Loose Lips Sink Ships

Shoppers unfazed as man dies at Target

What a horrible sign of the times when people care more about getting to a sale than they do about saving another person’s life.  There seem to be more and more examples of this kind of behavior popping up.  A month or two ago there was a video from China of a toddler being hit by not one vehicle, but two vehicles and no one stopping to help the child.  How can people have such little concern for human life?  Our societies are crumbling morally and that is leading to numerous tangible examples.

Smoking-Gun Document Ties Policy To Housing Crisis

I find it to be irresponsible journalism and analysis on the part of the main stream media and government investigators that this story is still news.  This should have been the first area that people dug into to determine the cause of the subprime mortgage crisis and yet not many people know that this is the cause of the entire problem.

When are people going to learn that you can legislate “equality” or “fairness”?  Or more importantly, when are people going to use more sensible definitions of equality and fairness - definitions that don’t require measurement based on outcomes.

Dear Congress: Please Stop Robbing Us

It’s worth reading this article to get an idea of the unfair financial advantage that elected officials have put themselves in with comparison to the average person. So much for being “public servants”.

Unintended consequences of lowering salt in pretzels

I had a little fun with imagining the unintended consequences of a push by the government to lower people’s salt intake.  Read the article first and then continue on below.

1. The “voluntary reduction” of sodium in food won’t happen until there is a reduction in demand for high sodium products (I think that is economics).  Therefore the government will just have to mandate how much sodium we can take in.  It will match up nicely with mandating how much CO2 we can let out.

2.  When the government puts regulations on companies for how much sodium they can use (because they won’t be able to stop the individual), companies’ sales will fall.  Food companies, mining companies, transportation companies, and every other company in the supply chain will have sales fall.  They can then lay off workers because demand decreased.  But, the government will have a solution for that.  They’ll raise taxes on “the rich” to pay for an additional 12 months of unemployment benefits and get us up to 30+ months of unemployment.

3.  The food companies will search for a substitute for sodium.  By adding more spices, they’ll increase the cost of production and either decrease their profit margins (lay off more people) or increase the cost of things like soup (decrease demand, lay off more people).  Then fewer people will be able to afford things like soup.  That’s ok.  The government can then force companies to sell soup for less or raise taxes on “the rich” to pay for programs that allow everyone to afford soup which we all have a right to have.

4.  Because of the decreased demand in salt and corresponding decrease in revenues, the Salt Lobby will petition congress to provide subsidies for the salt companies so they can keep people employed.  That will increase costs to the companies using the salt.

5.  A company will come up with a salt substitute that everyone wants to use.  Demand will go through the roof and that company will become rich.  The Salt Lobby till ask the government to prop up the salt business through taxing the salt substitute company.  The salt substitute company will be declared a monopoly and have their business regulated because we can’t have people making obscene profits.  Not everyone will be able to get the salt substitute because the financial incentives aren’t aligned.  The government will then take over the business and try to supply the salt substitute.  They’ll declare a national state of emergency and take over patent rights to the substitute.

6.  The salt substitute will then turn out to have incredible long term side effects and give everyone Lou Gehrig’s Disease.  The government won’t take responsibility.  The original inventors will go to jail.  The congressmen and president will pat themselves on the back for getting rid of the evil business man.

7.  A small biotechnology company will then determine that they may have the technology to cure Lou Gehrig’s Disease.  Since the government runs all health care, there won’t be any incentive for the company to spend millions of dollars on developing the cure.

8.  Everyone dies.  At least salt won’t have killed us.

Blackouts Plague Energy-Rich Venezuela - NYTimes.com

Here is an excellent example of why having the government run business leads to rationing, poorer goods and services and the powerful getting more power.

Here's Why the Economy's Growing

It’s great that the economy grew, but the cost at which we grew seems far to great a price to pay.  We need the government to stop trying to spend our way out of a recession and prevent future tax payers from footing an enormous bill.

Promise of free money leads to scuffle between thousands in Detroit

This entire article is a very sad commentary on our society.  We have people fighting for money that our country doesn’t even have.  It so sad to hear more of these stories than stories of neighbors showing love to neighbors or of people overcoming with their own determination.  We simply have people becoming dependent on the government for everything in their lives - jobs, food, education, clothes, tv’s, parenting, housing.  Eventually all this social welfare is going to cause the government to collapse under all of its promises and the only people who will truly benefit are those at the top.

The National Endowment for the Art of Persuasion?

Here is a thoughtful review of one questionable government activity. It makes me nervous to see the government becoming more involved in directing organizations to act in ways outside of their stated missions.