Category Archives: Debt

Debt Commission Dross

Debt, Economy, Military, Politics, Regulation, Ron Paul, Taxation, The State, War, Welfare

As has been said over these pixelated pages, “government commissions are where accountability goes to die.” You get my meaning. For example: Some major cost-cutting measures suggested by Obama’s deficit commission’s preliminary report only kick-in in 2050 and 2075.

Like his father, Rand Paul promises to be a beacon for liberty. Intuitively, Rand cleaves to free-market principles. Here are some salient points Rand has made in response to some silly questions, concerning the deficit commission’s preliminary report, fielded from Face The Nation moderator Bob Schieffer:

“… if you’re serious about the budget, you have to look at the entire budget–military and domestic, if you want to make a dent in the debt.

“…I don’t think I want to raise taxes right now. I think government
is too big and so I think we need to cut spending. The way I see it is, is that you want the private sector to have more money. I want to expand the private sector because we have a– a serious recession so I want to leave more money in the private sector. I want to shrink the ineffective sector of the economy which is the government.”

“… I want to be on the side of reducing spending. So I think really the compromise is where you find the reductions in spending. But I don’t think the compromise is in raising taxes. I mean here, you have to put things in perspective. We now consume at the federal level twenty-five percent of the Gross Domestic Product. [Actually, it is more like 40%, as a lot of spending is off budget] Historically, we were at twenty percent. So we’ve taken five percent away from the private sector. And the private sector is the engine that creates all these jobs. I want to send that five percent back to the private sector.”

“…you should shrink the federal work force and you should make their pay more comparable. Right now the total compensation for government workers versus private workers is almost two to one.”

“…make the tax cuts permanent.”

MORE…

UPDATE II: Not So Pale-Lin

Aesthetics, China, Debt, Federal Reserve Bank, Inflation, Political Economy, Regulation, Sarah Palin

“He’s backwards,” said Sarah Palin about Barack Hussein Obama’s lack of economic smarts. She spoke on the occasion of Judge Andrew Napolitano’s Fox Business show, Freedom Watch, going daily. Palin has an unadorned way of looking at things. She spoke forcefully and fairly knowledgeably about monetary policy tonight.

Less welcome was what Palin adorned on the occasion. Palin, a natural beauty with a glowing skin, had squeezed herself into the sort of Little Black Dress Ann Coulter wears to every event. Worse still was the orange, bottled tan with which Palin’s arms, shoulders, and alarmingly large bosom had been sprayed. The difference between the pallor of Palin’s face and the bright orange of her decolletage was plain to see on the TV. Less so in the online clip. Oy vey.

Palin does not need to heed TV’s repulsive stylists; most of them have acquired their “talents” making-up Kim kardashian’s private parts for public viewing. Palin should tell the image consultants to back off. There is no need to repeat the make-over failures of the McCain campaign.

It’s good to see Mrs. Palin coming to grips with monetary policy. A mature, natural beauty like Palin has no need to adopt the trashy TV look.

UPDATED I: I don’t understand the question below. Was Palin fundamentally wrong about monetary policy tonight? Did she recommend bad policies? Why do you care where she got the ideas she was promoting vis-a-vis the Fed? If she’s reading Ron Paul’s End The Fed, or Tom Woods’ Meltdown—why do you care? Speaking to—and against—current monetary policy makes Palin and Bachmann better than almost any other pol around.

UPDATE II (Nov. 16): Let me correct the above statement: “Speaking to—and against—current monetary policy makes Palin and Bachmann better than almost any other AMERICAN, most of whom draw a blank at the causes of inflation and the devaluation of the country’s coin—except to hoot obscenities at the Chinese, as a primate would scream at a someone with a coveted banana.

UPDATE II: Lazy Boy To China: Quit Producing, Start Printing

Barack Obama, China, Debt, Europe, Federal Reserve Bank, Inflation, Political Economy

This is not even a case of the pot calling the kettle black. It’s plain insane. Barack Obama is the president of a country that is, with full presidential imprimatur, devaluing its coin and all private savings in order to conceal the ever-accreting public debt. China’s monetary policy, which is its business, is geared toward production; toward growing its economy out of any foreseeable economic straits.

Brainy boy is so stupid as to demand that China strive for a “balance” (of what? Debt and credit?)

“The president, speaking at a news conference in Seoul, suggested China bears much of the blame for global trade imbalances, The New York Times reported. He abandoned his usual cautious language on the subject and said China and other countries should not assume ‘their path to prosperity is paved simply with exports to the United States.'”

Wow, BHO is unaware that China produces for the world. But then Americans do think America is the world. In that, BHO is very American, and not so much of an alien.

Recall that Lazy Boy issued the same dire warning to Germany’s Ms. Merkel:

“U.S. President Barack Obama [has called] for Germans to aid the global recovery by spending more and relying less on exports.”It is not only Germany that Obama wishes to knee-cap economically, but Canada, Japan and China too. Given that big-spending Americans exist at the sufferance of the frugal, productive Chinese, I don’t quite know how this would work.

“Ms. Merkel countered that Germany’s growth and employment are rising—and therefore the world’s fourth-largest economy has no reason to rethink its dependence on its powerhouse industrial sector and large trade surplus.”

UPDATE I: WSJ: “We don’t like to see U.S. Treasury Secretaries so completely shot down by the rest of the world, except when they are so clearly misguided.” An understandable sentiment, except that from where I’m perched, I can’t recall when last an American president went abroad on a worthwhile mission.

Rather than leading the world from a position of strength, Mr. Obama and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner came to Seoul blaming the rest of the world for U.S. economic weakness. America’s problem, in their view, is the export and exchange rate policies of the Germans, Chinese or Brazilians. And the U.S. solution is to have the Fed print enough money to devalue the dollar so America can grow by stealing demand from the rest of the world. …
But why should anyone heed this U.S. refrain? The Germans are growing rapidly after having rejected Mr. Geithner’s advice in 2009 to join the U.S. stimulus spending blowout. China is also growing smartly having rejected counsel from three U.S. Administrations to abandon its currency discipline. The U.K. and even France are pursuing more fiscal restraint. Only the Obama Administration is determined to keep both the fiscal and monetary spigots wide open, while blaming everyone else for the poor domestic results. …Meanwhile, China and other Asian economies see first-hand that rather than spurring more U.S. growth (on which Asian exporters still depend), U.S. monetary ease has flooded the developing world economies with dollars they’re not able to absorb; produced exchange-rate turmoil to the detriment of the region’s traders; and sent the world’s dollar-denominated commodity prices climbing.

No one is giving voice to the following thought—and whenever I mention this point, posters on this blog equivocate—but truly, the austere economic policies leaders are pursuing in Europe and the UK bespeak of some love of country and sense of duty. These Obama, and Bush before, is without. The terrible two have done things that, ultimately, hurt their countrymen horribly; they’ve trashed the country and its coin via war, welfare and debt.

UPDATE II (Nov. 13): What do busybody conservatives have against China for producing in response to demand? Why is the centrally planned, state counterfeiting of money even remotely comparable to the production of made-in-china junk in response to the demands for made-in-china junk? Mad at the Chinese for their exports? Why do you buy them?

American Sinophobes should remember that “China has undergone considerable economic restructuring and market reforms, the consequence of which is a 300 million strong Chinese middle class. Poverty levels have receded from “53 percent in 1981 to 8 percent in 2001. Only about a third of the economy is now directly state-controlled. As of 2005, 70 percent of China’s GDP was in the private sector.” The Chinese financial system is duly being liberalized—banking is diversifying and stock markets are developing. Protections for private property rights are being strengthened as well.”

“China is changing. It is ‘out of the red’ in more ways than one. The US is changing too: It’s in the red and getting redder.”

How Is The Oink Sector Holding Up?

Debt, Economy, Government, Labor, Political Economy, Socialism, Taxation, The State

How surprised is everyone that, as Cato Institute scholars affirm once again, “Federal workers make substantially more than private workers, not less, in addition to having a large advantage in benefits.”

Says USA Today: “Federal employees earn higher average salaries than private-sector workers in more than eight out of 10 occupations, a USA TODAY analysis of federal data finds.”

“Accountants, nurses, chemists, surveyors, cooks, clerks and janitors are among the wide range of jobs that get paid more on average in the federal government than in the private sector.”

“Overall, federal workers earned an average salary of $67,691 in 2008 for occupations that exist both in government and the private sector, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. The average pay for the same mix of jobs in the private sector was $60,046 in 2008, the most recent data available.”

What’s more, “The number of federal workers earning $150,000 or more a year has soared tenfold in the past five years and doubled since President Obama took office, a USA TODAY analysis finds”.

“The fast-growing pay of federal employees has captured the attention of fiscally conservative Republicans who won control of the U.S. House of Representatives in last week’s elections. Already, some lawmakers are planning to use the lame-duck session that starts Monday to challenge the president’s plan to give a 1.4% across-the-board pay raise to 2.1 million federal workers.” … MORE.

[SNIP]

From “Life in the Oink Sector”: “In the private sector a worker is paid for his productivity. If he were overpaid—in other words, remunerated more than he produces—the proprietor would go belly up. No business means no jobs.”

“Set aside the question of whether productivity—output per unit of labor—is the appropriate gauge in an enterprise, government, that confiscates and distributes wealth, but produces nothing. Understand this: Backed by the power of the State, the sponger sector has unlimited access to income not its own—it has the power to tax, borrow and mint money out of thin air. With such usurped authority, why would public debt that runs to the trillions deter the ongoing orgy?”

“By the standards of honest, if unorthodox, accounting, government workers, moreover, don’t pay taxes, but are paid out of taxes. In other words, they pay taxes out of money confiscated from taxpayers, who, in turn, pay taxes twice: on their own income and on the income of members of the bureaucracy.”

At the very least, state workers should not be allowed to vote, since a group that is able to vote itself raises and other perks, will do so with a vengeance. Again, why the surprise? This is why government should not be a source of so many professional parallels. Privatize these positions, the market will sort out the rest.