Some interesting facts about stimulus

Reason magazine have a very interesting article about the effects of stimulus. One of my main criticisms of stimulus (and the whole nonsense of Keynesian economics which gives as fictional multipliers effects, demand deficits and deflationary spirals ) is that the political leaders and supporters of stimulus never let themselves be in a position to be proven wrong. Which is the true sign of an ideologue.

If the economy continues to slump, jobs are shed, GDP falls, then the stimulus wasn't big enough.
If the economy grows, then the stimulus is said to work.

In America, the stimulus isn't working. Sometimes, very vague but optimistic predictions are made as the stimulus is introduced.. and it can be shown that they have fallen wide of the mark when looking back at the data.

My most recent analysis found that the total number of jobs the government attributed to stimulus spending as of April was 682,000. Factoring in stimulus dollars spent up to that point, the average cost of these jobs was $282,000.

That’s a lot of money. Worse, four-fifths of these jobs were in the public sector. This outcome is far afield from the administration’s original promise that the stimulus would create 3.5 million jobs over two years, 90 percent of them in the private sector.

...

....

The data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics in June, then, were bad news. (See the chart.) They showed that since the passage of the stimulus bill, the private sector has lost 2.55 million jobs while the federal government gained 416,000.

Away for work

Blogging has been extremely light lately, and I apologise.
Ever since starting a new job in Feb, there has been little spare time to devote to blogging. And there are plenty of stories that deserve attention.

From Kevin Rudd's sacking, to Julia Gillard's snap election announcement, to the myriad of stupid policies being proposed by meddling "public servants", there is no end to my daily frustration at how the government and its actions are treated as the essence of society and the definition of newsworthiness for our brain-dead media.

Socialism, and the idea that governments can and should spend a large chunk of our money on things that we need, is not a rational philosophy and is far more crazed than many perverted cults and sects. No matter how often governments prove that they are incompetent, no matter how many hundreds of billions they gather and spend on stupid things, and mismanage our wealth, squander our taxes and introduce red tape into our every day lives, the people seem to focus on who is currently PM, the head honcho of the government and not the abhorrent things that it does.

Expensive school halls, people killed by deadly insulation, a centralisation of the health system in Canberra, handouts to parents and family groups and whoever else puts their hands up, bailouts, stimulus spending, handouts to home owners.. its all just a massive waste and a tragic mess.

Right now, I am in Norway, and from today's experience, I'll guarantee that it is no socialist paradise. Five of my co-workers in the cafeteria all agreed that taxes (48% + 7.5% health levy) are too high in this country. They discourage people from working, and they didn't create equality anyway.
But this morning, my own personal experience with the Norwegian postal service, a government monopoly, got my blood boiling.

You see, I commited the *crime* of ordering a mobile phone online. It arrived in Norway, and instead of having it delivered to my hotel, I received a letter from the post office about tax and customs, and collecting it from their post centre.
I wasted 40 minutes of my time travelling there, to encounter layers of bureacracy, incompetence and extortion.

• I take a number, and proceed to the counter with my letter and my passport. Guy #1 explains that VAT is payable (about $150 worth). It was 25% based on the price on my invoice, which includes postage. I asked them why VAT was payable on the postage as well as the item, and they said "yes, it is payable". He told me to proceed to the collection counter to get my item.
• At the collection counter, I meet Guy #2, who goes out back and looks for my parcel for 5 minutes. He comes back, and instead of handing it over, tells me to take a number again and go back to the first counter to do the paperwork.
• Back at the first counter, I meet Guy #3. He also agrees that the system is too complex, but needs my passport. He tells me to sit down for 15 minutes whilst he busily types away and enters all my details into their system. 2 other co-workers are standing around behind the counter just chatting over a coffee and having a laugh. 15 minutes later, he explains that I have to pay the VAT, but when I leave Norway, I can get a stamp at the airport to show the items have been taken out of the country. ONLY THEN can I write a letter to the customs agency with the stamp and paperwork to APPLY to get the VAT refunded. Meaning it would take a few weeks !! He stamps my papers, gives me the passport back, and I proceed to the collection counter.
• Guy #2 comes out again.. He asks me if I am paying the total by card. I explained that I would pay the VAT with cash and opened my wallet to start counting. Then he drops a bombshell. There was a processing fee and a payment fee !! They added up to nearly $40. Now I knew I wouldn't over have a chance of getting this money back, so I started complaining and said that its too much, and that I shouldn't have to pay it.
• I was left with only one option, to refuse to pay and have them return the item back to sender. It would be cheaper for me to post it out to Australia then deal with these pricks, and on principle, I didn't want to pay these communist technocrats for their meddling.

I let each and every one of these paper-pushing idiots know that this isn't how normal countries behave, and this isn't how you should treat people. You cannot just shake-down and extort money out of people to fund these public sector parasites.

Furthermore, this system of VAT across Europe is overly complex and ridiculous. It is extremely difficult to have it refunded, it requires 2 or 3 rounds of paperwork.

Back to the Scandinavian system... social democracy isn't perfect at all. They have very high prices, largely due to high taxes and VAT. Whenever they do repairs on their train system, there is an army of unionised workers in fluorescent vests standing round. For the entire month of July, the westbound train lines from Oslo are shutdown for track works. Each train station has replacement buses, and the platforms have been manned with at least 6 of these people who simply point towards buses and make announcements through a megaphone.

Whilst the unemployment rate is extremely low in Norway, perhaps due to their oil industry and resources boom, they have huge unemployment with migrants and huge numbers of people living off welfare. Their debt to GDP ratio is well over 50% and they squander all their wealth on wasteful government spending. Their health system, like most socialist countries, is based on rationing and queues:

Waiting Times. There are significant waiting times for many procedures. Many Norwegians go abroad for medical treatments. The average weight for a hip replacement is more than 4 months. “Approximately 23 percent of all patients referred for hospital admission have to wait longer than three months for admission.” Also, care can be denied if it is not deemed to be cost-effective

They're getting divorced you say ?? I'm serial !

I blame manbearpig for this:

Former US vice-president Al Gore and his wife Tipper have told friends that they will separate after four decades of marriage.

Public health is a bottomless money pit.

Public health officials and senior administrators who blame today's problems on a lack of funding should be immediately ridiculed and shouted down.

They've had their funding provided at every turn in the past decade, as Australia and many other Western nations have poured funding into their public health systems. The NHS in Britain should scare people much more than America's so-called "free market" health system.

Via Reason Magazine comes this terrific article:

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It was the tragic case of 73-year-old Mavis Skeet, said the Tory-leaning Daily Telegraph, that "came to symbolize the crisis in the NHS" during the early Blair-Brown years. After having her cancer surgery cancelled five times—it was first scheduled for December 1998; it was cancelled a fifth time in January 2000—her condition was declared inoperable. She died in May 2000.

In January 2000, as the situation with the health service worsened, Blair appeared on David Frost’s morning program to declare that NHS spending was "too low" by European standards and a request a new infusion of cash to shore up the faltering system by adding doctors, nurses, and beds.

In a 2007 interview with the BBC (for the very good documentary "The Blair Years"), Blair acknowledged that around the time of Skeet’s death he was "receiving letters from people—heartbreaking letters—about people waiting for their heart operation, their husband or their relative, and dying on a waiting list because they couldn’t get treated quickly enough."

Socialised healthcare

I read somewhere that the health care bill was 2400 pages.

Why is it that the media report it as a universal health care package ? Wouldn't that just be a few pages of legislation ?

At 2400 pages, its the mother of all crap sandwiches. There is stuff in the bill forcing restaurant chains (with 20 or more outlets) to put calorie counts on their menus.

But focussing on one of the main points, the bill basically punishes Americans who don't purchase their own home insurance. Here are some lovely examples courtesy of Mike Shedlock's terrific blog:

Example 1:

Had a VERY INTERESTING conversation this evening with a CFO for a local business who employs about 100 people total..

I asked him how this health care bill was going to affect the company he works for.

He told me that he had run the numbers based upon providing health care for all of their employees and realized that he could save the company 1/2 million dollars by just paying the $2000 per employee penalty and not offering any coverage at all.

Example 2:

I ran the same simulation for the company I retired from. As a retiree, I continue to be in their group plan, at my own expense.

They can save $607,000 by terminating the health insurance plan, offset by a fine of $200,000.

One informed commenter sums up:

It is only after this bill is law for 5 or 10 years that we will begin to understand its effects. I believe they will be:

1. Costs far greater than anyone is the Government is letting us know. I challenge to name 3 government programs that cost what the government claimed they would. I can't think of one, except, I think I read, the prescription drug bill.

2. Like Mass. the costs will increase greatly on an annual basis.

3. The quality of medicine will drop drastically. Can you name me a single government program of this size that actually improves anything. Feds got into schools and they got worse, Feds got into energy and the situation is worse.

Deflation should be embraced, inflation should be rejected

The Angry Economist sums up much of the misguided fear that our economic and political "experts" have towards deflation.

Deflation is defined a decrease in the supply of money and results in falling prices. Each dollar has a stronger purchasing power. And just who wouldn't want this outcome ?

Well, our poorly schooled Keynesian economists warn that falling prices cause some kind of never ending deflationary spiral and a deficit in aggregate demand. Keynes asserted that people just won't spend anything under a scenario where all/most prices fell, and there would be pressure to cut wages as the outputs of industry fell in price. The so called spiral was as follows: Start->Inventories would grow, output would contract, employment would contract, incomes would fall -> Return to Start.

Keynes actually thought the laws of supply and demand didn't apply to labour like all it did with all other goods, and that wages could never adjust downwards to clear. So he blindly assumed unemployment would result and an economy would contract. When he suggested that this was the underlying cause of the business cycle and the great depression, the politicians swallowed every word of his.

This theory should have been flushed down the toilet in the face of reality. People always need to eat, they need clothing, work tools, housing, schooling and education. Not all purchases are speculative decisions. Sure, you'd think people might postpone many investment purchases if shares or property kept falling, but deflation isn't some never ending process. And real economic activity will continue despite the fall in speculative activity.

The kind of speculative activity that thrives under inflation - like the huge credit bubble that fueled the US property market till 2006, or the share market, or other asset bubbles across the world that occurred under inflation.

But returning to the fearmongering about deflation, The Angry Economist gives a great example of how misguided the arguments are:

The common wisdom is that deflation of the currency is bad. When money deflates, it becomes more valuable, even when you do nothing. So the theory is that people won't spend their money, because it will become ever-more valuable.

That theory cannot be true.

Look at the PC market over the last 30 years. In each one of those years, the PC became more reliable, faster, came with more memory and storage. The original MDA display was one color and text only. The CGA had 16 colors and 640x200 bits. The price -- of the computer you really want to have -- has stayed constant, at about $5000.

If the story told about deflation was true, then you would always be better off delaying your purchase of a PC by 6 months. You could be confident that the PC you would buy would be a more valuable PC.

Except ... that people did that very rarely, if ever. The standard advice was always "don't wait to buy a computer, because there will always be a better computer on the horizon."

So, in a situation where people can predict a constant stream of increase in value, people STILL made the trade. Thus, I think it's safe to predict that in a similar situation, where people could predict a constant increase in the value of their money, they would spend their money as needed.

The taxman strikes

I'm in a particularly foul mood, that has heightened my animosity towards government.

The Australian Tax Office has ever so kindly sent me a letter about my 2007-08 tax assessment, and my failure to disclose an interest amount I received from an Australian financial institution.

Their database matching system shows that I had only disclosed 2 out of the 3 sources that generated interest in that financial year.

Of course, it was a genuine mistake, and the letter says that no penalty will be applied but that in 28 days, I will be assessed for taxation on that income.

You know, being an enemy of socialism and having half a clue about all the theft and coercion it relies on, I see straight through their doublespeak and I simply interpret their message as follows:

" You trying to hold out on us slave ? Hand over the cash or go to jail !"

The Fed as Counterfeiter

The Mises blog has a great article that explains the complicated workings behind central banking, and how despite the complex mechanisms and multiple actions/strategies, they all combine to create a scenario where the government really can just print new dollars to finance its spending.

No wonder all the governments of the world are such big fans of central banking ... it gives them the 'flexibility' to just issue more debt, which gets exchanged for newly minted dollars, whenever it needs to spend on warfare, welfare, bailouts and special interests.

The mother of all Ponzi schemes

Is the modern Western welfare system.

The Mises Institute have a tragic/comic article about how today's welfare systems, social security, government backed pensions, medicare etc are completely out of hand and about as financially sound as Bernie Madoff's investments.

The money collected in taxes will simply never come close to covering the future liabilities in the form of pensions, medical coverage and government services.

And the article makes a very good point. That like all Ponzi schemes, the winners are the people who get in early. It presents this lucky lady, the first recipient of a social security cheque, as the prime example:

Social Security was a sure thing in its infancy. Just think of Ida May Fuller (1874–1975), a nonexempt legal secretary from Ludlow, Vermont. Ms. Fuller exemplifies the advantages of getting in early and getting out early. She paid a whopping $24.75 to participate in Social Security. Her first monthly Social Security check was issued January 31, 1940, for $22.54. Within three months, Ms. Fuller's investment was in the black. Over the ensuing 35 years, she would collect $22,888.92 in Social Security payments.

Andrew Sullivan - Democrat spokesperson

Nothing but praise for Obama's failures.. this shows just how unprincipled Andrew Sullivan has become in the past couple of years.

My own take on this potential disaster for the Democrats is best represented by my response to an Obama supporter who is intending to vote for Brown. Vote for him in 2012. Hold your nose and vote for Coakley on Tuesday. The message is already clear to Obama about the need to pivot quickly to debt and spending (something his record already proves he can do). But losing health insurance reform now, and crippling the Obama presidency as the far right wants, would be to throw away the last chance for a decade of any meaningful change.

If you voted for Obama in 2008, don't abandon him now.

Where do I begin ? Andrew Sullivan, the so called 'conservative', supports socialised health care, and a Democratic president. He openly opposes a sound Republican candidate without offering a shred of criticism, and suggests voters "hold their nose" and vote for the disgraced Democrat candidate... the states don't matter any more, what matters for him is power and Washington.

Some conservative !

Look out America, this is what socialised medicine is all about.

Socialism places equality above all else. Before prosperity. Before freedom. Before choice. Before people's preferences.

Socialised medicine isn't about helping the poor, but rather about tying the hands of the rest of society.

In Britain, the National Health Service reveals its nasty stripes in this telling encounter:

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That principle was illustrated by the case of Debbie Hirst, a British woman with metastasized breast cancer who in 2007 was denied access to a commonly used drug on the grounds that it was too expensive.

When Hirst decided to raise money to pay for the drug on her own, she was told that doing so would make her ineligible for further treatment by the National Health Service. According to The New York Times, “Officials said that allowing Mrs. Hirst and others like her to pay for extra drugs to supplement government care would violate the philosophy of the health service by giving richer patients an unfair advantage over poorer ones.” The right to health care is so important, it seems, that it can nullify itself.

Here's the elephant in the room

The Global Financial Crisis has not yet begun.

The US dollar, the world's reserve currency and supposedly every central bankers favorite store of wealth, is backed by enormouse debt, and a house of cards waiting to collapse.

It won't be long till the slow Japanese style deflationary slump kicks in as the debt burden continues to grow.

Nothing can go up forever, and eventually something's gotta give. Either the people cut their spending and repay their debts, or the government prints money like Zimbabwe and destroys the currency to keep them spending.

Mike Shedlock has the following post about an interesting Forbes article on the issue nobody in Washington wants to talk about:

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Not too long ago, a billion dollars in a governmental budget was a lot of money. Then we got into hundreds of billions. People understood that this was a lot, just because of all the zeros. Now, unfortunately, the number has become small: the world "trillion," as in $1.2 trillion for health care reform, seems so tiny. But it has 12 zeroes behind it, which is so easy to forget.

The total public debt is now at 141% of GDP. That puts the United States in some elite company--only Japan, Lebanon and Zimbabwe are higher. That's only the start. Add household debt (highest in the world at 99% of GDP) and corporate debt (highest in the world at 317% of GDP, not even counting off-balance-sheet swaps and derivatives) and our total debt is 557% of GDP. Less than three years ago our total indebtedness crossed 500% of GDP for the first time."

Add the unfunded portion of entitlement programs and we're at 840% of GDP.

The world has not seen such debt levels in modern history. This debt is not serviceable. Imagine that total debt is 557% of GDP, without considering entitlements. The interest on the debt will consume all the tax revenues of the country in the not-too-distant future. Then there will be no way out but to create more debt in order to finance the old debt.

An essay worth reading

The House that Uncle Sam Built is surely going to be an enthralling and worthwhile 20-page essay for me and my followers, with the following sharp and insightful opening paragraph:

The theme of “The House that Uncle Sam Built: The Untold Story of the Great Recession of 2008” is that government policy, not a failure of free markets, caused the economic trauma we have been experiencing. We do not live in a free market. We live in a mixed economy. The mixture
varies by industry. Technology is primarily free. Financial Services is primarily government. It is not surprising that the most government regulated and controlled segment of the economy, financial services, experienced the biggest problems. These problems were created by actions
by the Federal Reserve combined with government housing policy (especially the government- sponsored enterprises - Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae). Misguided government interference in the market is the real culprit in laying the foundation for the Great Recession.

Click here to download the entire essay.

Little Green Fanatics

Heh..

Charles Johnson has finally confessed and written a post titled "Why I parted ways with The Right"

After 2 years of leftist hysteria, and alienating all his collegeagues on the Right, he finally acknowledges his changing philosophy.

And what better way to prove his stripes with a post that actually attacks the ClimateGate scandal as a criminal conspiracy ... by the hackers and climate skeptics !

Well at least he's half right there.. better than his average batting record.

For a closer look at his political wingnuttery and environmental fanatacism:

... the CRU theft was a criminal attempt to sabotage the Copenhagen climate summit, and the entire right wing blogosphere is complicit in the crime.

Gee was Charles Johnson this angry about the hacked emails of Sarah Palin ?

All thats left is for me to ask - Whats next ? Will LGF be cheering Castro and Chavez, Keynesian economics, the UN and other idols of the left ?

Government corruption

When the government gets involved in anything, it inevibly becomes corrupt and politicised.

That is an unavoidable conclusion and the absolute truth that leads many people to distrust big government, and to try to keep the role of government as limited and consistent as possible.

When government is responsible for something as supposedly innocent as collecting statistics on unemployment, it is tempted to spin the numbers in a positive way. And Obama's job creation / recovery act tries to take credit for the non-existent recovery by tweaking the numbers:

According to a report from a shoe store in Campbellsville, Kentucky, the Army Corps of Engineers “created or saved” nine jobs when it used money allocated by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to buy nine pairs of work boots. The Wall Street Journal reports that the store’s owner, frustrated by the government’s confusing online forms, enlisted the help of his 42-year-old daughter, who figured nine—the number of people who would use the boots on the job—made as much sense as any other answer.

Little Green Failures

Charles Johnson's crumbling and moronic blog, and his ever changing postures and politicking are starting to wear thin on me. It seems he still has thousands of readers, but I wonder how long it will last.

3 years ago, it was pretty clear where he stood on issues. Nowadays, things seem to have changed, and not subtly.

He was about as pro-interventionist as you could get, a huge supporter of conservative blogs and the Bush presidency. Now, he peddles global warming alarmism and propaganda videos by Peter Sinclair, he supports socialised health care, ridicules all lovers of freedom and liberty (especially the tea party protestors and other Obama critics) as maniacal conspiracy theorists and white neo-nationalists and religious fundamentalists.

I was just browsing over some of his very characteristic and typical posts back in 2005, which include the following snippets.. mocking Al Gore for claiming he was non-partisan, mocking all Muslim groups for crying victim to racism, debunking many claims of Israeli soldiers commiting atrocities, pointing out the dozens of Palestinian 'cease-fires' involved continuing to fire upon Israeli civilians, and dozens of posts showing the Palestinian 'death cult' mentality, all whilst showing what a farce the UN is and applauding critics of the UN such as John Bolton.

It was hard to find a single mention relating to socialised medicine, or global warming and the IPCC. But here was a gem of a post in 2005 linking approvingly to Iowahawk who ridicules claims that increased C02 levels caused hurricane Katrina.

Even as recently as June 2008, he made fun of a left wing blog that cheered Obama for threatening anybody who stop him trying to pass his health care bill. And in August 2008, he exposed some of the radical supporters of Obama's campaign, including the Communist Party of America. Charles even used the term "Obamessiah" to ridicule the candidate whom he would later fall in love with.

It didn't take long for him to cheer Obama's plan for socialised health care, support every Democrat, become a global warming alarmist and at the same time, begin ridiculing Republicans and libertarians, ignoring his core issue of terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism, and begin making enemies of every ally he once had.

It seems he has come full circle today, with his post that mocks the Republican Party philosophy listed below, and simply labelling this a "failure". I'll highlight in bold some of the ideas that Charles very recently held to show how quickly he changes his stripes.

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED, that the Republican National Committee identifies ten (10) key public policy positions for the 2010 election cycle, which the Republican National Committee expects its public officials and candidates to support:

(1) We support smaller government, smaller national debt, lower deficits and lower taxes by opposing bills like Obama’s “stimulus” bill;

(2) We support market-based health care reform and oppose Obama-style government run healthcare;

(3) We support market-based energy reforms by opposing cap and trade legislation;

(4) We support workers’ right to secret ballot by opposing card check;

(5) We support legal immigration and assimilation into American society by opposing amnesty for illegal immigrants;

(6) We support victory in Iraq and Afghanistan by supporting military-recommended troop surges;

(7) We support containment of Iran and North Korea, particularly effective action to eliminate their nuclear weapons threat;

(8) We support retention of the Defense of Marriage Act;

(9) We support protecting the lives of vulnerable persons by opposing health care rationing and denial of health care and government funding of abortion; and

(10) We support the right to keep and bear arms by opposing government restrictions on gun ownership; and be further

RESOLVED, that a candidate who disagrees with three or more of the above stated public policy position of the Republican National Committee, as identified by the voting record, public statements and/or signed questionnaire of the candidate, shall not be eligible for financial support and endorsement by the Republican National Committee; and be further

RESOLVED, that upon the approval of this resolution the Republican National Committee shall deliver a copy of this resolution to each of Republican members of Congress, all Republican candidates for Congress, as they become known, and to each Republican state and territorial party office.

Che is a crap + boring movie.

Thats all you need to know.

2 parts. Each one over 2 hours long.
The film sequence is totally disconnected and random. Jumping back and forth in time.
The film doesn't even hint or portray his ideals or philosophy. He's just some friendly guy.

Steven Soderbergh is a dick. He doesn't really glorify Che. He just paints him as boring and average, but also popular and humane towards his comrades and his enemies.

Not the slightest hint or mention of the executions and firing squads.

There is no explanation of the Cuban revolution, the philosophy behind it and the impact it left. In every scene, all the village people wave and cheer at the brave revolutionary soldiers. And Che simply plots strategy for his next attack against the military.

Not the slightest hint that the guy was a brutal killing machine.

Don't watch Che .. instead watch Andy Garcia's masterful The Lost City.

Mine Your Own Business !

I just finished watching this interesting 2006 documentary that exposes the environmental movement's horrific anti-development and anti-growth attitude, and their complete hypocrisy.

Mine Your Own Business begins in the village of Rosia Montana, Romania, where a Canadian mining company is facing huge opposition from the environmental NGOs about their plans to develop a gold mine. The environmental movement issue statements that the villagers will suffer under this plan, the pristine environment will be devastated and that 700 villagers have been forcefully removed from their homes, and that it is deeply unpopular and unwelcome by the locals.

The documentary exposes all these claims as bald lies. The villagers were extremely eager to sell their homes voluntarily. The local environment was not quite so pristine and untouched, with polluted rivers from the era of a state run mine. And most interestingly, the villagers were very keen on having a mining industry in their local area for employment and income.

The same scenario was showed as the documentary makers travelled to 2 other mines that were opposed by environmental NGOs. One mine in Madagascar, and another in the mountains of Chile, were both welcomed by the impoverished locals, and fiercely criticised by the environmental activists.

On a technical note, the documentary is produced in a bit of a Michael Moore style, although obviously the political statement doesn't resemble anything Michael Moore has ever produced. A poor Romanian drill operator, eager to work, is taken to visit the other mines and is interviewed at length about his willingness to work and how his entire village depend on trade and commerce to survive and to be happy.

Key leaders of environmental NGOs are interviewed, and they are easily shown to be dishonest or deluded. They either claim that they "really know whats best" for the local villagers, and they even stretched the truth by claiming that that they have visited and lived in these rural villages where mining operations are being proposed, when they have never set foot in the area. They are exposed as wealthy and comfortable people who possess the delusion that they know what actually makes poor villagers happy, and one even spelled out his twisted opinion (I paraphrase here)

"We cannot measure happiness for these people the way we do for ourselves. Health, living standards, income - these aren't valid. We need to look at culture, environmental factors and their way of life"

After watching the entire documentary, this ridiculous claim is destroyed. Some terrific interviews with Deepak Lal and Frank Furedi give an insight into what drives the environmental movement, and I'd have to agree with them in viewing it as nothing more than a secular religion.

The ACCC hurt consumers yet again

Courtesy of the Daily Reckoning comes this interesting report:
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Late last week the ACCC told supermarket chain Coles that it mustn't offer customers a 40 cent discount on fuel. You've probably read the news articles covering the story. But not surprisingly none of them point out the idiocy of the demand by the ACCC.

Of course, the Coles special offer had strings attached. Customers would have to spend over $300 to get the discount, but still, the chance to get your petrol at 70 cents per litre rather than $1.10 isn't a bad deal.

Sure, you could argue that Coles just inflates it's prices to pay for the cheaper fuel. If you think that then you don't have to take them up on the offer. But if you shop at Coles all the time anyway, then it's a pretty good deal.

However, according to the ACCC it's a bad deal and it had to be stopped.

Why? Here's what the ACCC had to say about the offer:

"However there is a balance to be found between providing consumers with discounts on the one hand, and on the other offering significant price cuts for sustained periods or repeated offers which might have deeper impact on competition in the long term. The ACCC is not satisfied on information currently available that this promotion struck the right balance."

Goddess of the Market by Jennifer Burns

Here's a book I'll add to my shopping list - Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right.

The author, Jennifer Burns, was just on the Daily Show to promote her book, but rather than act as a passionate supporter of Ayn Rand, she presented her as some type of character of interest or fascination for conservatives.

John Stewart proved once again why he just doesn't quite "get it" most of the time. On the one hand, he seems to frequently tear into politicians (however the target is more often right wing ones than left wing targets) and ridicule their nonsense and broken promises. Whenever he has the attention span to fact check a claim, he usually does a terrific job of making fun of it. But it seems like he doesn't have enough attention to understand why conservatives are skeptical of big government, and instead interprets it as a shallow trick to rouse emotions and opposition to Obama.

He seems to flippantly and casually dismiss libertarians and free marketers as an angry emotional and irrational mob, whilst senior Democrats like Barney Frank and Nancy Pelosi are treated like sincere, virtuous public servants who give themselves to the greater good.

How did John Stewart describe Ayn Rand ? As an "elite", an "intellectual" who has a philosophy that works for the elite but not for the rest of us. And he mentioned that she upset the mainstream conservative movement in the 1950's with her atheism.

And immediately after, he mocked 'conservatives' Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, saying that they are anything but intellectuals and therefore today's conservatives have nothing to do with Ayn Rand.

But all the while, he failed to acknowledge that the Republicans don't exactly always represent the libertarian school of thought, to put it mildly. And that those who associate themselves with the right are not necessarily traditional conservatives.

I sat aghast at the fact that the author, Jennifer Burns, sat quietly through this slanderous attack on the Ayn Rand and the conservative movement, and she allowed a TV host in the space of 2 minutes, to totally misrepresent the subject of her book, and the philosophy of liberty.

Liberty and individualism is not a system to benefit elites. In fact, communism is the only system which promotes the elites above the proleteriat.

Liberty and individual rights make sure that merit is rewarded and laziness is punished. Capitalism and free markets, as a system, doesn't "believe" in any kind of outcome. It does not promote the smart above the stupid, the strong above the weak.

It helps foster one very important outcome - that people face the consequences of their actions. And with that incentive, the capitalist economies have made people work harder, care for their families and build prosperity far more succesfully than any command economy like North Korea or Cuba.

John Stewart just doesn't get liberty, he even described it as a philosophy of extremist individualism, to be contrasted and compared with communism, another extremist ideology. And according to him ..... somehow, its up to today's talk show hosts, political pundits and talking heads to find the middle ground between freedom and totalitarianism.

I don't quite buy it.