Government lacks the will to allow to big to fail firms to fail, and the will and competence to regulate them. If a firm is too big to fail, it will take advantage of that fact, leading to crisis and massive tax payer losses.
Author: Jim
Seventy percent taxes coming eventually.
In Greece, payroll tax, value added tax, and income tax adds up to around seventy percent. It is perfectly clear that this is far above the Laffer limit – the private sector in Greece is largely underground and not quite cash, like a third world country. If someone is employed by the state he pays taxes on his income because employed by the state, but does not actually do any work, because employed by the state. If someone is not …
The cost of government
Fleischer explains why he is not hiring. He must spend $74,000 to provide Sally with an $59,000 salary, of which after tax she gets $44,000 plus $12,000 in benefits. Plus he faces large uncertainty that these costs may be arbitrarily and unpredictably increased. The recent substantial increases in the cost of employing people have not been reflected in substantial reductions in people’s wages, thus wages are substantially above market clearing levels. The Fed could, I suppose, inflate their way out …
Rush Limbaugh – smarter than ten thousand ecology PhDs
Back when BP’s oil was spouting into the gulf of Mexico, Rush told us: “The beach will fix itself†“More oil spilled every year in Africa, in Nigeria, than so far in the Gulf, so it’s not unique. It’s not exceptional. It’s not the largest. Mexico had a spill that larger than this, nobody talks about except apparently me†And behold: The beach has fixed itself. The reason that BP was drilling there in the first place is that giant …
A solution to the gay marriage and the covenant marriage problem
The Other McCain agrees. Get the government out of the marriage business. Let each church decide for itself what marriage is, which views the government should ignore, and let people draw up what contracts they choose for living together. You have the right to contract. Let us have gay nuptial contracts, not gay marriages. And the same for heterosexual relationships: If a seventeen year old girl can contract for gigantic college debts that cannot be expunged by bankruptcy, in return …
Palin Power
According to polls, Palin’s Support for a Candidate Doesn’t Matter or Is Mostly Negative, yet we observe that in practice that when Palin endorses a candidate that is way behind, that candidate shoots up in the polls, and quite often wins. There are several possible explanations of this People tend to give politically correct replies to polls, rather than what they genuinely believe. Republican party activists do what Palin tells them to do, and republican party voters do what republican …
Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.
Pajamas media has found an excellent quote from Richard Feynman, which skewers every global warmer: “The Pleasure of Finding things out†by Richard Feynman, page 187 We have many studies in teaching, for example, in which people make observations and they make lists and they do statistics, but they do not thereby become established science, established knowledge. They are merely an imitative form of science-like the South Sea Islanders making airfields, radio towers out of wood, expecting a great airplane …
No democratic solution
Doctor Zero has a carefully thought out proposal to get 50% of the voters plus one behind the measures necessary to save America, behind measures that are carefully pruned to be the minimum possible measures that could save the country, measures that are as “moderate†as possible, which is not very moderate at all.
No way Jose. Democracy is doomed, or the country is doomed, or, quite likely, both.
“Diversityâ€
What academia means by “diversity†is people of all colors and all sexual preferences chanting their master’s words in unison. Steve Sailer found an interesting paper on admissions policy.
If you are not at the government’s table, you are on the government’s menu
Vox Populi: While the economic value of anything depends on sellers and buyers agreeing on that value as civil equals in the absence of force, modern government is about nothing if not tampering with civil equality. By endowing some in society with power to force others to sell cheaper than they would, and forcing others yet to buy at higher prices — even to buy in the first place — modern government makes valuable some things that are not, and …