Posted tagged ‘Central Planning’

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Must Read “Leftovers”

July 28, 2015

The Newest Obamacare Fail: Penalties of $36,500 Per Worker, at economicpolicyjournal.com. This new IRS penalty is a result of different interpretations of the Affordable Care Act. Or is it a money grab by the IRS. We should not be surprised that a 2500 page bill that allows bureaucrats to make more laws as they desire could be interpreted differently by the IRS. Since the IRS had to be expanded to enforce the Obamacare fine/tax, logic would follow that they have to find more money law breakers to justify their existence. Because there wasn’t enough money mined from the tax payers as only 6.6 Million Americans Were Forced To Pay The Individual Mandate Tax In 2014 for a total of only $1.2 billion. That’s chump change when you’re talking 3 plus trillion in government spending.

“Fannie And Freddie Are Back Bigger And Badder Than Ever“: NY Times Warns, at zerohedge.com. The only difference this time is “the government has decided to “sweep” almost all the duo’s profits into its own coffers, to be used as a slush fund for general government expenses“. This won’t end well will it! “What do you expect to happen when the people responsible for running the economy into the ground are rewarded with bailouts and deemed “Too Big To Jail?”

Paul Krugman On The Minimum Wage: 1998 vs 2015. by Mark J. Perry, at carpediemblog. Let’s go to the replay official!…… “Upon further review Krugman’s view on the minimum wage is…….”

“Why I Don’t Tip In Seattle” Left For Bartender, at imgur.com. You can’t raise the minimum wage in a vacuum. There will be consequences that many couldn’t even foresee, like not tipping.

A Criminal Inquiry Is Being Sought Over Hillary Clinton’s E-Mail Use, at targetliberty.com. Two inspectors general are asking the justice department to investigate Hillary Clinton. I don’t expect anything to be done because the Clintons are above the law. But as this scandal drags on, Hillary may not escape being found guilty in the court of public opinion.

IRS Agents Rob Convenient Store,  video from Institute for Justice.

No comment needed.

Lets End With A Positive Story

Black Cop: Why I Helped That White Supremacist, at usatoday.com. The people of South Carolina didn’t riot after blacks were killed in a church by a racist. Officer Leroy Smith gives everyone a lesson on how to handle the situation when he helps a man who was suffering from heat stroke at a KKK rally. South Carolina must have a different set of values than a lot of other places in this country, like Ferguson and Baltimore. Actions speak louder than words.

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Government Is Force.

July 9, 2015

Middle aged prisoners chains and cuffs over a brick wall - stock photo

George Washington: “Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force, like fire it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.”

This quote by George Washington came to mind when I read a couple of articles this week about Greece and China.

GREECE

A Lesson From The Greek Crisis: Safe Deposit Boxes Are Not Safe, by Joseph T. Solerno, at mises.org. The Government will not allow people to withdraw cash from their safety deposit boxes. The Government, with the help of the banks, will then take the cash out of these safety deposit boxes, credit the persons checking account, and put the cash in ATM’s.

In an unrelated story, Home Safe Sales in Greece Have Boomed Over the Last 5 Years, at time.com. Some Greek citizens learned from what happened in Cyprus, and are trying to protect themselves from their Government. Unfortunately home robberies have also skyrocketed. This is the unintended consequence of the unintended consequence.

This brings to mind a quote by Thomas Jefferson: “The two enemies of the people are criminals and Government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first.”

CHINA

Chinese stock markets have lost over 30% of their value in the last three weeks. The Chinese government created the stock market bubble in the first place by pumping money into the market through the use of margin debt. These central planners plans have run head on into economic reality, as the market is trying to liquidate and find a bottom. The central planners are now trying to keep this economic reality from happening. The Chinese government is attempting to cure the symptom instead of letting economic forces cure the problem the planners created. They are banning major share holders from selling stock for 6 months, freezing sales of half the companies in the market, blocked fund redemptions among other things.

Now the next step in this article, Utter Desperation: Chinese Police Vow To Arrest Malicious Short Sellers, at zerohedge.com. Yes the Chinese government is threatening to arrest malicious selling of stock. I wonder, what is the Governments definition of “malicious”? Do you think it is not defined because they want Chinese citizens to be afraid of even thinking about selling stocks? Does the Chinese government have a track record of abusing it’s citizens?

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Central planning by communists, socialists, or politicians and bureaucrats in a free market system, doesn’t work as the planners planned.

A quote by Ludwig von Mises comes to mind: : “Many think governments are free to achieve all they aim at without being restrained by an inexorable regularity in the sequence of economic phenomena …they maintain that the State is God.”

WHAT ABOUT THE U.S.

Milder versions of propping up equity markets has happened in the U.S. over the last 15 years. Fed money pumping via  zero interest rates and quantitative easing are examples of central planners at work.

In this article, and short video: Rick Santelli Unleashed: China Is Not Doing Anything That The U.S. Has Not Already Tried, at zerohedge.com. Santelli says central planners are in control. But as we see from what is happening in Greece and China, they aren’t. China and Greece can’t even control their communist and socialist economic systems. Will our central planners plans end up any other way except broken?

Related Article – Central Planners Don’t See The Consequences Of Their Actions. Or Do They? at austrianaddict.com

Related Article – A Look Over The Horizon At What Lies Ahead If We Continue Down The Central Planning Road, at austrianaddict.com.

Related Article – Politician’s “Affordable” Ideas Must Obey Economic Forces, at austrianaddict.com.

 

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The Essential HAYEK.

June 16, 2015

The Frasier Institute has come up with a project called Essential Hayek (here). It consists of a book, a website, and videos, that explain F.A. Hayeks ideas on liberty and economics in simple understandable language.

I remember reading The Road To Serfdom by F. A. Hayek in September of 1994. I don’t think I comprehended a quarter of the book at the time, but what I did comprehend opened my eyes to the fact that the US was traveling down this road rapidly. I have reread this book several times and have also read The Constitution of Liberty, all three volumes of Law Legislation and Liberty, The Fatal Conceit, Prices and Production, A Tiger By The Tail, Individualism and Economic Order, and many of his articles and essays.

When you first read Hayek he is not easy to understand because he was writing about abstract concepts and his native tongue was German. As you start to know his writing style, which includes the lengthy sentences he constructs, he becames much easier to comprehend.

Here are two short videos from Essential Hayek.

Economic Booms And Busts

Everything Has Its Price (And That’s A Good Thing)

 

My Favorite Hayek Quote, is at the top right of my blog.

“The coordination of men’s activities through central planning or through voluntary cooperation are roads going in very different directions. The first to serfdom and poverty the second to freedom and plenty.”

Volumes have been written explaining this quote, or these two sentences explain volumes of writings.

Spontaneous Order

The spontaneous order of the market far exceeds coordination through central planning, in the use of knowledge, the use of scarce resources, the creation of a higher standard of living. If you don’t understand the concept of spontaneous order it will be difficult to understand how the world works.

F. A. Hayek—” The free market pricing mechanism has a double misfortune. It is not the product of human design, and the people guided by it usually do not know why they are made to do what they do.”

Here are some related articles about spontaneous order.

Related Article – Spontaneous Order More Complex Than Top Down Planning, at austrianaddict.com.

Related Article – Spontaneous Order Utilizes More Knowledge Than Central Planning Could Ever Hope To Utilize, at austrianaddict.com.

Related Article – Spontaneous Order = Free Market Economy, at austrianaddict.com.

Related Article – Spontaneous Order Demonstrated By Traffic With No Signals, at austrianaddict.com.

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Observations From The Margin

November 6, 2014

Observation Tower

 

OBSERVATIONS ABOUT THE ELECTION

What does the Republican party gaining control of the Senate, increasing their majority in the House, and winning Governorships in Democratic strongholds like Illinois, Massachusetts, and Maryland tell us?

-Maybe a growing number of individuals are finally seeing what big Government central planning really looks like, and they don’t like it. The President’s interventionist policies over the last 6 years made him the face of big Government. This made it possible for Republicans to run against him specifically, instead of running against a faceless entity called big Government.

– When the President said “his policies were on the ballot”, no truer statement has ever come out of his mouth. In his press conference the day after the election though, he tried to spin his way out of that statement. It didn’t work. He said the election showed ” the people” wanted their Government to “get stuff done”. No Mr. President, with all due respect, many people want You to get out of their lives and leave them alone. They want the Government to stop “doing stuff”, and/or repeal “the stuff” you have already implemented.

-I love how politicians say “the people” as if it’s a monolithic entity that has a single mind. “The People” is made up of millions of unique individuals. This fact is the reason why Big Government central planning won’t work, because one plan can’t please millions of individuals. Individuals are only happy when they are allowed to make choices based on what they value, not “the” choice that some totalitarian politician tries to force on them.

-If Republicans think that “the people” are now on their side, they are sadly mistaken. I think many individuals understood that the only way to stop the current Government intervention into their lives was to vote in Republicans and try to hold their feet to the fire. Many of us know there is no chance that the Democrat party will ever be for smaller Government. But that doesn’t mean the Republicans are for smaller Government. If establishment Republicans don’t try to stop the growth of Government, if they won’t stand up to the President, guess what happens in the next election.

-If the implementation of Obamacares employer mandate had been implemented in 2014, instead of unconstitutionally delaying it until 2015; if the shale oil revolution hadn’t created a vast majority of the new jobs the President is taking credit for; how much worse would Nov. 4th had been.

-Republican analysts  moan about the fact that Romney got 4 million fewer Republican votes than Bush got in 2004, and crow about the fact that they got 5% more votes from Independents than Obama. They say if the Republicans had turned out, they would have won. Did they ever consider that the 4 million Republican votes they didn’t get are actually the 5% increase in independents. Many Independents used to be Republicans and probably still vote Republican.

-The Republican establishment doesn’t like the tea party and the libertarian wing of their party. Why? Because the tea party and the libertarians want Government to shrink while the establishment just wants to win elections so it can take big Government for a test drive. Do we realize that we are putting individuals in power and asking them to give up some of the power they wield? How hard is it to get rid of entitlements? Being in power is the ultimate entitlement.

-Alaska (69%), Arkansas (65%), South Dakota (55%), and Nebraska ((59%), all passed laws that increased the minimum wage. How can voters in these states who voted against expanding Government on the one hand, vote for Government intervention on the other? We know that economic reality won’t allow minimum wage laws to work like the central planners planned (Read: Minimum Wage Laws Create Unemployment). But, from The stand point of individual liberty, do these voters understand that they are interfering with a contract to which the employer and the employee voluntarily agreed. Do they realize that on the same ballot they voted to intervene in individuals lives, and to stop individuals in Government from interfering into their own lives. We have a lot of work to do in educating individuals about economics and individual liberty.

-It has taken 100 years of progressivism to get to this point in time where Government is involved In every aspect of our lives. How long do you think it will take to turn the ship around? It will take more than a few elections cycles. As F. A. Hayek said, “The battle for freedom must be won over and over again, the socialists of all parties must be persuaded or defeated if they and we are to remain free men“. The battle for individual freedom is going to be won at the state and local levels. Governors have to have the stones to stand up to the Federal Government. Rolling back Government is going to happen from the bottom up not from the top down in D.C.

LET’S LAUGH!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Why Has Classical Capitalism Devolved Into Crony-Capitalism, by Charles Hugh Smith

September 16, 2014

In this article, Why Has Classical Capitalism Devolved Into Crony-Capitalism, Charles Hugh Smith, (oftowminds.com) makes the point that the Elites, consisting of ; people in Government and central bankers, lesser institutions that are closest in orbit around Government and central banks, and organizations and individuals who are orbiting these lesser institutions, think the economy will eventually “heal itself” even after all they have stolen through zero percent interest rates, electronically printed counterfeit money, and Government debt. These three legs of theft are, quoting CHS, “…crippling the market’s self-healing immune system: Price discovery. Thanks to ceaseless interventions by central banks, the price discovery mechanism has been shattered: want to know the price of risk? It’s near-zero. Yield on sovereign bonds? Near-zero. And so on. Prices have been so distorted (the ultimate goal of Central Planning everywhere, from China to the EU to Japan to the U.S.) that the illusion of stability is impossible without more intervention.”

Here are his six factors of how, “...free market capitalism becomes state-cartel crony-capitalism, a Ponzi scheme of epic proportion...”

1. “Those who control most of the wealth are willing to risk systemic collapse to retain their privileges and wealth. Due to humanity’s virtuosity with rationalization, those at the top always find ways to justify policies that maintain their dominance and downplay the distortions the policies generate. This as true in China as it is in the U.S.”

2. “Short-term thinking: if we fudge the numbers, lower interest rates, etc. today, we (politicians, policy-makers, money managers, etc.) will avoid being sacked tomorrow. The longer term consequences of these politically expedient policies are ignored.”

3. “Legitimate capital accumulation has become more difficult and risky than buying political favors. Global competition and the exhaustion of developed-world consumers has made it difficult to reap outsized profits from legitimate enterprise. In terms of return-on-investment (ROI), buying political favors is far lower risk and generates much higher returns than expanding production or risking investment in R&D.”

4. “The centralization of state/central bank power has increased the leverage of political contributions/lobbying. The greater the concentration of power, the more attractive it is to sociopaths and those seeking to buy state subsidies, sweetheart contracts, protection from competition, etc.”

5. “Any legitimate reform will require dismantling crony-capitalist/state-cartel arrangements. Since that would hurt those at the top of the wealth/power pyramid, reform is politically impossible.”

6. “Understood in this light, it’s clear that central bank monetary policy—zero-interest rates, asset purchases, cheap credit to banks and financiers, QE, etc.—is designed to paper over the structural problems that require real reform.”

 

CHARLES HUGH SMITH INTERVIEW

If you want to hear an interesting and in-depth explanation about the rise of crony capitalism, listening to Charles Hugh Smith’s interview with Gordon T. Long would be well worth your time ( it also has some great graphs and diagrams).

Related Article – Central Bank Monetary Policy Enables Us To Put Off Real Reforms, by Charles Hugh Smith, at oftwominds.com.

Related Article – Is There Capitalism After Cronyism?, by Charles Hugh Smith, at oftwominds.com.

 

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Observations From The Margin

July 8, 2014

 

Observation Tower

Observation  (Photo credit: mooglet)

-The President is asking for $2 billion to fight the recent surge in illegals crossing the Southern border. Why would anyone trust this administration in regards to enforcing immigration laws? When Arizona tried to enforce Federal laws, the President had his justice department sue to stop them.

-The flood of illegal crossings reminds me of Fast and Furious only in reverse. In Fast and Furious, Government ATF agents told legal gun dealers to illegally sell guns to Mexican drug cartels, for the purpose of blaming the violence in Mexico on American guns crossing the border. This would give the anti-second amendment administration leverage to push for more gun control. Their plans were ruined when Border Patrol agent Brian Terry was killed with one of the weapons supplied by the ATF,s operation. With the current Southern border crisis, illegals are sending their young children across the border because they were told by international and local media, and family members in the U.S. that our Government was issuing immigration “permisos” (free passes) upon arrival. Of course our Government publicised this. The administration will use the flood of illegal immigrants as a crisis to try to get their immigration agenda passed into law. This administration would only enforce the parts of any new immigration law that they want enforced, and would ignore what they don’t like.

-Should these children be sent back to their families in their home countries? Yes: The precedent was set in the Elian Gonzalez case during the Clinton administration. Elian Gonzalez’s mother drowned when she tried to get her son to the U.S.. The INS placed Elian with parental relatives in Miami. He was taken away at gun point when courts ruled that his father, not his relatives, could petition for asylum {a temporary refuge granted political offenders}. Many made the argument that he would be better off with his father in the communist utopia of Cuba, than he would be with his relatives in the U.S., so I would assume, for the sake of consistency, these same people would use the same reasoning concerning these children.

-Every administrations tries to get outcomes they desire. If they can’t get it through legislation, or if legislation is passed that they don’t like, they take it to court. It they don’t get the result they want in court, they use executive power to either change the law, or they just don’t enforce the laws they are legally mandated to enforce.

-Here is why the IRS scandal is worse than Nixon and Watergate. The Nixon scandal was political dirty tricks between two political parties. The present IRS scandal is a case of Government bureaucrats using their power to intimidate individuals who wanted to “peacefully assemble and petition the Government for a redress of grievances”, as stated in the 1st Amendment of the Constitution. The IRS violated the constitutional rights of individuals.

-The IRS recently agreed to pay a $50,000 in damages to NOM for leaking  donors names to rival groups. Who do you think will pay this fine? Tax payers of course, because the IRS is funded by us. So let me see if I got this right. A portion of the taxes paid by the tax payers who sued the IRS, is going toward the fine that the IRS owes to these very same tax payers. That kind of punishment has no chance of constraining future abuses of power.  The individuals in the IRS who broke the law should go to jail, because that is the only constraint for curtailing future IRS abuses. Why do you think the IRS bureaucrats were so cocky when they testified in front of congress? They know nothing is going to happen to them. The rule of law doesn’t apply to our bureaucratic betters. If this bureaucratic lawlessness continues, we won’t comply with their edicts, and it won’t be pretty.

– All of the recent push backs in the Supreme Court against the Obama administration are all actions taken by regular citizens. Non of these actions are results of the Republican establishment having any stones. This progressive Marxist ideology can only be defeated by a bottom up transformation by citizens understanding that individual  freedom is the cure for the problems created by years of  intervention through Government central planners of both parties.

 

 

 

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Charles Hugh Smith – After 6 Years Of Unprecedented Central Planning, The Economy Is More Fragile Than Ever

June 23, 2014

File:Organiztion of the Federal Reserve System.jpg

Charles Hugh Smith does another brilliant analysis of how central planning, by the Federal Reserve, has markets completely distorted to the point that nobody knows what is real or fake, in this article, After 6 Years Of Central Planning, The Economy Is More Fragile Than Ever.

Artificially holding interest rates lower than they would be in an unhampered market, distorts the production process. It brings about economic activities that wouldn’t have existed if the market was left to decide what the interest rate should be. Interest rates “coordinate production across time”.  Any interference with the knowledge that passes through the production process, because the interest rate is distorted by the Fed, consumes scarce resources, scarce capital, and scarce labor. As we talked about in this article Capital Consumption, aka, Eating Our Seed Corn, and this article, A Look Over The Horizon At What Lies Ahead If We Continue Down The Central Planning Road.

Here are some excerpts from CHS’s article.

“Here are the key characteristics of Central Planning:”

1. “The central bank/state intervene in the economy in a dominant fashion, controlling functions such as interest rates…”

2. “The central bank/state pick winners and losers: ….. The central bank/state bailed out the too big to fail banks private losses with public-taxpayer money. In effect, the central state/bank enrich cronies at the expense of everyone else.”

3. “The central bank/state manipulate the nominally “free” market to boost asset valuations as a way of enriching cronies who own most of the financial assets and as a public-relations charade to mask the failure of their picking winners and losers.”

“In other words, in centrally planned economies, markets are not allowed to discover price–they exist only to reflect positively on Central Planners.”

4. “The central bank/state use the power of the printing press to create as much money as they need to reward cronies and cram their decisions down the throat of the economy.”

5. “The central bank/state use the power of their public policy announcements to manipulate behavior and the financial markets while keeping programs that might attract scrutiny secret.”

“Central planning fails for intrinsic reasons unrelated to the specific policies. The decentralized, self-organizing market is like the immune system for the economy; it keeps the system healthy by burning off the deadwood of failed bets and failed investments and distributing credit and risk on performance rather than cronyism.”

“By eliminating the economy’s immune system, Central Planning dramatically increases vulnerability and guarantees systemic crises down the road…”

“The economy becomes dependent on the The central bank/state intervention and loses the ability to function in the real world. When the real world finally intrudes, the weakened, strung-out addict, no longer capable of responding to reality in a positive fashion, expires.”

“The damage done by Central Planning has yet to come home to roost. Six years into the Grand Experiment–that Central Planners can pick winners who just happen to be their cronies–the chickens of consequence are still making their way home.”

CHS  has some great charts that show the results of the Feds interventions, which are hard to see let alone understand. As J.M. Keynes wrote, “There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.”

In order to understand what Keynes was talking about concerning counterfeiting by central banks, you first have to understand this quote by his rival F. A. Hayek, “The coordination of mens activities through central planning or through voluntary cooperation are roads going in very different directions, the first to serfdom and poverty the second to freedom and plenty.”

Voluntary cooperation through free markets brings about individual freedom and a higher standard of living, while its opposite, central planning, brings about coercion by the state and a lower standard of living.

Related Article/Video – Keynesianism vs. The Austrian School, by austrianaddict.com.

Related Article/Video – Keynes vs. Hayek Round II, The Fight Of The Century, by austrianaddict.com.

 

 

 

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Capitalism vs. Crony Capitalism

April 23, 2014

Many people who decry capitalism do so from a position of ignorance of what capitalism really is. They look at the market system that exists in the U.S. today and mistakenly call it capitalism. Our present economic system is not free market capitalism, it is crony capitalism. Crony capitalism is a branch on the same central planning tree that includes socialism and fascism. In a true free market capitalist system, businesses wouldn’t be able to lobby government to pass laws that protect their position in the market and raise the costs on their present and future competitors, because government wouldn’t have the power to make these rules. Under free market capitalism businesses are incentivized to first serve their fellow-man before they can profit in any way. They must produce a good or service that consumers will freely exchange a portion of their labor for. Under crony capitalism businesses are incentivized to protect their own self-interest at the expense of the consumers and tax payers who are usually the same people.

Here is a video titled,  Why Capitalism Works, from Prager University, featuring George Gilder. He talks about the role of the entrepreneur in free market capitalism, as well as the incentive of giving before you receive.

 

SCARCITY TRUMPS  UTOPIAN VISIONS

The problem with how people perceive an economy is they don’t understand that a utopian world can’t be created on earth. The first rule of economics, scarcity, combined with the imperfections of man, make a utopian world impossible. The real question should be: What economic system can use limited means to supply the most ends for the most people? Put another way: In a world of scarce means and unlimited ends, which economic system can satisfy the most desires, with the knowledge that many desires will remain unmet? Free market capitalism,  produces the best possible result. History shows the branches of the central planning tree, whether it’s called crony capitalism, socialism, fascism, progressivism, communism, et al, produce a system were people have a lower standard of living and less individual freedom. A free market is nothing more than individuals freely producing, consuming and exchanging what they want, and in whatever quantities they want. Any interference by government, no matter how small, in the freedom of the individual to produce, consume, and exchange, moves an economic system down the central planning road, which is what Hayek called, “the road to serfdom”.

Related Video – Walter E. Williams, The Free Market Is Not Allowed To Work, by austrianaddict.com.

Related Article – We Can’t Recreate The Garden Of Eden, by austrianaddict.com.

Related Video – Milton Friedman vs. Phil Donahue, Greed Is In The Eye Of The Beholder, by austrianaddict.com.

Related Article – Unleash The Mind, by George Gilder, by austrianaddict.com.

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Rand Paul and Mike Lee Respond To The State Of The Union Address

January 30, 2014

Senators Rand Paul and Mike Lee gave responses to the President’s state of the union address. These two are speaking a completely different language than the President is speaking. They are speaking the language of individual liberty, and the President is speaking the language of collective central planning. Unfortunately tens of millions of people in this country don’t understand the language of individual liberty, because they were taught the language of collective central planning. It is our job to educate them that liberty is superior to central planning. I think the tide is turning because these two responses would never have been given just a few years ago.

These responses show the fundamental differences between liberty and central planning that is summed up so well in my favorite quote by F. A. Hayek, “The coordination of men’s activities through central planning or through voluntary cooperation are roads going in very different directions. The first to serfdom and poverty the second to freedom and plenty.”

We have been slowly going down the road to serfdom for too long, it is time to change direction.

Here is Senator Rand Paul’s response.

Here is Senator Mike Lee’s response.

Related Article – Let The Counterfeiting Continue! The Fed Is Stuck In Their Feedback Loop, by austrianaddict.com.

Related Article – Tom Woods Explains The Austrian Business Cycle, by austtianaddict.com.

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Observations From The Margin

December 3, 2013
Observation Tower

Observation  (Photo credit: mooglet)

– How can William P.White the D.C. insurance commissioner get fired by the D.C. Mayor for telling the truth about Obamacare, while everyone who lied about Obamacare gets to keep their job.

– Politicians never cease to amaze me. John McCain called Ted Cruz attempt to repeal or defund Obamacare, “not rational”, and to attempt it during the Gov. shutdown was considered “a fool’s errand”. Six weeks later in an appearence on the Greta Van Susteren show McCain said Obamacare should be repealed. Most politicians live in a zero sum moment that they think can never change. McCain was acting on the polls at the time of Cruzes filibuster, while Cruz was trying to educate people about the problems concerning Obamacare, in an attempt to move public opinion toward repeal. Cruz succeeded with the help of the predictable debacle that the Obamacare roll out has become.When public opinion shifted, McCain found himself in a “new” zero sum moment. Seeing the parade of public opinion coming down the street, he grabbed the conductor’s baton and jumped in front of it in an attempt to look as if he was leading it. This is the reality of politics and politicians, and why I lothe it and them.

– The free market, not Government regulation, has allowed the production of the highest quality and quantity of healthcare possible. Over the years, Government intervention has worked to slow the progress of healthcare while driving up the cost, at the same time that new technological discoveries have worked to advance healthcare, and make it less expensive. We have no idea how advanced and less expensive healthcare would be if the free market would have been allowed to work unimpeded by Government regulations.

– Obamacare is the attempt by central planners to move healthcare toward a single payer system, aka socialized medicine. These central planners simply don’t like the results produced by individuals making voluntary decisions in a free market. They think their superior wisdom can produce better healthcare at an “affordable” price. Unfortunately for the planners Obamacare increases demand for healthcare, while at the same time constraining the supply of healthcare, which will result in less healthcare at higher prices. Their superior wisdom can’t veto the economic law of supply and demand.

– Politicians and bureaucrats can mandate that healthcare be provided to everyone, but if there is nobody to provide healthcare, what good is the mandate. They are promising you access to something that they don’t produce. Individuals produce healthcare, and if an individual decides the payment for his production isn’t enough, he will produce some other good or service for a payment he thinks is enough.

– How can the President, seemingly every week, get away with making executive orders that change Obamacare, which is the law of the land? Is it because the opposition party is pusillanimous. Tyrants become more bold when their power grabs are not challenged.

– Let’s see if I have this right. 1) Obamacare mandated that everyone purchase health insurance, even if they don’t want it. 2) If they already had a voluntary contract with an insurance provider, the Government arbitrarily nullified the mutually agreed upon contract, because it didn’t meet Obamacare’s arbitrary standards. 3) The President then decided that insurance companies reinstate the insurance plans that Obamacare mandates outlawed. 4) The insurance companies have said they can’t or won’t reinstate the policies that were outlawed under Obamacare. I guess being King is a lot easier in theory than it is in reality.

– Experts from Google and Oracle have been brought in as part of the “tech surge” to fix the problems with the healthcare.gov website. Why didn’t the “all-knowing” Government bureaucrats let these experts set up the website in the first place?

– The books Atlas Shrugged, Animal Farm, and 1984 were categorized as works of fiction when each was published. If they were published today they would be categorized as history books.

I got these cartoons from the burningplatform.com.

140590 600 Better on the Inside cartoons

140655 600 Obama Promises cartoons

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