Archive for September, 2010

14
Sep

Seventh Level Supercollider Shutdown

By libertyvini 1 Comment
Categories: Austrian Economics, autarky, commentary, economics, energy independence, fascism, mercantilism, politicians, politics, socialism and technology
What's That Sucking Sound?

What's That Sucking Sound?

“A Cold War-era construct from the 1950s, CERN was in part formed to get European nations working together again in the spirit of science. Today, much of CERN’s drama centers on the Large Hadron Collider, a $10 billion particle accelerator buried 30 stories below green pastures 20 minutes west of Geneva.

Switched on in 2008, the machine made headlines for what it could potentially do – create mini black holes, even search for new dimensions – and for what it could not – which was, namely, work. Ten days after starting operations, it broke down, forcing a costly refit of its super magnets and towering circuitry that funnel along a 17-mile circular track.

Fully functional since only last March, the collider was already scheduled to go down in 2012 for year-long upgrades, leaving the center’s other eight particle accelerators for its 2,000-plus researchers to work with. But with European governments now demanding budget cuts of $135 million over five years, Heuer made the decision to put all the accelerators on hiatus.”

It’s not investment, it’s sunk costs. It turns out that the expenditure wasn’t sustainable, maddening, yes, that these government morons would sink billions into an unsustainable project, then abandon it, but what’s the other choice? To operate it at terrible cost, and destroy more wealth?

What if the project we were talking about was the war in Afghanistan? “Well, yeah, it’s unsustainable, but we have already spent so much THIS far…” It’s the socialist calculation problem Mises wrote so eloquently about. They have no rational basis for calculating the costs versus the benefits.

In Europe, science collides with the bottom line.

13
Sep

Harley-Davidson, Meet Ludwig von Mises

By libertyvini 1 Comment
Categories: Austrian Economics, autarky, commentary, economics, fascism, liberty, monetary policy, politics, protectionism, socialism and technology

From a May 2010 article (behind paywall, sorry) on the death of Harley-Davidson acquisition Buell Motorcycles;

” The Motor Company had experienced two decades of steady growth, with demand continually ahead of supply. (In 2003) things started to stutter a little…the continued growth in production capacity was catching up with American market demand. ”

“But Harley wanted to grow…”(CEO) Jim Ziemer was challenging us to hit 600,000 units per year”. The company had been upsizing to meet those targets…suddenly (the) new capacity was beginning to fill dealerships…(t0) bursting with motorcycles. ”

The answer? Bring on the finance guys;

Harley-Davidson Financial Services (HDFS)…would underwrite loans to customers, including those with relatively poor credit…”

Uh-oh, next up – Wall Street;

“…because Harley couldn’t afford to carry all those loans, (they would) bundle and sell them to investors…”

And next, the sh!t hits the fan;

“…H-D sales were now falling, sustained… only by the ability of HDFS to make loans…”

…and finally, the vultures;

…Warren Buffett loaned Harley $600 million in early February 2025 – at a 15 percent interest rate”

…which resulted in Harley having to reverse its expansion, and sell (MV Agusta) or close its acquisitions (Buell).

From Ludwig von Mises “The Theory of Money and Credit”;

“the moment must eventually come when no further extension of the circulation of fiduciary media is possible. Then the catastrophe occurs, and its consequences are the worse and the reaction against the bull tendency of the market the stronger, the longer the period during which the rate of interest on loans has been below the natural rate of interest and the greater the extent to which roundabout processes of production that are not justified by the state of the capital market have been adopted.”

Gee, REALLY?

Exclusive: The Demise of Buell Motorcycles – News – CycleWorld.com.

09
Sep

About That “Minimum Wage”

By libertyvini 0 Comments
Categories: 2008 Presidential Race, Austrian Economics, autarky, commentary, Constitution, economics, fascism, liberty, monetary policy, politicians, politics, recommendations, reference, regulation, socialism, Uncategorized, US Constitution and war

@ Morning’s Minion;

“…one of my friends who is a social worker was part of a project to figure out what a real “living wage” in the DC Metro area would be.”

Probably an interesting experiment, but there is simply no way to know what decisions low-income people make to survive and succeed, what resources are available, where resources (housing, transportation) can be shared, or provided by employers, etc. All of these experiments have very poor correlation with reality, especially in light of the evidence that some people survive on less than that $14 estimate.

“Of course minimum wage is half that, which should tell us something about the conditions the working poor endure.”

That old canard. A tiny handful of people have to survive on the federal or state minimum wage. Minimum wage is always set lower than the median economic wage precisely for the reason that anyone who has or can develop a marketable skill will see their wage approach the marginal revenue product of their labor, meaning the last-hired worker is paid nearly all of the additional output he adds less employment expense.

The people who ARE negatively impacted by the minimum wage are people whose output is less than the mandated wage, new workers and others with, erm, uneven work histories. Before the minimum wage, people without skills were a handshake away from possibly learning a skill and rapidly increasing their output, their employability,m and their earning potential. By artificially raising the price to hire these unskilled workers above their marginal revenue product, the minimum wage prevents those people from being employed at all, probably forever.

”

Few things infuriate me as much as that phrase. The working poor. If you work, you should not be poor. What an abominable idea. ”

I agree. The government we labor under destroys wealth and steals income, not just direct income but investments that would increase worker output and enrich society at large. The poor are especially hard hit because they are regressively taxed – FICA is a 16% tax on every dollar they make, the inflation tax steals their income and makes saving futile, and the income tax is waiting to steal the funds necessary to climb out of poverty.

If we are going to reform Social Security (instead of end it, as I have already shown we should), then let’s recognize it for what it is, a tax-and-spend welfare / transfer scheme. Let’s drop the charade that it is some kind of annuity or insurance, since the supreme court has already disabused us of that notion, see Flemming v Nestor, conveniently available on the SSA website, or my site here;

…and let’s simply remove the tax cap, and make all income FICA-taxable, including any capital gains reported on individual returns. It will never happen, the owners of this country will make sure of that. But it will make the nature of the program clear.And maybe a few more people will wake up.

via Glenn Greenwald at Salon

09
Sep

Social Security Contributions Are A Theft. Period. That Doesn’t Mean The Feds Are Right To Steal Them Again.

By libertyvini 0 Comments
Categories: 2008 Presidential Race, Austrian Economics, autarky, commentary, Constitution, economics, fascism, liberty, mercantilism, monetary policy, police state, politicians, politics, socialism, US Constitution and war

Social Security Contributions Are A Theft. Period. That Doesn’t Mean The Feds Are Right To Steal Them Again.

@gc wall;

“I haven’t heard one democrat say that he wants to cut benefits and kick Granny off the dole. Links please. But then I am not telepathic like some people.”

Ummm, aren’t we discussing the secret work of the deficit-reduction commission? Exactly what do you think they are proposing to get out of the financial disaster they hath wrought?

“Social Security does not need an “orderly wind-down”"

I say it does. It is immoral to take property by force to give to others, no matter how needy.

“… a couple of easy tweaks and it will be solvent for seventy-five years.”

“Easy tweaks”, you say? Like raising the retirement age, cutting benefits, and raising (more) taxes on SS income? You a Reagan fan gc? Poor people and minorities already put more out in FICA taxes than they ever get out. Raising the retirement age makes that crime worse, and will force millions to literally work themselves to death. So if you assert that a few benign fixes will solve the problem, make the case. Let’s see the math. Demographics argue against it.

“It is amazing how many people advocate for saving employers’ all of six and one-half percent for insurance the keeps the less fortunate from eating cat food.”

1) It isn’t “the employer’s 6.5%”. The 6.5% (plus compliance fees and penalties) is money that would otherwise be paid to the employee. ALL SS “contributions” are stolen from employees at the point of a gun, and are immoral.

“When, exactly, did Americans agree that selfishness and indifference is wiser than responsibility and compassion?”

A smoke screen, and wrong to boot. SS contributions reduce the amount available for charity (and run it through the oh-so-efficient Federal government). Before the advent of the welfare state, Americans created thousands of charitable civic and fraternal organizations. Social Security is not insurance, is not an annuity, is not charity, and is not a retirement plan, it is a simple welfare / transfer program, a theft from producers that is transferred to consumers.

The bottom line is this – the labor I exchange with my employer is mine until we exchange. The money my employer exchanges with me is his, until we exchange. No one but two parties to the deal I mentioned has a legitimate moral claim to either one. To claim otherwise makes me a slave, and a victim of theft.

But back to my argument. Even if I agreed with your conception of Social Security as some kind of retarded, misguided, but well-intentioned charitable “responsibility”, the worst noises coming out of this evil “commission” hint not at reforming Social Security, or “easy tweaks”.

What we of a skeptical bent suspect is being mooted is a HUGE increase in FICA rates, along with removal of the cap, and for what? To skim enough money OFF OF A PROGRAM THAT IS ALREADY IN THE RED to avoid having to end America’s Global resource wars, the main reason we are in such deep financial trouble to start with.

This is what we suspect, because after the Bush Administration’s bailouts of 2008, it is increasingly obvious that theft is the only policy tool they have left.

via http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/09/04/simpson/index.html

09
Sep

So, You Want To Burn A Holy Book?

By libertyvini 0 Comments
Categories: commentary, liberty, terrorism and war

An allegedly Christian minister burning a Koran – wha? Seriously, who reads these things anymore? We live in a world where priests, rabbis, imams, and God forbid regular folks wave the damnable cowskin-covered bundles of dead trees around like swords, or clubs, but fail to heed, or even read, the best of the advice within their covers. Burn one, burn them all I say. True scripture is written on the heart as love.

09
Sep

NOW, you greenies, we are getting somewhere.

By libertyvini 0 Comments
Categories: Uncategorized

“Plants are good at doing what scientists and engineers have been struggling to do for decades: converting sunlight into stored energy, and doing so reliably day after day, year after year. Now some MIT scientists have succeeded in mimicking a key aspect of that process.

One of the problems with harvesting sunlight is that the sun’s rays can be highly destructive to many materials. Sunlight leads to a gradual degradation of many systems developed to harness it. But plants have adopted an interesting strategy to address this issue: They constantly break down their light-capturing molecules and reassemble them from scratch, so the basic structures that capture the sun’s energy are, in effect, always brand new.

That process has now been imitated by Michael Strano, the Charles and Hilda Roddey Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering, and his team of graduate students and researchers. They have created a novel set of self-assembling molecules that can turn sunlight into electricity; the molecules can be repeatedly broken down and then reassembled quickly, just by adding or removing an additional solution. Their paper on the work was published on Sept. 5 in Nature Chemistry.”

Solar cell, heal thyself.

05
Sep

RE: Glenn Greenwald – Obama Is Planning To Heist Social Security To Keep The Wars Going

By libertyvini 0 Comments
Categories: Uncategorized

Listen, I have very little time for the Social Security Ponzi scheme, which has been technically insolvent for many years, and whose operations tipped into the red for the first time earlier this year.

Moreover, as the late George Carlin pointed out, they the criminals on Wall Street ARE coming for it, and they are going to get it all. He was 100% correct about that, he was referring to Bush, but it applies equally to Obama, as Glenn said.

The people in the Permanent Government who are planning this are indeed using deficit reduction as a Trojan Horse to gut Social Security (AND seize your IRA / 401-K, or what’s left of it), and they are planning to do so instead of what SHOULD be done IMMEDIATELY, which is to end our ruinous, insane overseas military empire. One can only speculate why these people, mostly hardcore Democrats, would choose to throw Granny out in the street, rather than stop murdering brown people across the Orient.

So I will take up Glenn at his word – end the Empire first. Once we end the Empire, and the wars, and bring every last soldier, sailor, and Guardsman home and leave the mercenaries of Blackwater and Halliburton to fend for themselves, we should direct the savings into reparations to the Iraqis and Afghans,THEN fully funding an orderly wind-down of Social Security and Medicare unlike what the Democrats are planning – cut benefits and kick Granny off the dole, without a net.

First Principle – ensuring that all retired persons, and persons dependent or close to dependence on the programs will be taken care of.

Second – allow younger workers to invest as much of their wages tax-free for retirement as they want. People who want safety at a low return can invest in T-bills and bond funds but not before the bond bubble pops. No “public option” should be available to younger workers.

For there to be enough earnings for this to work though, the Federal Reserve System and the big bank cartel must be smashed utterly. The maintenance of artificially low interest rates, which brings inflation and systematic financial crises that threaten civilization unless, the banks tell us, we bail them outmust be ended.

The connection between work, savings, and capital must be restored before ANY reform of the way of retirement in this country can be fixed.

The alternative is to ride the present system into the ground, with or without the malign influence of the “deficit-reduction” commission.

via Salon.com: Letters to the Editor.

04
Sep

Cyranos Journal Online » Why is America suffering so much from a recession that Germany largely bypassed?

By libertyvini 0 Comments
Categories: Austrian Economics, autarky, commentary, economics, liberty, mercantilism, monetary policy, politicians, politics, protectionism, regulation, Ron Paul, socialism, US Constitution and war

Lots of good observations here from a left perspective, particularly regarding the impact of tax policy on the manufacturing sector, though regulation and Fed meddling play a big role as well. But a few quibbles;

1 Teddy Roosevelt was no hero, he was a tool of Morgan, and his “trust-busting” was no more than a smashing of Morgan’s rivals, principally Rockefeller, followed by cartellization of all industries Morgan controlled. FDR was just as bad, but he played on the side of the Rockefeller – Harriman – Kuhn Loeb group, and busted up Morgan cartels.

2 Technically, the US did not see real economic growth until 1946, when the war ended, and pent-up demand and de-regimentation of the wartime control economy erased 17 years of Depression.

3Subsidizing salaries is NUTS. It’s an admission as a government that you have broken the labor market and you refuse to let it clear. Germany’s labor market is vastly different than the US culturally, politically, ethnically, and with regard to harmful regulation. And protectionism just protects inefficient, uncompetitive industries that destroy wealth, and invites trade retaliation. E.G, Smoot-Hawley.

4 On the other hand, a low, uniform tariff, coupled with VERY light regulation of the export sector tends to build wealth. But our economy is so rife with misregulation and cross-subsidy that it is impossible to know anymore what our leading industries should be.

5Gabriel Kolko and many others have shown, beyond refutation that in the US, regulation is written by and for the biggest players in the regulated industry to disadvantage competitors and cartellize most of the business into the hands of a few gigantic firms, who can then run roughshod over everybody, workers and customers alike. This is an important reason we are in the pickle we are in – the game is rigged, There is no free market, except at very local levels.

6 Finally, Keynesianism is not economics, it is not science, it is superstitious voodoo like CDS and the Federal Reserve itself, a gigantic humbug fabricated to provide justification for the evil things the owners of this country want to do to us. Anyone in authority who puts forth such insane Kenesian notions as “stimulus” spending by government should have his head examined. When the government finally defaults on its paper promises, as bad as things MIGHT have gotten, had Hank Paulson not bailed out his buddies, followed by Obama and Geithner doing the same, it will be a thousand times worse when the stimulus fails. We are talking about hyperinflation, like we experienced in the 1970′s, or worse, like Weimar Germany, and we all know how THAT turned out.

7 I want to know why when Hayek won the Nobel prize for Economics, EVERYONE in the mainstream press, but particularly the left put it down, saying it isn’t really a “Nobel Prize”, they are a bunch of cranks, whatever; when Krugman wins, suddenly it’s a prestigious award, filling the winner with Godlike authority. Well Krugman is a Keynesian, and Hayek was not. When Keynsianism is shown up as a failure, AGAIN, will the mainstream and the left hail Hayek, and Mises, and Rothbard, who were right before the crisis hit, and have been proven right again and again?

They will bollocks. There is no way the Austrians will ever be even grudgingly admitted to be right. It doesn’t serve the powers that be.

via Cyranos Journal Online » Why is America suffering so much from a recession that Germany largely bypassed?.

02
Sep

Another Shining Moment For The City That Can’t Stop Spending

By libertyvini 3 Comments
Categories: Austrian Economics, autarky, commentary, Constitution, economics, fascism, liberty, mercantilism, Philadelphia, philadelphia local stuff, police state, politicians, politics, socialism and US Constitution
It's Not Just The Service, It's The Scenery

It's Not Just The Service, It's The Scenery

“…(T)he Federal Aviation Administration has proposed a mandatory $5 billion solution for Donovan and dozens of other Tinicum Township residents and businesses: Cut them a check and bulldoze the whole neighborhood. You want to stay? Too bad.”

Wait just a second here. The City of Philadelphia is broke, stone -cold busted, a wealth-destroyer without regional parallel. Until they get their spending and taxing under control, they have no moral authority to condemn a cardboard box, much less dozens of homes NOT EVEN IN THEIR JURISDICTION.

If we lived under a system that retained any justice, it would be Tinicum condemning the rump of airport property technically within the city’s administration, and kicking their asses back across the Schuylkill River.

But good luck doing that. As we have seen in the $20+ BILLION theft of Albert Barnes’ art collection, the judges that hover around the city like flies around a garbage can are owned by the politicians and Big Men of the City That Stabs You Back. They don’t need no stinking jurisdiction, they just take. “Here’s a dollar, now get lost”.

Meanwhile, the city continues to bleed residents, businesses, and, despite (or due to) carrying rapacious and malign taxation policies to a ridiculous extent, tax dollars. And the people that run it are still living in 1950.

(link courtesy of my wife)

via Tinicum residents airsick over plans to expand Philadelphia Airport | Philadelphia Daily News | 09/02/2010.