Free kibbles

TAX AND SPEND:

Moody's threatens federal government credit rating again. Congress is listening. They're doing everything they think they can get away with to raise our taxes. But they're not doing anything to reduce the irresponsible spending. We have to replace the aristocrats with citizen representatives who will cut spending. But that's not going to happen. What could happen is we could elect a principled president who would subordinate himself to the Constitution and refused to fund the Dept. of Education, Dept. of Agriculture, Dept. of Energy, the FCC, the FTC, etc., ends all welfare programs, foreign, corporate and individual and ends our wars and brings all US troops stationed overseas home. Even that doesn't address our biggest spending problems, but it would lay the groundwork necessary to deal with Medicare and Social Security. We need a real libertarian to hijack one of the parties then win the general election. Regarding the article, government isn't constrained by the high unemployment rate. Employment is constrained by out of control government spending.

Peter Schiff explains:

"Although not as visible as regulations and subsidies, government spending also plays a large role in job destruction. The more money government spends, the more resources it drains from the private sector. The fiscal 2011 budget proposed by President Obama contains $3.8 trillion in federal spending. Think of government as a cancer feeding off the private sector. The larger it grows, the more jobs it kills. Unfortunately, most politicians follow the misguided advice of economist John Maynard Keynes, who advocated government spending as a means of job creation. In reality, government spending merely results in government jobs replacing more efficient private sector jobs."

I'm really glad Schiff makes this point that harp on so often:

"Some economists point to taxes as the primary job killer, and argue that lower taxes will boost employment. While I have sympathy for this view, it misses the larger issue that the burden of government is not what it taxes but what it spends."

We pay for government spending twice. First we pay for it in taxes. Then we pay for it again because it sucks resources from profitable enterprises that are providing for people's needs and moves them to unprofitable enterprises that aren't.

"In the end, I fully expect the government to directly provide make-work jobs to the armies of the unemployed. This will accelerate the pace of private sector job destruction and make our economy even less productive than it is today. This means that while the government may be able to provide people with jobs, the wages they pay will provide little in the way of purchasing power. In the end, we will become a nation of government employees, with plenty of work but little to show for it."

Because we failed to learn history, we're repeating the mistakes of the Great Depression.

I hope you weren't planning on retiring:

"The U.S. government has a nasty surprise for tens of millions of retirees: a now-empty piggy bank. Two of them, actually: Social Security and Medicare.

Congress will soon have a nasty surprise for voters: a larger deficit than announced to fill these now-empty piggy banks.

The Federal Reserve System will also have a nasty surprise for investors: newly created digital money to fill up the empty piggy banks when the Treasury cannot sell any more debt at low interest rates.

The free market will have a nasty surprise for everyone: rising prices in response to the Federal Reserve's digital money.

Medicare will have a nasty surprise for physicians who treat Medicare-funded patients: limits on payments per service that are set below urban costs (price controls).

Physicians will have a nasty surprise to patients: longer waiting periods (rationing by sitting in an office). The days of wine and roses are over. The era of nasty surprises has begun.

Social Security will go bankrupt in 2010. It will take new legislation increasing Social Security (FICA) taxes to overcome this. Or it will take siphoned-off money from the general fund."

Government has ruined our futures.

That Ben Bernanke believes Okun's law is some sort of causal relationship is scary. If all we had to do was increase GDP by 10 percent to drop unemployment from 10 percent to five percent, then the Federal government should just increase the bank accounts of every individual and organization in the country by 10 percent. GDP would suddenly be 10 percent higher, but nothing would have changed. These people (including Krugman) are so caught up in their delusions, they're destroying our economy, our country and our lives too.

CRIMINAL JUSTICE:

FBI wants ISPs to keep track of every website every customer visits for two years on the off chance it might be useful in a criminal investigation. We're all criminals now. The private sector is not supposed to make the job of government agents. They (ostensibly) exist to serve us, not the other way around.

It's good to read a story of a police officer who didn't abuse his power and ruin somebody's life, and instead reached into his own pocket to help out. It's getting harder and harder to find one, but they are still out there. This brightened my day.

POLITICS:

Criticism of Palin's speech at the Tea Party convention.