Socialism: Force or Fantasy?

An interesting article on a subject that should have died in 1991 was published by Lawrence W. Reed on the Foundation for Economic Education website.  Where are some highlights:

"Some socialists say that they are simply advocating “sharing,” and since socialism’s advocates have good intentions, it must be voluntary and beneficial, too. Except that it never is. If it were voluntary, it wouldn’t be socialism, and if it were beneficial, you wouldn’t need force to create it and sustain it."

"Today’s socialist dreamers think and act as if they just arrived from an alternate universe. A $19 trillion national debt means that the federal government hasn’t spent enough to solve our problems. Stealing money that belongs to others through taxation is perfectly alright if you spend it on good things. People become much more honest, fair, competent, and compassionate once they get elected to office. If you force employers to pay someone more than their services are worth, they will hire them anyway and just eat the difference. Regulations always do good because their advocates mean well. Civilizations rise and become great because they punish success and subsidize failure, then they collapse when they embrace freedom and free enterprise. Each person is entitled to whatever he wants other people to pay for, like free college and birth control."

The article is at this link:

https://fee.org/articles/socialism-force-or-fantasy/

This is the list of recommended reading at the end of the article:

·         “TheWelfare State Has Slowly but Surely Eroded Nordic Character” by Daniel J. Mitchell
·         “NordicSocialism Isn't the Answer for America” by Nima Sanandaji
·         “The Mythof Scandinavian Socialism” by Corey Iacono
·         “ScandinavianMyths: High Taxes and Big Spending are Popular” by Nima Sanandaji
·         “How LaissezFaire Made Sweden Rich” by Johan Norberg
·         “The Denmark Delusion” by Scott Sumner
·         “’DemocraticSocialism’ Is a Contradiction in Terms” by Sandy Ikeda
·         “DoesDemocracy Lead to Socialism?” by B.K. Marcus
·         “Socialism’sPrescient Critics” by Philip Vander Elst
·         “RenderingUnto Caesar: Was Jesus a Socialist?” by Lawrence W. Reed
·         “MillennialsReject Capitalism in Name but Socialism in Fact” by B.K. Marcus
·         “ActuallyBernie, Markets, Not Socialism, Promote Kindness” by Julian Adorney
·         “SocialismIs War and War Is Socialism” by Steven Horwitz
·         “VenezuelaRuns Out of Toilet Paper, Achieves True Socialism” by David Boaz

Five key reasons to pull plug on wind subsidies

Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) published an article by Larry Bell which can be viewed at this link:

Five key reasons to pull plug on wind subsidies

The five reasons are listed below, and more details for each are in the article linked above:

1. First, consider that even gargantuan wind installations covering thousands of acres generate only small amounts of unreliable power.

2. Those intermittent outputs require access to a “shadow capacity” which enables utilities to balance power grids when wind conditions aren’t optimum . . . which is most of the time. Anti-fossil energy promoters aren’t eager to mention that those “spinning reserves” (which must equal the total wind capacity) are fueled by the same sort of coal or natural gas turbines that those friendly breezes were touted to replace.

3. A major study of nearly 3,000 on-shore British wind farms found that the turbines have a very short –12- to 15-year– operating life, not the 20- to 25-year lifespans applied in politicized government and industry projections.

4. Along with high life-cycle investment and operations costs, let’s also add environmental costs to the mix. A Sierra Club official described them as giant “Cuisinarts in the sky” for bird and bat slaughters. Other local wind critics have legitimate health concerns about land-based installations. Common symptoms include headaches, nausea, sleeplessness, and ringing in ears resulting from prolonged exposure to inaudibly low “infrasound” frequencies that even penetrate walls.

5. The existence of the entire wind power industry depends upon federal subsidies.

ObamaCare-Lite

Michael F. Cannon of The Cato Institute published an article today that evaluates the House of Representatives ObamaCare reform legislation.  The entire article can be read at this link:

https://www.cato.org/blog/house-gop-leaderships-health-care-bill-obamacare-lite-or-worse

Below are some highlights from the conclusion of this article:

The House Republican leadership bill does not replace ObamaCare. It merely applies a new coat of paint to a building that Republicans themselves have already condemned. Since the most important asset health reformers have is unified Republican opposition to ObamaCare, at least in theory, it would set the cause of affordable health care back a decade or more if Republicans end up coalescing around this bill and putting a Republican imprimatur on ObamaCare’s core features. If this is the choice, it would be better if Congress simply did nothing.

Making health care better, more affordable, and more secure requires first repealing all of ObamaCare’s regulations, mandates, subsidies, and taxes. Next, Congress should block-grant the Medicaid program, giving each state a fixed sum of money that does not change from year to year, combined with full flexibility to target those funds to the truly needy.

Finally, and crucially, Congress needs to enact reforms that make health care more affordable, rather than just subsidize unaffordable care. To make health insurance more affordable, Congress should free consumers and employers to purchase health insurance licensed by states other than their own. To drive down health care prices, Congress should expand existing tax-free health savings accounts into “large” HSAs. Large HSAs would be a larger effective tax cut than the Reagan and Bush tax cuts combined, adding $13,000 to the wages of a typical worker with family coverage. Large HSAs would drive down prices by making consumers cost-conscious at every margin, and would reduce the problem of preexisting conditions by freeing consumers to buy portable coverage that stays with them between jobs. Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) and Rep. Dave Brat (R-VA) have introduced legislation to create Large HSAs.

Protectionism

Tariffs and trade sanctions are experiencing a resurgence in popularity.  Mark J. Perry has recently published an article in TheAmerican Enterprise Institute blog AEIdeas that examines how this is possible given the stark economic reality of the damage that protectionism causes to the host nation.  The following excerpt from this article describes the damage caused by tariffs:

"It’s a scientifically and mathematically provable fact that all tariffs, at any time and in any country, will harm economic growth, eliminate net jobs, destroy prosperity, and lower the standard of living of the protectionist country because tariffs are guaranteed by the ironclad laws of economics to generate costs to consumers that outweigh the benefits to producers, i.e. tariffs will always impose deadweight losses on the protectionist country..."  

The full article can be viewed at this link:

25 reasons why protectionism is taken seriously when its actually a form of economic suicide