voluntaryXchange

Pithy Quotes from Mark Helprin

Mark Helprin thinks Benghazi was a bad sign. Me too, but in an unstimulating article I found two quotes I liked.

Here’s some antimetabole On Hilary:

… possibly the next president, comprehend this. Her record-air-mile tenure as secretary of state, in which restless ambition was the cause of unambitious restlessness, brought one of the most confused approaches to the international system ever foisted upon the long suffering Republic, unless you think donating Egypt to the Muslim Brotherhood was Napoleonic genius. [emphasis added]

On the busy-bodiness of the Obama administrations military endeavors:

History and the present tell us unambiguously that we require vast reserves of strength used judiciously, sparingly where possible, overwhelmingly when appropriate, precisely, quickly, and effectively. Now we have vanishing and insufficient strength used injudiciously, promiscuously, slowly, and ineffectively.

Read the whole thing, entitled "Benghazi's Portent and the Decline of U.S. Military Strength" in the April 10 issue of The Wall Street Journal.

Technorati Tags: mark,helprin,quotes,benghazi,hilary,clinton,obama

Print a Gun, the Whole Gun, and …

The first (more or less) complete 3-D gun has been printed. That’s right: printed out of plastic with a rapid prototyper (aka 3D printer).

N.B. The gun contains a metal firing pin, only because the law says all guns must have some metal in them to be legal.

N.B. The gun hasn’t been publically tested yet.

Some of the issues this will raise were discussed here at vX about 8 months ago.

What do you want to bet that society has done essentially zero to address any of them, while technology moves forward and obviates them.

UPDATE: So the gun was tested, the plans were uploaded, 100K people downloaded them in the U.S., the plans are now on servers hosted outside the U.S. and have had about a million downloads … and then the government objected. Do we need more evidence that bureaucrats are controlling reactionaries? This bit of news has been brewing for months … so if you believe banning this is a good idea, the government has just proved they’re willing to provide you with the appearance of doing something rather than the reality. I hope you find that satisfying.

Technorati Tags: plastic,gun,printed,3D

Obama Is Having His Cake and Eating It and Having It and Eating It and Having It

The Obama administration bemoans the cuts made by the sequester.

Time to put on our thinking caps. These are the facts about the process in May 2013:

• Presidents propose budgets.
• Congress passes, and the President signs, budgets that are often larger (and always different) than what the President proposes.
• The sequester of 2013 went into effect in March. It was based on the continuation of the 2012 budget, because …
• Obama didn’t propose his budget until April, and …
• As if May 5, 2013, Congress has yet to pass a budget for 2013.

Which leads to this awesome little turn of events: there are some programs that are receiving higher funding after the sequestration of their budgets than Obama has proposed.

That’s right:

• He’s actively complaining about budget cuts, that
• Were passively imposed due to past budget rules,
• Originally proposed by the Obama administration in summer 2011, while
• Actively proposing bigger budget cuts, that are irrelevant because
• The office of President is fairly passive in the process.

This is like “having your cake and eating too” (if the meaning is unclear, read the second paragraph here).

Except that it’s having your cake, and eating it, and having it, and eating it, and having it too.

Cross-posted from SUU Macroblog, which is required reading for my macroeconomics classes.

Technorati Tags: obama,sequester,budget

Democratic Kudos for Dubya’

Jimmy Carter:

Carter delivered a genuine tribute that was both warm and substantive. He told of importuning Bush at his 2001 inauguration--where, he recalled, "my wife and I were the only volunteer Democrats on the platform"--to do something about the Sudanese civil war. Carter said he asked for a meeting with the secretary of state and national security adviser; Bush followed through soon after Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice had assumed their positions. Result: "In January of 2005, there was a peace treaty between north and south Sudan that ended a war that had been going on for 20 years. George W. Bush is responsible for that."

Donna Brazile:

Bush understood the need for civility. I joined him despite my frustration because the need was too great for finger-pointing and blame-making. He flew to New Orleans and addressed the nation: "Tonight I also offer this pledge to the American people: Throughout the area hit by the hurricane, we will do what it takes. We will stay as long as it takes to help citizens rebuild their communities and their lives."

George W. Bush was good as his word. He visited the Gulf states 17 times; went 13 times to New Orleans. Laura Bush made 24 trips. Bush saw that $126 billion in aid was sent to the Gulf's residents, as some members of his own party in Congress balked.

Bush put a special emphasis on rebuilding schools and universities. He didn't forget African-Americans: Bush provided $400 million to the historically black colleges, now integrated, that remain a pride, and magnet for African-American students. Laura Bush, a librarian, saw to it that thousands of books ruined by the floods were replaced. To this day, there are many local libraries with tributes devoted to her efforts.

Not exactly the black hat stuff we’re used to.

Technorati Tags: george,bush,jimmy,carter,donna,brazile,library

Why Is Macro So Hard? When It Works It’s Least Obvious

Macro really isn’t very different from skiing, or gymnastics, or a multitude of other activities. It looks so easy!

It isn’t.

My best friend is afraid to fly. The feeling they describe is that their continuous concentration is required for the plane to stay aloft.

And I went snowboarding for the first time this winter. I couldn’t relax on the board: my mind was tense, my body was tense, and all that did was make me wipe out. A heck of a lot of good my continuous concentration did me.

The economy is much the same way. Don Boudreaux points out in an op-ed piece entitled “Silence Golden for Market Economy” that one of the great flaws of a market economy is that its proper operation is nearly silent.

The same goes for macroeconomics: the more we hear about the economy, the less likely that it is working properly. But it gets worse: a lot of the noise comes from people who aren’t willing to leave it alone.

The metaphor we need is that the economy is like a gymnast executing a flip, or a snowboarder making sharp turns, or a plane soaring quietly seven miles up. It isn’t effortless at all. Instead, it’s quiet, and it looks simple, because it’s working. 

But, what if we hear noise? Then there’s a signal extraction problem that you and I have to solve: are we hearing a failure of the economy, or the sound of someone “fixing” something that isn’t a problem? Signal extraction is the name given to ferreting out the important signal — that something’s wrong — from the unimportant ones.

Yet, this problem should be easy to solve. Given the extraordinary success of markets at making people better off — over the last 3 decades, or 3 centuries — you’d think we’d never hear of people trying to fix the market at all. And yet … this is most of what we hear out of D.C., or any government office, anywhere, anytime. This behavior is analogous to driving your car successfully to your destination, and deciding when you get there that it would run better if you went out and made the tires rounder.

It’s asinine, and we should know better. We don’t. Boudreaux finishes with a great point:

Unlike in politics, market participants do not confiscate the property of others. Unlike in politics, where those with the most votes get to take unilaterally from those with the fewest votes, in markets, even those with the most money are prevented from unilaterally taking even from those with the least money.

Government officials can demand the privilege of fixing stuff that isn’t broken. And unlike the rich, they don’t even have to make it worth your while.

Technorati Tags: why,is,macroeconomics,macro,so,hard,noise,quiet,market

You Can’t Make this Up: Obamacare Edition

Under Obamacare, smokers will not be surcharged in D.C., Rhode Island, Vermont and Massachusetts.

The purpose of the surcharge was to cover the costs of medical treatment for smoking-related diseases amid concerns that without it premiums for the general population will rise.

The surcharge is actually part of the funding model for Obamacare:

The Affordable Care Act allows states to impose up to a 50 percent surcharge for people who have used tobacco at least four times a week over the last six months.

The reasoning is that poor smokers won’t be able to afford Obamacare if the surcharge is included:

… If subjected to the maximum surcharge, a couple older than 60 years old who both smoke would face a premium equaling 48 percent of their total income …

“That’s basically unaffordable,” Dr. Akhter said.

…

Dr. Akhter said the goal of the [health] exchange is to serve as many people as possible, so he did not want to discourage people from buying insurance

The problem with this is the one-size-fits-all mentality that goes along with government programs in representative democracies.

I get that there’s a medical issue here. If smokers are addicted, getting them into treatment in the medical system is a good thing. The thing is, that’s not a public health issue: smokers aren’t infecting others with some smoking bug.

If it’s not a public health issue, then this is a funding issue. But notice that third quoted block, and how the director of this program conflates the two.

There’s a folk theorem in economics that all costs (or benefits) eventually accrue to the holders of fixed liabilities (assets). To the extent that a smoking addiction is a fixed liability, then the smokers are going to pay the costs one way or another.

Conflating smoking as a public health issue with smoking cessation as a desirable goal to be funded isn’t addressing this at all.

I think Dr. Akhter and his ilk would benefit from the services of a “Chief Economics Officer” that might dissuade them from this sort of muddy thinking. Indeed, they might point out how the endgame is going to work:

• Total costs to smokers include non-monetary costs of illness and monetary costs of treatment.
• Monetary costs will be lifted off of smokers.
• Monetary costs will be transferred onto non-smokers.
• Non-smokers, who are in the majority, will demand low ball coverage through the political system for a problem that isn’t their own.
• Sub-optimal monetary purchases will lead to poorer treatment and an increase in non-monetary costs on smokers.

This line of reasoning isn’t that hard. What is hard is getting bureaucrats to state the obvious: we’re going to charge you less and you’re going to feel worse.

BTW: I am not claiming there are good solutions to this problem. Having said that, weren’t we sold a bill of goods that sin taxes on cigarettes were going to pay for all this?

Technorati Tags: smoking,obamacare,surcharge

Just Wonderin’

Jimmy Carter has disappeared from the world stage.

I’m thinking he isn’t long for this mortal coil.

I wish him no ill will, but I’ll be glad when he’s off the geo-political radar screen for good.

Technorati Tags: jimmy,carter

Did You Miss Me?

If blogging has been light here at vX, it’s because I’ve been giving my students in-depth coverage of the Cyprus crisis over at SUU Macroblog.

Here’s all of those Cyprus posts in reverse chronological order:

• Cyprus
• A Little More On Cyprus
• More On Cyprus
• Even More On Cyprus
• More Light than Heat About Cyprus
• Today’s News On Cyprus
• What Now?
• Thursday’s News On Cyprus
• Friday Morning’s Cyprus News
• Saturday’s Cyprus News
• Cyprus’ Capital Controls
• Cyprus’ Solidarity Fund
• Sunday’s Cyprus News
• Just the Same, Only Worse
• The Other Shoe Drops

Technorati Tags: cyprus,eurozone,financial,crisis

What a Racket!

I was due a small tax refund from Louisiana. To pay it, they sent 2 Chase debit/visa cards.

If you don’t read the find print about how to claim your refund, you can activate the cards, spend past the refund amount, and end up owing money to Chase.

Perhaps Elizabeth Warren needs to worry less about the banks and more about their cronies in government.

Technorati Tags: debit,visa,tax,refund,card

Today, the Role of the Republican Party Will Be Played by a Tween Girl

Consider the last panel of today’s Sally Forth comic:

The Republicans version of “who we are” is that they are the party of reducing government spending, cutting taxes, and reining in entitlements.

The reality of “what we do” is that over the last decade the Republicans have been the party that just as happy to raise spending, that needed a leftist President to get their tax cuts made permanent, and has done nothing but make the entitlement problem worse.

Technorati Tags: republican,sally,forth,what,we,do,who,are