Has anyone else noticed....

Has anyone else noticed that the individuals wanting to save the earth from Global Warming/Cooling/Weather/Etc. for the sake of "the children" are almost always the same people who want to avoid paying as they go for political and economic boondoggles, leaving behind crushing debts to be paid by "the children"?

It makes me nuts. 

That's all. 

Have a great Friday !! 

Let's make Sasha and Malia's teachers buy all of the Obama family's school fundraiser candy

Dear Barack,

In one of your recent speeches about the economy, you made the following statements about the sequester cuts:

“If those layoffs had not happened, if public sector employees grew like they did in the past two recessions, the unemployment rate would be 6.5 instead of 7.5. Our economy would be much better off, and the deficit would still be going down because we would be getting more tax revenue......”

Barack, when you allow noises like those to come out of your mouth, it reveals a deep misunderstanding about productivity, prosperity, efficiency, and the purpose of work. 

Hiring public sector workers to improve unemployment statistics is like requiring Sasha and Malia’s teachers to purchase all of Sasha and Malia’s school fundraiser candy, just to get their numbers up.  Yes, candy and money would change hands, but that’s not the point of school fundraiser candy. 

Private sector firms succeed when they can produce something their customers want with fewer employees, not more.  You seem to think that success and prosperity follow from hiring more and spending more.  (Thanks to your "Jobs Created" crusade, almost every “public works” project is now announced with boasts about how many jobs it will create. ) Yes, when Google, Dell, and Peterbilt are doing well, they hire more people.  But that’s because they’re making something that people actually want, and they’ve figured out how to get more productivity out of each person, and the marketplace is rewarding them for it.  Hiring follows increased sales and efficiency, not the other way around.  You’re my age and probably remember the Coyote/Roadrunner cartoons, where the coyote tries to make his vehicle go faster by pushing the speedometer needle.  Take notes: It doesn’t work that way. 

Finally, increasing the number of federal employees is a bad thing, just because of the nature of most federal jobs.  At best, federal employees are unproductive overhead.  The Department of Education hasn’t improved education, the Department of Energy hasn’t created more energy, and at one point we had one Department of Agriculture employee for every seven farmers.  And so on and so on.  At their worst, federal employees create wars to reward their military/industrial complex contributors.  They print money and cause inflation.  These public “servants” retire at a ridiculously early age with pensions that are the envy of the private sector.  They create regulations that would make the Pope kick holes in stained glass windows.  Creating debt and red tape in the name of full employment for feds isn’t a good idea. 

We may or may not get a decent jobs report today.  Liabilities for your debts make it almost irrelevant.  We will never, ever be able to pay off what you've spent.  The economy has stunk to high heaven throughout the 5 years of your administration, and it’s because you believe that the parasites will never outgrow the host organism. 

Think again, Barack.  It’s happening. 

If we just took more money out of the private sector and put it in the public sector, the economy would improve?

Imagine if I I came to you with a gun, pointed the gun at your head, and said "Give me your money. I am going to hire lots of people to do things for me.  This is a good thing, and it will create more jobs." 

You would understandably think that I was stark, raving mad. 

You would say "Hey, Whited, my money is in the bank.  The bank is loaning it to companies and firms and individuals.  They're already creating jobs with my money.  That's the only way the bank can earn the interest that they pay me.  Put down the gun.  Jobs are being created at the same rate you could create them with my money." 

Imagine if I said "No, if I take your money, and hire people who overwhelmingly support me, it will create more tax revenue." 

I can hear you now, stating vehemently that you know the best use for your money, and that I'm just trying to win favor with those who already love me and want your money. 

Now, listen to this community-organizing, cash-for-clunkering, you-didn't-build-that, redistributionist, class-envy-agitating, crony-capitalist, Keynesian-bullshitting, economically ignorant resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. 

If those layoffs had not happened, if public sector employees grew like they did in the past two recessions, the unemployment rate would be 6.5 instead of 7.5. Our economy would be much better off, and the deficit would still be going down because we would be getting more tax revenue......

Instead of using a scalpel to get rid of programs we don’t need and keep vital investments that we do, the same group has kept in place this meat cleaver called the sequester that is just slashing all kinds of investments in education and research and our military. Yet all the things that are needed to make this country a magnet for good middle class jobs, those things are being cut. These moves don’t just hurt our economy in the long term. They hurt our middle class right now.....

Over the past four years, another 700,000 workers at the federal, state and local levels of government lost their jobs. These are cops and firefighters. About half of them are people that work in our schools. Those are real jobs. It doesn’t help a company like Amazon when a teacher, cop or a firefighter loses their job. They don’t have money to place an order. That’s hundreds of thousands of customers who have less money to spend.

See, he thinks your spending isn't good enough.  If you've got your money in a bank, it's getting spent.  He wants to put the gun to your head and spend it HIS way. 
It really is that simple. 
 

How To Create Little Libertarians

A friend of the Tarrant County Libertarian party has invited us to participate in Fall Festival of some sort. We can set up a booth and hand out literature on October 19th, from 10:00 a.m. til 2:00 p.m. for just a $20.00 fee.

There's one other catch....each booth must have a "kid-friendly" activity, like a beanbag toss, duck pond, coloring, face paints, or something similar.

I proposed the following at our recent Exec Committee meeting, and most of the group liked it. I think it will create some future Libertarians. It needs some finesse, though.... Here goes: We make two spinning wheels.

Each kid gets a spin on each. On the first wheel, make it statistically likely that the kid lands on a space where he wins 2 pieces of bite-sized candy. (Either 3,2, or 1 pieces for everyone.) If they land on "Start A Business" they get three pieces of candy. Land on "Create Jobs and Get Rich" they get two pieces of candy. Land on "Work Hard" and get one piece of candy.

But that's not all

... Then the kid has to take a spin on the 2nd wheel. While there is a slight chance that the kid doubles his haul by landing on "Make Friends With A Congressman" or "Start Building Drones" there's an even more likely chance that the kid'll have to give up some candy if he lands on a space reading "war - lose two pieces", or "green energy company - lose one piece", or "pay taxes - lose 1 piece", or "government healthcare - lose your life" (just joking there) or something similar.

Any kid who gets wiped out by this little economy could possibly receive a "bankrupt" spin card or something until he gets at least one piece of candy. And it should be fairly difficult to get that one piece of candy.

Then we give him a bright little piece of paper that says "The Libertarian Party believes that you should share your money and your candy, but it should be your choice, and your parents' choice."

Ideas like this are why I'm probably going to hell. Your thoughts on this?

 

Academics vs Entrepreneurs

Whenever there's an economic meltdown, a drop in employment, or a cosmic shift in trade, I get irked when the news media brings in some random academic to comment on the situation, instead of calling in a business owner or entrepreneur.

Academics, teachers, instructors and schoolma'arms are vital. Ignorance is bad. Knowledge is good. But for reasons I don't understand, someone with a doctorate in, say, Business Administration or Marketing gets more media respect than someone with real-world experience in Business Administration or Marketing.

Here's the difference in the two fields as I understand it.

Academics try to learn all that they can in a given field of study. The course is laid out for them. The path is well-marked. If they can jump a given set of hurdles, they'll receive a piece of paper stating that they successfully jumped the hurdles.

While there are risks involved in academic life, they are minimal. The goal is to reach a state where risk is avoided altogether, a condition known as tenure. All teaching considerations are secondary to getting tenure. Achieve that, and no students, colleagues, or administrators have to be satisfied with your performance, or what you produce. You have one of the most secure situations on the planet.

Entrepreneurs only have a vague idea what hurdles they'll have to jump, and where those hurdles are located. They don't know how much government interference they'll run into, or how much resistance they'll get from competitors. They don't know if their product will sell. No one told them that there would be a guaranteed market for "Product X". The customer generally doesn't know that they want "Product X" until the entrepreneur provides it. The entrepreneur doesn't have to please a committee, a grader, or an evaluator, but has to please millions of customers. (Note: Crony Capitalists are not entrepreneurs. Someone who starts a business because his congressman mandated that all consumers must use "Product X" is just another parasite. The green energy scams are a good example.)

If the entrepreneur is successful, he can't make a career out of providing "Product X" for the rest of his life. Copycats will be there. They'll come up with improvements. Variations. Replacements. Each success is statistically unlikely, but the entrepreneur has to pick up the dice and tries to roll a winner every day. Instead of security or tenure, the entrepreneur lives for risk, and you live a better life because of it.

One other thing.... the vast majority of academics are subsidized by government. Successful entrepreneurs are punished with higher and higher taxes, and have to listen to sermons from leeches about "giving something back". Here's my favorite Robert Heinlein quote:

“Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty. “This is known as ‘bad luck.’”

Detroit's academics are doing just fine, thank you. But entrepreneurs are scarce.