Black Swans and Ron Paul

 

I am in complete agreement with Taleb here. Ron Paul is the only one talking economic sense in the entire Presidential race. I give Newt some slack because he is the only one that has actually done the seemingly impossible, balanced a Federal Budget. But we don’t need a balanced budget, we need a reduced budget. We don’t need to control the growth of Government, we need to reduce Government. All this Bullshit about contraception is lipstick on a pig. It’s obfuscation to the real and only problem we are facing, fiscal meltdown.

My quibble is not with Taleb, but with this idea that the economic morass is a Black Swan. Black Swans are unpredictable. The mess we are in was/is very predictable.

GOP leaders don’t like Gingrich and that’s a good thing!

As Newt gains momentum in the GOP primary, the attacks against him by the GOP elite keep growing.

1. Why GOP leaders don’t trust Gingrich
2. Gingrich and Reagan: In the 1980s, the candidate repeatedly insulted the president.
3. Newt’s Troublesome Lack of Prudence
4. Hour of Newt
5. Gingrich: I’ll “serve notice” that future debates must allow audience cheering

Twitter has been even more disturbing as GOP pundits and bloggers: C.E Cupp, Michelle Malkin, Guy Benson and Jim Geraghty sneer and deride Newt and the people that support him.

Newt is not the perfect candidate, he does have lots of skeletons in his closet. I don’t agree with some of his positions at all. But the mere fact that he scared the shit out of the GOP elite and those who want to be part of the elite (explains the bloggers), gives me even more reason to support him.

I have zero faith in the political parties. They are only out to serve their own self interest and the interest of their backers. The Democrats serve the Unions and their “favorite” companies. The GOP serves their “favorites” as well. They both have shown zero regard for what is good for the nation as a whole, rather than their own narrow self interest. The GOP elite want the status quo. They want to keep the things the way they are. They didn’t like Reagan when he ran against Bush I. They wanted a party man like Bush. Afterwards, Reagan became so popular that it was political suicide to talk bad about him. (Well unless your Mitt Romney.) Bush I was a company man through and through.Romney is of the same vein as Bush I, a good company man. Romney’s only chance of winning is to be a company man. He has no appeal to anyone outside of company men and NE Liberal Republicans. Without company backing, he is dead in the water. The GOP media knows this. That’s why the decline to do any real reporting on Romney. That is why any attack against Bain is derided as “Anti-Capitalist.” What is why, as Romney’s numbers continue to fall, their attacks against the front runner continue to rise.

It doesn’t matter who is the frontrunner, as long as it is Romney. When it’s not Romney, we start to see a lot of stories of how bad the frontrunner is. No word about Cain until he became the frontrunner, then multiple stories crept up against him. Newt surged, then came the onslaught. Santorum surged, then came the onslaught. Now Newt is surging again…more attacks. Notice a pattern?

If the GOP has any chance of winning, it has to be a party for the people, not the elites. A vast amount of people are turned off from the Democratic Party, because they perceive it to be a party for the Elites. Obama was the chosen one and pushed down everyone’s throats. The media were behind their money men completely and pushed Obama; never reporting negatives, giving him softball questions, while viciously attacking anyone with the gumption of telling the truth about Obama (Palinization).

Now has the GOP establishment in full panic mode. From C.E. Cupp;

At the risk of sounding maudlin or apocalyptic, the conservative movement is poised to become irrelevant or simply extinct. If the next few weeks go the way the last one did, conservatism may as well hang up a sign that says “Closed for Business (apologies to Ronald Reagan).”

The irony is that she is absolutely right. The conservative movement that the party Elites enjoy will be dead. That’s a very good thing!

Epic moments of AGW nuttiness: LSU Professor and Nukes

Got to love it when a college professor tries to use scare tactics and fear-mongering to push their partisan agenda on their students.

It ties in nicely to a previous post, that the real threat comes from teachers like these, that use their academic clout for indoctrination rather than teaching.

How stupid are AGW fanatics? This stupid….

Methinks they are 5 cans short of a six-pack

Really? I mean really? Check out the website for Act-Respsonsible.org. I wonder how long that will be up? As of 12:33 pm EST it’s there….any bets on when it will be mysteriously erased?

What a great day to start of October!

Not only did Rick Sanchez finally get fired.

But the Global Warming fanatics are showing their true colors.

Make sure you watch the whole thing. Now you know how the loony lefty Greenies think about everyone that doesn’t join in on their groupthink circle jerk.

The moral of this story. Greenies would rather kill kids than give up on Global Warming hysteria.

Hey look another Neo-Malthusian

Check out this guy.

Much has been written about population growth since the first edition of Malthus’s famous essay was published in 1798. However, an underlying truth is usually left unsaid: Population growth on Earth must cease. It makes more sense for humans to bring growth to a halt by adjusting birth rates downward in humane ways rather than waiting for death rates to move upward as the four horsemen reappear. Those who think it inhumane to control human fertility have apparently never experienced conditions in Third World shanty towns, where people struggle just to stay alive for another day.

So I’m wondering, has this guy “experienced conditions in Third World shanty towns?” I’m guessing not.

I also find it odd, that this guy is appealing to the authority of a guy that was famously wrong! He might have just as well appealed to Ehrlich, author of Population Bomb.

Oh wait, he does.

Fred Pearce’s post at “Consumption Dwarfs Population as Main Environmental Threat,” is one example. George Monbiot’s post on “The Population Myth,” is another. Both authors seem to have discovered that our rate of consumption is an issue, so both play down population numbers and focus on our consumption habits. Neither mentions the work of Paul Ehrlich and his I = PAT equation, where I represents our impact on the Earth, P equals population, A equals affluence (hence consumption), and T stands for technology.

What is it with these people? I know they think they know much more than everyone else. I know they think they need to educate everyone because it’s obvious the unwashed masses aren’t capable of even thinking about the problem in the right way. I know these people have the best of intentions.

What about the history of mankind do these people not understand? England was sure to have a population problem, but oh wait, they discovered comparative advantage and traded their English wool for German beef. Primitive man, you know those hunter-gatherers, surely had a population problem. If they over hunted, they would all die (or most of them would anyway) Of wait, somewhere along the way they invented…..farming! OMG, Technology and ideas, coupled with trade….can that be an answer?

My hypothesis, is that I think Neo-Malthusians think so little of mankind, they have such a contempt for human in general that they just don’t understand the human drive to adapt. We made it through an Ice Age right? We started with stone tools (Neanderthals “invented” stone tools long before modern man came along.) and adapted, innovated and created the damn internet….now all we do is go to Papa John’s web site and food magically appears at your door!

Seriously, I think that they, Neo-Malthusians, just don’t understand both economics (from which we get comparative advantage, even Krugman admits that most people just don’t understand it,  and trade) and the human drive to better ourselves. They are stuck in a world view which only emphasises the bad, instead of the good. This world view is summed up perfectly in a Paul Ehrlich quote.

What business does anyone have trying to help arrange it that more human beings will be born, each one of whom might be a Judas, an Attila the Hun, or a Hitler – or simply a burden to his or her family and community and a person who will live a life that is nasty, brutish and short?

I’m much more of an optimist, which is summed up in this Julian Simon quote.

There came to me the memory of reading a eulogy delivered by a Jewish chaplain over the dead on the battlefield at Iwo Jima, saying something like, “How many who would have been a Mozart or a Michelangelo or an Einstein have we buried here?”  And then I thought, Have I gone crazy? What business do I have trying to help arrange it that fewer human beings will be born, each one of whom might be a Mozart or a Michelangelo or an Einstein – or simply a joy to his or her family and community, and a person who will enjoy life?

But back to the first guy….this is his solution, remind you of any country Liberals love to hate? (No, not the US.)

Continued population growth is unsustainable, as is continued growth in the production of oil and other fossil fuels. As Lester Brown argued, in PLAN B: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble, “If we cannot stabilize population and if we cannot stabilize climate, there is not an ecosystem on earth we can save.” As Alan Weisman wrote, in The World Without Us, “The intelligent solution [to the problem of population growth] would require the courage and the wisdom to put our knowledge to the test. It would henceforth limit every human female on Earth capable of bearing children to one.” Started now, such a policy would reduce Earth’s population down to around 1.6 billion by 2100, about the same as the world population in 1900. Had we kept Earth’s population at that level we would not be having this conversation.

More Doom and Gloom

Two article for you to ponder.

The first my Arthur Laffer of the Laffer Curve fame.

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that the nine states without an income tax are growing far faster and attracting more people than are the nine states with the highest income tax rates. People and businesses change the location of income based on incentives.

No brainer really.  Unless your a liberal and economics isn’t your strong subject. (Full article here.) But next comes the bad news.

On or about Jan. 1, 2011, federal, state and local tax rates are scheduled to rise quite sharply. President George W. Bush’s tax cuts expire on that date, meaning that the highest federal personal income tax rate will go 39.6% from 35%, the highest federal dividend tax rate pops up to 39.6% from 15%, the capital gains tax rate to 20% from 15%, and the estate tax rate to 55% from zero. Lots and lots of other changes will also occur as a result of the sunset provision in the Bush tax cuts.

Tax rates have been and will be raised on income earned from off-shore investments. Payroll taxes are already scheduled to rise in 2013 and the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) will be digging deeper and deeper into middle-income taxpayers. And there’s always the celebrated tax increase on Cadillac health care plans. State and local tax rates are also going up in 2011 as they did in 2010. Tax rate increases next year are everywhere.

Even Keynesians will note that severe tax increase, the likes of which Laffer is talking about, isn’t good for economic recovery.

So if that doesn’t dampen your spirits, here is another article from Brett Arends.

We already know that when you strip out the short-term Census jobs, May’s jobs growth was a pitiful 41,000. But what people haven’t realized is that the leading indicators for June are even worse. TrimTabs Investment Research Inc. tracks the real-time jobs picture by monitoring income tax deposits at the Treasury. And these have suddenly started falling. Based on the latest data, the firm predicts the economy will actually lose up to 200,000 jobs, net, in June. “The big news is that we have a job loss of about 200,000 coming in June,” says Trim Tabs’ Madeline Schnapp, “and the market isn’t ready for it.”

Get all that. We will have to wait and see June’s numbers but if Arends is right, we are fucked!

The Sky is Falling: Peak Hysteria?

Excellent article over at Reason, Peak Everything. It is a good follow up to my post from the other day, Earth Day Predictions.

The debate over peak oil is heavily politicized, so let’s set it aside and test the idea of imminent resource peaks and their consequences for economic growth on three other non-renewable resources: lithium, neodymium, and phosphorus.

I’m sure the Peakers are just as worried about the possibility of no more lithium, to power all those hybrids that is going to save the planet right?

In 2007, William Tahil, an analyst with the France-based consultancy, Meridian International Research, issued a report that alarmingly concluded that there is “insufficient economically recoverable lithium available in the Earth’s crust to sustain electric vehicle manufacture in the volumes required.”

Peak whatever, is non-sense. It’s just a bunch chicken littles going around trying to get everyone to do something about something, usually it involves money going to some “cause.” More often, Liberals (the US version of the word) are at heart of the Peak nonsense. I think it’s due because they think they know more than other people, and assume they are the one’s that need to make all the ignorant masses aware of the dangers ahead. Yet their end of the world scenarios never come true in the time horizons they set. They don’t understand how human naturally, without any coercive force, change behavior to adapt to changing conditions.

It’s ironic, since most of the know-it-alls are also the ones in favor of evolution. Yet they don’t understand that evolution, at its core, is about minute, random changes, not top-down controls. In fact it’s the top-down approach, God, that they are usually against. But of course, it’s because they know better. Yeah right.

Stanford University economist Paul Romer has observed, “Every generation has perceived the limits to growth that finite resources and undesirable side effects would pose if no new recipes or ideas were discovered. And every generation has underestimated the potential for finding new recipes and ideas. We consistently fail to grasp how many ideas remain to be discovered. The difficulty is the same one we have with compounding: possibilities do not merely add up; they multiply.” The above examples show that while the production of physical supplies of resources may peak, there is no sign that human creativity is about to peak.

Earth Day Predictions from 1970

This is why you don’t let the “experts” dictate policy.

“Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make. The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.” – Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist

“By…[1975] some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and starvation into famines of unbelievable proportions. Other experts, more optimistic, think the ultimate food-population collision will not occur until the decade of the 1980s.” – The same Paul Ehrilich

“Scientists have solid experimental and theoretical evidence to support…the following predictions: In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution…by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half….” – Life Magazine, January 1970

“By the year 2000, if present trends continue, we will be using up crude oil at such a rate…that there won’t be any more crude oil. You’ll drive up to the pump and say, `Fill ‘er up, buddy,’ and he’ll say, `I am very sorry, there isn’t any.’” – Kenneth Watt, Ecologist

“Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions….By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine.” – Peter Gunter, professor, North Texas State University

I’m a big fan of Dr. Thomas Sowell. His book Intellectuals and Society is an excellent read, to get an idea of what goes through the mind of intellectuals like Ehrilich. Why they get it wrong but never have to answer for being wrong so consistently.

(O)ne of the advantages of high intelligence is the ability to rationalize. We can all make mistakes and again, if you don’t pay for those mistakes, there’s not really a strong reason to make a correction. In fact, to admit a mistake among intellectuals and more so among politicians, will do you more damage than persisting in it.

Here’s more from Sowell. Go to the 2:04 minute mark to hear him talk about intellectuals that don’t pay any price for being wrong.

So think about all this, the next time you hear someone talk about the pending doom, unless of course we take their advice.

H/T Cafe Hayek

US Treasury Financial Report

This is scary, just in time for Tax Day.

The Treasury Department recently issued the 2009 financial report of the United States government. Whereas there is lots of talk in Congress and in the press about the federal budget, the annual report was released to near silence. That’s too bad, not only because the annual report is untainted by creative accounting but also because its message is too important to ignore.

Read the whole thing, then check out the Federal balance sheet, here.

United States Government
Balance Sheets
as of September 30, 2009, and September 30, 2008 (in billions)

2009         2010

Total assets………………………………………………………………………. 2,667.9      1,974.7

Total liabilities …………………………………………………………………. 14,123.8     12,178.2

Yeah it’s that scary. And remember that’s not even counting the unfunded entitlement liabilities, Medicare, and Social Security.

Add in Social Security, this is just for 2009:

Present value of future expenditures in excess of future revenue …………………………………………………………………. -7,677 billion

Gives us 21,800 billion in the hole for 2009 (Not counting Medicare).

Tea anyone?