But Now You Know

The search for truth in human action

New Page: The Culture of Safety Does More Harm than Good


culture-of-safety-tall-300px

But Now You Know has a new permanent page, a useful list of many ways in which today’s worry about safety is actually dangerous.

The increasing obsession with safety in the US has the opposite effect of the one intended. As with a mother determined to keep her child from all pain, the actual result is greater danger, more harm, and less actual living and happiness.

  • Avoiding germs gives you a weak immune system
  • Mandatory safety standards often cost lives
  • The FDA’s years-long approval process dooms terminal children
  • They need to suspend our rights…in order to fight for LIBERTY in the war on terror?

Let’s start with something even the caution-mongers can understand:

Avoiding risks can actually be physically dangerous. SOME exposure to risk prevents atrophy, giving the mind or body the opportunity to learn how to care for itself.

And then something the fear-freaks can never understand:

Life without risk ends up being barely worth living. Take away the freedom to choose what risks to take, and you take away the liberty to choose how much life to enjoy.

YOU may not want to do X, because it’s scary for you, but other people may find it worth the risk.

Issues explained and carefully footnoted on the page include:

  • Exposure to Germs is Good for You
  • Gun-Free Zones CAUSE School Shootings
  • Even Moderately Frequent Hand-Washing Increases the Risk of Dermatitis
  • Protecting Wall Street with Bailouts Causes More Crashes:
  • Always Wearing Sunblock Promotes Skin Cancer
  • The FDA Kills
  • “Dangerous” Playgrounds Help Kids Learn
  • Big Brother and the Nanny State
  • Safe Play Makes Kids Fat
  • Too Much Safety KILLS
  • Outward Bound is Crippled with Safety

Read the actual page, here.

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September 25, 2009 Posted by | environment, Family, Health, Politics, Society | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Where’s the Hyperinflation?


When the unaccountable, secretive arm of the banking industry known as the Federal Reserve started lending itself (the banking industry) billions of newly invented dollars, late last year, responsible people all over America were horrified.

Some of the soundest economic minds even started predicting “hyperinflation”.

Well, it’s been three quarters, now…soon it’ll be a year.

“Where,” other people are saying, “oh where is that oh-so-scary hyperinflation?”

The answer comes in several parts:

What is Hyperinflation? Hyperinflation is a specific thing. It’s not the three percent inflation we normally “enjoy”, any more than it’s a flavor of cream pie. We must define what it is, in order to know if it happens.

What Causes Hyperinflation? Having defined it, we need to know if the things that cause it are happening. The Fed has printed new money for nearly 100 years, never with hyperinflation. Is what happened recently sufficient to change that?

How Long Would it Take? Is it too late? It’s been nine months; are we safe?

Well, Let’s See

What is hyperinflation?

An actually hyperinflated currency, the Zimbabwe dollar was so weak that this is a single note for one hundred TRILLION. The Fed would have to print fifty times as much as it did last fall, in order to match this ONE bill.

(caption: An actually hyperinflated currency; the Zimbabwe dollar was so weak that this is a single note for one hundred TRILLION. At the rate it printed money for two months last fall, the Fed would still need over eight years just to print enough to equal this one scrap of paper)

Well, “inflation” is when you increase the amount of money, or the supply of it compared to the demand for goods in society…but when non-economists say “inflation”, they usually mean “prices go up”.

And so “hyperinflation” is just “prices going up really, really fast”. The amount necessary to count is generally said to be “100% per year for three years”, for long-term hyperinflation, or else “50% per month” for short-term hyperinflation.

The most inflation we’ve ever suffered, in the 1970s, was less than 14% per year. Normally, it’s between 2% and 3%.

Right now, prices are going DOWN most months, not up. There isn’t even price stability now, much less price inflation.

But why would prices be going up OR down, in an unhealthy way?

Super-quick history:

Almost exactly 100 years ago, in 1907, the US suffered yet another in a long series of destructive depressions and panics, generally caused by money shortages creating runs on banks, price failures, stock market crashes, et cetera.

But this one was stopped dead in its tracks by a group of wealthy entrepreneurs who made very short-term loans to various financial groups, allowing banks to pay off depositors, et cetera. The result was the downturn cut short, never becoming a full-blown depression.

A brilliant lesson was about to be learned, but unfortunately government prevented that. Instead of a newish industry of short-term finance lenders/insurers springing up, the Federal Government announced it was going to act in that role, from now on. It created the Federal Reserve, which would use its coercive power to print imaginary new money to lend to financial institutions in times of crisis.

(Sadly, it did the opposite; it lent out newly minted money in good times, but tended to cut it off whenever there was a financial panic, which was the only time it was supposed to lend in the first place…this is part of what triggered the start of the Great Depression in 1929)

Well, the Fed is a whole other discussion, of course, so we’re going to skip ahead, now

Today:

So instead of lending out money during a crisis, the Federal Reserve increases the amount of money a few percent per year, lending it out in good times. This is part of why we have (usually moderate) inflation…the amount of money increases faster than the demand for goods, so there’s more money to spend than stuff to buy, and prices increase.

But from 2004 through 2008, the Fed did something it hadn’t done since 1938 when we went off the Gold Standard: It started DECREASING money supply:

(caption: Notice that M1, paper money and money in US banks, shrinks (goes below 0 growth) from 2004-2008)

(caption: Notice that M1, paper money and electronic money in US banks, shrinks (goes below 0 growth) from 2004-2008)

Notice that the most important line, the red M1, goes below zero (to shrinking money), and stays negative longer than it had been at any but one time in fifty years. And currency (actual paper money) falls lower than ANY time in that span.

This is because M3, which includes money in foreign banks, was going up so quickly: Money was fleeing the US because of our wars, and the 700% inflated oil prices, and our billions in new foreign aid. We would buy oil that should have cost a few hundred billion, but instead cost us trillions, and send the money for that oil to Saudi Arabia, and other foreign countries.

Over the course of four years, this added up to a shortfall of between two and three trillion dollars in the domestic US economy. That money was all overseas.

Here comes deflation

The Federal Reserve cannot possibly keep money supply balanced, as illustrated by the recent deflation

(caption: The Fed's monopoly could never work better than any other monopoly, and now it's produced deflation)

This didn’t even leave enough money to pay for our normal goods, much less allow the economy to grow…plus, of course, the cost of making things was shooting up from the high oil prices, as all things require energy, while there was LESS money to cover that universal new expense.

The result? Deflation, and therefore a money shortage, that led to the economic depression starting in 2008. There was not enough money to run the economy, so prices began FALLING, the US suffering what appeared to be a “loss” of about three trillion dollars. This was simply the change in prices to represent the trillions missing because of M1 shrinking for four years.

The Federal Reserve’s response? It actually CUT its offered money supply in 2008, by refusing to lend to banks suffering financial trauma…once again failing to act in its sole official role of “lender of last resort” as in 1907.

But it couldn’t keep that up, because deflation destroys a market economy.

So, once this cutting off of emergency money caused the banks to start failing, the Fed belatedly loosened its purse strings: It lend out over two trillion dollars to financial institutions, in just a few months.

Is It Enough to be Hyper?

Now if the Fed did this all the time, lending out a trillion dollars each month when the economy was just fine, we might really have hyperinflation.

But, instead, the Fed did this ONE TIME, starting from a money deficit of three trillion dollars.

So, in fact, what it did was produce enough new money to, hopefully, make up for the money shortage.

Being down trillions of dollars, then adding two trillion, could not make prices double every year. Or even once.

Even if there had been no shortage, two trillion is not enough to increase prices by 50% every month, nor 100% every year, because it is a fraction of the many trillions of dollars in our economy, and only happened one time. Hyperinflation requires more money to be printed even as prices are going through the roof, so that people come to expect it and overprice things ahead of time.

But, even if it had been enough to cause hyperinflation, there’s one last big factor:

Time delay.

How Long?

We can’t guarantee that there will be NO backlash from this infusion of money, until about 18 months have passed. Historically, changes in money supply take between 6 and 18 months to hit prices in an economy. It has to gradually spread throughout the system, being spent, invested, and saved over and again, until its full impact is felt and absorbed.

So we have until mid 2010 to see whether there are SOME effects from the unhealthy throwing of two trillion unearned dollars at our socialized banking institutions.

What About Government Spending?

For better or worse, it is actually impossible for government spending to “stimulate” an economy, at all. And since the current “stimulus packages” are financed by bonds and deficit, not the printing of money, they are actually DE-Flationary. Read the above link, to understand exactly why these things are so.

Sorry, Not Even Close

But, ultimately, whatever backlash there is, it cannot be hyperinflation. With an economy of, depending on how you count, eight to twelve trillion dollars, you can’t make prices jump even 50%, even for ONE month (and it must keep happening, to be hyper), by printing two trillion new dollars. Not even if there were not already deflation to counter.

The great danger, to this day, is deflation, not inflation, which can produce a long-term spiral of economic depression

The great danger, to this day, is deflation, not inflation, which can produce a long-term spiral of economic depression. What's worse, is that the Consumer Price Index, adjusted to compensate for annual cycles like Christmas spending and winter energy prices, showed deflation six months earlier than this chart.

July 25, 2009 Posted by | Economy, Politics | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 26 Comments

It’s OK if it Kills People


(caption: Standing by a compact car, crushed in a test against a mere mid-sized car: "The laws of physics can't be repealed. Even with modern safety features like multiple air bags, people in small, light cars are always at a disadvantage in crashes." -- Russ Rader, Insurance Institute for Highway Safety)

(caption: Standing by a minicar, crushed in a test against a mere mid-sized car: "The laws of physics can't be repealed. Even with modern safety features like multiple air bags, people in small, light cars are always at a disadvantage in crashes." -- Russ Rader, Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (click picture to see video))

It’s bad enough that new gas mileage standards will cost the already-struggling US automakers at least $21,000,000,000 per year, which they will pass on to YOU, either in as consumers or taxpayers, but they also can TRIPLE the chance of your family dying in a car crash.

The new CAFE standards require automakers to have a much higher average gas mileage within a few years.  But since automakers can’t force people to buy smaller cars, this means they must stop making larger cars, in order to force the “average” bought to be more efficient.

GM, for example, is going to literally stop selling the Caprice, one of its most popular and longest-made cars, to regular people…because it’s large. It will only offer those to “fleet” buyers, like police, taxi, and limo companies. Each company will also make the cars it does offer smaller and lighter. You will have no choice but to buy these, if you want a new car.

And, of course, you will be forced to finance this change through your taxes, with the new Cash for Clunkers law, while Cap and Trade (if you let it pass) will cause more car shrinkage and insane tax burden on you than CAFE and Cash for Clunkers combined.

Forced Green = Death

(caption: You're three times as likely to die in a small vehicle than a large one)

(caption: You're three times more likely to die in a small vehicle than a large one)

Yet no expert seriously denies that smaller cars are far more dangerous than large cars. They may refuse to use those exact words, but crash test results like this are not just normal, but a question of physics.

When a car hits something, its size, weight, and the materials out of which it’s made decide how much harm will come to its passengers. This is true even when an immobile object like a fence or tree…but it’s most true when hitting a moveable object, like a deer or another vehicle. These factors determine how much of the energy goes to moving the object you hit, and how much to crushing your body.

Even if your car has a rigid steel frame (Smart cars) and crumple zones (European cars), the change in speed from hitting a heavier object will snap your body around and kill you.

So when Barak Obama and John McCain attempt to force through standards that will effectively ban the building of larger vehicles for families, they are condemning many people to death. But, they say, this is worthwhile in order to force greater fuel economy on regular people.

Efficiency is more important than human life.

In 2004, a study by Dynamic Research, Inc. found a a 20% change in the weight difference between two vehicles in a collision produced a 15% change in mortality. The motivation, of course, was to show that people needed to be forced to drive lighter vehicles; punish SUV owners by reducing the side of their vehicles…but a more rational way to look at it is that, since large vehicles (and deer, and trees) will not cease to exist, a 20% reduction in the weight of new cars means a 15% increase in the death of families riding in them.

Your Death: A Risk They’re Willing to Take

(caption: Barak will remain safe in his gas-hogging limosine)

(caption: Never fear; Barak will remain safe in his gas-hogging limosine)

Not only will there continue to be industrial vehicles, tractor-trailor rigs, and other necessary vehicles on the road to hit your shrinking family car, and not only will the deer you hit not be on a corrresponding diet, but bear in mind that the “fleet vehicles” the politicians use are effectively exempted. So Obama, McCain, government officials, and their loved ones will still be safe in their gigantic limosines, massive taxis, and ponderous police cars, to collide with and crush we mere mortals.

Statistically, you are twice as likely to die in a small car than a larger one, during a crash…THREE times as likely, if it’s a single-car crash. That’s right; you don’t have to hit an SUV to die from driving a small car: The more your car weighs, the more it can push back against the object it’s hitting, reducing the speed at which your body is jerked in an accident.

In fact, in a recent test by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, smaller vehicles even proved doomsday devices in crash tests against mere mid-level vehicles. It’s not just that a smart car will kill you if it collides with an SUV, but even a normal sedan…and when the new laws are in effect, the normal sedans being made then will be death traps against one made today.

So if a Cap and Trade politician’s limosine crashes into your family car, a few years from now, you (not he) will be far more likely to die than today…but that’s ok, it’s a chance he’s willing to take.

The Mid-sized sedan is slowed moderately by the impact, but the minicar reverses direction in a fraction of the distance. Outcome: Sedan's driver; pissed off, smartcar's driver; dead

The Mid-sized sedan is slowed moderately by the impact, but the minicar reverses direction in a fraction of the distance. Outcome: Sedan's driver; pissed off, smartcar's driver; dead

July 20, 2009 Posted by | environment, Politics, Society | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Hypocritical Car Dealers’ Whining…


This car dealer whines about how an automaker should not be allowed to lay him off, and then talks about how HE laid off 35 employees

(caption: This car dealer whines about how a car company should not be allowed to lay him off, and then talks about how he laid off 35 employees)

Oh no, the bankrupt automobile manufacturers are ending their association with two thousand car dealerships!

This is unacceptable, because bankrupt companies should never cut costs, nor do anything else to become efficient and remain in business. They should keep all of their employees, business associations, et cetera, even if it means continuing to lose money and vanish entirely within the year.

On the other hand, why are these hypocrite car dealers not doing the same thing?

The ones pandering to a grandstanding Congressional panel today complained that they — the dealers themselves — had to lay off dozens of employees.

One of them said something like “I have been turned into a glorified used car dealer, which…[sob]…cost thirty-five of our loyal employees their jobs! [whimper]”

But…but…why on earth did he not simply keep all 35 of those employees, the way he’s demanding the automaker be forced to keep his dealership?

Every single explanation he might give, if asked this, would translate into an argument for why the automaker needed to get rid of extra dealerships.

Of course, the automakers could have kept more dealerships, if the Obama administration were not undermining their ability to get out of insane contracts with the UAW monopoly.

But, either way, the automakers are SUPPOSED to cut costs, at the cost of jobs and associations.

Or else the car dealerships should not be laying off employees, just because they lost their new car contracts.

And now we see another consequence of the Bush/Obama nationalization of industries...

And now we see another consequence of the Bush/Obama nationalization of industries...

June 12, 2009 Posted by | Economy, Politics, Society | , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Thank Liberalism for the SUV…again


(caption: You can't ban powerful vehicles, any more realistically than you can ban stupidity.)

(caption: You can't ban powerful vehicles, any more realistically than you can ban stupidity.)

 

Years ago, busybodies decided to violate the limits to the powers of the Federal government, by setting gas mileage standards (and many other harmful regulations) on automobiles.

As is always the case with the Law of Unintended Consequences, this actually produced the opposite of the intended results.

It created the green-hated SUV boom.

This is because there are legitimate uses for large engines, and large vehicles. You can’t just declare that everything has to get X miles per gallon. Obviously, trash trucks cannot. The tractor-trailer rigs that deliver most of our goods cannot. Vehicles that actually are needed to drive somewhere on the road and then go off-road to do work cannot. 

There are, in fact, many sporting or work activities that require the power or weight that make high gas mileage impossible.

So the bureaucrats were forced to create special exceptions…for example, a Sports-Utility Vehicle class.

But arrogant, ivory-tower civil rulers cannot anticipate all needs. OK, let’s face it, they are actually incompetent at anticipating the needs of real people. 

So it didn’t occur to them that regular families need large vehicles, for many reasons. Nor that the regulations on minivans would make them too underpowered and, well, ugly, for most people to find tolerable.

So, in fact, the typical family was faced with an artificial division between the “efficient” vehicles, and those even more powerful than they need.

They were, therefore, actually driven (no pun intended) to buying from the latter class. Stuck between feeble, dangerous, ugly cars with good mileage, and inefficient, powerful, good-looking ones, they chose the latter. As they should.

It’s the environmentalists’ own fault.

And now they’re at it again:

The Obama/Pelosi administration have announced a McCain-like plan to FORCE Americans to drive even weaker, uglier, more fuel-efficient cars. This will not only increase poverty, by hugely raising the price of cars and therefore pricing people out of transportation, but will surely have many other unintended consequences, in the long run. More automaker bankruptcy, as they’re forced to make cars we won’t buy? Even crazier automotive trends, as we try to find a way to get what we actually need, instead of what they want us to have?

Have fun finding out what they’ll be.

May 25, 2009 Posted by | Economy, environment, Politics | , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Real Americans Don’t Buy American


When you hear those lazy, tax-dollar-stealing car company reps on the radio saying you should “buy from us, or otherwise be sure to Buy American”, don’t forget that “Buy American” is unamerican.

Not only do they rob the taxpayers, but these lazy bureaucrats want us to buy inferior cars, out of fake patriotism

Not only do they rob the taxpayers, but these lazy bureaucrats want us to buy inferior cars, out of fake patriotism

The American Dream is for everyone to earn their way, NOT for people to be given an easy way out with affirmative action.

And Buying American™ in order to protect overpriced, inefficient union monopoly jobs is the very worst form of Affirmative Action.

We Americans have, for good reason, a long-standing belief in “meritocracy”, people getting what they earn, earning what they get.

Most of us have ancestors who came here because they could earn what they deserved, regardless of class, nationality, or whatever…at least compared to anywhere else.

And they passed on the kind of attitude necessary for such a tremendous move. Most of us still have a healthy dose of it, today.

And we’re in the one place in the world where we still have some opportunity to exercise it. Not as much as America used to, especially not as much as we’d like…but still more than anywhere else.

So we love this place, America, because we really do believe it’s the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave.

We love it enough that it’s hard to avoid getting suckered into tolerating, or even supporting, something completely unamerican, if it’s clothed in enough patriotic trappings.

The examples of that today are many…more than since the middle of the Cold War. But, aside from the many others which get plenty of bandwidth on the net already, there’s one which I almost never hear anyone speaking out against.

So I’m doing that, now.

Do you know who deserves to have the money for that new car you want to buy?

Whoever makes the best car in your price range. Frankly, that’s the only answer that fits with the Spirit of America.

Same with your shirt, your birdhouse, your silicon implants…whatever.

Yet some people, mostly bloated, bureaucratic corporations who make products which can’t compete on fair terms because they’re overpriced and underquality, have the nerve to tell us that it’s patriotic to “Buy American”. And because the word “American” is one we love, we’re tempted to fall for it.

But we need to stop.

If Mitsubishi and Hyundai make better cars than Ford and Chrysler, then they’re going to get more money. Then Ford and Chrysler are going to struggle. The solution? It’s for them to get off their lazy butts…and we, as Americans, are just the kind of straight-talkers to SAY that about them…and make better effing vehicles.

But if they can convince us to unconditionally “Buy American”, along with forcing us to give them billions in bailouts, then they don’t have to. They can keep making mediocre-or-worse cars. Which is what they’ve done since at least the mid seventies.

I remember an ad where Lee Iacoca leaned forward earnestly at what was implicitly his desk as a Ford executive, and said, in essence, “OK, we admit it, we have been half-assing the cars. But you taught us a lesson, so now we’re making really good cars. All you have to do is come back and try us out, we’ve decided that Quality is Job One, now.”

That was twenty-something years ago, if I recall correctly.

Just recently I saw another ad. Another car exec looking repentantly into the camera and ernestly saying something like “OK, we get it, we’ve been half-assing the cars. But you taught us a lesson, so now we’re making really good cars. We think quality is job one, now. No…really. This time we mean it.”

No, they’ll mean it when the people — who really do buy inferior cars because of emotional appeal — stop letting  the FEELING of being patriotic come before the actual actions of American ideals.

I’m going to stick to being a REAL American, and you should, too.

Support whomever deserves it, because anything else is not only wrong, and unamerican, but self-destructive in the long run.

May 4, 2009 Posted by | Economy, Politics, Society | , , , , , , , , , , | 12 Comments

Attacking AIG-style Bonuses Will Cause MORE Companies to Fail


Money BombRecently, I wrote an article about how Golden Parachutes are important for our economy, instead of bad.

And yet now we have people objecting to AIG fulfilling its contractual obligations to people who might otherwise have abandoned the company to collapse years ago.

This needs to be re-explained, in simpler, clearer terms:

  • If a company is struggling, it needs the best people it can get, in order to TRY to save itself.
  • If you are the best man for the job, then you don’t need to work for a struggling company. You are almost certainly going to choose a healthy, growing company where your job is secure.
  • In order to obtain your services, a struggling company must either:
    1. Offer you far more money up front, which it probably can’t afford to do, or
    2. Offer you protection against the company failing, like a bonus that you will get even if, or only if, something goes wrong despite your best efforts
  • In order for struggling companies to have a chance to survive, benefiting the entire economy and all of we who are in it, you must therefore have:
    1. The power to offer bonuses in case the company fails despite a manager’s best efforts
    2. enforcement of that bonus contract, so the potential managers trust it’ll get paid, and
    3. freedom from punishment for receiving such a bonus

The problem, here, is not AIG honoring a style of contract that is absolutely necessary for the health of our economy.

The real problem here is the same that we face whenever there is government intervention with our taxpayer money:

This form of socialism will always cause conflicts of interest, that will harm the recipient, the taxpayer, and the economy ever more, in a snowball effect.

Think of how people were trapped on welfare, from the 1970s through 1990s. 

The government bailed  out people in need, but then had to punish them if they ever made any progress in getting out of poverty, because it would be irresponsible to keep paying them the same amount of welfare, when they got even a little of their own income. 

Likewise, many state governments violate your freedom of choice  on health-related issues, on the premise that those states are paying for some people’s health care. They impose gigantic taxes on tobacco, alcohol, even convenient food, claiming that people who use them are raising government health care costs.

In all three cases, the freedom of private people is violated as a natural domino cascade starting with government taking your taxpayer money, and bailing people out with it.

Our response to this obvious conflict of interest, between bailouts and people’s free choices, should be to legislate against bailouts, not liberty.

March 19, 2009 Posted by | Economy, Politics, Society | , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Why Nobody Wants to Bail Out Automakers (except bureaucrats)


One thing you’ll notice about the debate over bailing out the automakers is that, even more than in general, everyone’s against it except corrupt politicians, panhandling automakers, and monopolistic union officials.

That’s because it’s a lose/lose situation if we do, but things might actually get better if we don’t.

First, let’s consider the big, fat lie that three million people would be put out of work. 

We’ll ignore (for a moment) that bankrupcy will actually keep them in business and let them become more efficient.

Let’s pretend, instead that the automakers would actually [poof] ceased to exist.  Only a couple hundred thousand workers, not three million, actually are employed by those car companies.

If the companies vanished, then all other 2,800,000 workers would not only continue to have jobs…

(continued after the spiffy pic)

They claim three million jobs are at stake, but the bailout would actually cost jobs, and make a few union management types rich

They claim three million jobs are at stake, but the bailout would actually cost jobs, and make a few union management types rich

…but probably end up with better versions of their jobs. Why? Because people wouldn’t stop buying cars, they just would be buying DIFFERENT cars. Cars that need dealers, mechanics, parts sellers, and all the other jobs that the car companies are dishonestly counting as “three million jobs”. If you don’t buy a car from the Big Three oligopoly of panhandlers, you’ll buy one from someone else, instead.

 

Of course foreign cars often don’t need repairs and parts as often as American cars, but THAT would represent a savings for americans in general, that would create more jobs.

But, of course, the Big Three are in ZERO danger of magically vanishing.

Instead, they’d have to file for bankrupcy “restructuring”, which would be a way to allow them to fix a lot of the stupid inefficiency that laws and bureaucracy have trapped them with, WITHOUT them having to steal twenty five billion dollars (a number that will grow) from you and me, and then have Big Brother socialize them with mandatory “changes” that don’t represent what we consumers want, anyway.

And…well, really, that’s it. There are no other excuses for squandering $500 from the pocket of every middle-class family on yet another socialist bailout. Just “three million jobs” that is really only a couple hundred thousand jobs that would not go away, anyhow.

Sure, I could point out how restructuring, instead of a bailout, would break the back of the UAW monopoly, which forces American car companies to pay nine times as much for labor as foreign car companies. And how the UAW is therefore bribing the Democrats the way the Big Three automakers are bribing the fake-Republican neocons…which might just happen to be why they are all for the bailout, when everyone else is against it.

But, really, it boils down to “three million jobs is a lie”.

In fact, it boils down to the fact that americans would probably GAIN jobs from letting GM file for restructuring, while we will LOSE jobs by squandering more money on the bailout, which will ultimately come out of YOUR pocket, and mine. When the government wastes money, we lose the opportunity to spend the money on actual, productive things that employ people.

We need more economic freedom, to regain true American prosperity, not more handouts lifted from our own pockets.

November 22, 2008 Posted by | Economy | , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

   

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