free market

Applied Liberalism

Mark Noonan28 Comments

Liberal, Democrat governor; liberal, Democrat legislature; tax hikes…and what do you get?  From the Illinois Policy Institute:

In a trend that continues to worsen, more Illinoisans found themselves unemployed in the month of July.

Illinois lost more jobs during the month of July than any other state in the nation, according to the most recent Bureau of Labor Statistics report. After losing 7,200 jobs in June, Illinois lost an additional 24,900 non-farm payroll jobs in July. The report also said Illinois’s unemployment rate climbed to 9.5 percent. This marks the third consecutive month of increases in the unemployment rate.

Illinois started to create jobs as the national economy began to recover. But just when Illinois’s economy seemed to be turning around, lawmakers passed record tax increases in January of this year. Since then, Illinois’s employment numbers have done nothing but decline…

This is entirely unsurprising – in fact, it was predicted in many quarters.  Why on earth should business expand or even remain in Illinois if they are to be taxed higher than elsewhere?  Do you liberals out there really think that higher taxes are just so much water off the business duck’s back?  I mean, seriously – tell us:  did you really expect that things would get better after a tax hike?

Over in Wisconsin the conservative, Republican governor and legislature took the opposite course – and it is paying off in jobs growth.  Anyone want to bet that some of those new, Wisconsin jobs are old, Illinois jobs?  Not like its all that far to move.  This isn’t rocket science – make something more expensive and there will be less of it being used…Illinois made having employees more expensive, so less employees are being used.

As I’ve said before, the dichotomy between the States being governed by liberalism and those by conservatism will be immensely instructive for a generation of Americans.  In practical application, the people are seeing the results.  Those States with the most liberalism are doing worse than those States with the most conservatism…and as time goes on, this will merely become more pronounced…and when the next election rolls around, I think we’ll see some startling results in the liberal States.

HAT TIP:  Mish’s

Another Obama Business Dies

Mark Noonan9 Comments

If Obama lauds it, it will die – from NBC Bay Area:

Solyndra, a major manufacturer of solar technology in Fremont, has shut its doors, according to employees at the campus…

…Solyndra was touted by the Obama administration as a prime example of how green technology could deliver jobs. The President visited the facility in May of last year and said  “it is just a testament to American ingenuity and dynamism and the fact that we continue to have the best universities in the world, the best technology in the world, and most importantly the best workers in the world. And you guys all represent that. ”

The federal government offered $535 million in low cost loan guarantees from the Department of Energy. NBC Bay Area has contacted the White House asking for a statement…

Government can’t deliver jobs – it can’t even pick which company will be solvent a year later.  The only proper role of government in the economy is as a facilitator of a honest and free market…after that, it is up to the people to decide what works and what doesn’t.  Maybe Solyndra’s technology will eventually catch on or maybe it will remain a white elephant…but there is no way for government to know, and any attempt by government to make it work only ensures it will fail…because if you subsidize something, you’re just going to ensure that it never developes enough strength to make it on its own.

Please learn the lesson, liberals…you can’t control the market.  Sure, you can make certain that everyone is being honest; sure you can make the paths of the inventor, manufacturer, investor and consumer smooth…but you can’t choose the path and you can’t force people on to it.  Leave it alone – it will all be ok; it happens all of its own accord, if you just leave it alone.

The War Against Economic Freedom

Mark Noonan24 Comments

From Points and Figures:

Last night I went to see the documentary Farmageddon in Chicago. I also stayed for the full panel discussion…
…This documentary illustrates the plight of the organic farmer, specifically the organic dairy farmer. If a dairy farmer wants to sell raw milk, they will be run out of business and many times imprisoned by the federal bureaucracy. The USDA actively tries to run Raw Milk Producers out of the business. They work closely with agents from state agricultural agencies.

The documentary shows film of agents descending on various organic farms and outlets, guns drawn, SWAT teams present. It’s straight out of science fiction and something that you can’t believe happens in America. I can understand a huge police presence when going after a drug lord, but a family farmer? Sure, farmers keep guns but in my experience they aren’t violent people…

Why does this happen? Because we have built a corporate and government system which is forcefully opposed to a free market.  The market is where people go to buy – what is in the market is whatever people try to sell.  With reasonable regulations for genuine safety, people are supposed to broadly be able to decide what they will buy in the market and what they will sell.  The trouble with this rather common-sense ideal of the market is that it cuts in to the profits of the largest sellers and by giving people choice is annoys Big Government which prefers that you buy what the government wants you to buy.

Its not just organic milk producers.  Time and time again over my life I’ve seen the heavy club of government working in tandem with established business interests to crush market place upstarts.  If you ever wondered why we’ve only got 3 US auto makers – instead of 30, as the size of the American auto market would indicate – it is because Big Government and Big Corporation have set things up so that no one else can enter the market…except, of course, for big, foreign outfits who can afford to grease the legislative and regulatory wheels.  What the final result of all this has been is a progressive constriction on entry in to the market place – ultimately, a restriction on the ability of average Americans to create new wealth.

All of this utter nonsense of safety regulations, lawsuits, warning labels, etc works out to be nothing more than restraint of trade – and a restraint of trade which ensures easy profits for Big Corporation and a steady stream of donations to politicians in favor of Big Government (Big Union is in there, too…a sort of hybrid of Big Government and Big Corporation, working both sides of the street, as it were).   For 100,000 years or so the human race managed to consume milk products and we never died out – some how or another with out a single regulation from the FDA, humanity survived milk consumption.  The bottom line is that milk is food…a sort of food human beings are very used to eating.  Of course, like all human activities, eating food does carry a risk.  But, then again, life is risk…and, in the end, you never get out of it alive, anyway.

Don’t get me wrong here – I’m no libertarian arguing for a completely unregulated market, but what regulation there is must be there to ensure honesty and dignity.  If it starts getting in to deciding what you will buy, then it is a negation of the market place.  If someone wants to buy raw milk, then as long as the seller is honest about his product, then government has no interest in the transaction.  So, too, with all other economic transactions…as long as no one is defrauded or degraded (a human being cannot sell a human being – even if that human being is himself), then government should, for the most part, keep hands-off.

When I speak of freeing up our economy, this is what I mean – getting rid of the government and the corporations who shackle the economy.  We are bound hand and foot…and thus our people are growing poor, our dependent class is growing and foreign competitors are starting to catch us up.  We can fix this – but to do so Big Government and Big Corporation must be brought to heel.