When one member of the Evangelical Mafia sent this link along, and made a tart comparison between Al Gore's / George W. Bush's environmental habits (though noting that he still couldn't stand either one of the gentlemen in question), it reminded me that I've been thinking a good deal about government subsidies of alternative energy sources, particularly when it comes to meeting transportation needs—for instance, the fact that we are pursuing fuel-cell cars so aggressively at this moment, when they are still so far from being practical.

Of course, there is the issue of whether Federal subsidies are truly the best way to midwife the birth of a new industry—a question which may not have an obvious answer. After all, there is the issue of the internet to consider; where would it stand without the DOD's underwriting of the ARPA net? Beyond, that, though, I'd like to know if you all think there's a philosophical justification for this action at the Federal level? Energy independence is a bona fide national security issue.

(Yeah, I know: first, I won't take the "no new Clintons" pledge. And now this bit of heresy. But dangit: I'm curious, and slightly torn.)

Discuss, please.

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More on the Rosia Montana mining controversey. The environmental extremists are looking worse and worse.

If it were up to me, everyone would see Mine Your Own Business; the points it makes go well beyond Transylvanian gold.

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1 As bad as the environmental extremists look, they smell even worse.

Posted by: John at August 23, 2007 05:27 PM (njYUy)

2 Maybe these environmental wacko's will pay the local folks their wage differential. (I know there is as much danger of that as the wacko's minding their own business). This crap will continue until we figure out a way to hit the environmentalists in the pocketbook. Can ATH write a movie about the environmentalists having to pay the locals?

Posted by: RWB at August 26, 2007 03:42 PM (jaO5K)

3 Anything he accomplishes in that arena has to be managed through extreme stealth . . . believe me.

Posted by: Attila Girl at August 27, 2007 11:30 PM (VgDLl)

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Shit. After the frosts in California, floods in East Anglia.

Most of the "buy locally" movement is pure silliness, and comes from living in an area/country/state with varied terrain, wherein a balanced diet can be produced by local farmers. It also sort of assumes that no one ever gets a hankering for tropical fruit, unless they in fact live in the tropics.

The politics of scurvy. And, in cases of flooding or frost, the politics of "let them eat, well . . . nothing. Honey, do you have the crossword puzzle from today's New York Times?"

To some degree I like to buy locally, but that has a lot to do with the fact that I'm cheap, and I therefore look for the best deals on produce. That means I tend to buy fruit from California or Mexico. But if the New Zealand apples look good and are reasonably priced, they jump into my shopping cart with some alacrity.

And of course as a Person with Allergies, I'm supposed to eat local honey when I can. Instead, I take a crapload of Clariton and get a hydrocortisone shot every few years. These procedures are a lot less messy than the honey thing.

Via Insty.

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. . . is narrowing, though the U.S.-China balance is still out of whack. This weak dollar thing is very helpful overall, though of course one feels sorry for the college kids who are doing their summer-in-Europe this year (mine was during the 1980s, so our dollars bought oodles of extras).

The U.S. trade deficit narrowed more than forecast in April as a weaker dollar pushed exports to a record and demand for imports waned.

The deficit fell 6.2 percent, the most in six months, to $58.5 billion, from a revised $62.4 billion in March, the Commerce Department said today in Washington. The gap declined even as the shortfall with China widened.

The dollar's drop and expanding economies in Europe and Asia are fueling demand for American-made goods and the deficit is retreating from a record $67.6 billion in August. The gain in exports may also help economic growth accelerate after the slowest quarter in more than four years.

``The trade imbalance seems to be permanently on the mend,'' said Chris Rupkey, chief financial economist at Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ Ltd. in New York. ``Certainly, trade is going to contribute to growth in the second quarter.''

Rupkey predicted a deficit of $60.2 billion, the lowest among 74 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News before the report was published.

In April, exports rose 0.2 percent to a record $129.5 billion, as sales of foods, plastics and consumer goods such as jewelry improved. Imports slipped 1.9 percent.

``The rest of the world is growing,'' said Diane Swonk, chief economist at Mesirow Financial Inc. in Chicago. ``With the tailwind of a weak dollar, that's good news to keep our factories humming. This will probably easily throw GDP growth over the 3 percent range for the second quarter.''

Via Reynolds, who remarks, "good news, I think. Am I wrong?"

Well, it looks more good than bad to me, especially when coupled with this tantalizing little detail:

Oil imports fell to $24.9 billion, from $25 billion a month earlier, as a drop in volume offset higher prices.

Hackbarth? Verdon? What do you think?

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1 Ask Nancy Pelosi. I sue she will be able to include the words "worst ever" and "Great Depression" somewhere in the opening remarks. Don't forget to congratulate Nancy's son, Paul Jr., on his $180,000 second full-time job with InfoUSA. I'm glad they gave the boy a chance given that he has no experience o training in that firm's primary business operations. It's not the $millions that Info USA's Vino Gupta throws at Bill and Hillary, but it's a start. http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2007/6/4/210922.shtml?s=al&promo_code=34F0-1 I'd give you a better link, like to the NYT, LA Times/Guardian/SocialistWorkersParty Marketeer, or the WaPo, but I guess that they have other fish to fry.

Posted by: Darrell at June 09, 2007 08:12 PM (4Gy3p)

2 "I sue"="I'm sure". . .The monkeys got their gin rations.

Posted by: Darrell at June 09, 2007 08:14 PM (4Gy3p)

3

Posted by: Attila Girl at June 10, 2007 12:00 AM (VgDLl)

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Lotteries are taxes, and they tax those who can least afford it.

I am not anti-gambling, but state-run lotteries prey on the poor, and they should stop. They are an obscenity.

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They've found the ultimate way to spoil their employees, with a company bus system:

The company now ferries about 1,200 employees to and from Google daily—nearly one-fourth of its local work force—aboard 32 shuttle buses equipped with comfortable leather seats and wireless Internet access. Bicycles are allowed on exterior racks, and dogs on forward seats, or on their ownersÂ’ laps if the buses run full.

Riders can sign up to receive alerts on their computers and cellphones when buses run late. They also get to burnish their green credentials, not just for ditching their cars, but because all Google shuttles run on biodiesel. Oh, and the shuttles are free.

Via James Joyner, who remarks: "They must have one hell of a union. Certainly, no greedy corporation would do this kind of thing simply to attract top-notch employees."

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. . . than organizations that depend upon high turnover in order to propel themselves forward. Megan McArdle bares her soul about her time with PIRG:

. . . The shamelessly llame pretexts for getting rid of the overly successful, and the deliberate assignments to bad turf in order to depress your wages and thus force you to quit, or if that doesn't work, give them an excuse to fire you. . . . . It all comes flooding back . . .

Those who run organizations that treat their employees badly have a special place in Hell.

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Steve Frank skewers the Governor's planned hike in California's minimum wage, providing a summary of the arguments against minimum wage laws, which Larry Elder likes to point out "hurt most those they purport to help."

Apparently the plan is to increase the minimum wage in two increments, ultimately by a full dollar an hour, landing us at $7.75 an hour. As usual, this will make it harder for unskilled people—and those who are the victims of prejudice—to find work.

We know about the failure of the California education system. Over 100,000 12th graders are in jeopardy due to their inability to pass a test, at the 10th grade level in order to graduate. These will be the first victims on the altar of the raise in minimum wage.

The lessons learned from the 40's, 50's, '60's, through the '90's was still true in 2005. If you want to harm those most in need, raise the minimum wage. Of course this helps the Democrats. They believe in government control over the individual. They want poor people, that is why their policy is to keep people poor, not allow them to become self sufficient. That is why this is not a compassionate act, the raising of minimum wage, it is a crass political act of power--power over people, their money, their jobs, their families their future under freedom.

This is what we know:

1. Those on welfare are 44% less able to get off welfare
2. teenage blacks lose even more opportunity for jobs
3. The poor have fewer chances for a job
4. Studies show that only 6% of those receiving minimum wage are actually the single financial support for a family.
5. Minimum wage folks also receive free health care, can receive vouchers for food and housing, and have other support systems.

But, there is an answer. I, too, want to raise the take home pay and spendable income of the poor and least among us. You don't mandate policies that cause them to lose jobs, instead you create incentives for business to grow and therefore create competition for jobs--which causes higher wages.

Cut taxes, on sales, on income, on corporations. If the private sector is more vibrant, more jobs will occur—that is the Milton Friedman answer. Kennedy, Reagan, Bush all saw this, now Arnold needs to go back and re-read "Capitalism and Freedom."

Frank backs his assertions up not just with Milton Friedman's work, but study results, and quotations from the likes of Alan Greenspan. So be sure to read the whole thing.

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Here's one way. The World Bank's approach underscores something that has been on my mind for years: the fact that producing wealth often hinges less on "natural resources" than it does on what Thomas Sowell calls "cultural capital." The obvious example is Israel, whose natural resources are nearly identical to those of the surrounding Middle Eastern states (or inferior to them, if one takes into account the oil reserves in the area). Yet the Israelis have built a strong economy out of little more than education, salt water, and . . . sand.

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From the Brussels Journal.

(Via Insty.)

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My heart just aches. I can't even be snarky. Not yet.

Shades of L.A. in 1992. Though our riots only lasted for three days, and these have gone on for eight.

Ironically, in L.A. it underscored the line between the decent and the indecent: despite the racial overtones to the rioting, when I waited in line at the supermarket alongside black people we still shared a camaraderie: we were part of the decent people who wanted to hunker down with our loved ones until the craziness stopped.

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. . . David Foster opens a discussion of the recent dystopian Peggy Noonan column. I've seen the piece before, but I just figured it was raining in NYC and she had the winter blues or something. But the comments are really thoughtful, and have to do with

• the nature of our "elites";

• how living in a city affects our perceptions;

• how many decades it has felt, in this country, like "the end of it all," and whether baby boomers are more inclined than most generations to feel that way.

Head on over there.

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up right now about politics, economics, fractals, and human physiology.

UPDATE: I mean, Dave Price (Tall Dave) does.

Go. Now.

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1 Sure, give Dean all the credit

Posted by: TallDave at October 20, 2005 07:10 AM (giBEj)

2 Oh, shit. I just did The Thing One Musn't Ever Do, didn't I?

Posted by: Attila Girl at October 20, 2005 10:08 AM (LNv50)

3 I thought that was wearing white after Labor Day.

Posted by: TallDave at October 20, 2005 10:16 AM (giBEj)

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Big Box Mart is the first short JibJab has made that doesn't strike out at both sides of a given issue. It's a provocative little piece about trade, and how our addiction to cheap goods affects the American economy. It's protectionist, sure; however, the butt of the joke is called "Big Box Mart," which implies not just the reflexive lefty hatred of Wal-Mart, but also criticism of the "bix box" stores such as Costco (where my "enlightened" friends go to save money).

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Anyone in the White House listening?

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had a nice little article in the Atlantic this past spring that I somehow missed. It's a short summary of the Social Security debate, and it highlights the problem I've always had with Social Security: if this is something that we give to impoverished seniors, why do we also give it to the rich?

Is it simply an inefficient government-run pension fund? Or is it a social service for the poor? If the former, why not make it efficient? If the latter, why not means-test it?

Because, as O'Rourke points out, everyone wants to have it both ways. Which is a human nature problem, really.

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. . . has an interesting discussion going on in her comments section over here. I'm only a quarter of the way into it, since it got Instalanched and is very long. But it's fascinating.

Fighting poverty nation by nation is perhaps the hardest job in the world today. A while back I had an interesting debate with Laura, of the ever-excellent Apartment 11D, on whether or not "unregulated capitalism" was good for the third world. My answer is that when we look at the third world, our heart cries out, as it should, but that doesn't mean that those in the third world are victims of anything but nature. The appalling poverty of Sri Lanka or Mozambique is not some bizarre aberration that can be tracked to a cause we can cure. We are the aberration; Sri Lanka and Mozambique are the normal state of human history.

Via Insty.

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You asked; Virginia Postrel answered. It's actually fairly compelling.

(Insty.)

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. . . smacks the anti-Walmart crusaders. Hard.

Via Beautiful Atrocities. (Don't forget to keep checking Jeff's "outside reading" column, and if you see somethng juicy there, go to it immediately: as he updates the list, the old stuff goes away. So if he finds four interesting stories in one night, four old ones get pushed off. He's trying to train me not to procrastinate.)

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Via Oakland Jeff, a TCS piece on what drug-reimportation will do to our pharmaceutical industry and therefore the future of medicine.

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