“It’s growing. Obamacare is really not helping the youth. It will tax them for health insurance they don’t need, AND it will also make it more difficult for them to find full time jobs.”
http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2013/09/part-time-employment-as-share-of-total.html
“The US Treasury said Wednesday the government’s massive response to the economic crisis five years ago paid off, avoiding a catastrophic breakdown of the financial system. In a report marking the anniversary of the bankruptcy of investment bank Lehman Brothers — which snowballed into the worst crisis since the 1930s — the Treasury defended deploying hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to save other banks, major financial institutions and auto companies. While the rescue effort required piling up government debt, it was necessary, said Treasury officials who briefed reporters.”
“Centralization is tailor-made for sociopaths gaining power. Sociopaths seek power over others, and centralization gives them the perfect avenue to control over millions or even entire nations. Even worse (from the view of non-sociopaths), their perverse abilities are tailor-made for excelling in office and national politics via ruthless elimination of rivals and enemies and grandiose appeals to national greatness, ideological purity, etc. As C.D. points out, the ultimate protection against sociopathology is to minimize the power held in any one agency, organization or institution.”
http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.de/2013/05/centralization-and-sociopathology.html
“Mary Schapiro, the former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, must take us for fools. Four months after leaving the SEC, Schapiro is joining a firm stuffed to the gills with former government financial-services regulators peddling their knowledge of Washington’s regulatory thicket to the banks and financial-services companies they once oversaw. Promontory, founded in 2001 by Eugene Ludwig, a former comptroller of the currency, has become a sort of mini-version of Fannie Mae in its heyday. About 100 of the 400 Promontory employees are former Washington regulators.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-07/where-bank-regulators-go-to-get-rich.html
“A recent analysis published in the Criminal Justice Ethics academic journal suggests when technicians perform forensic analysis of blood and other evidence for cases such as drunk driving, the results can be influenced by built-in financial incentives to produce a conviction, arguing that even if false conviction rates are very low, a 3 percent error rate could put 33,000 innocent individuals behind bars every year. The primary problem, according to the paper, is that fourteen states reward crime labs with a bonus for each conviction they generate. North Carolina pays a $600 bounty ‘upon conviction’ to the law enforcement agency whose lab ‘tested for the presence of alcohol.'”
http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/42/4203.asp
“It’s hardly radical libertarianism to reduce unemployment benefits from four years to two years, but it is rather significant when even politicians realize that it’s not good – as illustrated by these powerful cartoons – to lure people into the wagon when nations need more people pulling the wagon. It’s a bit depressing that Denmark actually ranks higher than the United States in the most recent Economic Freedom of the World rankings. Yes, their welfare state is too big, their tax system is a nightmare, and they are saddled with one of the world’s most expensive bureaucracies, but Denmark has ultra-free market policies in other areas.”
“In a recent New York Times column Krugman pronounced Obamacare a success before it has even been tried. Why? Because the premiums to be charged in California health insurance exchange are apparently lower than what the experts thought they would be. Aah… let’s see… Everybody thought health insurance premiums would be 100% higher. In fact, they are only 60% higher… Hooray… Break out the champagne! I’ll come back to these price comparisons in a minute. For the moment, I would ask: What kind of an economist would celebrate an expected price decline without asking what happened to quantity or quality? This is an Econ 101 mistake.”
“Let’s take the example of a single mom with two kids, 1 and 4. She has a $29,000 a year job, putting the kids in daycare during the day while she works. As the above chart – via Gary Alexander, Pennsylvania’s secretary of Public Welfare — shows, the single mom is better off earning gross income of $29,000 with $57,327 in net income and benefits than to earn gross income of $69,000 with net income & benefits of $57,045. It would sure be tempting for that mom to keep the status quo rather than take the new job, even though the new position might lead to further career advancement and a higher standard of living.”
“The president gave a speech on August 22 in Buffalo outlining his proposal to ‘reform’ the student loan program. He acknowledged that the program has some problems, but assured the audience they are easily fixed. Just take the principles behind Obamacare and apply them to education. The president personally ‘guaranteed’ that his proposals would make college more affordable. We don’t have a 2,000 page bill in Congress yet, but it’s all quite familiar: government will take even tighter control of higher education just as it has taken even tighter control of medicine, and use Obamacare as its operating manual.”
http://www.mises.org/daily/6518/
“Drug dealers are not going to obey laws that supposedly control guns. If you want to get drug dealers to stop buying guns, then you had better vote to de-criminalize drugs. But liberals want to criminalize guns, and conservatives want to criminalize drugs. If you think this argument makes no sense, then don’t expect liberals to respond to this argument: ‘People who are prepared to defy the laws against murder aren’t going to obey laws against owning guns or large-capacity magazines.’ Cartels want above-market income on state-protected turf. This takes guns. The debate is over who gets to carry the guns legally, and who will carry them illegally.”
http://teapartyeconomist.com/2013/09/05/guns-badges-cartels/