Facts are Stubborn Things

According to one Hillary Clinton, "The rich are not paying their fair share" of taxes. The top five percent of wage earners pay more than 54 percent of income taxes. She seems to bright not to know the truth so I wonder why she said that.

Crowding Out

Crowing out was a term I became familiar with in the 80-81 recession where Paul Volcker saved the future. The tenet is that government spending crowds out private spending. In other words, there are only so many dollars in the world and when the government spends them, they are not there for private enterprise to spend.

It's a simple concept and almost intuitively true. It also doesn't matter if we're talking about dollars taxed today or dollars borrowed against the future. There is a finite pool of capital (current or borrowed against the future) and private enterprise gets the leftovers.

Now, here's evidence that this is also a short-term phenomenon. If other research backs this up, this pretty-much blows Keynesianism out of the water.

The entire study is here.

I'm Starting to Like This Guy

Gov Christie calls S-L columnist thin-skinned for inquiring about his 'confrontational tone'

Four Ways

There is a good argument to be made that the financial regulation changes moving through Congress now are best set aside for a few years. We do not yet know enough to know if we're doing the right thing. Too bad Congressmen and women do not have to take the political equivalent of the Hypocratic Oath - First Do No Harm.

Here's an interesting discussion of the federal government's complicity (if not outright fault) in abetting the Crash of 2008.

Despotic Bureacracy

Here's a very interesting take on a subject I've been reading about since I was a little boy. I particularly like the quote referring to the American Revolution where one of the sparks was that King George had "erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance."

If I can ever find it, I'll post a link to a video I once saw of a 60s-era Ronald Reagan giving a brilliant speech on the same topic.

The Oligarchy

I hear and read more talk about Corporatism these days - but that may be the effect of the observer distorting the evidence. Power Line has an interesting post about a new American Oligarchy. What Power Line is calling the Oligarchy and I call Corporatism, I've also heard called the Washington-Wall Street Nexus.

So, here I risk sounding like a wingnut but it's hard for me to overemphasize how corrosive these structures are to truly free markets and free peoples. Here's hoping that in the near future this topic is discussed more often and openly.