NEWJERSEY: “Public Education” is immoral

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

http://channel-surfing.blogspot.com/2010/05/voucher-hypocrisy.html

Monday, May 10, 2010

Voucher hypocrisy

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Bret Schundler jumps into the voucher hypocrisy pool, dismissing stats that contradict his claims and call into question his proposals.

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Don’t you think that Gooferment-run schools propagandizing future voters is immoral?

Don’t you think that funding them by stealing wealth from unwilling victims is immoral?

Don’t you think ripping children from their families and imprisoning them for many hours a day for decades being “taught” to be good little robots is immoral?

Don’t you think allowing the Teachers’ Union to become an overpowering force in politics is immoral?

Don’t you think that “public education” in the inner cities (a failure by any measure) is immoral?

Answer those then we can chat about how it’s ineffective and inefficient.

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GOVEROTRAGEOUS: Stopping the Social Security Ponzi scheme! “Cold turkey”?

Wednesday, May 5, 2010

http://cafehayek.com/2010/05/stopping-the-social-security-ponzi-scheme.html

Stopping the social security ponzi scheme
by Russ Roberts on May 4, 2010
in Social Security

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The way to keep social security from bankrupting the country is to make it a welfare program for the elderly. But what about all the money I “contributed”? Alas, that was a lie. The money wasn’t set aside for the future. It’s like asking why don’t I collect food stamps even though I’m rich. Hey, I contributed so I should get food stamps. That’s a bizarre belief to have. That’s not the way food stamps work. That is the way social security is supposed to work, but it’s a bad idea, it was an illusion that your contributions were really yours and there isn’t enough money to keep the illusion going.

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The problem is that the gooferment took the “seed corn” from everyone. They skimmed the “cream” off the top. We could have saved MORE for our own retirement, but they STOLE it early (when the savings would have had more impact) and OFTEN (by inflation eats up savings and raises costs). So everyone to now say “too bad, you’re screwed” is the perpetuation of a fraud and a theft. We didn’t get into this mess in a few years and won’t get out of it in a few years. It was decades. So, like Chile, we need time. <sub 40, recognition bond for contributions payable in 40 years; over 40 below 60, you get some choices; over 60, you get the old plan> And you work your way out.

I pitched a similar idea in the NY Tax Revolt in the 80’s. A twenty year plan to get out of gooferment education at 5% a year. Followed immediately by a twenty year plan, to get out of gooferment funded “education” completely. Forty years, like the time the Jews wandered the desert, gives you time to reeducate people and allow them to adapt to the new realities. Too bad they didn’t adopt it, we’d have been half way out by now. NJ’s education expense is crippling the State.

Paradigms and memes don’t change over night. And, folks have to be able to see the path, where it leads to, and how it can be accomplished with 960 (40 times 12) easy monthly payments of some modest amount gets them to Freedom.

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Upon reflection, this would cause violence in the streets. Only the wealthy could survive this body blow. And, with the gooferment planning to “monetize the debt” (i.e., inflate the currency so it can pay off the debt), those on fixed incomes and retired will be slowly strangled. Think the German pre-WW2 hyperinflation that made Hitler possible.

No, we need an orderly multi-generational way to get form here to there. Peacefully. The Chile solution worked well; why not here?

One problem is they were all illiterate and could ignore the liberal media telling us the gooferment’s propaganda line. We’re too “smart” for our own good. And, the youth propaganda reeducation camps are ensuring continued stupidity!

Argh!

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MONEY: WW2 Wage and Price control were disasterous and carry through today

Tuesday, May 4, 2010

On Apr 24, 2010, at 5:58 PM, LUDDITE wrote:

http://finance.yahoo.com/focus-retirement/article/107923/8-great-companies-to-retire-from.html?mod=fidelity-changingjobs

At a time when some firms have cut back on benefits, these employers offer notably generous plans. Fortune picks some of the best.

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Good for you. But bad for us as a society. Pensions and benefits are a result of the WW2 wage and price controls. Big companies bent the salary cap rules by giving these inducements to get good workers. This was a gooferment distortion of the employment marketplace which as usual has had disastrous side effects. I’m not a economist; nor a social scientist, but let see if I can enumerate the ones I know about.

(1) Medical insurance tied to employment had several bad effects. It locked up workers who couldn’t or wouldn’t change jobs due to losing their benefits or the “pre-existing conditions of going to a different insurer. Lose your job due to poor performance, bad economy (i.e., recession), or structural changes in the economy (i.e., rust belt) lose your benefits. It disconnected the link between the expense and the pain of paying thus inducing folks not shop around, negotiate, or even look at the bills.

(2) Pensions are in effect deferred compensation. It locks up capital in the company pension plan — with its risk in bankruptcy — from the individual. So, for example, an employee, if they had that money, could have used it as they saw fit to provide for their own retirement. In my own case, I could have had an extra X$/month to pay down my mortgage sooner and had that capital asset for my retirement. It’s about Freedom and liberty. I was FORCED to trade X$ per month at that time for a future cash flow at age 65 assuming I lived so long. If I didn’t, it was lost. Like “Social Security”!

(3) Pensions were such an expense that the Aircraft companies were firing “old” injineers just before their pensions vested to hire new graduates cheaper. (The fact that much of their work was for the military and the gooferment made it hurt even more.) Hence, having created the problem, the Gooferment gave us the solution — more gooferment — the ERISA laws. (Argh!)

(4) Pensions and benefits, due to it hidden sunken costs, makes the workforce less flexible and nimble. You had to have a much bigger opportunity in a new job in order to justify leaving the security, pension, and benefits in an old employer.

(5) Increased regulation of the workplace, such as OSHA, FALSA, and NLRB, all sprung out of that New Deal thinking. And, was as taxation and regulation, a drag on our economy.

So that’s why this is bad for us as a nation.

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RANT: A truly free market requires no license!

Thursday, April 22, 2010

http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2010/04/22/obama-to-scold-wall-street-in-cooper-union-speech/?mod=djemalertNEWS

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“A free market was never meant to be a free license to take whatever you can get, however you can get it,” President Obama will say, according to speech excerpts.

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One thing about OBH44, his speeches are a hoot!

A truly free market requires no license!

It’s a meeting of the minds of two sovereign individuals who agree to an exchange that benefits both of them. (If there was no mutual benefit, why would they do it!)

It requires no Gooferment intervention. Ever!

Force prevention (i.e., physical security) is RESPONSIBILITY of the parties involved. They will probably subcontract that responsibility to who ever rents the space for the exchange to them.

Fraud prevention (i.e., some one breaches the contract) is handled by the marketplace by reputation. Break your word and no one will do business with you.

SO why is a Gooferment bureaucrat (albeit the Head Bureaucrat) trying to mislead us into thinking that some type of “license” is required. At least the highwaymen of olden days just robbed us of our wealth, they didn’t try to confuse us as well!

Argh!

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footnote: I was so argh-ravative by this story that I broke my regular publishing schedule to bring this online. One man’s rant in the blog forest. I doubt anyone will notice. Arghhhhh!

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GOVEROTRAGEOUS: Zero-Day School Weeks

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

http://cbs2chicago.com/local/four.day.school.2.1583104.html

Mar 23, 2010 6:27 pm US/Central
4-Day School Weeks Might Be Coming In Illinois
State House Has Passed Bill Allowing School Districts To Set Up Shorter Weeks; Mayor Daley Has Doubts
SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (CBS) ―

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Add an entire school day to the chopping block. State lawmakers want to move financially struggling schools to four day weeks. They say it will save money, and it won’t affect classroom time.

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Kids would still have to complete the same number of hours per school year, so switching to four-day school weeks would mean longer school days or shorter summer vacations.

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I have an idea that will save a lot of money.

Close the youth indoctrination centers completely and forever!

It’s immoral to make people pay for things that they did not agree to pay for. Parent had ’em. Parents feed, clothe, and shelter them. They should educate them too.

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POLITICAL: Drew Cary and Reson save Cleveland — Part 3

Saturday, March 20, 2010

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9-ozphsuSk

Why not?

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POLITICAL: If this isn’t intergenerational theft, what is?

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100305/ap_on_go_co/us_budget_deficits_3

Congressional estimates show grim deficit picture
By ANDREW TAYLOR, Associated Press Writer Andrew Taylor, Associated Press Writer
Fri Mar 5, 6:17 pm ET

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WASHINGTON – A new congressional report released Friday says the United States’ long-term fiscal woes are even worse than predicted by President Barack Obama’s grim budget submission last month.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office predicts that Obama’s budget plans would generate deficits over the upcoming decade that would total $9.8 trillion. That’s $1.2 trillion more than predicted by the administration.

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Time for a serious acknowledgment. This generation was “robbed” by the last in the Social Security Ponzi scheme, as well as the continual addition to the debt. So to are we “robbing” future generations by piling on the debt and unfunded liabilities.

So what is the answer?

Well, clearly each year, the demographics change as to the intergenerational population. So there’s MUST be year to year deficit neutral budgets. Since there has to be a true up in the next financial year. So any deficit must be corrected in the following year. Since we can NOT eliminate the debt build up over 70 years in a few years, we need to have a 70 year deficit reduction plan. CLEARLY, we can’t have unfunded liabilities or off-budget expenditures.

So, it’s a giant mess.

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POLITICAL: The cost of “public educstion”

Thursday, March 11, 2010

http://centraljersey.com/articles/2010/03/04/opinions/doc4b902460b6719996011467.txt#blogcomments

EDITORIAL: Governor balancing books on students’ backs
Thursday, March 4, 2010 4:22 PM EST

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   Gov. Chris Christie has made a point of saying he plans to tackle the state’s budget crisis head on. Gone, he says, are the days of kicking the proverbial can (i.e., the state’s recurring deficit) down the road and hoping someone else will pick it up.

   But that’s exactly what he’s doing, withholding aid from school districts for this year’s budget and forcing them to make up the shortfall with money many districts had planned to use in 2010-2011.

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Unfortunately, “We, The People” can’t afford “public education” anymore. A new solution will hae to be found. “Public Education” is inefficient and ineffective. Also it’s dumbing down and indoctrinating the next generation of voters to look to big gooferment as the “solution” to every problem. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but that the reality. Too expensive, too “one size fits all”, too corrupt.

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RANT: Obamais looking at your retirement savings

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

http://biggovernment.com/jarenas/2010/03/09/the-united-states-of-argentina-obamas-pension-grab/

The United States of Argentina: Obama’s Pension Grab
by J.C. Arenas

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As of the third quarter of 2009, Americans held a combined $8 trillion in 401(k) plans and IRAs, according to the most recent retirement market report from the Washington D.C.-based Investment Company Institute. Furthermore, his proposal for health-care reform calls for an extension of the 2.9% Medicare tax to unearned income, which means those annuities and other forms of guaranteed income streams you would receive in exchange for relinquishing the freedom you currently possess over your retirement funds, would be subject to taxation. The American people consistently lose when the government desires to be helpful.

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WHERE is OBH44 going to come up with all the money to pay for all these goodies?

Trillion dollar deficits? Where do you find a loose trillion dollars?

Argh!

Your retirement funds.

That’s the target BECAUSE there is NO WHERE else for the gooferment to get that size money!

Will this be the issue that awakes the sheeple?

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INTERESTING: Chaos creates order

Friday, March 5, 2010

http://www.economics21.org/commentary/health-care-chaos-and-challenge-chickens-manhattan

Health Care, Chaos, and the Challenge of Chickens in Manhattan
John O’Leary and William D. Eggers | 02/24/2010

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The paradox is that chaos creates order, while control can result in chaos. In an effort to control outcomes, free exchange is curtailed and the essential ordering signals of price and profit are lost—leading to misallocation of resources and outcomes that nobody likes.

Few of us appreciate how mundane chaos really is and how we are essentially surrounded by it.

Consider: Who is in charge of getting the right number of chickens to Manhattan every day? After all, few chickens live there, but a lot of chickens get eaten there. The typical Manhattanite downs about sixty pounds of chicken a year, in every imaginable form, from chicken chow mein to chicken nuggets, from organic chicken to those little cubes that float in your can of chicken soup. Untold thousands of people participate in providing for Manhattan’s ever-changing chicken needs, from truck drivers to restaurant owners, from grocery store managers to Arkansas chicken farmers. Who is in charge? Who makes sure that New York City winds up with the right amount of the right kind of chicken?

The answer is: No one. The chaos of the uncontrolled buying and selling of the market produces an orderly pattern of exchanges that coordinates the activities of independent yet interdependent participants. The result, without any central planning, is an adaptable and ever-changing arrangement that generally meets the needs of Manhattan’s chicken eating public. The government provides certain oversight and context for the market. The U.S. Department of Agriculture watches over chicken farms and the city’s Board of Health licenses and inspects restaurants. Chickens are hauled over public roads and contract disputes between chicken farmers and truckers are resolved in public courts. But when it comes to the essence of the chicken delivery system—how much chicken, of what kind, at what price—it is the invisible workings of supply and demand that align the productive activities of a loose network of thousands of people (and companies) in making sure New Yorkers get their chicken potpie, chicken vindaloo, and extra-spicy buffalo chicken wings.

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Interesting, no central authority using force to “enforce an orderly market”. No “market failures”. Just lots of folks seeking their own best interests as they see them. That’s called “freedom”. If the gooferment didn’t “inspect” chickens — ignore for the moment that this is a farce because they don’t do any “inspecting” — just look into what they really do! — do you think the marketplace wouldn’t figure out how to make chickens safe? Kosher, Halal, WalMart, supermarket guaranties, Consumers Reports or Underwriters’ Laboratory, consumers or buyers talking to each other.

And don’t even get me started on the “roads” argument. No roads in Disney World?

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