Saving the Children

In response to the tragedy of Sandy Hook, there are a variety of "solutions to the problem" being bandied about.

1. There is the predictable one, where the proponents of gun control want to take away guns from everyone. This suggestion is easily dismissed. Officials can only get guns away from the law abiding citizens, the non-law-abiding will keep theirs, thank you very much. The obvious flaw in this plan is that it definitely makes us all less safe.  
2. There is the somewhat surprising solution offered by Wayne LaPierre, where the NRA proposes an armed guard at every school. This is a better solution. This will arguably make us more safe, and is clearly more effective than solution 1. It will, ironically, make us feel less safe, however. Has anyone felt safer as a result of being subjected to TSA patdowns? No, quite the opposite. Do we feel safer when we have to go through a metal detector to get into the civic center? No. Ultimately, a new federal bureaucracy of schoolhouse militia seems a step in the wrong direction, for this and a lot of reasons. 
3. Then there is my solution, one that I haven't heard from anyone yet. Simply disband the public school system. End it. By decommissioning all schools, we can get the children home where parents make independent arrangements for their children's education.

This third idea will eventually win out. Current standardized teaching and brick and mortar learning are outdated, and I say should be summarily dismissed. We must envision a new way of thinking about education. We should consider a system where the teaching and learning are so diverse, that different understandings and specializations naturally occur out of students' self directed interest. 

Some of the need is efficiency. There's nothing efficient in teaching 30 kids the same lesson. Most of the time is spent waiting for other kids to learn. There's nothing efficient about school buses, cafeteria lines, or detention halls. The teachers among us can still be teachers, but they must be free to pursue education in a free market way; by offering education services and voluntarily joining with other like minded service providers. Maybe they offer instruction in their home. Maybe they offer it online. And maybe they choose to operate private schools with appropriate security. Then they wouldn't be a target rich environment like we have now.

Some of the need is to divest away from state programmed indoctrination. But that is a natural benefit of a higher purpose: for children to realize their dreams.

If we have to ask how we protect the children against these kinds of attacks, why isn't one of the questions: "Why do we group our children together like this?"? The answer to that holds a key to their ultimate safety.

Quotable

"We are opposed to state interference with parental rights and rights of conscience in the education of children as an infringement of the fundamental Democratic doctrine that the largest individual liberty consistent with the rights of others insures the highest type of American citizenship and the best government."

-- Democratic National Platform (1892)

Wizer One-Liner # 29

You will have to excuse Detroit. Her people have a bad habit of re-electing community organizers.

Chart of the Day #14

Net investment is what allows a free market economy to advance.

Teacher Education Starting at the Top

When you tax something, you get less of it. -- Jack Kemp

Smoking, gambling, teabags. Anything you want to slap a tax on it will have a diminishing effect. Take income, for instance. When you tax income, people produce less of it, or at least less of it that they would leave exposed to the higher taxes. But even if you could count on human nature to be unaffected by taxes, the numbers still have to add up.

Today, the Washington Times posted this article about the willful disregard of both simple mathematics and fundamental human nature, ... by the head of the teacher's union, no less.

I saw the Cavuto interview with the NEA Van Hoekel, and thought the same thing. What part of 2+2 is too hard to understand? As I pointed out in my July post on "Simple Economics", 19% GDP is what we have to live on. Let's figure out a way to do that.

As long as people like Van Hoekel avoid the math and human nature issues, there will be no progress. Unfortunately, elections don't seem to be about either anymore. I believe we are all in for an unexpected educational experience at any time.

The Fiscal Curb

The inspiration for blog posts here usually come in the form of a concise idea. Sometimes that idea can be well expressed in only a few words. So, I today, I sit down to talk about my views on the so-named "fiscal cliff".

Yes, we've seen this drama before. The talk of big time financial doom and gloom.  Debt ceiling approacheth. Blasted Republicans, Darn Democrats. Economic hardships all over the place. Woe is us. The government has to do something!

Stop right there.

The government has to do something? Let's examine how we got here. The government has to solve this artificial problem it created to avoid the other artificial problem it also created (i.e., the debt ceiling)? 99% of politicians are giving the rest of them a bad name, again.

We are subjected to this Kabuki Theater with every congress, and with every changeover of elected officials. The result is almost always the same. Crisis looming, elected officials arrive, hammer out what the press will call a compromise, and voila! Heroes are made.

The guy who has gone before the fiscal policy makers and asked for fiscal sanity, one Ben Bernanke, is credited with first using the term "fiscal cliff". He and the Federal Open Markets Committee have maxed out the printing presses. If that isn't doing enough damage, Bernanke also wants congress to back off the last existing attempt to stop the spending madness, lest we all step off the cliff.

It's not a cliff, I am here to say. I came up with the term  "fiscal curb" to describe what we face on January 1st. ...I thought that was clever until I saw that over 4000 other blogs, most of them liberal, were using the same term. Let's see if they agree with this:

What's really wrong with the fiscal cliff.

1. It's not the tax increases. We all know that the national debt is a severe drain on future resources, and anything that begins to slow the increasing debt is fundamentally good. To have it fall on the shoulders of the 1% is clearly unfair, but fairness isn't really in the political playbook this season. The economy will sort itself out, as it does best when the rules are stable.
2. It's not the return of the payroll tax back to 6.2%, or as otherwise known: "full" funding of the social security system. It is the only fair tax we have. It is straight off the top with no deductions. I would prefer it to be a sequestered fund, but that's a topic for another day.
3. It's not the affordable care taxes. We saw these coming two years ago, and we should not take steps to hide their impact. Laws have consequences. Let's show the average American what they voted to keep. They aren't going to like it, and the law will be changed, or collapse under its own weight. This would be a very good result.
4. It's not the spending cuts. $109 billion is peanuts. Chicken feed. It is 0.67% of the deficit. That won't cover the interest on the debt. Don't fear it. Don't fight it. Those who claim a reduction in GDP are really the same people wanting government spending to be a large part of GDP. The truth is that any money not spent by government, means money spent in productive enterprise. Less government spending is always good. If there is anything wrong with the spending cuts, it is that we should be looking at a minimum of 600 billion/year.
5. It's not the end of extended unemployment benefits, either. It's time for everyone to go back to work, and they know it, too.
6. And, It's not the ending of the medicare doc fix. If you are moving towards socialized medicine, there's nothing wrong with showing Americans what that looks like, with doctors leaving practice, and moving to Belize.

No, none of that is bad. So, what is wrong with the fiscal cliff? Only that the press has bought into the notion that it is a fiscal cliff, and eagerly await in the audience as the politicians warm up for another round of Kabuki.

If it is not averted, what it means for the economy is the average American will need to pony up another $300/ month to Uncle Sam. Chicken feed, especially when you compare it to the cost to the economy avoiding the curb entirely.

Of, By, and For

This explains the fatally grievous condition of mankind. Ignorance surrounds its cradle: then its actions are determined by their first consequences, the only ones which, in its first stage, it can see. It is only in the long run that it learns to take account of the others. It has to learn this lesson from two very different masters - experience and foresight. Experience teaches effectually, but brutally. It makes us acquainted with all the effects of an action, by causing us to feel them; and we cannot fail to finish by knowing that fire burns, if we have burned ourselves. For this rough teacher, I should like, if possible, to substitute a more gentle one. I mean Foresight. For this purpose I shall examine the consequences of certain economical phenomena, by placing in opposition to each other those which are seen, and those which are not seen.- Frederic Bastiat, That Which is Seen, and That Which is Not Seen, 1850.

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. - Abraham Lincoln, The Gettysburg Address, 1863.

The 47% have chosen: Government of, by, and for the uninformed. The focus of the rest of us must now turn to minimizing the impact of this folly on our own lives. This means:

1. Downsizing our US footprint, to minimize the resources exposed to higher taxes and degraded currency.
2. Take care of our own health, because the health care provider exodus begins shortly.
3. Prepare for "the strike", as producers from Hostess to Westinghouse close up shop.
4. Set aside some land. Learn to grow your own food. Take measures to protect it from man and beast.
5. Prepare for a better education for your children. Hasten the end of public education as we know it. 

Quo Vadis America?

Your Wizer is relatively speechless today. Fortunately, Trader Dan blogs the best assessment I've seen today on what it means for the markets and the economy.

An Intervention

When the news from Benghazi came around, my first question was: Why are there no dead terrorists in the embassy compound? It has taken me years to develop the next question, but now that it is in my head, it's much easier to think this way often. My next question was: Why are there embassies?

When you think about it, embassies provide very little in the way of productive utility; and the only functions they provide of economic value is as a possible point of security for American Nationals located in that country. See the irony? The only function is security; its people are dead, and the compound is burned to the ground. My thought is: Why wouldn't it be better to close all our embassies, and advise all of our foreign workers to contract their security to private firms? Why wouldn't that be better for everybody? Good ideas like this happen all the time. I can't be the only one thinking this way. With practice, everybody can see these opportunities to reclaim economic opportunity.

It's really the bigger picture I want to discuss. It's high time to rethink a lot of things.

Yesterday, I wrote about the insanity of doing nothing.  Today, I re-inforce that a little by asking you to read John Tamny's latest article. In the article "Obama, Romney, What's Best for the Economy", Tamny points out at the outset that the election shouldn't matter, and why it shouldn't. He goes on to explain how much it really does. He lays out, very adroitly, the economic landscape either way. It's a shame we are down to two choices when both of them have significant downside.

As a former red and/or blue voter, I realize I have been enabling this self destructive behavior. If you've ever seen (or better yet, participated in) an intervention, you realize that the dysfunctional person is often being enabled by family members, friends, and associates. I think it may be time to stop enabling the red and blue destruction, and begin voting for the return of America.

It's too late (obviously) for this election, but perhaps we can get more people to think like John Tamny, and recognize the voting path that does not end in a red or blue hell.

Below are four examples of enabling behaviors taught to families by their loved ones to help keep the addiction comfortable at the expense of the family (cut and paste from: Family First Intervention):
■Guilt - Addicts and alcoholics teach families that it is their fault and that everything bad that happens is because of some other person, place or thing. Because families feel guilty, they then enable.

■Fear - Families are taught that if they try to intervene, set rules and boundaries or make them go to rehab they will hate the family forever, they will never talk to them again, the will commit suicide or they will die if they stop.

■Hope - Your love one tries to teach you that they will stop on their own and that they have a plan. Families then believe them despite all attempts that fail. You then start to believe if they get arrested just once, get that right job or just meet that special someone this will all go away. Your loved one teaches you to wait and do nothing.

■Victim - All addicts and alcoholics become professional victims. They constantly think to themselves and teach others that if you had their terrible life you would drink or drug too. They say things like “you don’t know what it’s like to be me”, “if you were married to him/her you’d drink too”.

Now, please re-read the previous four paragraphs, substituting our politicians for the loved ones (I know, but please try anyway), and instead of drugs or alcohol, substitute power or money.

Maybe an intervention is indeed in order.

Quotable

Obama (to)Romney: "You seem to want to import the foreign policies of the 1980s, just like the social policies of the 1950s and the economic policies of the 1920s." So he's Reagan, Eisenhower and Coolidge all rolled into one? Sounds way too good to be true, but one can only hope. -- James Taranto

Cynicism

The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.
--George Bernard Shaw,

Wizer's Definitive but Still Cranky Election Observation

With five weeks to go before the most important election in 32 years, we have it boiled down to this:

1. The blue candidate believes at his core that all things are possible through government, but does not believe that the message is a winner.
2. The red candidate believes that many things are possible and best handled through the private sector, but he also does not believe that his message is a winner.

So, the messages are all crafted to hide something, or to craftily change the subject. During an election season, the mainstream press must report every day on what the candidates say. Therefore, the news is always off-topic. Without the core messages being communicated, the election will turn on who has the better golf game. Heaven help us.

Chart of the Day #13

This is one of the reasons I think the number is more than 47%. (From Townhall.com blog)

Chart of the Day #12

Spot the trend.

Chart of the Day #11

Pesky Demographics...

I'm a 53%er?

A democratic government is the only one in which those who vote for a tax can escape the obligation to pay it. -- Alexis de Tocqueville, 1831
This week it was revealed that at a closed-door fundraiser in May, Romney told wealthy supporters that he could not hope to win the votes of the 47 percent of Americans who, he said, do not pay federal income taxes.  -- ABC News blog


I'll be honest...I thought the number was higher. I was just telling a friend and co-worker that 51% of the people will certainly vote for more free money. I still think they will, but Romney thinks he has a fighting chance with about 4% of those people. That's about the most optimistic sentiment I have heard in a while. Okay, so 47% it is.

I think it makes a good discussion point, because every time Mother Jones or one of her minions brings it up, it will remind people how close we are to the tipping point.

Blogging the blogs

I have not been commenting much about the election, for a couple of reasons:

1.) Certain bloggers do a much better job at framing the issues and putting them in context than I do. Walter Russell Mead is one of them.
2.) When the choices were between no discernable plan, and a horrible plan, there isn't much constructive I could think of saying.

I saw this Tom Woods speech from a Libertarian gathering in Dallas, wherein he suggests that it is important to carry the torch of liberty through our blogs, and that, in the face of the dilemma that someone's always going to outblog you, he said simply 1) to blog about what you are reading.

So, in that vein, I now blog about 2) Walter Russell Mead's article following the announcement of Paul Ryan as presumed VP nominee for the R party.

I think he frames the election going forward pretty well. It is a relatively deep red vs. deep blue, now.
Before, Romney had no plan other than not being Obama. Paul Ryan is "instant plan". Just add water. The most important thing Romney accomplished was to facilitate the debate over big government vs. small. It's already more than many of us had hoped for this election cycle.

We can leave aside the obvious shortcomings of Ryan's plan (willing to live with 3% deficits forever, voted for TARP), and recognize that there actually may be someone in politics with a functioning calculator, and hopefully a big eraser. That can be counted as a victory as far as I'm concerned, and a step away from the brink.

A game of Keep Away (maybe for keeps)

Do you remember the game of Keep Away? Where two kids stand 10-20 ft apart, and throw the ball to each other at the exclusion of everyone else? Depending on the relative skills, it is possible that the kids in the middle will never get their hands on the ball. Such games should end quickly, because it's no fun for the people who can't get the ball.

In an article today in the Wall Street Journal, Laffer and Scudder raise the point that the target revenue the government is aiming for by jumping the fiscal cliff is about 500 billion dollars. That is a static figure, which amounts to a 3% increase in tax. But as Jack Kemp said "When you tax something, you get less of it". That means lower income overall, and a reduction in growth of the economy. This magic 500 bil looks like a big deal. But it is out of reach. The 500 billion that the taxocrats want to abscond with is unlikely to materialize.

The people (or corporations if you don't mind) with that kind of income are going to transfer it out of the country before it is even made; effectively playing Keep Away with the money. This is money that will benefit other citizens, other governments. Not ours.

This is a game of Keep Away that is being played too close to the cliff.

Fighting the Liberty Fighters

"Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself." — Milton Friedman

To be against the free market requires several huge leaps of non-faith.

To be against the free market one has to believe that people are not the best shepherds of their own fate, that some anointed individual in a distant piece of earth has a better idea, or even the first thought of a more constructive use for another person's resources.

To be against the free market means to oppose a person's freedom to pursue and to benefit from the fruits of his labor. The opposers are not freedom fighters. They are bondage fighters who want to see everyone shackled by a yoke of declining productivity.

To be against the free market is to deny human nature.  It is to adopt a shallow understanding of economics (hello Keynesians) and to ignore the obvious truths in it.

Those against the free market have little or no understanding of the nature of human dignity, drive, and desire.  People with no incentive to produce anything of value produce nothing of value.

The defining principle of the contra-free-market crowd is to disincentivise production. They do this by attempting to convince enough people that they have a right to someone else's lunch. And that it is somehow morally acceptable for people to think this way. It is a dibilitating lie.

And, like clockwork, every four years, we gather in the precinct rooms to prove that at least half the populace believe this lie.

Any surviving ethic will have to be consistent with human nature. So, from here, I believe the best personal strategy is to invest in the things that are in line with basic human nature. We want to be free to pursue happiness. We want everybody to have the same opportunity, to share and celebrate that freedom.


Ultimately, there can be no personal freedom without economic freedom. Economic freedom is not something government can give you. it is something you have to protect for yourself.


To my readers: Invest in freedom. Embrace those things that both harness and nurture the human spirit. Do not invest in any person, place, or thing that denies the human spirit. Protect the free market and protect freedom.

Simple Economics

..either immediately or ultimately every dollar of government spending must be raised through a dollar of taxation. Once we look at the matter. In this way, the supposed miracles of government spending will appear in another light. -- Henry Hazlitt

Economics as a field of study is often misunderstood. So much misunderstood that it is often blamed for our sad economic condition.  This is a little like blaming the scale for the failure of a diet. The core of economics describes with brutal precision the nature of an economy. People trade labor for goods, just as they did at the beginning of history. It is happening on an ever increasing scale, and the more people interacting with an economy, the more complexity we have.

People tend to dismiss economics as being abstract, almost a philosophy rather than a science. It's not surprising that many would reach that conclusion. You can hear the words "if economics was a real science, our economy would be steadily improving, like medical science". If economic science and medical science were practiced equally well, we would still be in the blood-letting phase.

The other difference that occurs to me is that bacteria behave rationally.  My argument here is not to advocate for economics as science, but for economics as a fundamental aspect of human nature. And every time we ignore core human nature, there is bad trouble.

"I think almost every economist would agree that government gets itself in trouble when it tries to interfere with voluntary behavior." — Milton Friedman 

Economics is misunderstood. Consider that government sometimes creates false impressions of economic conditions, for the purpose of manipulating public sentiment. for example, Austerity and Stimulus. Austerity we understand as low government spending, and Stimulus has come to mean high government spending. In Europe right now, there is discussion about reversing the course of austerity, and going to stimulus instead.

The fallacy in this argument is that real austerity, and austerity as it is practiced in, say, Greece are not the same thing. Further, real stimulus, and stimulus as practiced in, say,  shovel ready form, are also not the same thing. In fact, the two "economic" approaches are probably not much different in execution. The political party in charge makes sure it's friends are taken care of whatever the new scheme is called.

But real economics offers real solutions. Real austerity takes the size of government down to the point where the economy can sustain itself without borrowing. Simple, right? Easy to define. Easy to visualize. Easy to achieve. Mountains of data show that the amount of federal revenue that can be created is no more than about 19% of GDP. It is an immutable law. So, we should tune our government to exist on that number. If we want to grow the government we should accomplish it by growing the economy.

So, rather than trying to parse what everybody means by austerity, stimulus, and voodoo economics, we should start looking at simple, real economics.

Estonia and Finland

Recently I was taken by the juxtaposition of two news stories, One, chronicling a dustup between Paul Krugman and the president of Estonia. I have no love for Krugman, of course; and I follow his antics only to see how far afield from real economics a Nobel -Laureate in economics can publicly travel.

The news wasn't that Krugman picked a fight with Estonia. The news was that Estonia and the other Baltic countries are doing very well as a result of their austerity. As a laboratory of economics, it presents a pretty good example of what is possible with a healthy dose of government austerity.

Estonia is growing at 7.6% per year. Yes, Growth AND austerity. Not too bad. Co-balticites Lithuania and Latvia are also reporting positive results from similar economic policies.

Of course, in our own country, this worked for the Harding and Coolidge administrations.Sometimes we need more contemporay examples. I had to look at a map to find Estonia. Then I was struck by the proximity to Finland. A short boatride across the Gulf of Finland is all that separates Estonia and Finland.

Finland is one of the few growing economies left in the EU and is fighting to preserve what little they can of the existing recovery. This is prompting the Prime Minister of Finland to argue against Eurobonds (i.e., printing of excess euros). They think that the Spanish banks are not too big to fail, and that austerity and growth are not mutually exclusive.

Good for them.

If they have to exit the Eurozone, it will be for very good reasons. They understand economics better than Paul Krugman, and maybe even better than the rest of us. I cheer them all on. It appears that the Baltic region will be poised to recover quickly from the double dip. Hopefully, the US won't be too far behind them.

Chart of the Day #10

History, in general, only informs us what bad government is.

-- Thomas Jefferson

There are no constraints on the human mind, no walls around the human spirit, no barriers to our progress except those we ourselves erect.

-- Ronald Reagan

From The Enterprise Blog, American Enterprise Institute, James Pethokoukis, 5/16/12

Chart of the Day #9

My problem lies in reconciling my gross habits with my net income. -- Errol Flynn

Link o' the Day

http://www.bobkrumm.com/blog/?p=2354

Hmm, is it ethical to apply this much calculus to a napkin sketch?

Chart of the Day #8

From the Washington Post Blog

A government big enough to give you all you want

It's not Republican, it's not Democrat. Honestly, it's not liberal, it's not conservative ... It's economics," says Economist Art Laffer. "If you tax people who work and you pay people who don't work, don't be surprised when you get a lot of people not working. -- Art Laffer

Previously, with the help of Hauser's law, we looked at the revenue available to government through taxation.

Hauser's law neatly shows that the amount of money available to the government is nearly constant, irrespective of tax rates. If the relationship holds, the amount of revenue is always going to be about 19% of GDP. When faced with this information, wouldn't it seem appropriate to focus on increasing GDP as a way to increase revenue?

The hidden time bomb in this relationship is the realization that there is only 19% of blood that can be squeezed out of the income of the people. However, the government has ways to spend more than they take in.

But, you can also chart government spending as a function of GDP.

The spending has blown past 19 %, and may never look back. Does everyone see where this is going?

Edgar the Entrepeneur

A man who gives his children habits of industry provides for them better than by giving them fortune. -- Richard Whateley





Edgar the Entrepeneur is a video cited by the Ludwig Von Mises Institute, which beautifully describes the consequences of minimum wage policies. I recommend you see it.

I have long advocated that minimum wage laws should be abolished. They are the cruelest hoax currently being perpetrated by the elected ones. I have two teenage boys neither of which, apparently, is worth $7.35/ hr. Both are good workers with many skills, but neither is employed despite many applications.

I would quickly send them both to work for a combined $7.35 an hour just to get them some experience. Each of them would be better off, as would the lucky company that could use their talents. But sadly, because of misguided public policy, the three bottom rungs on the ladder are missing.

Qui Bono? Who is this benefitting? China I suppose. China and the other growing countries that have an unlimited supply of 3 dollar labor. Unfortunately, we would rather export the jobs than allow the companies that produce the products succeed in manufacturing those goods here.

Chart of the Day #7

Article by Lance Roberts of Street Talk Advisors. He points out that austerity will be the opposite force on the growth needed to pay for the Ryan program (or most any other plan floated thus far, for that matter). I think he is right, but you have to start somewhere.

Chart of the Day #6

From Paul Ryan's WSJ op-ed 3/20/2012

Chart of the Day #5

http://inflationdata.com/inflation/images/charts/Oil/Gasoline_inflation_chart.htm

Wizer One-Liner # 28

Gas is $3.77 a gallon for one reason and one reason only: It's worth it.

Oil is money

Gas is $3.77 a gallon for one reason and one reason only: It's worth it.  --Wizer One-Liner #28

We've been watching carefully the energy markets now for several years, and learning about the mechanisms and challenges of the oil and gas delivery industry. There are several clear axioms emerging from this study that we'd like to share with you.

1. Peak Oil sounds like a crackpot theory, but it is a simple metric that tells a large part of the story. Oil discovery in terms of estimated volume accessible in ground has declined every year since 2006. This means one of two things: Either the world's oil companies have stopped looking, or they've stopped finding. I would be very surprised if they've stopped looking. After all, it is the one resource that enables their existence. Finding the oil is another matter. If you put the same resources on finding oil, and the return on those resources are less, then there might be a budding scarcity. That is the underlying question asked.

2. All scarce goods (which includes just about everything except sand, air, and mosquitos) are subject to the laws of economics. There is a price at which it does not pay to produce the stuff, and a price at which it does not make sense to buy it. Those numbers are closer together than you might think.

3. All economics markets for scarce goods have a price which is determined by supply and demand. On the supply side there are input costs, and for gasoline the most obvious ones are the cost of the oil itself, and the costs of delivering it to market. When the costs of extraction (i.e., the process of fracking for example) begin to rise, the willingness of the suppliers to sell it at the same low price diminishes rapidly. If the market conditions were such that $2.50 per gallon gas was remotely possible, we'd put a gas station next to the Amoco that beats him every day.

4. On the demand side, there's the growing demand of the world's fastest growing automotive markets for new sources of gasoline. The oil companies have a choice of selling the gasoline here for $3.77 or trucking it to India instead and getting $6.00 for it.

It's kind of amazing that the price is as low as it is.

What would we do if gas was $6.00 a gallon? We might alter our trajectory a bit, but we will pay it. Why? Because it is worth it. Let's look at the "real" cost of gasoline.  In pure inflation terms, we've been cruising along since 1985 with an extremely low price of gasoline.

http://inflationdata.com/inflation/images/charts/Oil/Gasoline_inflation_chart.htm

If there is a danger sign in peak oil signals, it is that the adjustments will be harder to make the longer we wait. We have literally been borrowing and spending oil. Like money, it is only replenished through the hard work of people and their private organizations. And people will have to work harder now to extract the oil, just as people will have to work harder to pay down the enormous government deficit.

The republicans would have you believe that we can return to $2.50 gasoline. I think that is only possible in two ways: One, stop depreciating the dollar, or stop exporting as many of them as we do to OPEC. I don't think they have a realistic plan to do either.

The democrats believe that imposing some sort of forced alternative energy program is going to fix the problem. To this we offer an analogy: If you have 50 miles to go to the next gas station, and put 20 miles worth of gas into the car, how do you think that's going to turn out? If you shut off the engine of production before the oasis is reached, you don't get there at all.

Oil, and the cheap energy it provides is responsible for a remarkable period in this country's history. Inside every gadget, tool, piece of furniture, or building is enormous pools of cheap energy. It is the building block of the 20th century. In the 21st century, we are going to have to pay more for that boost. At the end of the day, would I rather pay $3.77 for a round trip to the grocery store, or would I be just as happy to walk the 20 mile round trip? No, even at $6, it's worth it.

What Not to Do with Your Vote

I hope a tax will be preferred [to a loan which threatens to saddle us with a perpetual debt], because it will awaken the attention of the people and make reformation and economy the principle of the next election. The frequent recurrence of this chastening operation can alone restrain the propensity of governments to enlarge expense beyond income. --Thomas Jefferson to Albert Gallatin, 1820.
 
Tomorrow is primary election day in my state. I've not lived here long enough to absorb all the politics of this state, so I don't know about local or even the senate primaries (or even if there is a choice). I will do what I always do in these cases...defer to the knowledgeable voter. Why should I throw some random vote out there to jumble up the results, and confuse the candidates? I'm simply not smart enough to vote for any of them. I wish more people knew when they weren't smart enough to pull a lever.
 
It occurs to me that there are millions of people who vote in knee-jerk fashion for one party or the other, for many decades after the party ceases to represent their best interest. In fact it should be clear by now that precious few of the candidates whose names end with (R) or (D) have any of our interests at heart.
 
The biggest problem we face as a country is the uneducated voter. Our founding fathers did not foresee political parties. At first, they seemed like useful consolidation. Now they are an end unto themselves.
 
In the republican primary are people representing all four corners of the debate. The tendency will be for many people to trust the party and their fellow citizens, and pick from the top two presented. The danger is, we will be too clever by half, and elect someone who is indistinguishable from Obama. The party will always present to you the false choices spawned by the cronyism that permeates their world.
 
The point is, voting for the lesser of two evils; think about it; is voting for evil. Vote for a guy who represents your views, or don't pull the lever. There is usually an alternative. We need a game changer here. The "most electable candidates" that survive are, one by one, tearing this country down.
 
Pick the guy they don't "present", and you are doing more with your vote than you can imagine.

Chart of the Day #4

Chart of the Day #3