Why I do not expect to live a long life...

I am grading final exams this week. The second essay question on my macroeconomics final exam reads: "What caused The Great Depression? Fully explain the Keynesian solution for this problem."

Here is an answer I just read. It has not been edited.

"The Great depression was caused by World War II and the major increase on taxes to be able to afford it. The was a low unemployment rate during that time mainly becauses businesses couldn't afford to pay people to work. their are always consequences to decisions the Gov't make. Keynesian would have suggested that we bring the Gov't into this and let them help. Put caps on whatever he wanted to make sure it was at a price the people could afford. Never mind the fact that there will be major shortages and companies will probably collapse. This approach would not be smart at all; I may be helpful to the people, but only temporarily because once their is a shortage either the prices are going to increase massively or the business would close."

Folks, it is answers like this that are all too common in my classes today. With every passing semester of reading this __________ I age more rapidly. At this pace I think there is a reasonable chance that I will die - while grading exams - sometime in the next semester or two.

At my funeral, please tell people that I tried to help.

Thank you. Now, back to my grading...

POLICE STATE 2011: Government Bureaucrats Steal Basketball Hoops In Dela...

Your thoughts?

The U.S. has no Business in Libya

Here we go again....

Now that a Middle-East dictator has finally decided to fight back against those who seek to change their government, the United States is once again taking up the moronic position of being the "Great Interferer" in the soverign affairs of another nation.

It seems we will never learn. Pick your police action in this week's survey as the dumbest one we have ever pursued. The list is a long one and it never goes well.

It does not matter what the price of oil rises to or how many Libyan protestors die in their revolt. This is THEIR revolt. The only thing the U.S. can possibly gain for creating 'No-fly' zones, or from bombing runways or from aiding the revolutionary forces in any way is to once again prove to the world that we arrogantly reserve the right to fix things for other nations - especially if gas prices rise above $3.50 while we are in the process of not fixing other nations.

If the Libyans want to recruit Americans to fight along side them, that is fine. If they want to buy guns from us, that is great - we have plenty. If they want us to verbally support their cause, Amen to that to. But, not one dime, or one American drop of blood needs to be spent or shed during this uprising.

Random musings concerning the world around us...

My apologies for being "out of the loop" for more than two months. I have been re-writing my textbooks and, as you might imagine, there has been a great deal to write about since the last editions came out two weeks before Mr. Obama took office.

I thought I would use this posting to share some thoughts on a few issues that have been in the news lately.

First, have you noticed that no matter what happens to prices liberals are not happy? When gas prices increased to over $4 per gallon in the summer of 2008, liberals took to the airwaves to denounce the greed of 'Big Oil' and chronicled the meteoric rise in the profits of BP, Exxon-Mobil and the rest of the den of thieves. Then, when prices fell to less than $2 per gallon in 2009, liberals cried that lower prices would cause us to go back to gas-guzzling trucks and SUVs, which would cause more global warming.

When housing prices skyrocketed a few years ago, NBC, CBC, ABC and the left-leaning newspapers cried about the poor and middle class families that were priced out of the market. When home prices collapsed they cried about the poor and middle class families that could not afford to stay in the homes they should not have bought to begin with.

Please ask your friendly neighborhood liberal exactly what they want when it comes to the invisible hand then let me know what they say.

Now to Egypt. Please calm down with all the talk that this is July 4, 1776 for the Middle East. Egypt ranks 96th in economic freedom according to the Heritage Foundation's annual rankings. Egypt has 35% of its labor force working for the government. This percentage has artifically fueled public wages to well above what the private sector in Egypt can pay. Therefore, potential businesses are crowded out of the labor market and unemployment - especially for college graduates - is rampant. Unless Egypt fixes that, along with corruption, lack of tranparency in regulations and taxes and other growth-killing rules we will simply see one lousy dictator replaced with another one. But.....just in case I am wrong, please don't gripe about rising gas prices stemming from the growing rebellions. Remember, the price of tea increased when the colonists began fighting against our king.

Heading west to Wisconsin, bravo for the governor of the Badger state. It is time for public sector unions to die. Period. There was once a good reason for private sector unions. Long ago working conditions were horrible for millions of American workers. If you were treated badly, tough - it was you against the company. Unions were a natural reaction to corporate abuse and greed. Then, decades later, JFK legally recognized public unions and it has been the bullet train to bankruptcy for the states ever since. It is simply ludicrous that teachers, firefighters and other public sector workers received the budget-busting European-style retirement benefits that they enjoy. It is time to do away with $100,000 -plus pensions, double-dipping and the other practices that will kill our states one by one. As a 20 year veteran of Florida's retirement system I have been asked to contribute exactly zero pennies towards my retirement fund. Our new governor wants me to kick in 5% of my annual pay to help towards my retirement. My reaction? "What took you so long..."

Now to the National Football League. The billionaire owners want the players to play 18 games and take a nearly 20% pay cut while imposing a rookie wage scale. The millionaire players want to keep the status quo. The owners will get their t.v. money even if there is no season. The players spend money like drunk 2 year old children in a candy store. Kiss the 2011 season goodbye and enjoy college football next year. I should mention, as a Miami Dolphins fan since 1975 (translation - I have never seen them win the Super Bowl), it gives me great pleasure knowing that I will be put out of my misery this fall.

Let's go over to the White House for a moment. President Barack Clinton is finally getting it. He signed off on keeping the Bush tax cuts and lowered our payroll tax from 6.2 to 4.2% for this year. Thank you, Ronald Obama. It is about time you took a look at the playbook from Clinton's last 6 years. If you keep it up, you might be able to beat Sarah, "I have no ideas, but I am kinda cute" Palin, or 109 year old Ron Paul.

I almost forgot the upcoming baseball season. Red Sox over Phillies in 7 games. New York Yankees (Satan's team) fails to make the playoffs.

O.K., that is enough for now. I hope you all are doing well. If you are not, make sure you blame it on global warming.

Once Again, He was right...

During his farewell address to the American people, Ronald Reagan, ever the humble optimist, spoke of America as being a shining city on a hill, a beacon of sorts that would set an example for freedom-loving people from every corner of the world. Mr. Reagan had a good reason to speak of our nation in such glowing and confident terms. In the eight short years he was in office, our nation accomplished more economically and internationally for the cause of liberty than at any time since World War II. 19 million new jobs, falling inflation and interest rates, record economic growth, a doubling of federal revenues and the vanquishing of the Soviet Union all happened as a direct result of his view that liberty works best for our people, and all people.

Mr. Reagan would have never believed that in less than 20 years since he left office the United States would be slouching towards the goal of becoming Western Europe - debt-ridden with quasi-nationalization of key industries (see cars, student loans, banking, health care...), exploding social welfare spending, rising levels of regulations and the threat of punitive tax rates on the more productive people among us.

I have said many times in recent years that America is no longer Reagan's America but one where the Reagan years are to be looked at as a brief aberration as we stumble into the same ditch as the Romans. I have not shared in his optimism. I have not believed my own statements that we must have hope because we are the only nation whose reset button has the word "liberty" on it. I tell my students, and have prepared to tell my kids, that our country still has time to change its mind and turn this economic Titanic around. Yet, many times I think I say this only because I do not want to feel guilty for bringing children into a world where they will be poorer than I, only by virtue of being born while adult socialists made plans on how to ruin their chance for success.

Yet, once again, I am proven wrong and Reagan, the great sage is proven right. There are reasons to be hopeful even when all looks bleak.

Of course, one reason could be the 63 seats that the Republicans won in November promising to not act like a Bush Republican. Another could be found in Mr. Obama recently pushing for greater free trade with South Korea despite protests from unions, environmentalists and other groups who do not want to compete in the global economy. It is also somewhat encouraging to see Mr. Obama cave in on his promise to force tax rates up on high achievers. The coming two year extension of the Bush tax cuts, combined with the payroll tax cut, even if temporary, are also a temporary movement away from the Hope and Change idiocy that has been so pervasive in our country.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, is the decision of Judge Henry Hudson, who just yesterday ruled that Mr. Obama's health care legislation requiring all of us to engage in commerce - by force - is unconstitutional. We may now see the implosion of the criminally suffocating health care legislation that promised to hurt businesses and individuals everywhere.

Somewhere, Mr. Reagan is probably smiling that sly smile of his and saying, "I wonder why people were so frantic over the past couple of years. Don't they know that Americans always change their minds when they come to believe that government is the problem, rather than the solution to what ails us?"

Bit by bit perhaps his reason for optimism is being woven back into the fabric of what makes our nation unique. I for one plan to do more sewing in the near future. After all, if Mr. Reagan could have hope when times suggested there should be none, the least I can do is have hope when current times suggest there is little.

How to waste $100 million...

Yesterday, Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, announced that he was going to donate $100 million to help improve the public schools in Newark, New Jersey.

He would have been better off if he would have announced a series of 100 prizes worth $1 million to those individuals who come up with the best ideas for improving Facebook. Or, he could have spent the $100 million hiring more employees to monitor abuses of the Facebook service. Or, he could have thrown $100 million out of the window of his moving vehicle and assumed the people who picked it up would put it back into the economy.

Yet he chose to do one of the dumbest things a human being could do with $100 or $100 million.

Will $100 million:

a. Cause lousy parents in Newark to suddenly get involved in their childs' education or help them with homework or encourage them to read to their kids?
b. Cause poorly qualified teachers to magically become experts in their field of study?
c. Cause the teachers union in Newark to lose the power to protect bad teachers?
d. Cause tenure to go away in Newark?
e. Cause Newark to open up all school districts to competition, allowing any kid to go to any school he or she desires?
f. Cause the schools to adopt 1950s era punishment for unruly, disrespectful students?
g. Cause the IQ of the students in Newark to increase?

I wish Mr. Zuckerberg would reconsider. All he has accomplished is a net reduction of his wealth with nothing to show for it.

Thoughts on Quran burning and Mosque building

If liberty is truly valuable to you then you must allow others to use their liberty to do things that you might find offensive - so long at their behavior does not violate the rights of others.

This silly pastor in Gainesville has as much right to do something stupid as Muslims in New York have the right to do something that might be offensive.

It really does not matter what we think about a mosque being built in the shadow of 'Ground Zero'. The people who lost their lives nine years ago do not have an opinion on the matter any more than those who are upset about the mosque have any right to use government to stop its construction. If the folks who are proposing this building have paid for the land, labor and materials to build it, then so be it. That is the end of the story....IF....we truly believe in the idea of liberty. To force them to go somewhere else would simply show that Americans are hypocrites and that all that we say we have been fighting against the last nine years would be for naught.

I would be upset if I saw some nut burning the Bible in Iran - or Illinois. Yet, I only have an interest in seeing the Bible treated with respect, not a right to see it treated with respect.

If a book gets burned in America, so be it. So long as the pastor did not steal the matches or force someone else to assist him, we, as liberty-lovers are obligated to stand back, shake our heads over the foolishness of the man, and then let him proceed.

I would hope that Muslims and Christians living in America would see these events as an opportunity to do what we are supposed to do - leave each other alone.