Why I think we should be worried about nationalisation of medicine.

Good article on the Wall Street Journal, Why Government Can't Run a Business.

Couple of fun quotes on taxes

"Blessed are the young, for they shall inherit the national debt." --President Herbert Hoover (1874-1964)

"The difference between death and taxes is death doesn't get worse every time Congress meets." --American humorist Will Rogers (1879-1935)

"Settled" science of global warming?

I really liked this quote:

"President Obama has said that the science of global warming is 'beyond dispute,' and therefore settled. This is the justification for the imposition of a carbon cap-and-trade system that will cost $2 trillion. But Obama does not understand science. 'Settled science' is an oxymoron, and anyone who characterizes science as 'settled' or 'indisputable' is ignorant not only of science, but also history and philosophy. Aristotle, who lived and wrote in the fourth century B.C., was one of the greatest geniuses the world has ever known. He invented the discipline of logic, and founded the sciences of ecology and biology. Aristotle's physics were accepted as correct for nearly two thousand years. ... Aristotle taught that heavy objects fall faster than light ones. Over the centuries, a few unreasonable persons expressed skeptical concerns. But the consensus was that the physics of motion were described by Aristotle's dicta. The science was settled. Around the year 1591, an irascible young instructor at the University of Pisa demonstrated that Aristotle was wrong. He climbed to the top of the tower of Pisa and dropped cannonballs of unequal weight that hit the ground simultaneously. Aristotelean professors on the faculty were embarrassed. The university administration responded by not renewing Galileo's contract, thus ridding themselves of a troublemaker who challenged the accepted consensus. ... President Obama, a lawyer and politician, would now have us believe that the process of history has stopped. For the first time, scientific knowledge is not provisional and subject to revision, but final and settled. Skepticism, which has been the spur to all innovation and human progress, is unacceptable and must be condemned. But in fact, it is our awareness of what we do not know that determines our scientific level. ... Knowledge begins with skepticism and ends with conceit." --University of Oklahoma geologist David Deming

Jaguar inflation?

Listened to an entertaining 8 minute podcast Jaguar Inflation from the Mises Institute. The author creates a situation where the Federal Government decides everyone should have a Jaguar automobile and the disaster that follow.

Free Market Failure?

I just listened to Not Guilty as Charged: The Foolish Attempt to Blame the Free Market for the Economic Collapse and found it very interesting. Seems like the federal government is trying really hard not to take any blame for the economic problems.

Why Stimulus?

In an Imprimis article in January 2009, Burton W. Folsom, Jr.: Do We Need a New New Deal? I found a couple of interesting quotes. First was on the efforts to keep prices from falling, they were destroying crops:

What's worse, some New Deal programs had terrible unintended consequences. The Agricultural Adjustment Administration, for example, overhauled agriculture by paying farmers not to produce on part of their land. After farmers took the federal dollars, the U.S. developed shortages of the very crops taxpayers were paying farmers not to produce. By 1935, for example, the U.S. was importing almost 35 million bushels of corn, 13 million bushels of wheat, and 36 million pounds of cotton. Simultaneously, we had an army of bureaucrats in the Department of Agriculture to inspect farms (and even to do aerial photography) to ensure farmers were not growing the crops we were importing into the country.

I remember hearing of a case during the depression when a farmer who grew more wheat than he was supposed to, although he sold none of the wheat, he was tried under the commerce clause. What an abuse of justice.

The next quote was on the success of all the New Deal programs:

Henry Morgenthau, FDR's loyal Secretary of the Treasury, was frustrated at the persistence of double-digit unemployment throughout the 1930s. In May 1939, with unemployment at 20 percent, he exploded at the failed New Deal programs. "We have tried spending money," Morgenthau noted. "We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. . . . We have never made good on our promises. . . . I say after eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started. . . . And an enormous debt to boot!"

So now people are calling for a "new new deal" when they don't look back at how poorly the previous one worked. Why don't we learn from the past?

Interesting Podcast on Global Warming

I found the following audio podcast Climate of Extremes: The Global Warming Science They Don’t Want You to Know - Capitol Hill Briefing to be very interesting, worth listening to. In the end it seems like he thinks there is some warming happening, but nothing like the total gloom and doom so often spouted.