Careful, the President Can Hear You Now

If you liked the cartoons I shared about the NSA spying scandal, I suspect you’ll like this story even more.

It begins with a newlywed heading home to his lovely wife…but has a surprise ending.

Sort of reminds me of a scene in that cinematic class, American Pie II.

And you have to give the President credit for good timing when delivering a line. Maybe he does have a future career as a movie star?

He’d definitely do better on the silver screen than he did in his previous position.

Can You Find It in Your Heart to Feel Sympathy for Politicians and their Staff?

I had some fun back in April when I noted that politicians and staff on Capitol Hill were getting very agitated about having to be part of Obamacare.

Well, it seems that the way the law applies to them is so costly that many of them are thinking about calling it quits.

Here are some of the heartbreaking details from a story in Politico.

Dozens of lawmakers and aides are so afraid that their health insurance premiums will skyrocket next year thanks to Obamacare that they are thinking about retiring early or just quitting. The fear: Government-subsidized premiums will disappear at the end of the year under a provision in the health care law that nudges aides and lawmakers onto the government health care exchanges, which could make their benefits exorbitantly expensive.

Gee, cry me a river. It’s about time that these pampered potentates on the Potomac learn how it feels to live in the real world.

The story warns of potential consequences.

If the issue isn’t resolved, and massive numbers of lawmakers and aides bolt, many on Capitol Hill fear it could lead to a brain drain just as Congress tackles a slew of weighty issues — like fights over the Tax Code and immigration reform. …Sources said several aides have already given lawmakers notice that they’ll be leaving over concerns about Obamacare. Republican and Democratic lawmakers said the chatter about retiring now, to remain on the current health care plan, is constant.

Oh no, what a threat! The politicians who have spent years (or decades in many cases) imposing more taxes, more spending, and more regulation are saying they may leave? Well, my attitude is that we should tell them “don’t let the door hit you on the way out.”

Maybe some new blood would lead to more rational – or at least less irrational – policy from Washington.

I’m heartbroken with grief for the unfortunate politicians

And it would be good to go back to the days when we had fewer congressional staffers. Maybe they wouldn’t dream up so many bad ideas if each office had only 3-4 staff.

Now that I’ve vented, I suppose it’s time to take a deep breath and acknowledge that the crowd on Capitol Hill has a legitimate gripe. Because of sloppy legislative language in Obamacare, it appears that the politicians and Hill staffers will have to pay for health insurance with after-tax dollars out of their own pockets.

That’s actually the way the health insurance market should work, but I doubt lawmakers and Hill staffers want to be the guinea pigs for the new system. They’d rather experiment on us.

But you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs. And if things get too hard for those blokes and gals, maybe the powers that be on the Hill can re-hire the grief counselors who were put on the payroll after the 2010 elections.

Not that they deserve any sympathy. As illustrated by this article, staffers and politicians quickly get hired as lobbyists, thus further contributing to the culture of corruption in Washington.

I Made a $16 Trillion Mistake, but Still Had a Stronger Position in this Debate

I’ve done a handful of TV debates on Social Security, including the time I said that I wished Republicans had a secret plan for personal retirement accounts.

So I thought I was well prepared for this duel with a defender of the status quo on Fox Business Network.

I generally think the debate went well, but I confess that I didn’t have the updated numbers on the program’s long-run deficit.

I knew the long-run fiscal gap in past Trustees’ Reports was around $30 trillion, but I wanted to make sure I didn’t exaggerate. And since perhaps the economy’s modest improvement has impacted the long-run outlook, I decided to throw out a number that surely would be on the low side.

So I said $20 trillion.

Well, nobody can accuse me of exaggeration. Here’s a chart showing the program’s dismal long-run deficit, which is compiled from Table VI.F9 and Table V.B1 of the recently released Trustees Report. If you add up the annual deficits, you get $36 trillion. And that’s in today’s dollars!

So I made a $16 trillion mistake. That’s a big number even by Washington standards.

But it doesn’t really matter since everything I said about policy was correct, regardless of whether the long-run deficit was $5 trillion, $50 trillion, or somewhere in between.

If you want to know more about right way to do Social Security reform, click here to see my video on personal retirement accounts.

And if you want to learn more about the wrong way to deal with the program’s huge long-run fiscal gap, click here to get the sobering details on the big tax increase that both President Obama and my debating opponent would like to impose.

P.S. One encouraging footnote is that personal retirement accounts continue to garner good support in public opinion polls. And with the very good results we’re seeing from nations such as Australia and Chile, I’m cautiously optimistic that reform can happen in America.

Defending Tax Havens

It goes without saying that I’m always ready to defend tax havens when statists are seeking to undermine tax competition, financial privacy, and fiscal sovereignty.

So when the BBC asked if I would debate the topic, I said yes even though I’m in Paris (where supporting liberty is probably a capital crime).

I think the debate went well. Or, to be more precise, I was happy that I got to make my points.

I’ve been in debates on tax havens when I’m outnumbered 3-1, so a fair fight almost seems like a treat.

P.S. If you have a burning desire to watch me debate tax havens, you can see me cross swords with a bunch of different statists by clicking here.

P.P.S. Or if you like watching when I’m outnumbered, here’s my debate against three leftists on state-run TV.

With the Nation Facing a Fiscal Crisis, Why Are Greek Taxpayers Subsidizing a Big Bird-Type State-Run Media Network?!?

A couple of years ago, I shared a chart that powerfully demonstrated why Greece was in fiscal crisis.

The chart, which showed the explosive growth of the government bureaucracy, also provided some indication of why reform would be so difficult.

Once a majority of a country’s voting-age population is riding in the wagon of government dependency, it is very difficult to build political support for reform.

Now I have another story that perfectly symbolizes Greece’s dysfunctional situation.

It involves the Greek equivalent of a mooching Big Bird-style state-run media. Let’s start with an excerpt from the UK-based Independent.

Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras faces a political revolt after pulling the plug on the country’s state broadcaster in the middle of the night. News presenters were cut off mid-sentence when Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation (ERT), the 75-year-old state television station, was dragged off-air just hours after the decision was announced, in what the government described as a temporary measure to stem the flow of wasted taxpayers’ money into a channel plagued by “excesses”. …In announcing the reasons for the move, Mr Kedikoglou listed a catalogue of ERT’s excesses, which include three orchestras paid as civil servants and 19 provincial radio stations which broadcast only four hours of original programmes each day.

What’s remarkable is that the government isn’t even proposing to get rid of handouts. They just want to reduce the amount of money spent on government media, which is financed by money involuntarily extracted from consumers via their electricity bills.

Here’s what a local English-language news source reported.

Government spokesman Simos Kedikoglou argued that ERT had become bloated and needed to be overhauled but PASOK and Democratic Left said they had not given their consent for it to be shut down. Kedikoglou said the new broadcaster would have an annual budget of 100 million euros, rather than the 300 million ERT currently gets from license fees levied via electricity bills.

 

But maybe there is hope for Greece. Some people (perhaps like the long-suffering tax slaves I wrote about two years ago) are fed up with overpaid government officials.

Here’s an excerpt from the BBC about the private sector’s non-response to a strike called by a “communist-backed labour group”.

City streets have been as full as usual with commuters and car traffic. Supermarkets have been open for business and cafes serving customers as usual. ”The lowest ERT employee is making in a day what I’m making in a week, so why should I strike for them?” vegetable-seller Yannis Papailias told Reuters news agency in Athens. ”Hundreds of thousands of people have lost their jobs. Who protested for them?” asked waitress Maria Skylakou. Unions representing about 2.5 million workers have repeatedly gone on strike in Greece since Europe’s debt crisis erupted in late 2009, although action has been less frequent and more muted lately than last year when marches frequently turned violent. Corruption and mismanagement are widely known to exist within ERT, a public company symptomatic of Greece’s past mistakes.

Wow, the bureaucrats make in a day what someone in the private sector makes in a week. Even if that number is exaggerated by 50 percent, that’s still a remarkable indication of how government in Greece has become a racket for entrenched bureaucrats and interest groups.

And we thought it was bad that federal bureaucrats in the United States got twice as much compensation as people in the economy’s productive sector!

P.S. Don’t let anyone tell you Greece has made “too many” budget cuts. The government in Athens is infamous for being insanely wasteful, even to the point of subsidizing pedophiles and requiring stool samples from folks applying to set up online companies.

Two Tax-Hiking RINOs Slain in GOP Virginia Primary

I’m currently in Paris for my final stop on the Free Market Road Show. In other words, I’m in the belly of the beast of big-government statism.

So you would think I might be depressed, but I’m actually in a good mood.

Not because I’m surrounded by millions of socialists, but because voters in my home state just punished a couple of entrenched incumbent Republican politicians who sided with special interest groups and voted to rape and pillage taxpayers.

Here are some bring-a-smile-to-your-face details from a Washington Post report.

Two 20-year veterans of Virginia’s House of Delegates lost their seats Tuesday, falling to GOP primary challengers who assailed their support for a tax-heavy transportation funding overhaul. Del. Joe T. May (Loudoun) and Del. Beverly J. Sherwood (Frederick) lost to political newcomers who railed against the transportation plan, which imposes a $1.2-billion-a-year tax increase. … No sitting Republican delegate had faced a primary challenge since 2005, when activists went after some of those who supported a $1.5-billion-a-year tax hike pushed by then-Gov. Mark Warner (D).

You probably won’t be surprised to learn that these Republican-in-name-only lawmakers claimed tax hikes were necessary because there was no room to cut spending.

But the real problem is that too many Republicans in Richmond decided that the cesspool of big government was actually a hot tub. So rather than drain the swamp (yes, I’m mixing my metaphors), they decided they wanted more money to waste.

So, over the past several years, the burden of spending rose. Not just rose. It climbed twice as fast as inflation.

But they needed more money to maintain and support bigger government. So they disregarded their anti-tax promises.

And two of them paid the price at the polls. That may not sound like much since 34 GOP lawmakers sided with the left and voted for the tax hike.

But remember that it’s very hard to defeat incumbent politicians. So when a pair of 20-year incumbents lose, you can be sure that other lawmakers now will be far less likely to side with the political class instead of the people back home.

By the way, what makes the story in Virginia so pathetic is that Republicans normally get seduced into tax increases because of stupidity. As the Charlie Brown parody indicates, they get tricked into believing higher revenues will be used to lower deficits.

But in this case, the RINO Republicans openly admitted that they wanted more revenue to expand the state budget.

Heck, they didn’t just deserve to lose. They should have been tarred-and-feathered.

The no-tax-hike position is a line in the sand that shouldn’t be crossed.

The starve-the-beast rejection of tax hikes isn’t a sufficient condition to control big government, but it darn sure is a necessary condition.

A Very Limp Attack on Libertarianism

Even though Barack Obama unintentionally is doing a good job of recruiting more people to the libertarian philosophy, that doesn’t mean I’m optimistic that we will achieve libertarian Nirvana in my lifetime.

Libertarian Man of the Year?

I’m even willing to admit that part of the problem is that libertarians (like me!) tend to be a strange breed and we occasionally rub people the wrong way. Needless to say, this sometimes makes it difficult to gain new converts.

So when people say libertarianism is unrealistic, that may be an accurate political prediction. I can respond by pointing out reasons why I think it’s possible to reduce the burden of government and make people more free, but there’s no doubt that it’s difficult to make substantial progress against the combined forces of bureaucrats, politicians, lobbyists, interest groups, and dependents.

That being said, there are some arguments against libertarianism that are very weak. Consider what Michael Lind just wrote for Salon.

Why are there no libertarian countries? If libertarians are correct in claiming that they understand how best to organize a modern society, how is it that not a single country in the world in the early twenty-first century is organized along libertarian lines? …If socialism is discredited by the failure of communist regimes in the real world, why isn’t libertarianism discredited by the absence of any libertarian regimes in the real world? Communism was tried and failed. Libertarianism has never even been tried on the scale of a modern nation-state, even a small one, anywhere in the world.

Lind actually answers his own challenge by noting that libertarians point to the superior performance of nations that are more free than others.

I’ve done that myself by comparing the United States with the European Union. Or Chile with Argentina and Venezuela. Or South Korea and North Korea. Or Singapore and Hong Kong with the United States.

Anyhow, you get the point.

But Lind would like readers to think it’s somehow illegitimate to judge libertarianism by comparing libertarian-leaning nations with statist-leaning nations.

But he doesn’t offer any legitimate rationale for this restriction. Why do we need a perfect libertarian society to make judgements about libertarianism, any more than we need pure socialism or communism to draw conclusions about those statist societies?