The real problem, however, is that the Keynesian model is simply incorrect. It is based on the very crude idea that the economy, as measured in Gross Domestic Product, can be accurately summarized by the following formula: GDP = C+I+G+(X-M). In English, this means the economy is equal to consumer spending (C), plus investment (I), plus government spending (G), plus (exports (X) minus imports (M)). Since government can only control government spending directly, any failure of consumer spending must be compensated by increasing government spending. That is what the $787 billion is nominally intended to do, to make up for the decline in consumer spending.

However, this is complete balderdash, as a third economic theory points out. The Austrian school, to which I myself subscribe, has repeatedly shown that neither monetary nor fiscal policy are capable of doing more than delaying an economic contraction, and that using them to delay contraction only extends and exacerbates the contraction when it eventually arrives. Austrian theory teaches that credit inflation, which is how they describe the monetarist tool of injecting liquidity by cutting interest rates, leads to investment and consumption booms that will inevitably be followed by busts. It is, in fact, the only economic school with a reasonable explanation for the economic cycles so readily seen in the historical data.

This post by the same author, about the column linked above further shows where Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman effectively states, “Though my head is firmly planted in my rear, the planting is less firm than that of other economists of my stature.”

So, for those of you that have no interest in poetry, you will no longer find them posted here. For those of you that do, feel free to subscribe to the RSS feed on the new site, or check back when you’re so inclined to see if there is anything new. You will also notice that there is a link on the sidebar here that lists recent posts to the poetry site, so you can see if there is anything recent there also.

Before entropy did its devil’s work
I was content keeping time with inertia

Standing on the bridge over the dank concrete river
Carrying garbage from afar to an unknown destination
The small child looked at me with round eyes
Hoping I might trade her pennies for a small candy

The men were full of bravado, passing me tequila in double doses
My wife smiling at me in joy for the expected child sitting placid in her womb
We sat and ate in the cantina too young to appreciate the gravity of the situation
Smiling and hope filled the room in bushels as we laughed

The man asked for fifteen for the blanket but finally accepted ten
It was hand made and wool and very soft and big
I thought its grey was charming and I knew it would keep us warm
And it did; It still keeps her warm today

The sun was bright and the Coronas were less than a dollar
Tasting sticky in the heat it was our last stop before we returned
Crossing over the bridge and the river
Foul with waste destined for a distant home

The rolling of the tires sings softly
Punctuated by tar marks on the road

movement to momentum

Quiet carrion meandering slowly
Informed by sunlight and small flowers with white buds

action to existence

Sinking deeper into my soul
A soft whisper calls me

hope

I sing!
The heart personified
Spring and its merry travelers and life!
Emerson’s jealous mistress has returned
I sing the breaking dawn
Leaking languid shards across the Eastern sky
I sing with the voice of Marvell
His coy love waiting in his eyes
I sing for Whitman a new song
A new day, a new dawn, a new birth
Breathing deep the breath of life
I sing my love
And I am not afraid!

When the economy goes south, one name invariably surfaces on the lips of pundits and economists: John Maynard Keynes. That is because the twentieth century’s greatest economist is generally associated with the idea that markets require government intervention in order to function properly. During boom times, when the market seems to be working, no one has any use for Keynes’s skepticism toward unrestrained capitalism. But, during recessions–when the economy grinds to a halt and Washington suddenly looks like the only thing that can save it–Keynes invariably enjoys a revival. The current economic crisis, our country’s worst since the Great Depression, is no exception. Everyone, it seems, has spent the past months rediscovering Keynes.

This article is a very well written, thoughtful piece that overlooks many, very important historical economic facts. The writer, along with most Keynsians, makes the fatal mistake of believing that the economic woes of Keynes’ time, as well as our current times, are the result of the shortcomings of capitalism. The points that are completely avoided are the meddling in the economy of Wilson’s War Socialism, and the later, almost constant tinkering of then Commerce Secretary, Herbert Hoover, in the economy during the Coolidge and Harding administrations.

These meddlings were anything but the trappings of lessaize-faire capitalism. Furthermore, as has been shown in Rothbard’s America’s Great Depression, they led directly to the great depression. As for today’s times, anyone who thinks our economy is anything close to pure capitalism divulges a deep ignorance of all things economic. From far reaching regulatory bodies to the Federal Reserve’s control of the monetary supply, today’s version of American capitalism is nothing close to the capitalism prescribed by the Austrians or other classical economists. To blame the problems of the 1930’s or today on capitalism is akin to me blaming Ben & Jerry’s for my ice cream tasting bad after I pour vinegar all over it. After all, it would have been fine if I had just left it alone in the first place.

“I just think it’s sad, it really just frustrates me. People are really misunderstanding this really cool culture by focusing on this 2012 thing. It means more about us than it does about the Maya.”

-David Stuart, director of the Mesoamerica Center at the University of Texas at Austin (quoted in CNN article linked above)

According to the article, Hollywood is getting involved with some juicy action drama surrounding the idea that the Earth will start spinning in the opposite direction. I’m sure there is more of that to come. Maybe we’ll get some cool new reality shows with people living like the Mayans lived. If we’re lucky, we might even get to stare at the sky along with Geraldo Rivera waiting in rapt anticipation as absolutely nothing happens.

For those of you in the metro Detroit area and in need of professionally cleaned flooring, my industrious younger brother has decided to toss concerns about this moribund economy out the window and open up shop with his own business. The business is called NuFloors and they will clean your carpet, tile, terrazzo or wood floors, clean grout and generally, make your old floors look new.

Tell him that you heard about his business here and, well, you’ll receive the same hard work and professionally cleaned floor at a low price that everyone else gets. But I can tell you that he does a great job. He made my hardwood floors look excellent!

. . . from the beginning, [Satan] has worked with a vengeance to distort the very definition of womanhood and to confuse everyone about us, including us. Here are just a few of [Satan’s] lies: That men are smarter, have all the power, and are more important, so if we want to have influence we should be more like them; that marriage and family are confining; that motherhood is menial and a waste of any talented woman’s time; that women are perpetually frazzled and failing; and that a woman’s value is based on her size, shape and what she accomplishes outside the home. Too many women have bought these lies. Our culture is disintegrating at the speed of light, and unfortunately, our gender is doing a lot of the damage.

~Sheri Dew, ["Awake, Arise, and Come Unto Christ" a speech given at 2008 BYU Women's Conference]

Proverbs Chapter 3

The Rewards of Wisdom
1. My son, do not forget my teaching, But let your heart keep my commandments ;
2. For length of days and years of life And peace they will add to you.
3. Do not let kindness and truth leave you; Bind them around your neck, Write them on the tablet of your heart.
4. So you will find favor and good repute In the sight of God and man.
5. Trust in the LORD with all your heart And do not lean on your own understanding.
6. In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He will make your paths straight.
7. Do not be wise in your own eyes ; Fear the LORD and turn away from evil.
8. It will be healing to your body And refreshment to your bones.
9. Honor the LORD from your wealth And from the first of all your produce ;
10. So your barns will be filled with plenty And your vats will overflow with new wine.
11. My son, do not reject the discipline of the LORD Or loathe His reproof,
12. For whom the LORD loves He reproves, Even as a father corrects the son in whom he delights.
13. How blessed is the man who finds wisdom And the man who gains understanding.
14. For her profit is better than the profit of silver And her gain better than fine gold.
15. She is more precious than jewels ; And nothing you desire compares with her.
16. Long life is in her right hand ; In her left hand are riches and honor.
17. Her ways are pleasant ways And all her paths are peace.
18. She is a tree of life to those who take hold of her, And happy are all who hold her fast.
19. The LORD by wisdom founded the earth, By understanding He established the heavens.
20. By His knowledge the deeps were broken up And the skies drip with dew.
21. My son, let them not vanish from your sight ; Keep sound wisdom and discretion,
22. So they will be life to your soul And adornment to your neck.
23. Then you will walk in your way securely And your foot will not stumble.
24. When you lie down, you will not be afraid ; When you lie down, your sleep will be sweet.
25. Do not be afraid of sudden fear Nor of the onslaught of the wicked when it comes ;
26. For the LORD will be your confidence And will keep your foot from being caught.
27. Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due, When it is in your power to do it.
28. Do not say to your neighbor, “Go, and come back, And tomorrow I will give it,” When you have it with you.
29. Do not devise harm against your neighbor, While he lives securely beside you.
30. Do not contend with a man without cause, If he has done you no harm.
31. Do not envy a man of violence And do not choose any of his ways.
32. For the devious are an abomination to the LORD ; But He is intimate with the upright.
33. The curse of the LORD is on the house of the wicked, But He blesses the dwelling of the righteous.
34. Though He scoffs at the scoffers, Yet He gives grace to the afflicted.
35. The wise will inherit honor, But fools display dishonor.

Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning

The Cult of the Presidency: America’s Dangerous Devotion to Executive Power

Two days after his inauguration, Roosevelt used the Trading with the Enemy Act to order the closure of all American banks. Passed during World War I, the act was designed to restrict trade with hostile foreign powers “during the time of war.” Ignoring that limitation, Roosevelt wielded it in peacetime against Americans.

Cato brings this up in regard to Joe Biden’s recent rhetoric on the economy …

“We’re at war,” Biden told congressional leaders of both parties during their sit-down with Barack Obama in the Capitol, according to two sources familiar with the exchange.

George W. Bush’s use of the war metaphor (much less his actual conservative credentials) notwithstanding, I’ll be curious how much more we hear of this in the coming months.

It’s H.J. Res, 111th Cong., 1st Sess., introduced by Rep. José Serrano on Jan. 6, 2009. The resolution proposes “an amendment to the Constitution of the United States to repeal the twenty-second article of amendment, thereby removing the limitation on the number of terms an individual may serve as President.” … He had apparently done the same in 2005.

My take on the matter? I think PJ O’Rourke said it best when he said, “Term limits aren’t enough. We need jail.”

Is There a Serious Conservative Argument

Obama’s Indifference on Tax Cuts

Both pieces raise some very interesting issues, but to tell the truth, whenever normative economists start waxing philosophical about what policy shift will improve the economy and to what degree, my eyes get all blurry and roll back in my head a bit. One of them off-handedly makes the point that the libertarian view on tax cuts is that they are intrinsically good. Perhaps I was misreading, but I thought the comment rather dismissive. As if stealing less of your money is silly.

The other thing I found interesting was the debate between one of the authors and Greg Mankiw. The debate centers around how much tax cuts will benefit the economy as opposed to “public sector spending”. My own view, of course, is that public sector spending may look good on paper and fit nicely into many formulae, but in the actual economy do not produce anything. Politically it looks good, as it looks like government is doing something but, appearances aside, really only serves to make matters worse.

This happens because Republican presidents face fierce opposition from Democrats in Congress when they try to push measures that erode social freedom, and Democratic presidents face fierce opposition from Republicans when they attempt to restrict economic freedom. However, Presidents from both parties find the road much easier going when they go against their base constituents and restrict freedoms where you would least expect it. This is because congressmen from their own parties are less likely to point out the betrayal of the their elected leader.

We saw this with George Bush Sr. when he put through his tax hikes. We saw this with Bill Clinton when he stiffened drug laws and forced NAFTA through. This last pretends to be a free trade accord but is nothing more than international corporatism at work. George W. Bush Jr cut taxes but also created huge new entitlement programs. It also can be little doubted that he found his true calling when the World Trade Center towers fell and he was able to use it to trash the 4th Amendment with the Patriot Act and wage war in the Arab world.

When Barack Obama chose Tom Holder as the incoming Attorney General, a notorious drug warrior, I knew it would be the same with him.

The question to me is, does this happen because these Presidents simply follow the path of least resistance or does power just naturally beget power? I suppose that’s a false dichotomy. What other options are out there that might explain this?

Also, if you notice the section on the right titled “Check These Out” you’ll see a list of articles I’ve recently found that I found interesting. Maybe you will to.

Only government can break the cycle that is crippling our economy, where a lack of spending leads to lost jobs, which leads to even less spending, where an inability to lend and borrow stops growth and leads to even less credit.

Truer words have never been spoken. The only problem is that the plans that have recently been bandied about in the mainstream media will do no such thing. The folks at Marginal Revolution are at least impressed that the plan that appears to be taking shape is much better than the New Deal, and it very well may be; that remains to be seen.

I’m still slowly making my way through Murray Rothbard’s America’s Great Depression in an attempt to educate myself on the economic circumstances surrounding us today. If Rothbard is correct, and I believe he is, Obama is right when he says that only Government can break this current economic boom/bust cycle. But it can only be broken by stopping the inflation that causes the cycle in the first place. It can be helped by cutting taxes and cutting spending. The trouble is that the cycle needs to run its course before the economy can get itself on a healthy footing again.

The current proposed course will only prolong it. Just not as badly as the New Deal prolonged the cycle we affectionately refer to today as the Great Depression.

Well, it now seems that the fear-mongering we were treated to last summer with the global ice caps melting away was little more than just that.

Thanks to a rapid rebound in recent months, global sea ice levels now equal those seen 29 years ago, when the year 1979 also drew to a close.

Ice levels had been tracking lower throughout much of 2008, but rapidly recovered in the last quarter. In fact, the rate of increase from September onward is the fastest rate of change on record, either upwards or downwards.

What of the consensus of the scientific community now?

If you’ll turn your attention to the upper right hand corner of the page you will notice a darkened box with light colored writing. This box at one time contained an excerpt from this sites introductory post. From now on it will contain the “Quote of the Arbitrary Time Period.” When I happen upon a quote that I find particularly striking, I will post it there. Hopefully you will enjoy them as much as I do.

The second new feature is the nice little plug in I have installed that allows you to email posts if you are so inclined. The plugin was developed by this fella here.

Enjoy!

My biggest problem with all of this is the undeniable fact that the people of Palestine elected for their leaders a group of people who state in their founding documents that their goal is the obliteration of Israel and references the Hadith:

“The Prophet, Allah’s prayer and peace be upon him, says: “The hour of judgment shall not come until the Muslims fight the Jews and kill them, so that the Jews hide behind trees and stones, and each tree and stone will say: ‘Oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him,’ except for the Gharqad tree, for it is the tree of the Jews.” (Sahih Muslim, Book 41, Number 6985)

In light all of this it seems to me that Israel has no choice but to fight Hamas, because as long as Hamas exists it will seek to eradicate Israel and Jewish people everywhere. Is it not the right and perogotive of the Israelis to defend themselves against this? Tony Karon can go on and on all he likes about what he thinks are the real issues behind this conflict, but the Hamas documents state the facts loud and clear.

Excerpt from Vox Popoli

The story of Jesus Christ’s resurrection, on the other hand, is reportedly told by several of his personal companions, who claim to have encountered him subsequent to his very public death. The oldest manuscript to date is the Magdelen Papyrus, which contains Matthew 26 and has been dated as early as 66 AD, 33 years after the events it describes. The Lukan Papyrus is dated between 67 and 77 years after Christ’s reported death, and there are another 230 extant manuscripts compiled within 500 years of the event.

Based on many discussions I’ve had in the past, I believe these facts are little known to the public at large. If you have interest in such things, I recommend picking up a copy of Josh McDowell’s fine work, A Ready Defense. I was blown away the first time I read it.

All in green went my love riding
on a great horse of gold
into the silver dawn.

four lean hounds crouched low and smiling
the merry deer ran before.

Fleeter be they than dappled dreams
the swift sweet deer
the red rare deer.

Four red roebuck at a white water
the cruel bugle sang before.

Horn at hip went my love riding
riding the echo down
into the silver dawn.

four lean hounds crouched low and smiling
the level meadows ran before.

Softer be they than slippered sleep
the lean lithe deer
the fleet flown deer.

Four fleet does at a gold valley
the famished arrow sang before.

Bow at belt went my love riding
riding the mountain down
into the silver dawn.

four lean hounds crouched low and smiling
the sheer peaks ran before.

Paler be they than daunting death
the sleek slim deer
the tall tense deer.

Four tall stags at a green mountain
the lucky hunter sang before.

All in green went my love riding
on a great horse of gold
into the silver dawn.

four lean hounds crouched low and smiling
my heart fell dead before.

E.E. Cummings

Roger Farmer from Financial Times

So where do we go from here? The only actor large enough to restore confidence in the US market is the US government. The current policy of quantitative easing by the Fed is a move in the right direction but it does not, as yet, go nearly far enough.

It is time for a greatly increased role for monetary policy through direct intervention of central banks in world stock markets to prevent bubbles and crashes. Central banks control interest rates by buying and selling securities on the open market.

A logical extension of this idea is to pick an indexed basket of securities: one candidate in the US might be the S&P 500, and to control its price by buying and selling blocks of shares on the open market.

This has got to be one of the most hair brained schemes I have ever heard of in my lifetime. Marginal Revolution calls him a well respected economist, and if that is the case, I can see why well respected financial practitioners hold them in so ill regard.

From The Sunday Times

Last May, Taleb published The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. It said, among many other things, that most economists, and almost all bankers, are subhuman and very, very dangerous. They live in a fantasy world in which the future can be controlled by sophisticated mathematical models and elaborate risk-management systems

There are several problems with the idea, but I’m only going to address a very basic one. If Farmer’s idea had any merit at all, it would be because stock prices dictate the health of the economy. If stocks go down, then that causes the economy to go bust. If stocks go up, then that causes the economy to boom. Then, if government stabilized the price of stocks through buying and selling, then that stabilization would lead to healthy markets.

The only trouble is, in the real world, stocks are only one indicator of the health of the economy. When the economy is good, stocks generally reflect that good health. Mr. Farmer does address this, somewhat, when he states, “In classical economics, the prices of stocks are determined by fundamentals and the fundamentals of the economy are sound.” This statement is misleading at best. Even ignoring the fact that he is obviously not referring to price, but relative price, in classical economics the prices of stocks are still not determined by fundamentals, but rather, they are determined by just how many people want to sell them and just how many people want to buy them (supply and demand). It is true that, generally, more people want to buy stocks then sell them when the fundamentals are sound, but once a stock passes a certain price point relative to profits, this is no longer true. And according to classical economics, the current market is well past that price point.

So, if stock prices tend to describe rather than prescribe economic health, what effect would Mr. Farmer’s plan have? It would serve to hold stock prices at an equilibrium, having no effect whatsoever on the economy as a whole.

What good would that do? None that I can think of, other than to obfuscate normal indicators that the economy is falling apart. And that would be useful only if your goal was to control what the public thinks about the economy.

Even when his cell phone offered no bars on Sunday and he had no other way to get a dial tone, Carlton Smith did not second-guess his 21st Century decision to cancel traditional landline phone service in his house.

Smith was one of the many victims of a service outage that affected AT&T Wireless customers across the Midwest all day Sunday. The 35-year-old father of two called the experience frustrating, and he was disappointed in how AT&T handled the outage. But he wasn’t worried.

“We figured it was a cell problem and it would clear up,” he said.

I spoke at length yesterday with Tribune technology writer Eric Benderoff about my decision to go “cell only” in my house and how I felt about that decision in light of the recent AT&T outage.

The article quotes a poll taken by Sprint regarding people’s moving away from traditional land line telephones in their homes. I’m curious what you think…

Click Here for the Uncle Sol page on Twitter

So, now all the debating can end. The 1960 Dallas Cowboys (0-11-1) and the 1976 Tampa Bay Buccaneers (0-14), both expansion teams, were also winless. But those were the days before free agency. Those were the days when expansion teams needed years to build up before they could be competitive in the NFL. They did not set their records for futility in a league built for parity, capping the salaries of its franchises and allowing easy movement of its players. No, these teams, while bad in their own right, should have been bad. In 2008, the Detroit Lions are bad just because of incompetence. And that is much worse.

So there you have it folks. The 2008 Detroit Lions. Worst. Team. Ever.

For the $20 admission, I would say it was worth every penny. The theater itself was bit tightly packed, and for what is billed as a cozy atmosphere, they didn’t have enough tables for the chairs. And I recommend that you go with people you know fairly well, because you may end up sitting closer to them than you might otherwise anticipate. We arrived at the theater close to show time, so ended up toward the back of the line. With general admission seating, we ended up getting shoved in two chairs in the back corner without a table. This was, however, preferable to the couple that came in behind us that ended up sitting shoulder to shoulder with another couple they didn’t know. The female of the pair behind us was on the heavy side, and the female of the pair they sat down next to looked none too thrilled to have her personal space invaded by the other’s personal girth.

We did find the show however, very entertaining, and that, after all, is what we paid for. The first act was a series of skits, with a few improv pieces sprinkled in. To be sure, some of the skits bordered on trite and predictable. There was a song poking fun at Wal Mart, which I have no trouble with, but the punch line was that they made those that don’t celebrate Christmas second class citizens by advertising the holiday, but showed their greed by selling ethnic products that catered to those citizens, saying that they (Wal Mart) were still willing to take their (those not celebrating Christmas) money. The phrasing was mildly amusing, but the whole thing, done in a country “red neck” style, was a bit too predictable and easy.

The highlight of the evening was the office chair ballet, done to the Nutcracker Suite. Three of the actors started out seated in office chairs typing on invisible keyboards when the music began. At this point they began to move in synchronized fashion, in faux self-conscious fashion to begin, and then with increasing gusto began twirling each other about in full-fledged ballet style. It was very entertaining.

There were a series of skits, set in the “North Pole Bar”, where the bar keep had bar room conversations with various traditional Christmas characters. Most of them were entertaining, but unremarkable, but the Frosty The Snowman character was a riot. The other high point of the evening was a musical number in a kind of pop/hip-hop style possibly titled, “Bitch, Put Some Clothes On”, imploring young women everywhere to dress appropriately for the weather. The interjections by the male actors during the chorus were screamingly funny.

Of the cast, my wife and I agreed, Tim Robinson was the best. Honorable mentions also go out to Dana Quercioli and Tim Baltz. Mark Raterman, was also, I thought, very good. Mary Sohn was relied upon heavily in the musical numbers, presumably as the only cast member who could really sing. The cast was rounded out by the talented, but not too remarkable Megan Hovde Wilkins. Though she did deliver one of the funniest lines of the evening during the improv portion of the show.

All in all, we had a great time. If you like to laugh and don’t mind the drive out to Novi, Michigan (yes, Second City Detroit is in Novi), I recommend checking out the Second City Detroit.

Today we celebrate the birth of our risen Lord. Though the images of this holiday iconify a helpless child, it is incumbent upon us to remember the purpose of His coming and the work He did later in His life. We are asked in Peter’s letter to always be ready to answer anyone who asks the reason for the hope that is in us.

When we look around this world today we see much that causes us worry, from the state of the economy at home to war and suffering abroad. These things remind us of the fallen state of man, still under the spell of the evil prince that rules this world. Yet today, as we visit with loved ones and share our small gifts with each other, these troubles of the world fade somewhat into the background. Today, let’s remember the purpose of His coming, and the most important gift of all, that of our salvation.

Even as He tarries, we wait in hope for His return. Today, let us celebrate our risen Lord and the hope that He has given us.

Merry Christmas!

The truth is, when I first heard about it I didn’t have much to say about it. The Lions were in the middle of their 13th consecutive loss to start the 2008 season. The fans were frustrated and probably said some things they shouldn’t say. A player did something stupid. What’s to say about it?

This morning, I was listening to a local sports radio station as the hapless Lions prepared for their next defeat, and one of the fans from this section (the one that Dominic Raiola silently communicated with) called in. In his phone call, the fan mentioned that his season tickets this year cost him around $7000. Of course, the fan talked about the incident and minimized the role of the fans and vilified Raiola for his action. That part doesn’t concern me. Fans don’t have the right to say whatever they want to players on the sideline. They don’t have the right to use foul language, as they must at least respect the other fans around them and they don’t have the right to hurl threats at the players. Both of these actions would be cause for security to remove them from the premises and perhaps even ban them from attending future events. I don’t know if their actions rose to that level. I wasn’t there. In the same respect, the players don’t have the right to offer obscenities at the fans, either verbal or in gesture. I don’t know if these fans crossed that line. This player crossed that line. He was fined by the team for his action. That may be the appropriate punishment and it may not. That is for other people to decide.

When the news hit of Raiola’s gesture, the player was asked about it and said that he had been the victim of verbal abuse and intimated he would like to fight the fan(s) in question. In my opinion this is all very stupid and very unworthy of comment. However, what Raiola said next is what really got me. He said, “You know, if you’re not happy, why are you coming to the game?” This statement really got to me.

You see, I’ve been a Detroit Lions fan ever since I can remember. Ever since I was a kid, every Sunday during football season, I have sat in the living room with my Dad and watched them play on television. The only exception was the six years I spent in the US Air Force, where I routinely sought out a local sports bar and watched the games there.

In all of these years I have seen them win exactly one playoff game. You see, as Lions fans, we know that a trip the Super Bowl is unlikely at the end of the NFL season, whatever season it might be. But, for whatever reason sports fans root for a team, we root for the Lions and we wait for the time when, eventually, that magical season will come around, everything will click the right way and they will win it all. It’s what keeps us interested. It’s what keeps us watching. We look at other NFL cities and see teams that have seemingly come out of nowhere to win it all and we wait for our turn. The thing is, even though they don’t win it all, even though they don’t make the playoffs or they don’t win when they do get there, they are still entertaining. For years we had Barry Sanders to watch and we loved it. For the past decade times have been leaner, but we still find reasons to watch the games.

This year, at the beginning of the year, for the first time in a long time there was genuine optimism surrounding the Lions. The head coach was a tough guy. He was bringing in tough guy players. They were going to win the old fashioned way, by pounding it in there one play at a time. They had shed themselves of the free wheeling Offensive Coordinator and cut down on the number of plays. They said that finally they would have their own “go to” plays when things got rough. Those were the plays that they knew they could execute because they would practice them so much. In the pre-season they won all four games. We all know those games don’t count, but they looked like they wanted to win. They looked like they might actually have something going. And the team was advertising, “Believe in Now” – trying to tell us that they had turned it around. This year would be different. This year it would be worth the price of admission to come and see the Detroit Lions play football.

Then, as the season began, it quickly became obvious that this team was lost. After all the season tickets had been sold. After all the fans had locked in their seats for eight hang-on-the-edge-of-your-seat NFL football games. Then the team looked like they had no idea what they were doing. In the middle of the season, Matt Millen, the President of the team for the past eight years was fired. Two guys that worked for him in the front office were put in place to fill in for the rest of the year. The coaching staff was so bad that firing the head coach was out of the question. There wasn’t anyone on the staff that could even be considered to take over on an interim basis. And then the explanations began to come out.

You see, we were told, William Clay Ford, the owner of the team is loyal to a fault. He finds people that he is comfortable with to run the team and he holds on to them for too long. Anyone could see a few years in that Matt Millen was over his head running an NFL team, but Ford had made a friend and he believed that his friend could turn it around. In the mean time, the Lions never got any better, and Millen kept on collecting a pay check. Fords fault, we were told, was loyalty.

Today, the Lions lost their 15th game. If that is true, that Mr. Ford is loyal to a fault, then Mr. Ford’s loyalty is misplaced. If he is going to show his loyalty, he should show that loyalty to the long suffering fans of his team. These are the people that pay for tickets. These are the people that buy the jerseys, the hats, the banners and the concessions. These are the people that huddle in front of their televisions hoping to see the Detroit Lions climb atop the NFL heap and for once, emerge victorious. If these were the people to whom Mr. Ford was loyal, he would demand excellence from those that work for him. He would show his appreciation by putting a winning product on the field. But no, we are not where his loyalty lies. His loyalty is not with the fan, spending $7,000 of his hard earned money on season tickets, being told by a prima donna athlete he just shouldn’t bother to come. If we want to know what Mr. Ford thinks of us, we need only look at the Lions’ record, as they bear down on the record mark of futility in the NFL as the first team to finish a season 0-16. If we want to know what he thinks of us, we need only look for the appendage protruding from the hand of Dominic Raiola on the sideline, held out defiantly to the fans.

My inclination is to believe that liberals will be sorely disappointed when Hope Change doesn’t save the cheerleader or the world. When Barack Obama, like Bill Clinton, fails to usher in the worker’s paradise I imagine that much of the luster will be lost.

Although, I have found some of the rhetoric on the fringe of his campaign and election to go beyond mere hero worship and qualify as what sounds like the worship of a deity. This site however, goes above and beyond. For now I’ll chalk this up mere lunacy, but if this gains traction, we could be in for some interesting times.

President George W Bush said allowing the US car industry to fail would not be “a responsible course of action”.

I am curious to see if this ends up helping them. It was my understanding before that the only way for the autos to get any relief from their current contracts would have been going in to bankruptcy. However, the terms of this loan seem to demand just those types of relief. On moral grounds, I still think it’s a bad idea, because A) the government has no constitutional authority to do it and B) I think it onerous to take money away from hard working Americans and give it to companies who have failed to run their business in a sustainable fashion.

However, since the constitution now means next to nothing, and this particular money was already stolen from the American people to give to the banks who couldn’t run their businesses in a sustainable fashion, we’ll wait and see.

The real onerous part to me is the March deadline for the Autos to show they have a sustainable business plan. If they had simply gone in to bankruptcy now, they would have been able to liquidate some of their assets, but most likely stay in business, even at a leaner capacity. If Washington decides in March that it doesn’t like what the Autos are doing, it can call those loans immediately. That will most likely mean complete liquidation and the end of the American Auto Industry. This means that between now and March, the big three will have to focus on what will please politicians more than they will have to focus on what will help the bottom line. In my opinion, this can’t be a good thing.

So, now we wait and see. If the Autos do bounce back to some level of profitability, will George W. Bush end up being remembered as the president that saved the autos? Somehow I doubt it.

My hope for this site, as indicated in it’s sub-title, is that, eventually, it will grow to a place where people can come and have interesting discussions on a variety of topics. This is why I welcome the comments, as that is how the discussion grows, and lately the comments have gotten very interesting. At least for now, I am going to refrain from adding to my original thoughts in the comments area, merely because I would like to encourage your participation. If you see something you would like to respond to, whether it’s in the original article, or in the comments below, by all means, respond! My fear is that if I respond to every argument made in the comments, you will have nothing left to participate with. Once a discussion gets going, however, I will most certainly participate. This site is intended to be about ideas, whatever they may be, and to whomever they might belong.

The only thing I ask is that you keep the language in your comments suitable for all audiences. I struggled with this decision, as I find censorship of words an ugly and linguistically arbitrary thing, and I really want no part in it. However, my practical nature reminds me that search engines will downgrade the site and filter it for all audiences, and many companies will block it outright if they find some word that they believe some will take offense to. I will also censor any comments that are abusive to others who were thoughtful enough to comment. Argument is encouraged, abuse is not. And we’re all adults here (I would think anyway) – we know the difference between argument and abuse.

And if you don’t, I do. And it’s my site. So there.

All that said, I will refuse to censor any ideas. I will not concern myself with political correctness, possible lunatic rantings, or even outright insanity. Your ideas are your own and I will defend your right to share them, regardless of my own opinion as to their merit.

So please, enjoy your stay here. It is my sincere hope that you find something here to pique your interest, and by all means, let everyone know what you think!

I always rolled my eyes a bit at this explanation, as even while the show had been scrubbed of its Christian title, the music, though not religious, was certainly Christmas music, save for the solitary Chanukah song thrown in for good measure. I had always wondered who they thought they were fooling, merely changing the title of a cultural ritual performed for generations in our community, but keeping the content precisely the same.

Over the past couple of years this began to change. Suddenly, we began hearing songs we had never heard before sprinkled in among the classics. Though they never would have dreamt of doing this when I was in school, and I’m sure would have been met with angry mobs in my parents’ school days, I thought this was probably a good thing, expanding the horizons of my children by exposing them with a little more of what existed out there in the world.

This year, however, was different. This year we were greeted with a speech about how small our world really is and that our focus now is on celebrating the other cultures around us. Only one song of the thirteen we heard was a song I recognized from my youth. I didn’t recognize the title, but as soon as they started singing I could see the Peanuts kids in my mind during the interlude of A Charlie Brown Christmas.

Christmas time is here
Happiness and cheer
Fun for all that children call
Their favorite time of the year

I remembered sitting in front of the television, before their were hundreds of channels, my mother having told me that a Christmas special was on TV tonight. I sat and watched this special every year of my childhood. I remembered Charlie Brown picking out the sad little tree and I remembered Linus telling us all what Christmas is really all about. I remembered my sophomore year in high school when I took a forensics class and three of my friends and I performed a portion of this show for the class (and a grade, of course).

I also remembered the years previous attending these concerts and hearing the various Christmas songs the children sang, and the memories that came to life with them, riding in a big bus with my huge extended family to see the Thanksgiving Day parade, an aunt handing out sheets of paper with the words to the songs and all of us singing along as we rode. I remembered standing in the living room with a cousin, singing songs from a madrigal group we were in for my family. I remembered standing outside city hall with the pep band, playing my baritone horn for the annual Christmas tree lighting.

This is what these concerts mean to me. They take me back to the safety and comfort of my childhood, and they give me comfort knowing that my children will one day sit in an overcrowded gymnasium or auditorium listening to their own children conjure up the past for them.

But this is no longer what we find important. Today it is important that our children celebrate other cultures, but not that they have a culture of their own. We think this makes us more worldly, more understanding, more accepting of other people. But what we are doing is something that no people would expect from themselves in any other time or place. We convince ourselves that our pagan rituals with Christian names are somehow offensive to those who believe in other things, yet if we decided to move our families to a Muslim nation, would we be offended at the celebration of Ramadan? If we moved with our children to Asia would we take offense as those around us celebrated Vesak? Of course we would not. We would likely be fascinated with this interesting tradition.

As a libertarian I have long advocated for open immigration, thinking that the influx of population combined with a free market would produce a booming economy, much in the way that it did in the peak of this country’s immigration period, from after the Civil War until World War I. Not being xenophobic the thought of people from other cultures moving here was pleasant to me, as I thought America could offer them and their families the opportunity for prosperity they were unlikely to find in their native homes. As a Christian I have never believed that God is a respecter of national boundaries, choosing to save those of us born on one side of a national border while neglecting those on the other.

But the one thing I never considered was the malleable personality of our culture. Our desire for political correctness prevents us from standing up for our traditions, for fear we may be called racist. We hesitate to question those who run our public schools because the worst thing that any of us can be called today is intolerant. But this desire to celebrate our own culture is not born of fear for others, but rather ties the bind between us and our own past as it builds the bridge to the future through our children and grandchildren.

Though some respond to this by saying that our only option is to not allow those from other cultures to emigrate to this country. I prefer to think it better that we convince ourselves that our own culture is worth preserving and perpetuating, that we take a stand, not against those around us who may be different, but merely for the way of life we know. But I really wonder; are we capable?

The trip was truly incredible. First of all, the grey cold skies of Detroit in early December, while well familiar to this native Michigander, are easily left behind for a brief seasonal hiatus of warmth and sun. Orlando is perfect this time of year with afternoon high temperatures in the mid 70’s. In contrast to the past few weeks of highs which hovered around 35 in Detroit, hell, even on it’s own it was perfect.

The hotel was very nice with several dining options and amenities. The size of the room was about the same as most places I’ve been, and it was the first time I’ve ever seen queen sized beds in a hotel room. Prior to this I had always believed that king sized mattresses were hotel standard. My only real complaints about the place were the really ridiculous prices for a bottle of water in the room ($7) and the fact that I had to pay for the use of the exercise room and internet access. Paying for internet access I expected, though the price of $10 per day was excessive, paying for the right to ride on an exercise bike truly surprised me.

As for deciding between the parks, my wife and I hemmed and hawed a bit, and in the end decided to pay the extra $14 per person to allow the four of us access to both parks for the day. All of us were very happy with that decision as we were able to hit the big attractions at both parks and fill our day with the best of what Universal had to offer. The best “rides” were The Simpsons ride at Universal Studios and Spider-Man at Adventure Island. Many of the attractions try to include you in the experience, but none succeeded like these two. It’s amazing how, with a few twists and turns and great 3-D (Spider-Man) or Imax (Simpsons) effects you can actually feel like you’re flying through the air or falling from the top of a building. These rides were thrilling, and at my daughter’s insistence we actually waited in line for The Simpsons twice.

The other highlights were the awesome effects of T2 (Universal Studios), though the stage production at the beginning of it was on the lame side, the good humor and excitement of Shrek 2 (Universal Studios) and the (spoiler alert – don’t read the rest of this sentence if you haven’t been and plan on going) thrilling drop in front of the T-Rex on the Jurassic Park water ride (Adventure Islands).

Aside from the attractions, I must also say that every employee at both parks that we dealt with was good enough at his job that I didn’t notice him. I admit that I can be difficult to please and am very easily annoyed by incompetence. So, the fact that I can’t bring to mind any of the employees says something.

As far as the parks were concerned, my only complaint concerns the “Meal Deal” they try to push on you at every turn. Fortunately, I didn’t personally buy this meal deal, as it was part of the package that my employers provided us. They advertise that with this deal, you can eat at one of the parks “all day” for free, with the expected fined print of not covering your drinks. What they leave out of their advertisements is that these “free” meals are only available at certain, awful, eateries on the premises. Also, the correct interpretation of “All Day” does not include breakfast, as none of these places serve breakfast, nor are they open between 9:00 AM, when the park opens, and 10:30 AM.

Because of this, my family and I did not dine before going to the park, expecting that we would eat breakfast and ended up paying $85 for the pleasure of dining on very runny eggs, horrible french toast and rubbery bacon, with some very annoying people dressed up like Grinch characters who like to pretend they are clever. Another of my coworkers, not realizing that the deal was only reserved for specific locations, went into another restaurant on the premises and ordered. Upon receiving their drinks, she asked the waiter to trade her “meal deal” card for a bracelet (this is how they lock you in to one park for the deal) when she was told that they didn’t honor the deal there. Fortunately, she had the gumption to get up and walk out. I’m sure many others, having been roped in, are shamed in to paying again for what they thought they had already paid for when they bought the deal.

All in all, we were very pleased with the weekend and thought very highly of the entertainment Universal has to offer. My kids had a blast the whole vacation and we are all very grateful to my employer for sending us. I wish that I could mention the company name here, to give the fine owners credit for their generosity, but I hesitate to associate them with this site and my opinionated ramblings. Still, my family says thank you!

Our culture and our people, we think, are too enlightened for such things. Jonah Goldberg writes in his fine tome, Liberal Fascism, that he believes that Fascism in America would never digress to the levels of Mussolini’s Italy, much less that of Hitler’s* Germany. Goldberg has more faith in the power of American culture than I do. Personally, I find the millennia of chronicles of the fruits of human nature more persuasive than a couple of centuries of relative good behavior.

So, assuming that we can at least agree that tyranny is an undesirable condition in which to live, how do we avoid it? As it turns out, the founding fathers of this nation busied themselves with just that notion for a fair bit of time. They reasoned that in order for a people to be free of tyranny, their government would have to operate under clearly defined limits. They understood that without such limits any government they devised would eventually descend into tyranny, as it is the nature of government to amass power to itself. In order to accomplish this goal they created the Constitution. The Constitution contains clearly defined limits on what the government is permitted to do. The Bill of Rights outlines some things the government is specifically forbidden from doing, like abridging the freedom of speech, infringing the right to keep and bear arms, engaging in unreasonable search and seizure or even depriving a citizen of property without due process of law.

So, here in the US we already have limited government, at least as far as we believe that the Constitution is still what gives our government its authority. The trouble comes in when we decide that we can ignore the constitution in order to further some goal that we deem to be “good.”

What is seldom contemplated by those who wish to grant the government some extended power in order to do some good, is that government power is always exercised by force. If the good deed your special interest group wishes to impose requires money, that money is obtained by use of force. If you don’t think so, try not paying your taxes and see who shows up at your door. Those things they have strapped to their belts aren’t their lunches.

The second thing that is seldom considered is that power itself is neutral. If the government is given some power, like the power to levy an unapportioned tax on the incomes of its citizens, that power can be used for good or bad. It may well be that those who argue for such a tax fancy themselves Robin Hood and wish to take money from those whom they have decided already have enough in order to give it to those whom they have decided do not. But once that power is granted, how it is used is up to whomever is in control of that power. That person may decide to invade Iraq instead.

That last point is really the crux of my argument. As our nation has plodded along through history, it has allowed the government to overreach its constitutional limits in order to respond to some crisis. With each crisis comes expanded government power. Our politicians have learned that it can be easy to get the power they desire so long as they can convince us there is a crisis. For evidence, look at all of the rhetoric used in our extra-constitutional endeavors. War on Poverty. War on Drugs. War on Terror.

When it comes down to it, you may believe that the good of some of these things outweigh the evil of having to use government force to accomplish them. While I may disagree, this is not necessarily contrary to expecting our government to abide by its limits. The Constitution itself provides for this with the ability to amend it. The benefit of amending the constitution to allow the government to do something it is not already allowed to do, is that it’s power to carry out this “good” can be strictly defined, or limited, by the amendment itself.

The imperative in all this, is that what we have now is government only mildly constrained by constitutional limits. The ACLU makes noise over it’s pet issues and student groups get in frenzies over speech issues, but it doesn’t stop the government from continually pushing these boundaries. FDR had the New Deal. LBJ had the Great Society. Nixon had the War on Drugs which Ronald Reagan kicked in to high gear. Bill Clinton tried to nationalize health care and originally tried to pass the Patriot Act over an indignant Republican Congress. George Bush created the Department of Homeland Security, passed the Patriot Act, started the War on Terror and oversaw the detainment of thousands of prisoners without charge at Guantanamo Bay. What’s more is that each President expanded the power and reach of all the programs of his predecessors. Not one reduced any of them. It may or may not yet be tyranny (and I think I know what side of that argument the detainees at Gitmo would fall on) but if we don’t define the limits now, what will we do when it is?

*I would provide a link to information on Adolph Hitler for you, but if you’re having trouble finding information on him on the internet you need more help than a link will provide.

“Millions of Americans cannot find affordable financing for their basic credit needs. And credit card rates are climbing, making it more expensive for families to finance everyday purchases,” Paulson said. “This lack of affordable consumer credit undermines consumer spending; as a result, it weakens our economy.”

Henry Paulson, United States Secretary of the Treasury

Source Article: Financial Bailout Balloons To The Trillions

I’ll be honest with you. It was my intention to start off this piece with a nice assonant metaphor, lulling you in with a comfortable tone before I let fly a juxtaposing cacophonous flurry to jar your senses and catch your attention. The trouble is, nothing in the natural world is ridiculous enough to be properly called a metaphor for the utter charade we are witnessing in Washington. Not even the talented writers for Monty Python would have attempted anything as unbelievable as this.

Also in the spirit of honesty, I must tell you that I blame all of us. Because, in this past election, we voted for politicians that supported this bail out, either with their votes as incumbents, or with their pedestals as aspirants, I lay the blame squarely at our feet. Before this bailout we were already staring at the specter of long and hard depression. The failure of these banks was the beginning of it. But because we allowed these sniveling politicians to convince us that this would ward off that depression, we are now responsible for making that inevitable depression significantly more difficult to live through.

More people will lose their jobs. More people will lose their homes. Wages will fall farther. Its duration will be longer. It is our fault, because like the repeatedly battered, we keep believing and we keep coming back for more. Can’t you hear us? “Congressman [your elected representative here] is really sorry this time. I really think he means it.” If we had any good friends they would be staring at us in disbelief.

Just look at that quote above. Secretary Paulson is actually saying, presumably with a straight face, that the lack of consumer spending resulting from a dearth of available credit is “weakening our economy.” This is like me saying that my runny nose is making me sick. Are we really expected to believe that the Secretary of the Treasury of the United States of America believes that the lack of available credit is the what is making the economy weaker, and that somehow severely diluting if not eradicating our hard earned savings by dumping the equivalent of half of all the production in our country over the course of a year onto the market is the cure? I find it very difficult to believe that he isn’t just banking on the fact that most of us don’t know enough to not believe it. And besides, for how long will we remember that he said it.

The really confounding part of all of this to me is the complete farce of logic that occurs in this type of government spending. Let’s paint the picture. Ok, there was a problem because we made money really cheap to lend making really risky loans viable for most lenders. So, as a solution, lets give those lenders a huge hunk of cheap cash so that they can keep lending it out. What what what?

The Austrian lesson in all of this is that when you make money falsely cheaper to lend through inflation (which is how they do it, and have been doing it for the better part of a century) then that money will be malinvested. According to Austrian theory the inflation masks the market signals that would normally cause the investors to back off, and they can’t see where the mistakes were made until it is too late. The only way that economic normalcy can return is if the inflation stops and the economy is allowed to clear itself of this malinvestment. The way it does so is through a recession/depression cycle. Inflating more, as they will have to do to finance this bailout, is like trying to bail out the ship by sailing under a waterfall.

UPDATE: 

Oh, for you Ohio State grads out there, here’s an explanation on that last sentence.

America’s Great Depression

Traditionally, stocks were valued at about ten times earnings. With high margin trading, earnings on shares, only one or two percent, were far less than the eight or ten percent interest on loans used to buy them. This meant that any profits were in capital gains alone. Thus, Radio Corporation of America, which had never paid a dividend at all, went from 85 points to 410 points in 1928.

(From the second page of the introduction to the fifth edition)

To put this in perspective, today, after the stock market has recently lost almost 40 percent of it’s value, shares of Apple Corp closed trading at $92.95 per share. In the third quarter of this year, Apple made $1.07 billion in profit. This means that Apple was earning about $1.19 per share (refrence previous link). So, according to the passage above, if traditionally companies trade at about ten times earnings, Apple shares should be trading at about $11.90. Currently, at $92.95 per share Apple is currently trading at about 77 times earnings, and this is down from a high price of around $200 per share only a few months ago. And according to this page, Apple has not paid dividends since 1995.

Maybe it’s just me, but this seems to indicate that Apple is rather over valued at this point. And this is a very successful and profitable company, which has recently lost over half of it’s high value.

All of this got me thinking about the state of the current stock market and how we view owning stocks. In 1996, I remember sitting at the dining room table with my wife, our newborn son sleeping in the other room, while a nice salesman told us about the opportunities to be had by investing long term in the stock market. He showed us some very impressive charts and graphs which indicated that even given the little bumps from time time, the market has always gone up. He told us of the wonders of dollar cost averaging and the benefit this could provide in long term investing.

And this I think is indicative of how most people think of stocks today. Our parents, grandparents and great grandparents made killings investing in companies like Coca-Cola in the 1960s and IBM in the 1980s because the value of the stock just kept going up and up and up. We think of the stock market as having some intrinsic property that causes it to continually rise in value over the long term. But is this perception valid?

The truth is, I don’t know. It would take someone much more educated than me on these things to say for certain. I do know, however, that there are very few people whose opinions I trust on the matter (take a look at the video linked to in my earlier post, Video Evidence).

The fascinating thing to me, is what gives stock value in the first place? A share of stock indicates ownership of a portion, however small, of the company from which it is issued. When we think of the benefit of owning part of any company, what do we think of? If we think, say, the grocer at the end of the street wants to sell us part of his company. Would we consider buying it because we think we might be able to re-sell that part of the company at a profit at a later date, or do we consider it because sharing in it’s profit will earn us a continuous stream of income from the investment? My hunch is the latter.

So, why should we think differently with stocks? Why should we want to own a stock that does not pay dividends from it’s profit, thus sharing it’s profit with it’s owners, unless we believe that the otherwise reinvested profits will earn us even greater dividends in the future? It is my opinion, therefore, that the only way a stock really has value, is in the dividend it pays, or at least is expected to pay at some not too distant future point. Otherwise, we’re merely investing in the inflationary expansion of the market, which, according to the Austrians at least, will eventually come crashing down around us. It is unavoidable.

Michigan’s defense came out strong to start this game, but the offense has been awful. Nick Sheridan looks lost out there. I may have to find something better to do once the first half is over.

14-0 Ohio St

1:20 PM

The Michigan offense comes to life!

14-7 Ohio St

1:33 PM

Well I guess we’ll see how the second half goes.

14-7 Ohio St – Half time

Michigan opens up the second half looking like they have all year.

21-7 Ohio St

2:25 PM

Now it turns into a joke. It looks like Sheridan might be out of the game. If he was their best option, how bad is it going to get now?

28-7 Ohio St

This type of thing certainly makes me happy that I married young. It’s brutal out there. Article and link below.

Love in the Time of Darwinism

Earlier this year, I published an article in City Journal called “Child-Man in the Promised Land.” The piece elicited a roaring flood of mailed and blogged responses, mostly from young men who didn’t much care for its title (a reference to Claude Brown’s 1965 novel Manchild in the Promised Land) or its thesis: that too many single young males (SYMs) were lingering in a hormonal limbo between adolescence and adulthood, shunning marriage and children, and whiling away their leisure hours with South Park reruns, marathon sessions of World of Warcraft, and Maxim lists of the ten best movie fart scenes.

I was in a bind. But, like the rest of Detroit, the autos have been on my mind of late, so I thought I’d hang on a bit and see how the conversation went. As is their wont, the hosts of the show were taking calls to hear what their listeners had to say. One of the callers was very passionate. He was absolutely tired of hearing about how the union folks make too much money and how they are killing the companies they work for. His opinion was that someone else ought to take a pay cut and that unions were, after all, keeping all of us from making just above slave wages. His exacts were, “You know as well as I do that these companies would be paying us just above slavery if it weren’t for the unions.”

Once I heard that, I knew I had a topic to post this evening.

When you, dear reader, saw the title of this post, you may have thought that I have a friend named Murray who is somehow related to the auto industry, most likely in some kind of working capacity. Rest assurred that I have far too much respect for your intelligence than to treat you like a nightly news viewer and offer up logically laughable anectdotal evidence supporting my opinion. No, the Murray I refer to is none other than Murray Rothbard, author of America’s Great Depression. As it happens, I finished the second chapter of the book last night, and it was all about workers’ wages and how they fit in to the economy (If this is your first exposure to this site, I posted an earlier item about this book).

What I found most impressive about Mr. Rothbard’s treatment of the subject, is the facility with which he shows how the point of equilibrium with workers’ wages is at full employment. He shows that in a free market, unhampered by collective bargaining and minimum wages (no, these are not the only ways our current market is not free, but we’ll save that for another post) everyone who wanted a job would be able to find one. He shows how workers’ wages are the price of a commodity (labor) and just like any other price, it follows the law of supply and demand. So, when the price of something is forced above market rates (as minimum wage laws and collective bargaining do) there will quickly become more of that thing than the market is willing to purchase (in this case labor). This phenomena is popularly known as unemployment. So, while the higher wages certainly help some people, they don’t help those who are left out in the cold.

Conversely, when prices are forced below market rates a shortage occurs. Our radio listener from above provides the perfect example of this in his observation that companies would like to pay workers barely enough to survive. Our listener may very well be right, but when companies try to hold workers wages below market rates they will quickly find that they will run out of the pool of workers from which they may hire. When this happens, the only way they can attract the workers they need is by bidding up prices (wages). So, in this case, economic laws force them to raise wages if they wish to get the employees they need to get the job done.

Our radio listener was very passionate in his opinion, and his wish, I’m sure, is that all people live the best life possible. Unfortunately, what he doesn’t realize is that those very ideas he holds on to about economics are the same ideas that keep his wish from coming true.

For the past several years I have operated solely on Macintosh in my home, with my MacBook Pro, and my wife’s PowerBook keeping us connected. After a brief forray in technical support, I swore off Microsoft Windows forever. Unfortunately, those who see fit to keep me gainfully employed insist that I use one of the awful machines at work, but at home I choose otherwise.

As the living room PC was my first dabble into Ubuntu I left it running the default desktop installation, Gnome. I like it quite a bit and I’ve learned my way around it pretty well so far. It really is very intuitive and I’ve had very little trouble finding whatever I might be looking for.

I also decided that I might need a bit more exposure if I was going to become skillfull with the Linux distribution, so I also did a bootcamp installation on my MacBook Pro. I initially tried it in Parallels, but in the end I’m not really fond of Parallels, as it seems to slow down the computer a little too much for both operating systems. So, I removed the Parallels installation and decided to try bootcamp.

Unfortunately, the MacBook and Ubuntu didn’t get along too well at first. It didn’t seem to want to use my macintosh keyboard, the touchpad didn’t work right and the desktop started dimming as soon as I let go of the touchpad or keyboard. So, I was constantly stopping to think, then immediately reaching up to the “brightness” button on my laptop. That was getting a bit annoying.

Then it occurred to me that in all of my reading on Linux as I’ve been setting up these machines, there was another desktop distribution called KDE. So, I’ve decided to give that one a whirl on the laptop. So far so good. It looks really sharp and I don’t have the annoying dimming problem I had in Gnome. I’ve yet to mess arround with the keyboard and touchpad configurations, but here’s hoping.

I’ll let you know from time to time what I think about the differences between the two desktops as I get to know them both better.

Watch the video.

Obama’s New Deal

For years, economic contrarians have been predicting financial disaster for the U.S. economy. And for years, famous mainstream economists and CNBC analysts have been assuring everyone that Federal Reserve was managing the new economy effectively, and that this new and astonishingly productive economy meant that economic laws of the past were outdated. Paul Krugman, the New York Times columnist who was recently awarded the Nobel Prize for economics, was one of the few honorable exceptions among the big names in the field, as his 1999 book, “The Return of Depression Economics,” was more prescient than most in noting “depression economics – the kinds of problems that characterized much of the world economy in the 1930s, but have not been seen since – has staged a stunning comeback.”

It is my considered opinion that the big three are an albatross, tied tightly to the palm of our dear peninsula. Our entire economy is tied to the success of these behemoth companies. I have believed for years that the best thing that could happen to our state is an influx of non-auto related industries, whatever they may be. At least then, the failure of the autos would not carry so great a sting.

Sadly, if the autos were allowed to fail, it would certainly hurt this area. Jobs would be lost. More homes would foreclose. Our property values would drop and the dearth of capital in the area would become even more severe, effecting us all. Sadder yet, this bail out will only postpone the misery. We are being led to believe that if the American taxpayers would only give the autos a measly 25 or maybe 50 billion dollars, they would be able to compete again and everything would be honky-dory. I’m here to tell you that this couldn’t be further from the truth.

The fact is that the Detroit auto industry is out-moded, operating under a business model that has long since become obsolete. This is evidenced by the fact that the average Detroit auto worker is compensated at an astronomical hourly rate. This taken in conjunction with the sweetheart union deals that simply cannot remain in any competitive industry today. The autos are asking all of us to ignore these things, and pretty please, if we can just give them the money this time, all will be well in the future.

Source: http://mjperry.blogspot.com/

The trouble with all this is that it merely delays the inevitable. With the way the autos operate right now, these problems will all come to surface again. With the rest of the national economy potentially on the verge of collapse, chances are that will come sooner, rather than later. This may be the worst case scenario, but if things get as bad as many projections say it will, it is also the most likely scenario.

So, let’s discuss what would happen if the autos were actually allowed to fail. Would Chevy and Ford become part of the lore of American industrial history, fading into distant memories as we all become accustomed to driving Toyotas and VWs? Perhaps. Personally, I think it’s more likely that they would end up in bankruptcy, freeing them from so many of the obligations that make them so woefully uncompetitive. It would certainly be a painful time for us here in Michigan. But, it would at least afford us the opportunity to recover, and recover in way that gives us hope for the future.

On a side note, the fact that we’re being treated to so much emotional drivel should be enough to raise red flags in the mind of any thinking person.

Mr. Rothbard is an economist of the Austrian School. I’ve long been interested in economics, but in his recent campaign for the Republican nomination for President, Dr. Ron Paul made mention of Austrian Economics quite frequently, and his endorsement piqued my interest. Specifically because of the recent economic troubles that seemed to escalate in the way that Dr. Paul said they would.

At this point in the book, the very remarkable thing to me, is that our government is doing exactly what the Austrian School says that it should not. If the Austrians are correct, what we are doing (and actually have been doing for the past few decades) is exactly what one should do, if one’s goal is to create an economic depression. In addition to this, if one wished to exacerbate that inevitable depression, then the recent Wall Street bail out is exactly what the proverbial doctor ordered.

I’m sure I’ll post more on the topic as I continue on in the book. On a side note, here’s an interesting post on some of the unintended consequences of the bail out.

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