Will's Perspective

Winding Down

2007-12-08T22:40:00.001-06:00

The new site is picking up the pace, and I'm starting a series on the major competitors to Giuliani in 2008. I'm going to be letting this site continue to die a peaceful death, so be sure and subscribe to the feed on the new Will's Perspective!

Free iPod Touch Giveaway!

2007-12-08T17:02:00.000-06:00

I just discovered a free file service called “FileLime.” The site is currently hosting a blog contest to give away a free iPod touch. Register here.

Now, about FileLime: It’s a free and incredibly simple host that will allow you to upload a file online to link to. Its strength lies in its simplicity—there’s not even a registration processes. Just select the file and click “upload.” It’s incredibly diverse, it takes photos (keeping them in full quality), PDF files, or your Social Security Number (don’t look for mine). If it’s a file on your computer (not an application, though), chances are you can upload it. You’ll see I’ve begun to use it to link to PDF versions of some of my research papers.

On the other side of the ledger, its greatest strength may also be its greatest weakness. The sheer simplicity of it neglects to provide any instructions or help. For instance, there’s not even an “About This Service” page on the website to explain what they’re about, if I want to find a file later without saving the address, I’m not sure how I would.

Overall, it’s one of those obvious ideas you wonder why no one thought of before—and wonder how long it will last.

Moving On Up

2007-12-02T16:36:00.000-06:00

In light of new aspirations and desires for organization, I'm moving shop over to a new website: www.willsperspective.com

I hope all of you will subscribe to the new feed on that site. I'll miss blogspot's ease of use, but the new system is a bit more flexible.

I'm currently in the process of transferring old posts from this blog to the new site, and it will take a few weeks, but hopefully we'll have a searchable database of research soon.

Thanks to all of you for reading.

Best regards,
Will

Huckabee's Fiscal Restraint?

2007-11-28T16:22:00.000-06:00

One long-standing 2008 controversy is over the nature of Huckabee's tax hikes and cuts, the context, and impact they may have had on Arkansan voters. He has managed to make enemies with two influential organizations: the libertarian CATO Institute and the venerable conservative economic lobbying group the Club for Growth (the latter of which I'm a member).

I've long had criticisms on some Huckabee positions. The remarkably articulate Governor has gone Dan Quayle a couple of times on fiscal issues ("I support Free Trade, but it must be Fair Trade"), and his baseless income inequality rhetoric is disturbing.

However, as I learned when dealing with the customer relations desk at Wal-Mart, rhetoric is secondary to the bottom line. That line is policy action. Extraordinarily admirable policy stances such as the FairTax have earned a good deal of respect for the Governor from me. Nothing in the Club's report, when conisdered in context, would keep me from voting in for him in a general election.

Dick Morris, for whom I have limited respect--but occasionally he's insightful, had some interesting refutation in this week's column:

A recent column by Bob Novak excoriated Huckabee for a “47 percent increase in state tax burden.” But during Huckabee’s years in office, total state tax burden — all 50 states combined — rose by twice as much: 98 percent, increasing from $743 billion in 1993 to $1.47 trillion in 2005.

In Arkansas, the income tax when he took office was 1 percent for the poorest taxpayers and 7 percent for the richest, exactly where it stood when he left the statehouse 11 years later. But, in the interim, he doubled the standard deduction and the child care credit, repealed capital gains taxes for home sales, lowered the capital gains rate, expanded the homestead exemption and set up tax-free savings accounts for medical care and college tuition.

Most impressively, when he had to pass an income tax surcharge amid the drop in revenues after Sept. 11, 2001, he repealed it three years later when he didn’t need it any longer.

He raised the sales tax one cent in 11 years and did that only after the courts ordered him to do so. (He also got voter approval for a one-eighth-of-one-cent hike for parks and recreation.)

He wants to repeal the income tax, abolish the IRS and institute a “fair tax” based on consumption, and opposes any tax increase for Social Security.

Willy Wanta and the Packed Wally World: My Personal Marketing Experience

2007-11-24T18:15:00.000-06:00

Wal-Mart, the glorious place it is, wasn't made to hold thousands of people at five in the morning. Nonetheless, I have experienced on the of the greatest marketing successes of the modern era: Black Friday. No sane person would buy as much as they do, but if ingenious markets account for variables and provide incentive, it will happen.

Black Friday shopping is a fetish rivaled only by the Saturday morning yard sale shoppers. It's an American tradition that, prior to this Thanksgiving, I had never experienced. But all that changed with a simple desire for $19.99 a pop seasons of 24 and $12 flash drives and SD cards.

You need to know Mountain View is a town of 3,000 people. Two stop lights and a Wal-Mart. And said Wal-Mart was our destination at a quarter to five yesterday morning. Dad kept telling me stuff like, "So, most people are going to be standing in line waiting for them to open the doors at five, but we're just going to sit here in the heat. It's not worth it." Yeah right, I thought, there's going to be three people there, and at five o'clock a worker's going to walk up, say "you're weird," and open the doors. We'll buy something and leave. I just knew it. Knew it.

Okay, so I was wrong.

Being the geeky soul I am, I was reminded of Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities. When Dickens talks about Paris he describes a wine casket that breaks, and countless peasants flock the streets to lick up the wine and wine-soaked mud off the cobblestone streets.

This was the same scene, only instead of peasants and wine it was middle class Americans and HDTVs.

Speaking of which, half of Mountain View has one now. 42', 55', 32'... Stacks of them ten feet tall went all the way down the middle of the center aisle.

Upon arrival, as Dad said, the line stretched from the front door of Wal-Mart to the Gas Station at the back of the parking lot. As soon as the doors were opened, these people flooded in grabbing carts and heading inside. As soon as aforementioned people with carts were inside, however, they realized that that many carts wouldn't fit in Wal-Mart, thus they couldn't move around. Thus they abandond them. Thus hundreds of abandoned carts littered the aisles, thus they were still not able to move around.

When I finally reached electronics and the 24 display, I noticed that our Wal-Mart had turned into a Sams Club--complete with crates and forklifts. The flash drives weren't on a rack, they were cardboard boxes filled with said drives and stacked on top of each other.

People have no apparent need for one or two blenders, let alone six of them. Heck, for ten bucks a blender, why should that stop you. Three 50' plasmas? eBay is the only thing I can think of.

I love capitalism.

I love excess.

I love America.

(And my new seasons 3 and 4 of 24, along with 2GB SD cards and flash drives.)

Maybe next year I should try Target...

Unusual Video and Apologetic Philosophy

2007-11-12T21:37:00.000-06:00

As I went to an apologetics conference featuring Josh McDowell and Dinesh D'Souza last weekend, I began pondering some interesting ideas. As a paradigm of cause and effect in life, is this illustration I created yesterday accurate? I'm leaning towards relationships being contingent on actions and philosophy on ethics, but I'm not sure. In traditional Western philosophical thought, our ethics are dictated by our predetermined philosophy, but I'm beginning to think our fundamental ethics (e.g. truth) result in philosophy.

2008 Looking Differenet... and random sidenotes

2007-11-03T22:29:00.000-06:00

Thompson is still unimpressive, Huckabee's fund raising is surging, and Giuliani and Romney are about the same. That said, how will we stand going into Iowa where Giuliani is in surprisingly bad shape and Romney's on top? Dick Morris says Huckabee could end up second in Iowa, while Romney's lead is still comfortable, and Giuliani looking rather shabby? We might actually have a shot at beating Giuliani, if a distant chance of a flank.

Now, a couple of random things. First, Miracles is now my third favorite CS Lewis book. Fantastic. If you want a "welcome to the supernatural" book, it's a great shot.

Second, House MD is the greatest show of all time. But you already knew that. Tuesday's episode was as hilarious as any (House to Cuddy: "By the way, I can tell when my Vicadin isn't really Vicadin. The question is, can you tell when your birth control pills aren't really birth control pills?"). But, more interestingly, the HDTV that has resided gracefully in the garage since we got it half off the morning after thanksgiving a couple of years ago finally got dragged into the house. Since I did the dragging, it ended up in my room. The whole "get something better, want something even better" saying is perfectly true. Analog cable looks quite screwed up on a digital TV. DirectTV HD perhaps?

"Surprisingly" Strong October Economy Numbers

2007-11-03T22:27:00.000-06:00

Employers boosted payrolls by a surprisingly strong 166,000 in October, the most in five months, an encouraging sign that the nation's employment climate is holding up relatively well against the strains of a housing collapse and credit crunch.

The Labor Department's report, released Friday, also showed that the unemployment rate held steady at 4.7 percent for the second month in a row. It's a figure that is considered low by historical standards.

My Feeble Attempt at a Video

2007-10-14T14:49:00.000-06:00

Slightly cheesy, but hopefully beneficial.

Preparing for Chinese Olympics: Fantastic

2007-09-29T12:34:00.000-06:00

Amid the international discussion regarding the merits of a somewhat tyrannical government hosting the 2008 Olympics, TIME magazine reported the most important preparations underway:

Government officials say some 4 million Beijing residents have received English language lessons. Famous for aloofness and droll irony, the city's people have been getting training in other areas too in the hope that they will curb their spitting, erratic driving, incessant littering and inability to form an orderly line.

Mulling Over Bush's Proposal

2007-09-22T09:23:00.000-06:00

Bush's plan to alleviate the credit crunch (expanding FHM loans) seems mild compared to the political alternatives. The Wall Street Journal today discussed its without comparison.

No one wants to see borrowers lose their homes, and the good news is that private lenders are already working with late-payment borrowers to refinance the terms of these subprime loans. What's troubling about the FHA expansion plan is that the insurance guarantee places taxpayers atop the housing bubble. Uncle Sam would insure tens of billions of dollars in new mortgage liabilities, and just when default levels are cascading.
Worse, both the White House and Congress want to suspend the FHA's downpayment requirements to insure even zero-equity loans. They should read a new study by the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO), which reviewed 5,000 FHA loans and found that borrowers "who make no downpayment at all have the highest default rates." Sometimes these default rates were three times higher than high downpayment loans. In the latest "FHA modernization" bill, some borrowers would have no equity in their home.

Why They Should Stay

2007-09-20T23:01:00.001-06:00

I apologize for the delay in posting, I've been out of town. As I've said before, subscribe to my RSS reader to make up for my skirmish-ness.

Allow me to briefly delve into foreign policy. The Economist had a very well organized argument in their cover story last week.

From a slightly different perspective, but perhaps a more pertinent one, economist Thomas Sowell articulates the mistake of Iraq--and the disaster it would be to leave.

If nothing else comes out of the Iraq war, it should banish the concept of "nation-building" from our language and our minds. "The track record of nation-building and Wilsonian grandiosity ought to give anyone pause," as was said in this column before the Iraq war began...

You cannot turn a territory and its population into a functioning nation with the stroke of a pen or the drawing of lines on a map.

Real nations evolve over time out of the mutual accommodations of peoples, not by imposing the bright ideas of theorists from the top down...

This is not a plea for withdrawal. Whatever the situation when we went in, international terrorists have chosen to make this the place for a showdown battle. We can win or lose that battle but we cannot unilaterally end the war. It is the terrorists' war, regardless of where it is fought.

A Good Point Regarding Payroll Cuts

2007-09-08T19:39:00.000-06:00

The Labor Department's August employment report shows a gain of 24,000 private sector jobs. Job growth for June and July was revised lower, suggesting that the job market had been
under pressure even before the latest bout of financial market unrest in August.

A drop in government payrolls more than erased the private sector gain, but economists pointed out that the biggest culprit was teachers, a segment that is vulnerable to large
seasonal swings and appears likely to be revised higher next month to reflect the start of the school year.

The data was collected in the week that included August 12, the height of the financial market turbulence, but before a rash of reported financial job cuts, which will likely show up
in employment reports for September or October.

Interesting read.

No Net Job Growth in August

2007-09-07T10:55:00.000-06:00

The AP is reporting that employers dropped 4,000 net jobs in August. Huge gains in education, retail, and healthcare where overshadowed by losses in various manual labor sectors and government jobs.

It's really quite amazing what around 1% of the mortgage industry-- and prior to that, the fed's excess money supply- can do to the rest of the economy.

Unemployment as a whole remains a healthy 4.6%, and August showed reasonable wage gains.

2008 Breaking News: John Edwards is a Populist

2007-09-05T12:30:00.000-06:00

Who picks up Labor Union endorsements. Thank you, Mr. Edwards, I'll be sure to consider that when casting my vote.

“The union movement is not just important for the past, it is crucial to strengthening and growing the middle class in America, crucial to lifting millions of Americans out of poverty,” Mr. Edwards said while visiting a region of the country where the steel and manufacturing businesses have declined.

You can just see a plethora of empirical data ooze from that statement. You can, can't you? Surely someone can. I'm just inferior.

Competition Improves Efficiency - Shocking!

2007-09-03T21:47:00.001-06:00

In the most shocking news since Criss Angel made a pocketknife disappear, look for an article in the next American Economic Review entitled "Do Markets Reduce Costs? Assessing the Impact of Regulatory Restructuring on US Electric Generation Efficiency." It's conclusions are so blunt it even caught US News and World Report's attention:

Over the past two decades, huge swaths of the economy have been deregulated, from banking to electricity to airlines. But has competition increased efficiency? In a paper forthcoming in the American Economic Review, a group of academics from Emory University's Goizueta School of Business, MIT, and the University of California's Haas School of Business say yes. In Do Markets Reduce Costs? Assessing the Impact of Regulatory Restructuring on U.S. Electric Generation Efficiency, the researchers examine production at fossil-fuel generating plants from 1981 to 1999, before and after deregulation. Publicly owned plants, which were largely sheltered from deregulation, experienced the smallest efficiency gains. Investor-owned plants in states with restructured markets improved the most. Even in a stodgy old industry like electricity, markets do seem to work their magic.

The paper is currently available for free on the Berkley website. The abstract explains well:

While neoclassical models assume static cost-minimization by firms, agency models
suggest that firms may not minimize costs in less-competitive or regulated
environments. We test this using a transition from cost-of-service regulation to
market-oriented environments for many U.S. electric generating plants. Our
estimates of input demand suggest that publicly-owned plants, whose owners were
largely insulated from these reforms, experienced the smallest efficiency gains,
while investor-owned plants in states that restructured their wholesale electricity
markets improved the most. The results suggest modest medium-term efficiency
benefits from replacing regulated monopoly with a market-based industry structure.

An excellent empirical work, nearly the entire article is as quotable as the abstract. The principle argument of free market advocates during electric reform was nearly dead-on.

During the second half of the 1990s, states began to shift their focus from
incentive regulation to restructuring. By 1998, every jurisdiction (50 states and the
District of Columbia) had initiated formal hearings to consider restructuring their
electricity sector, and by 2000, almost half had approved legislation introducing some
form of competition that included competitive retail access, whereby companies competed
to sell power to retail customers.10 Restructuring initiatives, in contrast to incentive
regulations, fundamentally changed the way plant owners earn revenue....Retail access programs in combination with the creation of the new
wholesale spot markets may increase the intensity of cost-cutting incentives, leading to
even greater effort to improve efficiency.

David Letterman: “Top Signs President Bush Needs A Vacation”: Staffers found him having a conversation with a coat rack; Asked CIA director to have Jason Bourne join hunt for Osama; Hasn’t stopped sobbing since he was passed over for “The Price is Right”; Has only seen the new Harry Potter movie four times; So overworked he’s pronouncing words correctly; He’s been drinking like an astronaut.

Jay Leno: Pretty busy day in Washington today. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Karl Rove went to U-Haul together to help each other move. ... Idaho Sen. Larry Craig, a married, conservative Republican, was arrested by a plainclothes police officer for lewd conduct in a Minneapolis airport men’s room. Today the senator’s office said it was all a big misunderstanding. The undercover police officer said the senator tried to reach under the stall to touch him, but the senator said, no, he wasn’t trying to touch him, he was only trying to pick up a piece of paper off the floor. Who picks up paper off the floor in the men’s room? I don’t even like when my shoe laces touch the floor in the men’s room. ... You know who I feel sorry for in this whole thing? The undercover cop. How’d you like to have that job? Sit in an airport bathroom all day, your pants around your ankles with a coffee and a donut waiting for guys to hit on you. ... At a political forum here in Hollywood last week, Hillary Clinton said that she does not support gay marriage. In fact, she said she’s not too crazy about straight marriage anymore, either. ... Fred Thompson said he’s still testing the waters in his bid for the presidency. He’s been testing the waters for what, like six months now? In fact, those aren’t wrinkles on his face—he’s starting to prune up from being in the water for so long.

Obama Blames All Consumer Choices on Mortgage Lenders

2007-09-03T13:03:00.000-06:00

Unscrupulous lenders who deceptively sold subprime mortgages to millions of Americans should be fined and the proceeds used to help bail out borrowers facing a wave of foreclosures, according to Barack Obama, the Democratic senator running to be his party’s presidential candidate...

Writing in today’s Financial Times, Mr Obama blamed lobbyists working on behalf of lenders for obstructing tougher regulation of the subprime industry, adding: “Our government failed to provide the regulatory scrutiny that could have prevented this crisis.

“While predatory lenders were driving low-income families into financial ruin, 10 of the country’s largest mortgage lenders were spending more than $185m (€136m, £92m) lobbying Washington to let them get away with it,” he wrote, citing figures from the Centre for Responsive Politics.

Obama's harsh rhetoric is shallow and ill-conceived by most economic standards. Foreclosures are painful, not profitable, for lending institutions. These businesses have very little incentive to repossess on shaky subprime mortgages. As painful as it sounds to those struggling to make payments, the unwise consumer who borrowed more than he or she could afford, and poor planning on the part of the lender, are the principle financial villains in this story. Yes, some people were probably not fully informed on the ramifications of these adjustable rate mortgages. Nonetheless, "learning the lesson" of mortage marketing doesn't come easily. Bailing them out or punishing a business that is losing out does little to rectify potential future crisis: will this happen again? Certainly, no one wants perpetual problems with subprime lending. People need to learn their lesson, and a painful one at that. The Economist confesses that, "The retreat to a new level of risk was never going to be orderly or free of casualties. Neither should it be. Bankers and investors need to suffer precisely because the methods of modern finance have been found wanting. It sounds Darwinian, but the brutal demonstration that you pay for your sins is what leads the system to evolve. Markets learn from their mistakes. Only fear will spur investors to price risks better and get them to put more effort into monitoring their counterparties."

Several facts should be remembered before we take wide scale legislative action. While the economy suffer to some degree, CATO pointed out last week that new home construction is still growing, albeit much slower. The economy outside of the housing market remains strong. The loans in "crisis" represent about one in one hundred mortages in the US, the scale of these foreclosures is marginal, modest at worst. Jim Cramer and his cadre have little justification to berate Mr. Bernake's "academic" explanation and words of comfort about "Armogeddon." Scare mongerers do little to improve consumer confidence.

Many businesses messed up. Politicians like Mr. Obama needing to capitalize on the situation at the expensive of the consumer and economy are daft and unethical to scream, "curse you for messing up!" As The Economist explains:

But there is a price that is only now becoming apparent. Because lenders expected to be able to sell on the risk of default to someone else, they lent too easily. After all, they would not have to pick up the pieces. In theory, that risk should have been borne by the people best able to carry it. But with everybody having sold on the risk to everyone else—and the risk often being carved up, repackaged and sold again—nobody is sure where the losses are. The fear is that some risks ended up with those who least understood what they were getting into, and fear is a potent force in this disintermediated world. In the interbank market, every counterparty was potentially vulnerable. Even small amounts of bad credit can drive out good.

In theory, ratings agencies and mathematical models help investors price the risk they are taking on, even if the securities they are buying are scarcely traded. Yet when some supposedly good-quality assets proved to be worth little, people lost faith in the models and the ratings. Across the board, investors had failed to take account of how fast and how far asset prices fall when everyone wants to sell at the same time. Hard-to-sell long-term securities had been bought with short-lived debt, which left borrowers vulnerable to a change in sentiment every time the debt fell due. It does nothing to restore confidence when the biggest model-driven hedge funds had to get in new money. The people at Goldman Sachs lost a packet when something happened that their computers told them should occur only once every 100 millennia.

Politically, something will have to happen. No "tragedy" can avoid it. We can only hope it's a mild course of action that doesn't excessively bind the individual or businesses, such as President Bush's proposal for FHM loans or, at worst, other policy prospectives such as allowing homeowners to stay in their homes and pay ordinary rent instead of payments. We can then pray radical populists like Mr. Obama have their plans shown to be, well, radical.

Jay Leno: Today Chinese officials recalled one million tons of lead because it may contain toys. ... Hillary Clinton was chastised by The Washington Post for showing too much cleavage in front of the Senate. See, that seems sexist to me. They’ve never gone after Senator Ted Kennedy for doing the exact same thing. ... Isn’t this ridiculous? Shouldn’t we be focusing on I-raq, not her rack? ... It’s amazing isn’t it? The United States is 231 years old, but apparently the media is only 13. ... Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said today that he would not use nuclear weapons under any circumstances. I didn’t realize his battle with Hillary had escalated to this level. I just thought there was a little friction. ... Madame Tussauds’ new wax museum in Washington, DC, is going to feature a “scandal room,” featuring wax likenesses of elected officials involved in sex, alcohol or ethics scandals. Why would you go there, when you can just walk five blocks to the Capitol building and see the real thing? ... If you haven’t seen “The Bourne Ultimatum,” it’s about a guy who works for the government but can’t remember his past. The original title was “The Alberto Gonzales Story.” ... Happy Birthday to our governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, who is 60 years old. You can tell he’s getting up there. Remember when he used to say things like, “I’ll be back”? Now he says, “Ow, my back.”

2008 Update: Thompson Sliding to Second, Huckabee Replacing McCain, McCain Celebrates

2007-08-30T22:30:00.000-06:00

McCain's disastrous campaign keeps him in good humor, apparently. In an interview with Jay Leno he made several interesting remarks:

"We are doing so poorly I thought maybe I would announce on this show that I'm running for president," McCain told Jay Leno in an appearance taped for broadcast Tuesday night on "The Tonight Show." "We have obviously made mistakes," the Arizona senator said...

McCain turns 71 Wednesday - if elected he would become the oldest first-term president. Leno mentioned the birthday and McCain noted that his 95-year-old mother was refused a rental car in Paris because of her age. So she bought a car and drove around sightseeing. "I'm taking her with me wherever I go," McCain said.

The latest averages show Giuliani's lead still comfortable, with Thompson second, Romney third, McCain fourth, and Huckabee the new found distant fifth.

Romney, as anticipated, topped (bought) the Iowa Straw poll and used the resume indent to prop up fundraising, which some rumors say may be slowing down. Impressive organizational structure and handling of confrontational interviews were staples of his campaign strength.

Since his mildly surprising second place finish in Ames, media-induced popularity has gone for Huckabee like Senator Craig goes for the guy in the stall next door. Local papers, national papers, every afternoon talk show and practically network news station arranged interviews within the following weeks. While a PR miracle, and popularly called a "shocking" second place finish, it could be anticipated for several reasons.

With no other serious competition (Giuliani, McCain, and Fred Thompson were absent from the ballot) Romney was a shoo-in. The only intrigue in existence is how "also" prospects would stack up. Huckabee stole the fire from the last two Republican debates with witty one liners and eloquent charisma. Thommy Thompson looked like an insurance agent, Tom Tancredo like, well, a Congressman, and Sam Brownback more like a preacher than the Rev. Huckabee himself. While being the de facto second tier leader in the debates and media portrayal, he was near the bottom of the totem poll in fundraising, the only discrepancy in which Brownback had the upper hand. Ultimately, perceived vision and eloquence trumped cash.

Thommy Thompson's non-existant support encouraged him to finally fold his campaign, while the deeply depressed Tancredo may follow suit. Ron Paul, who has a surprising amount of cash on hand, took a Steve Forbes finish in standings. Unlike Forbes, however, Paul has a radically active group of libertarians and online activists who may keep his campaign pumping for several months.

Far more telling than the Straw Poll, however, may be the September 5th debate on Fox News. Biggest question- will Thompson be there?

Two Americas

2007-08-29T16:27:00.001-06:00

But who envies who?

Some new Heritage Research is very interesting.

The following are facts about persons defined as "poor" by the Census Bureau, taken from various gov ernment reports:

Forty-three percent of all poor households actu ally own their own homes. The average home owned by persons classified as poor by the Census Bureau is a three-bedroom house with one-and-a-half baths, a garage, and a porch or patio.

Eighty percent of poor households have air conditioning. By contrast, in 1970, only 36 percent of the entire U.S. population enjoyed air conditioning.

Only 6 percent of poor households are over crowded. More than two-thirds have more than two rooms per person.

The average poor American has more living space than the average individual living in Paris, London, Vienna, Athens, and other cities throughout Europe. (These comparisons are to the average citizens in foreign countries, not to those classified as poor.)

Nearly three-quarters of poor households own a car; 31 percent own two or more cars.

Ninety-seven percent of poor households have a color television; over half own two or more color televisions.

Seventy-eight percent have a VCR or DVD player; 62 percent have cable or satellite TV reception.

Eighty-nine percent own microwave ovens, more than half have a stereo, and more than a third have an automatic dishwasher.

Democratic Tongue-Twisters

2007-08-12T15:33:00.000-06:00

Sorry about my hiatus from posting, some trips and a busy schedule have severely limited my time. I'd encourage you to subscribe to my RSS feed to keep up with the halfway sporadic updates.

To catch some humor from the Democratic debates, I'd recommend this article on severe flaws in logic and economics.

An Anecdote Worth a Thousand Words

2007-07-16T12:07:00.000-06:00

As much as we can discuss earmarks and agricultural subsidy abuse, perhaps we need something more tangible.

In the past five years, Andre Agassi, Ted Turner and Scottie Pippen, have received farm subsidies.

Apperently, Agassi has a prep school with a defunct website that nailed $200,000, Pippen picks up $26,000 annually, and Turner almost $13,000 annually.

Tragedy of Single-Payer Healthcare: A Story of Lindsey McCreith

2007-07-12T23:17:00.000-06:00

Rebounding Economic News

2007-07-08T16:32:00.000-06:00

As anticipated, it seems 2007 Q1 may have been the weakest point of the year. A strong economic report, keeps unemployment at 4.5%, and wages up 4%.

The economy resumed healthy growth during the spring after a winter lull, an employment report confirmed yesterday, with 132,000 jobs gained last month and a nearly 4 percent rise in wages seen over the past 12 months.

Democratic Majority: "Improve World Image... With Protectionism"

2007-07-05T22:07:00.000-06:00

The Wall Street Journal editorial page makes an interesting point:

Democrats are promising to improve America's image in the world if they retake the White House next year. Tell that to Peru and Colombia, which are watching Democrats in Congress renege on free-trade assurances that are barely a month old.

House Democrats pulled that fast one late last Friday, shortly before a holiday weekend when few were watching. They also announced their opposition to a free-trade pact with South Korea only a day before the deal was signed, and for good measure they announced that an extension of trade promotion authority (which expired June 30) is essentially dead as long as they run Congress. Ah, bipartisanship.

HillaryCare Letter to the Editor

2007-07-05T20:08:00.000-06:00

Thursday, July 5th, 2007

To the editor:

Canadian Lindsay McCreith doesn’t think too highly of Canada’s “universal” health care system that many presidential candidates want to emulate. He would have had to wait for four months just to get an MRI, then months more to see a neurologist for his malignant brain tumor. He had no choice but to visit a Buffalo, N.Y. hospital for lifesaving surgery. Now he's suing for the right to opt out of Canada's government-run health care, which he considers dangerous. He’s not alone. Long delays for critical surgery are common, and in hospitals one in ten patients wait more than a dozen hours for treatment. The Wall Street Journal notes that a, “Canadian government study recently found that only about half of patients are treated in a timely manner, as defined by local medical and hospital associations.”

In his anti-American care film “Sicko,” Michael Moore declares we could learn from Cuba’s universal health care system under Fidel Castro. What does Castro himself think about his miracle system? During his time of critical illness, he turned not to his own socialized doctors, but instead brought in capitalist doctors and equipment from Spain. Accordingly, Madrid’s regional president scoffed at Castro’s hypocrisy and failed socialist system.

Perhaps the most well known proposal in America is Senator Clinton’s “HillaryCare.” It depicts the current system—correctly—as being broken. A current system featuring a myriad of federal and state regulations that drive up costs, a tax code that provides few options in employer-provided coverage, and no room for individual coverage competition. However, she doesn’t advocate positive reforms such as less government regulation and more viable options for individual choice, perhaps through measures such as Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) or tax breaks to make private coverage more affordable to low-income citizens. Instead, she proposes that governmental bureaucracy handle all of it through a single-payer, taxpayer-funded format. Uninsured Americans are depicted as lost and forgotten—supposedly forty six million of them.

In fact, David Gratzer, M.D., a physician licensed both in Canada and the United States and fellow at the Manhattan Institute, paints a different picture. Dr. Gratzer explains that in a 2003 report, a third of the uninsured have family incomes of more than $50,000 a year, and for 16% of the uninsured, incomes exceed $75,000 a year. A Health Affairs study of non-poor uninsured Californians pegs their average annual health spending at $200 per person. Many people have done the math and decided not to pay for the coverage. Additionally, one third of the remaining Americans qualify for Medicare or Medicaid, and another third are without coverage for extremely brief periods, usually less than a few months. While approximately six million Americans slip through the cracks, it’s a far cry from forty six million.

Reform should be focused on providing maximum liberty, promoting the autonomy of individuals, and create more options to increase viable health care choices. The classic economist Adam Smith was correct in asserting, “Every man…is first and principally recommended to his own care; and every man is certainly, in every respect, fitter and abler to take care of himself than of any other person.”