SOME MORE ECONOMICS

There is a really brain-dead article about the current bankruptcy bill on Real Clear Politics by some woman who obviously knows nothing about either economics or business. She says banks are to blame for lending money to the poor at high interest rates. What she overlooks: People have to take responsibility for their own actions -- if you cannot afford the repayments, don't borrow; If the banks DIDN'T lend to the poor they would be condemned for "discrimination", "paternalism" or even "racism"; Poor people are frequent defaulters on their debts so banks have to charge high interest to cover all those who don't pay; The new bill will make it harder for people to dodge their debts so will reduce the interest that banks have to charge and thus make loans more affordable to the poor. What is wrong with any of that?

Competition is sweet: "If American consumers and taxpayers have learned any lesson over the years it's that sugar producers don't like competition. In fact, they loathe it. Always have. Since 1820, when Louisiana sugar planters successfully argued for high tariffs to prevent a collapse in the value of slaves, the industry has used political influence to fleece consumers and taxpayers and avoid competition. No other industry has used its deep pockets and vast political clout ($22 million of campaign contributions to both parties since 1990) to restrain trade and competition. American consumers have been the victims. In 2004, government price controls through trade quota restrictions and loan guarantees priced U.S. sugar at more than 20 cents a pound, about 2r times the world price. This means Americans spend about $2 billion more yearly ... than if we had a free market in sugar."

How awful! Cheap clothing for the people! "The Bush administration took a giant step yesterday toward imposing new caps on imports of Chinese clothing, responding to complaints that China's export juggernaut is starting to dominate the worldwide apparel market since the system governing the global industry was changed on Jan. 1. A U.S. interagency panel said it will initiate proceedings to determine whether new limits should be slapped on imports from China of underwear, cotton trousers, and cotton knit shirts and blouses"

The rich get richer and the poor really do get poorer in socialist Britain: "Britain's poorest 10% of households are becoming even poorer, according to devastating official figures revealing that Chancellor Gordon Brown's tax-and-spend agenda is hurting Middle Britain while failing to help the most vulnerable. The poorest 5.8m Britons are the only group whose take-home incomes are falling, according to figures discovered by The Business buried in a 357-page Department of Work & Pensions (DWP) study slipped out last week. The real income after tax, welfare and housing costs of the poorest 10% of households fell from 91 pounds (E131.90, $170.20) a week in 2001-02 to 90 pounds in 2002-03 and 88 pounds in 2003-04. Their annual incomes are down 3.3% to 4,576 pounds a year, suggesting that an underclass is being left behind despite a relatively strong and prosperous UK economy. The incomes of this poorest group are also down over the past two years before adjusting for housing costs. When housing costs are included, post-tax take-home pay of the top 10% of Britons rose by 1.4% between 2002-03 and 2003-04; during the same period, the poorest 10% saw their income drop by 2.2%. The next worst-affected group was the middle earners, who suffered from a 12.9% rise in council tax and a 1% rise in national insurance contributions over the year. NOTE: This article now seems to be offline so I have rescued it from the Google cache and reposted it in full here

Possibly the best explanation of economics ever written, Henry Hazlitt's Economics in one Lesson is now free online here (Big PDF).

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ELSEWHERE

USA Today has an editorial defending the American judiciary from conservative dissatisfaction with it. The editorial makes what would in general be a reasonable point: "Frist is also considering an unprecedented ruling to prevent Democrats from blocking judicial nominees - crushing the valuable principle that judges appointed for life should be acceptable to a broad political mainstream and thus beholden only to the law and the Constitution.". That would be a reasonable point if America had a judiciary that stuck to judging instead of making the law up as it went along but what the paper says refers to an idealized past, not the present reality. It has got to the point now where tough action is needed. The existing system has failed.

Stories like this one from AP really give me the pip: "Iraqis are increasingly calling on U.S. forces to leave their troubled nation". A less biased lead would be: "Followers of a small minority group who got virtually no support in the recent Iraq elections are about the only visible opposition the US now has in Iraq"

Aggressive U.K. pacifists: "Anti-war activists are borrowing the tactics of animal-rights extremists to intimidate staff at a factory where weapon parts used in the Iraq war are made. They are the latest group of protesters whose activities could be stopped by High Court injunction..... Activists are accused of shining laser lights into employees' eyes when they are driving, putting glue in external locks, dumping concrete and manure in the reception area and throwing red paint bombs. They also allegedly assaulted a security guard, photographed staff and their vehicles, dismantled air conditioning vents and wrote to the neighbours of a director saying he was a mass murderer. Protesters set up a roadblock last May, preventing access to the site for five hours. In June an employee was boxed in his car for 15 minutes. In September demonstrators staged a 24-hour rooftop sit-in."

Eyewitness Border report from two "Minutemen": "Witnessing with our own eyes what is going on at the border has really been mind-boggling. Unless you see it for yourself down here you would never believe it. The local media reports some of what actually transpires on the border here but it never reaches the interior of our country and the majority of our citizens. In plain language we are being invaded, not by armies, but by literally thousands of illegal aliens every single day of the year. The Border Patrol doesn't even catch half of the people that come across and they catch an unbelievable number of them. I've heard the number 1 in 4 that come through. When they do catch them they send them back into Mexico where they try again the next day. ... I hear they don't have half the manpower they need so a lot of calls go unanswered. Of the hundreds arrested in March in this area alone the newspaper reported 20% of them had criminal records."

Germany: "When US President George W. Bush visited Germany last February, tens-of-thousands of angry demonstrators turned out in Mainz and all across Germany to vent their outrage at the Iraq war and the abuses at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Now, less than two months later, Russian President Vladimir Putin is in Germany. And a whopping 30 protesters showed up to demonstrate the bloody Russian war and widespread human rights violations in Chechnya. Putin and Schroeder were all smiles as they tipped champagne glasses and signed multi-billion dollar business deals for everything from Russian natural gas imports to German bullet train exports in Schroeder's hometown of Hannover. Naturally, with the cash registers busily ringing away, Chechnya never came up and the German media has all but ignored the topic".

My latest quote on MARXWORDS finds Marx expressing contempt for the Indians.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here

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That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftist movers and shakers is perfectly shown by the 2004 Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftist ideologues are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions and can con "the masses" into giving them power.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist"

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