Thursday, June 16, 2011

Odds and Ends

It seems we have a Luddite for President. Barack Obama told a news program yesterday that employment is not picking up because business has substituted capital for labor. Look, he says, there are ATM machines rather than tellers. Would Obama's economy be better if we banned all technological change?

In the Mercatus Center a study was recently published listing the economic freedom of the states. There are some problems in the study given that Oregon is ranked sixth most free when Oregon is nearly as regulation plagued as Washington and California. But, Arizona was ranked 22. New Hampshire was 1. We need to look at why Arizona is only in the top 45% of most free states.

The Community College Board again raised the property tax. Amazing how the Board has the power to increase the tax any time it wants. The Goldwater Institute has been investigating the profligate spending by the Community Colleges and it appears that rather than raising their revenue, the Board should reduce some of its spending.

"Shovel ready jobs were not so shovel ready" says the President regarding the reason his stimulus plan did not help employment. Shovel ready literally would have been the FDR action of employing people to dig holes and employing other people to fill them in. This reduces unemployment. Does it increase standards of living?

I was a guest on the Terry Gilberg talk show on KFYI the other night and spent most of the time talking about the debt and the debt ceiling. I argued that the debt ceiling should not be raised; interest payments can be made and social security checks sent out and military paid all from current revenues. Not raising the ceiling would force government to prioritize. But a forecast -- it will be raised and without matching cuts.

No comments:

Post a Comment