Thoughts on the Passing Scene

❡The consumer is king; the economy exists for consumers. If foreign exporters want to sell here at below local market prices (called "dumping" by the politicians), we should accept and say thanks. It is immoral and corrupt of our politicians to put their constituents' narrow interests ahead of consumers in general for their personal political advantage!⋄ ❡Why must we pay such tribute, in money and loss of freedom, to our politicians? What do they actually bring to the table? Force and overhead!Do they really know how to spend our money better than we do, and should they have the political power to do so, which mostly means in the best ways to keep themselves in power? I say nobody knows how to spend their money better than the people who earn it and own it and have the primary right to spend it! If this were not so, we w'd not be here today, because that's what people did before politicians learned how to preempt it for their own advantage. If some people don't have the ability to look after their own money and affairs, maybe it's because our socialized political and economic systems have taken away their need and opportunities to learn. How can we recover our constitutionally guaranteed freedoms to make our own decisions and spend our own money? We have to get our cause before some intelligent, courageous judges who will belatedly resurrect and impose adherence to the Constitution and its limitations on our out-of-control politicians. ❡Gordon Brown, Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer and next prime minister, made an impassioned speech at the Labor Party's annual convention that could have been Fidel Castro's: no flat tax, no free market, more forcible transfers of the tax producers' money to the tax consumers to fund and encourage the production and consumption chosen by the politicians, who know best what's good for the economy and the citizenry! Margaret Thatcher must have thrown-up. ❡Wealth is simply title to capital assets, which must be well managed to satisfy human wants or it redistributes itself. Carping about the increasing gap in income and wealth between rich and poor is misguided. Focus should rather be on standards of living of the poor, and the contributions outsize incomes and wealth make to it. Capitalism has an insatiable appetite for capital, and capital creates jobs and services and goods for all levels of society. Those with the largest incomes and the ability to defer consumption accumulate the most capital and make the greatest contribution to everybody's standard of living. P.S."...average U.S. per capita income is now about 55% higher than the average of the European Union's core 15 countries. In fact, the biggest E.U. countries have per capita incomes comparable to America's poorest states. A recent study by two Swedish economists found that if the United Kingdom, France, or Italy suddenly were admitted to the American union, any one of them would rank as the 5th poorest of the 50 states, ahead only of West Virginia, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Montana. Ireland, the richest E.U. country, would be the 13th poorest state; Sweden the 6th poorest. The study found that 40% of all Swedish households would classify as low-income by American standards." Essay by Gerard Alexander in Claremont Review of Books, Fall 2005. ❡The conflict over teaching intelligent design/creationism in the public schools is caused by government funding, which also causes poor product. The solution to both problems is to eliminate government entirely from any participation in education and allow schools to teach anything its customers want and at the quality level they demand and are willing to pay for. ❡The current debate over where to find the money to rebuild New Orleans and the Gulf coast and reimburse the losses of the inhabitants has a simple answer: not from the federal taxpayers. So where w'd the money come from? From the insurance cos.,the State, the people, and voluntary contributors. ❡It will take this country several generations to recover from the Bush dynasty. God save us from another one. ❡After seeing a few uncovered Arab women, I divine that the Arab/Islamic culture requires women to hide their bodies, not so much from strangers as from their own men. Which ever it is, it's a great custom! ❡What is the greatest invention of all time? Not surplus, not control of fire, not speech, not writing, not agriculture, not herding or domestication of animals, not the wheel or sail or keel or metallurgy or stirrups or horsecollar or navigation. It is division of labor. ❡The Founding Fathers gave us a Republic which soon deteriorated into a Democracy, and when the political and judicial systems failed to contain it, it deteriorated into the tyranny of the majority, with its forcible, demoralizing redistributionism that we are mired in today. In the mid-19th century Alexis de Tocqueville wrote that when the poor have the largest vote in a democracy, they will vote themselves larger and larger shares of the wealth of the well-to-do and ultimately destroy democracy itself. ❡What are our greatest geopolitical blunders so far of the 21st Century? Avenging the attacks of 9/11/01 and continuing to underwrite Israel. Of the 20th Century? Avenging the Lusitania, Pearl Harbor, and the Tonkin Gulf, and underwriting Israel!