How Conservatives Tackle Social Problems

I liked this piece in the Washington Post the other day, written by a scholar from the pragmatist-right American Enterprise Institute.  The author, Douglas Besharov, lists six principles of how a conservative approaches a social problems (and I encourage you to read his fuller explanation of all of these).

1. A preference for limited government
2. A desire to means-test or otherwise target government benefits
3. A concern about the behavioral consequences of assistance
4. A deference to mediating institutions
5. Respect for private choice, often in the form of markets
6. Humility bred from disappointing experiences -- and the likelihood of unintended consequences

He finishes strong as well:

When a problem seems bad enough, people often want to "do something," whether or not it is unproven or unlikely to succeed. Being conservative sometimes means seeing problems and deciding that nothing can be done -- at least not immediately. (That should not be the end of the inquiry. Being conservative includes a commitment to experimentation -- even with ideas with which one does not agree -- coupled with rigorous and honest evaluation.) These principles actually apply to any sound approach to social policymaking. One does not have to be conservative to be wary of unrealistic goals and the possible ill-effects of government intervention.

Chuck Norris Approved

If you haven't seen this ad for Mike Huckabee, you must.

Right now.

So I can just....not pay....?

Charlie Rangel says that we have a "voluntary tax system." Isn't that exciting?! Donald Luskin discusses this in a neat op-ed in today's Wall Street Journal (and it's not just neat because I am, or at least was, linked at the bottom):

Perhaps from Mr. Rangel's perspective, our tax system is indeed voluntary. After all, he chooses who pays taxes, how much they pay and how their money gets spent. If he wants to raise our taxes to support a $2 million earmark to create a Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service at the City College of New York, he can volunteer to do that -- but the rest of us have no such choice.

To be fair, our tax system is indeed voluntary in certain respects. For example, wealthy liberals like Warren Buffett, who call publicly for higher taxes on the rich in the name of fairness, can volunteer to pay more themselves any time they wish to do so. All Mr. Buffett has to do is send a check to Department G -- that's G for "gift" -- at the Bureau of the Public Debt in Parkersburg, W.Va.

But could it truly be a vountary system? Luskin says yes.

Why not try an experiment in which the tax system is made truly voluntary? Already 42 states (as well as the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico) raise revenues with lotteries, through which citizens voluntarily paid $57 billion last year. It's a long and noble tradition. Before the birth of Christ, the Han Dynasty ran lotteries to raise the revenues used to build the Great Wall of China.

Government could be entirely financed by voluntary taxation. Yes, the government would have to be small enough to make do, and citizens would have to be sufficiently public-minded about it. But all 13 original American colonies ran lotteries, and playing them was considered a civic duty. Proceeds from lotteries established Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Dartmouth, Princeton, and William and Mary -- and paid for the cannons that defeated England in the Revolutionary War.

It's that "small enough to make do" part that really throws some gunk in the works, though. Our elected officials are a bit allergic to that idea.


Read the whole thing here, and you should also check out Don Luskin's blog, The Conspiracy to Keep You Poor and Stupid.

Standing up to spending

At least one GOP leader gets the spending thing. John Boehner, the House Minority Leader, had an excellent letter to the editor in Monday's Washington Post arguing the same point I did in an earlier post - that the best way to "pay for" the elimination of the Alternative Minimum Tax isn't through new taxes, it's through spending restraint.

Congress doesn't have a revenue problem. Revenue is at an all-time high after the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, which have triggered economic growth that is "paying for" an AMT patch many times over. Rather, Congress has a spending problem, and raising taxes to "pay for" an AMT patch is simply a backdoor way to feed its addiction to pork.

He calls out several irresponsible earmarks that would at least make a dent in paying for the AMT.

I'm so glad to see Boehner singing the song of less spending. He needs to push more of his colleagues in this direction.

HT: Poor and Stupid

Quote of the Day

"If [your] child is 40 years of age and still living at home and says, 'hey mom and dad, you didn't give me my allowance this week,' you really haven't provided an atmosphere for a productive human being."

That's from Joe Manchin, Governor of West Virginia, discussing the dependence on government money in West Virginia. In that wild and wonderful state, 52% of state spending is done by the government sector. The quote is from a while back I think, but is in respond to a great book called Unleashing Capitalism: Why Prosperity Stops at the West Virginia Border and How to Fix It, which you can pick up through the West Virginia Policy Foundation.

Think about that 52% number for a moment, though - government money comes from taxpayers. Some of that money is going to be federal dollars, but a whole lot of it is drawn from in-state. So WV is giving money back - in the form of job assistance, welfare, subsidies, government jobs - to the very people it got money from in the first place. Money is going into the WV economy only after it is taken out of it first.

Private sector growth offers a different model, where someone else fronts the money for, say, a new car plant. The plant creates jobs, which creates money that doesn't cost WV citizens anything. Jobs provide skills, skills inspire entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs set up new businesses with private money, those new businesses create new jobs. The process repeats, the economy grows, and everyone, especially the middle and lower classes, wins.

Overnight change? No - only government can promise that. Sustainable change and long-term improvement? Yes - that's what the market does.

Trust People

Joe Biden, the marginally better Democrat candidate for president than the frontrunners, has said something we support whole-heartedly.

Sen. Joe Biden said in an interview at the New Hampshire Union Leader yesterday that too many Democrats, including the frontrunners for the presidential nomination, do not have faith in the American people.

“We’ve got to trust the American people more,” Biden said.

“I think they’ve really lost faith in the American people in terms of leveling with them,” he said of his leading rivals.

When he asks groups of Democrats if they think the American people are stupid because they elected George W. Bush twice, most respond that, yes, they do, he said. He said he thinks that attitude is a real problem for the Democrats, who fail to understand how smart and pragmatic the American people really are.

Absolutely! And how do we trust people more? Well, we certainly don't mandate that they volunteer, as another presidential candidate suggests; we assume they have the goodness in their heart to do this on their own. We let them manage their Social Security money in the way they see best, whether that's a public or a private investment solution. We assume that people in local communities know more about managing their own affairs than people in far off places do. If people fail once, well, that happens, and if they fail over and over and over then maybe there's a place for government to step in.

But you're right, Joe. Step one is to trust Real People - instead of government. If a leading candidate makes that argument, and does so passionately, I don't see how that candidates can fail next year.

Voters choose fiscal restrain in New Jersey

A recent ballot measure in New Jersey asked voters whether they wanted to approve $450 million dollars in bonds to fund stem cell research in the state. Despite wide-spread support for stem cell research in the state, and despite a similar measure passing in California a few years back, voters rejected the measure. This quote from a political consultant for the pro-funding side sums it up well:

Mr. Oster said that although polls conducted in July, shortly after Mr. Corzine signed legislation placing the measure on the ballot, showed that nearly 7 in 10 New Jersey residents supported the research, organizers in favor of the bill also noted than barely 4 in 10 supported using state money to pay for it.

Newsflash to the GOP (and to politicans of all stripes) - Real People understand the need for financial restraint. They don't want their money wasted when there are private solutions available.

Statists would like us to believe that if the government, particularly the federal government, does not fund stem cell research then no one will. Research by the Reason Foundation from a couple years ago shows that is not true.

Already there is nearly $4 billion in private and state monies committed to stem-cell research over the next decade, with another three-quarters of a billion dollars under active consideration.

That's some real money. My guess is that money is going to be used more judiciously and have more results demanded of it than government money will, and that means cures sooner.

Quote of the Day

From FoxNews' business guy, Neil Cavuto:

"It's about food. It's about your home. It's about your life. The government is worried about all of the above. All I'm saying is you should be worried they're worried. Here's why: They're telling you that you can't take care of yourself. You can't be trusted with what you put in your mouth or what you sign on the mortgage dotted line. So they'll tell you what to put in your mouth and they'll save you from what you signed on that dotted line. Does anyone see a trend here? Personal responsibility has now become government responsibility."

HT: GPPF

Lou Dobbs almost killed me

I had a near-death experience in the barber's chair today. Of all ironies, the hard-working Vietnamese immigrants that cut my hair had anti-immigrant bigot Lou Dobbs on their TV. I've grown so disdainful of his biased, short-sighted, illogical opinions as to physically recoil at the sound of his voice. The air was blasting so I couldn't hear his blathering....until, with hot foam lathered on my neck and a straight razor bearing down to clear it away, the air shut off and I could hear old Lou going off on another tirade.

As the razor scrapped across my neck, I froze and tried to tune him out, knowing that sooner or later he would say something so remarkably stupid that I would involuntarily shutter, and the razor would slip and that would be the end of me. Death-by-idiocy.

An example of the demagoguery I had heard on the show already: one of the FOOLs (Friends of Old Lou) was talking about how partisanship today was at an all-time high - all because of Iraq, mind you - and that it is higher now than it was during the height of the Vietnam War.

But let's think about that for a moment. The height of the war was, what, 1967-1968. Lyndon Johnson, a Texas Democrat, was president. He led a Democrat-controlled House and a Democrat-controlled Senate, all of whom felt committed to this war in Vietnam. But you can't expect the Republican party, traditionally the more strong-defense, support-the-troops party, to be yelling and screaming about "Johnson lied, people died" and how the Gulf of Tonkin was a sham. No, they supported the war effort and the president leading the war effort.

Reverse the parties in power, and you'd likely see a partisanship on par with today's tone.

The problems with Rangel's tax bill

Real Clear Politics has a good update on the Rangel tax bill, specifically focused on Republican plans to use the bill against Democrats in the 2008 elections. The article expands on some flaws that I didn't realize:

Mr. Rangel's plan would slap a hefty 4 percent surtax on single taxpayers who earn more than $150,000 and on married couples filing jointly who make more than $100,000 each. In effect, they are "putting a massive new marriage penalty into the tax code," Ways and Means Republicans charged. [emphasis added]

Moreover, under Mr. Rangel's bill "you can kiss your deductions goodbye," they add. The surtax would be levied on adjusted gross income before any deductions for charitable contributions, mortgage interest, medical costs, and other expenses.

But the new surtax Mr. Rangel wants to impose on working Americans would also affect an estimated 24 million small businesses who pay their taxes through individual tax returns. Many will lose deductions that lower their taxes on business income, while incorporated businesses will benefit from a rate cut, making it harder for small employers to compete with the Wal-Marts of this world. Mr. Rangel would also slap his surtax on capital gains, effectively raising the 15 percent long-term capgains rate by another 4 percent or more for millions of investors.

Jack Kemp offers some important advice to Republicans ready to pounce on this. Says Kemp:

"It isn't enough to be against Rangel's bill, we have to offer our own proposals. He has, to his credit, begun a debate over tax reform that lowers the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 30 percent, but pays for it by raising taxes on capital gains and capital investment which is a bad idea."

Sounds familiar. But based on recent trends, such sound advice will, of course, be completely ignored.

Governmental Success

Seth Godin lists the points below under the heading "Small Business Success," but it's something we could all take to heart.

Three things you need:

1) the ability to abandon a plan when it doesn't work
2) the confidence to do the right thing even when it costs you money in the short run
3) enough belief in other people that you don't try to do everything yourself

Specifically, I would love to see government applying these. Government is typically very good at the 2nd rule, but usually at the expense of rules 1 and 3.

I'm not so libertarian as to think government serves no purpose. There are some "right things" that government should do, and when it is doing them it should spend money. But when things aren't working as planned or when there are existing market solutions to problems, the government needs to step back, re-evaluate, and either exit gracefully or reorganize (generally the former).

Hopefully hate speech is banned too

This is true:

A 13-year-old junior high school student was given two days of detention after school officials spotted her hugging friends after school last Friday.

Megan Coulter, an eighth-grade student at Mascoutah Middle School, was hugging her friends goodbye after school Friday when vice principal, Randy Blakely, saw her and told her she would receive two after-school detentions.

Blakely had previously warned Coulter that she was in violation of the school's policy on public displays of affection after she was seen hugging a student at a football game.

The school's policy says that “displays of affection should not occur on the campus at any time.”

Are we really trying to sensitize and sterilize society this much??

HT: OpinionJournal

Conversations you only hear in DC

Heard in front of the Mayflower Hotel in Washington.  A man introducing his wife to another man:

"He was Ambassador to Sweden when I was Ambassador to Denmark."

Ah.  Of course. 

A winner's view on global warming

I haven't blogged about the ludicrous selection by the Nobel Peace Prize committee of Al Gore and the IPCC for this year's award because I've been so absolutely appalled by it and have found silence a helpful way of dealing with the ridiculousness of it all.

One of the award winners (as a member of the IPCC) had an excellent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal this week discussing his own disappointment with the alarmism that has built up around this issue.

I'm sure the majority (but not all) of my IPCC colleagues cringe when I say this, but I see neither the developing catastrophe nor the smoking gun proving that human activity is to blame for most of the warming we see. Rather, I see a reliance on climate models (useful but never "proof") and the coincidence that changes in carbon dioxide and global temperatures have loose similarity over time.

There are some of us who remain so humbled by the task of measuring and understanding the extraordinarily complex climate system that we are skeptical of our ability to know what it is doing and why. As we build climate data sets from scratch and look into the guts of the climate system, however, we don't find the alarmist theory matching observations. (The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration satellite data we analyze at the University of Alabama in Huntsville does show modest warming -- around 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit per century, if current warming trends of 0.25 degrees per decade continue.)

In the piece, he helpfully reminds us that the true heart of this debate is a debate over energy, and that so many of the called upon changes will do drastic bits of damage to our economic prosperity by significantly increasing the costs of energy production while doing precious little for climate.



Christy is an excellent scientists, but he also brings a real-world perspective to this discussion.

My experience as a missionary teacher in Africa opened my eyes to this simple fact: without access to energy, life is brutal and short. The uncertain impacts of global warming far in the future must be weighed against disasters at our doorsteps today. Bjorn Lomborg's Copenhagen Consensus 2004, a cost-benefit analysis of health issues by leading economists (including three Nobelists), calculated that spending on health issues such as micronutrients for children, HIV/AIDS and water purification has benefits 50 to 200 times those of attempting to marginally limit "global warming."

Given the scientific uncertainty and our relative impotence regarding climate change, the moral imperative here seems clear to me.

Here here.

Cut through the clutter

The spam filter on my email is pretty good, so most of what ends up in my spam folder is from companies I've signed up with or bought something from.

Most of the time I don't read the solicitations from Crate and Barrel and Macy's and all the airlines that end up in my spam box. They have long titles that all blur together, because of course they know I'm not going to open their email, so they feel they need to cram as much into that subject line as they can.

An email in my spam box today cut through the usual clutter. An email from the Hard Times Cafe had an extremely compelling subject line: "You are awesome!"

Well, thank you. You're too kind.

There was no special deal or coupon in the email, just an invitation to come into their place of business and watch the Redskins game this weekend. To come be a part of the gang in your friendly neighborhood wings-and-beer place. And I opened the email, and considered a restaurant I hadn't thought about it a while.

And why? Because they appealed to the one thing that everyone cares about - their own sense of self worth. Everyone wants to be liked, and people like people who like them.

So go out there and like your customers. They'll appreciate it, and you'll probably appreciate the results.

I'll write for you

With Hollywood's writers set to go on strike, I am happy to offer my services to those shows who may want to experiment with amateur talent.

I bring a libertarian edge and droll wit that will certainly spice up....just about anything on television. Yes, my first few scripts may be duds (so perhaps I should start with sit-coms), but soon I will have honed my skills to be writing for the best television has to offer. In this new digital age, it is cheaper for you and me to work remotely from Northern Virginia and assemble a small team to assist with the scriptwriting.

Plus, I will never unionize.

Serious inquiries may email me at petersrole at yahoo dot com. Non-serious ones can email me there too.

Important Hollywood producers, you have it in your power to save television. I look forward to saving it with you.

College costs

Marketing guru Seth Godin rants about the cost of college today:

According to The Chosen, an exhaustive study of college admissions, there's no measurable difference between the outcomes of education with the most exclusive schools and the next few tiers. Graduates don't end up happier. They don't end up with better paying jobs. They don't end up richer or even healthier. The whole thing is a sham (which costs a quarter of a million dollars a person at the top end).

Part of his assessment is that what really separates the "best" schools from the "average" schools is marketing and branding. This make sense, particularly, as he points out, among the baby boomer generation, who always want "what's best."

Godin's rant hits at a topic that Dr. Richard Vedder of Ohio University has been ranting about - from an academic perspective - for some time. His book, Going Broke By Degree, dove into this topic extensively, and his Center for College Affordability and Productivity spends its days trying to figure out why college costs have spun out of control even as the efficiency and effectiveness of college education seems stagnant. If this is a topic that interests you, CCAP, particularly its blog, will provide you with lots of information and insight, such as this suggestion to control costs.

Principles matter

From the Politico, the People magazine of politics:

Only 36 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents say the GOP "does an excellent or good job" of "standing up for traditional GOP positions" on issues like reducing the size of government, cutting taxes, and promoting conservative social issues.

That's a decline of 25 points since July 2004. In fact, it's the lowest Republican rating for the GOP since Pew began tracking the issue in 2000.

If it turns out to be a subway race between Giuliani and Clinton, Pew further found that two-thirds of Republicans say their vote for the Republican would be more accurately described as a vote "against Clinton" and "not for Giuliani."

Principles matter. Poll after poll after poll - for three years now - is telling the Republican party leadership they need to fix their tune on solid conservative principles and yet they continue to defy that. If they don't get with it, why shouldn't they get their clocks cleaned next year?

Candy welfare for tomorrow's CEOs

Should you give candy to trick-or-treaters who aren't wearing costumes?

On the surface I say no, but I get mushy on that when I consider the incetives. I typically believe in following traditions wholly or not at all, so if you are going to trick-or-treat, put on a costume and be part of the game or don't go at all. Showing up at my door dressing in the same thing you wore to school this morning is, at best, candy welfare, and at worse it's a Jesse Jackson-style shakedown.

I think kids that go without costumes know what they are doing, in so far as bucking tradition but demanding candy anyway. It's rebellious. Therefore, rather than see it is as a risk and thus being understanding when I, the gracious giver of candy, decide not to give them a treat, these rebellious ones have an incentive to maintain their rebelliousness, which likely spells the end of my pumpkin or, worse, my comfy porch chairs.

So the downside - loss of the serenity of my porch or yard - is significantly worse than looking the other way and begrudgingly handing over a piece of candy. A theory worth testing, to be sure (and likely to be tested while renting), but if we're after maximizing our own economic benefit, being extorted by these costumeless children seems to be the best way to go.

But is it right for the long-term? Really, there's not much difference between the unfrocked children and bad-actor companies like Enron or Global Crossing. Both are acting within a framework - the Halloween spirit and the corporate structure - were there are standards and practices to be followed. Yes, some of the rules and constructs of those frameworks are dumb and we have to work to get them changed while still following them. But some rules are there because, without them, you fail to add real value to society.

Enron, for example, seemed to be creating jobs and wealth for thousands and thousands of people, when it reality it was doing the accounting equivalent to trick-or-treating without a costume, going through the motions and seeking the profit but not staying within the spirit of the rules.

Even if I lose a pumpkin or a lawn chair, by not giving these kids candy, maybe I can change their long-term incentive and get them playing within the spirit of the holiday. So no candy for them next year - but maybe I'll slip them some Enron stock.

Who's paying for whose mistake?

Professor Don Boudreaux makes a helpful observation about Representative Charlie Rangel's attempt to eliminate the Alternative Minimum Tax. Framing the mission creep of the AMT as a "mistake" that Congress appears ready to correct, he notes:

Given that the current operation of the AMT is a mistake, why do Rep. Charles Rangel and so many others talk of the need to "pay for" fixing the AMT? A merchant who mistakenly overcharges customers is obliged to refund the money and stop overcharging, period.

The problem, of course, is that Congress has already spent the money. But I guess they could just dip into those unsecured Social Security monies to pay for things like they did in the good ol' days.