The dark reality of "green" jobs

Via O Insurgente, "La negra realidad de los empleos verdes" in Expansión:

A quienes proponen generar empleos mediante energías verdes se les suele olvidar un pequeño detalle. Resulta que a día de hoy las principales formas de producción renovable necesitan enormes subvenciones para existir. De hecho, en lo que va de década, el dinero público entregado o comprometido por el Gobierno español en dar un empujoncito a las renovables se acerca a los 30.000 millones de euros. Con esa lluvia de millones que cae permanentemente sobre la industria renovable nadie se extrañará si generan empleo. La cuestión es a qué coste.

Lo importante, como diría el gran economista francés Frederic Bastiat, no es sólo el empleo que se ve sino, también, el que no se ve o, más bien, el que ya no se podrá ver. Cuando el Gobierno decide gastar el dinero del contribuyente en molinos eólicos o placas solares, en lugar de dejar que cada uno lo gaste en lo que quiera, veremos aparecer muchos empleos verdes, pero el coste será el resultado de otras actividades productivas que no llegarán a tener lugar y los empleos que no se crearán debido a la acción gubernamental.

an uncomfortable word

The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics: "Fascism" by Sheldon Richman:

Where socialism sought totalitarian control of a society’s economic processes through direct state operation of the means of production, fascism sought that control indirectly, through domination of nominally private owners. Where socialism nationalized property explicitly, fascism did so implicitly, by requiring owners to use their property in the “national interest”—that is, as the autocratic authority conceived it.

la libertad y el mercado o se asisten mutuamente o se hunden juntos

"Libertad y mercado" de Federico Jiménez Losantos:

Krugman, uno de tantos progres que se niegan a aprender de sus derrotas –el negocio de la progresía es ese: la negación del principio de realidad económica o política y la afirmación del principio del placer de sentirse superiores moralmente a los demás- ha llegado a España, cuya economía dice que le aterra, de la mano del terrorífico Zapatero. A tal señor, tal honor. Y critica a su adorado Obama por la misma razón de fondo por la que critica los diez años de Depresión tras 1929: porque el New Deal rooseveltiano no se atrevió "a ir hasta el final" en su intervencionismo. Lo hicieron soviéticos, fascistas, nazis y demás depredadores de la libertad social y defensores de la idolatría del Estado. De eso no hablan los progres, pero en última instancia lo que se critica en Roosevelt es lo que define a keynesianos a lo Krugman: nunca se atreven a llevar hasta el final su ataque al libre mercado: son totalitarios pero sin valor para reconocerlo, una cobardía subvencionada respetuosamente por los liberales de boquilla, que suelen ser tan intervencionistas como todos los políticos de cualquier condición. Y si hay algo clarísimo es que el proteccionismo da más poder al Poder y quita poder al ciudadano. Por eso la libertad y el mercado o se asisten mutuamente o se hunden juntos.

Health Care Is Not A Right

Health Care Is Not A Right by Leonard Peikoff:

Most people who oppose socialized medicine do so on the grounds that it is moral and well-intentioned, but impractical; i.e., it is a noble idea—which just somehow does not work. I do not agree that socialized medicine is moral and well-intentioned, but impractical. Of course, it is impractical—it does not work—but I hold that it is impractical because it is immoral. This is not a case of noble in theory but a failure in practice; it is a case of vicious in theory and therefore a disaster in practice. I want to focus on the moral issue at stake. So long as people believe that socialized medicine is a noble plan, there is no way to fight it. You cannot stop a noble plan—not if it really is noble. The only way you can defeat it is to unmask it—to show that it is the very opposite of noble. Then at least you have a fighting chance.

Democracy, unlimited government at work

Chávez gana el referéndum que le permite la reelección indefinida (La Vanguardia):

Hugo Chávez podrá perpetuarse en el poder. Había redoblado la apuesta sin escatimar recursos y la ganó. Logró allanar el camino hacia su reelección indefinida al aprobarse la enmienda de tres artículos de la Constitución. El presidente venezolano ganó el referéndum con amplio margen que le permitirá en 2013 volver a ser candidato por otros seis años. En el primer boletín del Consejo Nacional Electoral (CNE), con el 94 por ciento de las actas escrutadas, el sí a la reforma constitucional obtuvo el 54, 36% de los votos, mientras que el no que propugnaba la oposición obtuvo un porcentaje de 45,63%.

thoughtcrime map

Map of anti-gay donors in EuroSoc:

This is a Google Maps mash-up giving the name, profession and employer of San Francisco residents who contributed to the campaign to ban gay marriage in the state of California.

How Government Prolonged the Depression

How Government Prolonged the Depression (WSJ):

The New Deal is widely perceived to have ended the Great Depression, and this has led many to support a "new" New Deal to address the current crisis. But the facts do not support the perception that FDR's policies shortened the Depression, or that similar policies will pull our nation out of its current economic downturn.

So what stopped a blockbuster recovery from ever starting? The New Deal. .... New Deal policies .... violated the most basic economic principles by suppressing competition, and setting prices and wages in many sectors well above their normal levels. All told, these antimarket policies choked off powerful recovery forces that would have plausibly returned the economy back to trend by the mid-1930s.

buy American, destroy jobs

"Buy American" plan could cost U.S. jobs: study

"Buy American" provisions under consideration in Congress as part of a huge economic stimulus bill could create only 1,000 new steel industry jobs and might cost as many as 65,000 across a number of sectors, a new study said on Tuesday.

tradewarmongering

Out of Gaps In Treaties, First Salvos Of Trade War:

In 1930, Congress fired the first shot in a protectionist battle that prolonged and deepened the Great Depression. After passing a bill aimed at saving American jobs by effectively barring 20,000 imported goods, including French dresses and Argentine butter, other nations retaliated by raising their own barriers on U.S. products, effectively bringing global commerce to a halt.

[Now] In the United States, a move to greatly expand Buy American provisions as part of the $819 billion fiscal stimulus package has generated shock waves in other countries, with Canadian and European officials in particular rising up in protest. The provision, passed by the House on Wednesday, would mostly bar foreign steel and iron from the infrastructure projects laid out in the stimulus package. A Senate version still being considered goes further, requiring, with few exceptions, that all stimulus-funded projects use only American-made equipment and goods.

Now more than never Hazlitt is meaningful:

The effect of a tariff, therefore, is to change the structure of American production. It changes the number of occupations, the kind of occupations, and the relative size of one industry as compared with another. It makes the industries in which we are comparatively inefficient larger, and the industries in which we are comparatively efficient smaller. Its net effect, therefore, is to reduce American efficiency, as well as to reduce efficiency in the countries with which we would otherwise have traded more largely.

inflation in Zimbabwe to come to a screeching halt

Zimbabwe opens up to multiple currencies (Reuters):

Zimbabweans will be allowed to conduct business in multiple currencies, alongside the Zimbabwean dollar, in an attempt to tackle soaring inflation, acting Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa said on Thursday.

"In the hyper-inflationary environment characterizing the economy, our people are now using multiple currencies alongside the Zimbabwean dollar. These include the (South African) rand, U.S. dollar, Botswana pula, euro and British pound among others," he said in a budget speech.

Savings socialism

[AA: How stupid can you get - why not criminalize the time value of money instead? ]

Punish savers and make them spend money:

The next logical step, although it may be politically controversial, would be to do the opposite of what the Tories suggest. Instead of reducing taxes on interest payments, the Government could tax all bank deposits and other risk-free savings. This would create a negative risk-free interest rate, encouraging savers either to invest in property, shares and other productive assets - or simply to save less and consume more. In either case, the result would be more consumption and physical investment, less unemployment and faster recovery from the slump.

Nanny State 2008

(Reason TV)

Ponzi Schemes

Via Mark Perry,

Flag flying Eurofascism

Nicolas Sarkozy attacks Czech refusal to fly EU flag:

"The manner in which Cohn-Bendit demanded that President Klaus fly the EU flag over his castle could easily have been done by a German official of over 70 years ago or a Soviet official of 20 years ago," he said.

"No doubt they think that Buckingham Palace should fly the EU flag to show its dominium."

Social Pyramid Scheme

How I learned to stop worrying and love the demographic time bomb by Nick Silver (IEA):

Most Western countries have some form of unfunded or pay-as-you-go (PAYG) pension system. These are effectively pyramid selling schemes, where one generation sells on its pensions commitments to a new generation.

Pyramid selling relies on being able to find a new generation of suckers, which is what the argument for more people proposes - new babies and immigrants being the next generation of suckers. This is no long-term answer - it's just building a bigger pyramid.

New Deals are not good for individual rights

Nazi Economics by David Gordon:

In effect, Germany had embarked on a Keynesian policy: government spending became increasingly important in guiding the economy into the military channels that Hitler wanted. John T. Flynn noted that Franklin Roosevelt followed a parallel policy, after his programs of domestic spending failed to extricate America from the depression. "Here he [Roosevelt] was with a depression on his hands [with] the pressing necessity, as he put it himself, of spending two or three billion a year of deficit money, and most serious of all, as he told Jim Farley, no way to spend it. . . Here now was a gift from the gods. . . Here now was something the federal government could really spend money on: military and naval preparations." ....

Keynes himself viewed the Nazi efforts with favor. In his preface to the German edition of The General Theory, dated September 7, 1936, Keynes indicated that the ideas of his book could more readily be carried out under an authoritarian regime: "Nevertheless the theory of output as a whole, which is what the following book purports to provide, is more easily adapted to the conditions of a totalitarian state, than is the theory of the production and distribution of a given output under conditions of free competition and a large measure of laissez-faire."

More about Central Planning

Four-year plans
Five-year plans

Hosing money on the economy

"Taiwan government presents consumption vouchers" (Taiwan News):

Under a government plan to boost the economy by encouraging domestic spending, about 23 million Taiwanese citizens and foreign spouses will each receive NT$3,600 worth of vouchers beginning Jan. 18, just one week ahead of the Chinese Lunar New Year holiday.

Envy

Envy is dangerous, destructive, divisive—and revealing. It exposes the falsity of Labour's great claim that they're the party of care and compassion. It is the worst possible emotion to inspire a political party supposedly dedicated to improving the lot of ordinary working people.

From there it is but a short step to the doctrine of class warfare. The Marxists in the Labour Party preach that this is not only just but necessary and inevitable.

But let me put this thought to you. If it is wrong to preach race hatred — and it is — why is it right to preach class hatred? If it's a crime to incite the public against a man simply because of the colour of his skin — and it is — why is it virtuous to do so just because of his position?

The political organisation of hatred is wrong—always and everywhere. Class warfare is immoral, a poisonous relic of the past.

Margaret Thatcher, Speech to Conservative Party Conference, 1978

constant lying

This is what 'monetary management' really amounts to. In practice it's merely a high-sounding euphemism for continuous currency debasement. It consists in constant lying in order to support constant swindling. Instead of automatic currencies based on gold, people are forced to take 'managed' currencies based on guile. Instead of precious metal they hold paper promises whose value falls for every bureaucratic win. And they are suavely asured that only antiquated minds dream of returning to truth, and honesty, and solvency, in gold.

Henry hazlitt