Calling John Galt

This is Leadership?

The Tortoise Awards

The sculpture above is from Rockefeller Plaza, and commemorates the epic visual of mighty Atlas bearing the weight of the world on his shoulders.

There are apocryphal accounts of philosophical questions raised at the time, about where Atlas stood in the scheme of things. “On the back of a giant tortoise,” was one of the legendary answers.

Well, what is the tortoise standing on? “Another tortoise.”

And that one? “It’s turtles, all the way down…”

The logic eventually fails, and drops to the level of circular reasoning. Much of what we hear and see with regard to economic discourse and public debate is based on ideas that under closer scrutiny fail to pass the Tortoise test. “On what do you base that assertion?”

Slow and Steady Wins the Debate

We here at Team Galt know full well we aren’t going to win hearts and minds overnight. We need to do a better job of compassionately expressing our understanding of several fundamental concepts:

• How wealth is really created
• The constitutional role of government
• The inherent capacity of the State to grow if unchecked
• The importance of free trade and the rule of law

There are many myths we must debunk, and it must be accomplished with the grace and precision of a jeweler. The first step is recognizing those fallacies and assumptions as uttered by our politicians and repeated by a media that doesn’t think critically enough to know better.

And here’s how you can help.

As you encounter articles, statements or links that display an egregiously incorrect, biased or slanted assumption about economics, freedom or liberty… send them to us. Help us expose those fallacies for the absurdities they are – just another stack of tortoises that answer a question but explain nothing.

Each week, we’ll recognize the Tortoise of the Week. Kudos to you if you sniff it out, and a wag-of-the-finger for the shell-head who utters it.

Send your submissions to tortoise@callingjohngalt.com – We welcome your input, this globe is getting awful heavy…

No New Ideas

As Reason.com correctly points out, Obama is using the failed playbook from Carter’s 1970’s.  It will work as well this time as it did last time.

Voting With Their Feet

Britian is looking at a 50% tax on income and it may go even higher. Sir Michael Caine gets up at 6am every morning to earn everything he has and has said that if it goes 1% higher he will be leaving for America.

We may at times be helpless to directly stop the ever increasing taxes, encroachment of the government, and greater gov’t spending, however we can vote with our feet…

I want my own airport

The Stimulus in My Backyard

For anyone who wants to know what classical Keynesian stimulus looks like, you’re welcome to hang out in my backyard.

I live in Jefferson County, Alabama, which currently sports the highest municipal debt in the nation.

We started down that path through honest means, and time will tell how much dishonest means added to the debt.

A few years back, there was an environmental lawsuit which tagged the county for having sub-standard sewers, leading to nasty stuff getting into the creeks. The county went into an EPA consent decree, with a timetable for improvements.

It occurred to the county leaders they might seize this opportunity to go beyond the scope of the decree. After all, while you’re digging that old pipe up, why not replace it with something bigger and better? Why not expand capacity for future growth, and prepare large sections of the county for future industrial and residential expansion?

You know, invest in infrastructure. It just took a little bit of extra borrowing.

Well, now we’re sitting on a three-billion dollar debt. We’re a full year into servicing interest only. We’re more than a year past the point where bankruptcy made sense, and many of us quit counting after the first dozen emergency extensions. Think Orange County, California, and multiply it by three, factoring the population difference.

Granted, it wasn’t a three-billion dollar project at first. But that’s the nature of government projects, they tend to grow.

Granted, there was a decent amount of graft and corruption involved, and little deals here and there deciding who would get those lucrative contracts. That’s also the nature of government – there larger the amount of money on the table, the greater chance of money changing under that table. No fewer than 6 current or former commissioners have been either tried or are under indictment, a stunning number when you consider there are only five seats on the commission.

Granted, our county leaders tried playing the shell game of bond swaps and other money-moving machinations to keep the interest rates as low as possible. And it blew up in their faces, so now the insurers are trying to force the county to raise sewer rates to cover the shortfall. Average homeowner would see a $120/month increase if they got their way. Oh, and if you had a sewer hookup that was put close enough to your house that you had an option to use it one day, but never used, you’d be hit with a $40/month convenience fee.

No S#!t.  Literally.

So, what do we have for all this debt? We have a half-completed sewer, mounting interest debt, and legal nightmares. We have de facto bankruptcy, and the prospect of laying off essential county staff. And we face a monetary reputational hit that is far worse than bankruptcy would have been.

What we don’t have is record employment and economic bliss.

Keynesian theory dictates that government spending can be a catalyst for raising aggregate demand in an economy. It does not factor at all what you spend the money on. All that amounts is the amount that is pumped into the system. Those dollars “turn over” in the ecosystem, and a magic multiple is announced that makes it sound like your economy made a profit on the extra spending.

By all accounts, there was a large amount of extra money spent in Jefferson County. But it came from somewhere.

That money that was “spent” did create jobs, but you can never calculate the opportunity cost — how well would those dollars have been spent, what kind of “Un-Keynesian” multiplier did we give up to buy half of a non-stinking sewer that we didn’t need, for ten times the cost of the original decree?

If Keynesian stimulus worked, then Jefferson County, Alabama, would be the subject of numerous national stories and articles. Other communities would be flocking here to collect the evidence they would need to justify new taxes and increased spending, all in the name of job creation.

I haven’t seen any of those articles, have you?

High Unemployment Rates in States w/ High Taxes and Greater Unionization

Who would have guessed that the states with the highest unemployment also had higher taxes and a higher percentage of union workers... From The Volokh Conspiracy:

The six states with the highest unemployment rates are:

• 12.6% Michigan
• 12.1% Oregon
• 11.4% South Carolina
• 11.2% California
• 10.8% North Carolina
• 10.5% Rhode Island

The six states with the lowest unemployment rates are:

• 5.2% Iowa
• 5.2% Utah
• 4.9% South Dakota
• 4.6% Nebraska
• 4.5% Wyoming
• 4.2% North Dakota

Federalist vs States Rights

Do states have the right to secede?  Texas Gov Rick Perry has been talking a lot about it lately.  Obviously, there is strength in numbers, but is this a viable option for independent states as a response to a larger and larger federal gov’t?

Another way to deal with Gov’t Fraud

Bald Faced Lies About Markets

Saying that ‘libertarianism is wrong because Free Markets don’t exist’ is like saying ‘fur coats are dumb in cold weather’ because we’ve never seen a Sasquatch.