Fear of a free future

Michael Barone had some thoughts on the SOTU speech. (Thanks to Glenn Reynolds for the pointer.)

Obama’s Antique Vision of Technological Progress.

Barack Obama, like all American politicians, likes to portray himself as future-oriented and open to technological progress. Yet the vision he set out in his State of the Union address is oddly antique and disturbingly static.

Read the whole thing.

A lot of the speech was like finding an article in a magazine from 1930 about what the year 2000 would be like. The left can't let go of the dream of a command economy, even though command economies always fail. The knowledge problem is not amenable to wishful thinking. Over-regulation stifles activity of all kinds. How many nuclear plants could be under construction now if even half the money from the stimulus programs had been put into a program of construction? Killing the coal and oil industries without replacing them is a recipe for poverty. Lefties fear prosperity because poor people are easier to rule. Lefties fear technology because technology can lead to prosperity. You don't find computers in private hands in Communist countries. You didn't use to find typewriters, copiers or mimeographs, either.

Obama's EPA turning off the water to California's Central Valley is poverty by decree. It's not of the same magnitude as Stalin's Holodomor, or decreed famine, in the Ukraine in the 1930's, but it's the same type of thing. Shutting down West Virginia's largest coal mine is another move to promote poverty. And these moves do not have only local effects. They raise the prices of food and energy to the whole country, and indeed the world.

Update: Rick at Wizbang links to William O'Keefe at the Examiner: "Setting a goal to raise energy prices seems to be the last thing we would want to do as a nation." Yet it is the Administration's policy.

"Suffocated by Red Tape"

This morning's email brought a link to Suffocated By Red Tape – 12 Ridiculous Regulations That Are Almost Too Bizarre To Believe at Economic Collapse. I had heard of some of these, had not heard of others. They make more of an impression gathered together into a bunch. A few samples:

#1 The state of Texas now requires every new computer repair technician to obtain a private investigator’s license. In order to receive a private investigator’s license, an individual must either have a degree in criminal justice or must complete a three year apprenticeship with a licensed private investigator. If you are a computer repair technician that violates this law, or if you are a regular citizen that has a computer repaired by someone not in compliance with the law, you can be fined up to $4,000 and you can be put in jail for a year.

#2 The city of Philadelphia now requires all bloggers to purchase a $300 business privilege license. The city even went after one poor woman who had earned only $11 from her blog over the past two years.

#8 A U.S. District Court judge slapped a 500 dollar fine on Massachusetts fisherman Robert J. Eldridge for untangling a giant whale from his nets and setting it free. So what was his crime? Well, according to the court, Eldridge was supposed to call state authorities and wait for them do it.

Go over there for the rest, an Institute for Justice video, and some discussion of opportunity cost. If the government were serious about stimulating the economy, much of the current regulatory regime, at all levels from Federal to local, could be yanked out by the roots.

"The [Democratic] party's candidates are like brides of Dracula …"

Daniel Henninger mentions Calvin Coolidge, the Form 1099 expansion, cap-and-trade, the EPA, public sector unions, and some other things that have been on my mind, in a look at the Democrats' anti-business attitude and activities.

His conclusion may be over-optimistic.

Thanks to Maggie's Farm.

Doctor Zero cuts through the claptrap: "No more control"

Everyone who gets elected thinks he or she is smart enough to run the system. In a free market, nobody runs the system. If somebody is running the system, it's not a free market. Doctor Zero at Hot Air:

Political control is what’s killing us. It is expressed in hundreds of ways: high tax rates with carefully tailored exceptions, massive bailouts, laws rigged to favor government-controlled industries, restrictions on resource development, and a vast poppy field of subsidies and penalties. The Democrats have added thousands of pages of fabulously expensive legislation since Obama took office. Two messages echo through those pages: Obey and be rewarded. Resist and be punished.

Hands off!

Hope you like your house the way it is

Remodeling will become much more expensive, starting April 22. Small contractors might as well close up shop now. Neo-neocon has the story, and the comments: Next on Obama’s hit list: small contractors.

I can't recall another American President who thought that prosperity was a Bad Thing, and worked so actively against it.

Stossel on Hayek's Road

The Road to Serfdom, that is. One of the necessary books. At Amazon in text, or on the web, illustrated and condensed. John Stossel discussed it for an hour — television hour, that is, about 44 minutes. UK Libertarian has the whole thing, in parts.

Found in parentheses

Glenn Reynolds linked a few days ago to this piece by James Pethokoukis, What Ben Nelson didn't tell Nebraskans. It's a good enough article on Nelson's omissions about why he became Vote # 60 for ObamaCare, but what left me feeling gobsmacked, after Reading The Whole Thing, was this bit, in parentheses, near the end:

John Williams of Shadow Government Statistics calculates that using Generally Accepted Accounting Principles as public corporations do, the total 2009 budget deficit would be roughly $8.8 trillion, not the $1.4 trillion reported on a cash basis.

Good grief!

Disambiguation: Walter J. "John" Williams of Shadow Stats is not Walter E. Williams of George Mason University.

Can we save ourselves?

Pull back from the brink? Not jump off the bridge?

Joel Kotkin discusses Copenhagen, what's happening, who benefits. Capping Emissions, Trading On The Future: The West's goals in Copenhagen are tantamount to suicide. Thanks to Glenn Reynolds.

Laffer on taxes and monetary policy

In the WSJ.

The damage caused by high taxation during the Great Depression is the real lesson we should learn. A government simply cannot tax a country into prosperity. If there were one warning I'd give to all who will listen, it is that U.S. federal and state tax policies are on an economic crash trajectory today just as they were in the 1930s. Net legislated state-tax increases as a percentage of previous year tax receipts are at 3.1%, their highest level since 1991; the Bush tax cuts are set to expire in 2011; and additional taxes to pay for health-care and the proposed cap-and-trade scheme are on the horizon.…

My hope is that the people who are running our economy do look to the Great Depression as an object lesson. My fear is that they will misinterpret the evidence and attribute high unemployment and the initial decline in prices to tight money, while increasing taxes to combat budget deficits.

Depends on whether "the people who are running our economy" have prosperity as a goal.

Tyler Cowen on Obamacare

How to write about legislation that is not really there? The Democrats' health reform bills will not have a definite form until after they are passed in both houses and go through reconciliation. But one has to try.

How an Insurance Mandate Could Leave Many Worse Off

AMERICANS seem to like the idea of broadening health insurance coverage, but they may not want to be forced to buy it. With health care costs high and rising, such government mandates would make many people worse off.

The proposals now before Congress would require just about everyone to buy health insurance or to get it through their employers — which would generally result in lower wages. In other words, millions of people would be compelled to spend lots of money on something they previously did not want, at least not at prevailing prices.

Estimates of this burden vary, but for a family of four it could range up to $14,000 a year over the next decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Right now, many Americans take the gamble of going without insurance, just as many of us take our chances with how much we drive or how little we exercise.

The paradox is this: Reform advocates start with anecdotes about the underprivileged who are uninsured, then turn around and propose something that would hurt at least some members of that group.

The Times does not see fit to link to Prof. Cowen's blog, Marginal Revolution.

Norman Borlaug, R.I.P.

A Nobel Peace Prize winner who deserved it. The real "Green Revolutionary." 1914—2009.

He left the world a better place than he found it.

Secret origin revealed: the shallowness of Paul Krugman

He read Isaac Asimov's Foundation books, loved them, and failed to understand them. Understood about the first twenty percent or so, the setup of Hari Seldon's idea of psychohistory. If he'd been paying attention through the rest of the stories, he would have seen that psychohistory was doomed to fail.

This explains much.

TigerHawk has the story, and the comments.

And Ramesh Ponnuru has something to say.

It's a pity his school librarian didn't give him some Heinlein.