stuart Mill that a woman is sovereign over both her body and mind–a freedom of philosophy tenet–the conservatives will continue to lose close national elections.

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