Again Mr. President, that is not true

During the electionn, the President Elect made the following statement: "Few challenges facing America and the world are more urgent than combating climate change. The science is beyond dispute, and the facts are clear." On Monday, the CATO Institute ran a full page in in the New York Times that contained the following statement, and signed by many top climate change scientists: (To see the full page add, click here.)

With all due respect Mr. President, that is not true.

"We, the undersigned scientists, maintain that the case for alarm regarding climate change is grossly overstated. Surface temperature changes over the past century have been episodic and modest and there has been no net global warming for over a decade now. After controlling for population growth and property values, there has been no increase in damages from severe weather-related events. The computer models forecasting rapid temperature change abjectly fail to explain recent climate behavior. Mr. President, your characterization of the scientific facts regarding climate change and the degree of certainty informing the scientific debate is simply incorrect."

Rand, Paterson, and Lane

"This Women's History Month, on the sixty-third anniversary of their monumental triple achievement, the Cato Institute pays homage to three women without whom it would not exist."  In an artilcle entitled Three Women Who Launched a Movement, CATO discusses Isabel Paterson's The God of the Machine, Rose Lane's The Discovery of Freedom, and Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead and (later) Atlas Shrugged, all published in 1943.

In a time of great political and economic turmoil, when most people assumed that socialism was the wave of the future, and almost unavoidable, these three women presented the ideas of individualism, capitalism, and the virtue of free markets is such an understandable and persuasive way, that they effected a great intellectual change in American society.  This article got me thinking, we could sure use another Ayn Rand right about now.

Mr. President, that is not true.

Recently, the President made the following statement:  "There is no disagreement that we need action by our government, a recovery plan that will help to jumpstart the economy."  Today, the CATO Institute ran a full page in in the New York Times that contained the following statement, and signed by many top economists including Nobel laureates and other prominent scholars:  (To see the full page add, click here.)

"With all due respect Mr. President, that is not true.

Notwithstanding reports that all economists are now Keynesians and that we all support a big increase in the burden of government, we do not believe that more government spending is a way to improve economic performance. More government spending by Hoover and Roosevelt did not pull the United States economy out of the Great Depression in the 1930s. More government spending did not solve Japan's "lost decade" in the 1990s. As such, it is a triumph of hope over experience to believe that more government spending will help the U.S. today. To improve the economy, policy makers should focus on reforms that remove impediments to work, saving, investment and production. Lower tax rates and a reduction in the burden of government are the best ways of using fiscal policy to boost growth."

Obama Stimulus Bears a Closer Look

There is a new article by Will Wilkinson today at the CATO Institute site with a short review of and recommendation for Obama's proposed stimulus plan.  The article is entitled "Obama Stimulus Bears a Closer Look."  A tax cut to individuals and businesses would be an immediate stimulus to the economy.  The author proposes a Social Security Payroll Tax cut.  This would be easy to do, and would give tax breaks to both individuals and businesses.  Also, when the crisis is averted, the tax could be easily reinstated.

The part of Obama's plan that involves building infrastructure is a different story.  This would not act as an immediate stimulus, and would allow for plenty of corruption.  I am never comfortable when the government thinks it can do a better job spending my money than I can.

Should the States be Bailed Out?

I found a short, two-page article on the CATO Institute website today entitled "10 Reasons to Oppose a Stimulus Package for the States." I recommend it.

Bailout Blues

If you're like me, you've been watching this auto industry bailout thing pretty closely. I look at the FEE website every morning. I look at the CATO Institute home page, Investor’s Business Daily and National Review Online. Everybody is saying the same thing. This is a bad idea. The truth is, we really don't need some smart economics folks to tell us this. You and I can smell truth, and this aint it. This is a bad idea, and a bad idea for a lot of reasons. And I don't know about you, but I'm making myself sick thinking about it all the time.

Seriously, have you talked to anybody in the last month that thought this might be a good plan? And, if everyone thinks this is such a bad idea, what are our representatives in Washington doing? At least with the bank bailout, we were giving money in hopes of resuscitation. For the auto industry, we are just trying to keep them comfortable until they die.

Another question ... If so many smart people (not me, the FEE folks!) are so sure that these bailouts are so damaging, then what the smoke is our government doing? Whose idea was it to let attorneys-gone-politician sort out the biggest financial mess of our lifetime. Honestly, and I speak from experience, if attorneys could count, they wouldn't have gone to law school.