Hail To The Victors

President Obama unveiled the central theme for the Democrats’ 2012 campaigns at a recent speech in Ann Arbor in which he blamed rich people on the University of Michigan.  Or something.

His point was that no one could succeed without public institutions like the University of Michigan discovering things - with government funding.  He used the example of the internet, although he left out the part about its most famous prime movers being college dropouts, and the other part about government having virtually nothing to do with everything we like about it. 

Dropouts making good is quite logical, actually, since the things they learn in Econ 101 – supply and demand, price elasticity, marginal utility, and substitution effect – are useful.  It’s all that Keynesian macro stuff later on that twists the brain into a knot and dulls the competitive instinct.  Better to leave too early than too late.      

Mr. Obama’s speech echoed the moral-takings theory of Massachusetts senatorial candidate Elizabeth Warren; namely that all 310 million regular Americans pulled a laboring oar to create infrastructure, without which the fabulously wealthy could never have gotten that way. And since the fabulously wealthy won’t “give back” enough on their own, the government has a moral obligation to take their property by force. 

Good thing they only want our money, because it also would not have been possible for Halle Berry to come down to Rodeo drive to have her nails done unless the government built the roads first, and it sure doesn’t seem fair that one lucky guy gets to be the object of all her affections.   So does the government also have the moral authority to force Ms. Berry to give the all the boys in Barstow a tumble?  I think not, and shame on you, Ms. Warren, for even suggesting such a thing.    

The first two problems with the Obama/Warren “give back” argument are 1) who does the giving, and 2) who does the receiving.  Infrastructure provided by government was paid for by taxpayers – i.e. the rich people - and the people who will benefit from the socialists’ increased rent-seeking will be the Democrats’ wealthy clients and donors, not the working poor at whom the pandering pitch is aimed. 

Here is how trickle-up economics works in the real world:  the working poor will pay higher prices per filling to cover the rich dentist’s tax increase, and those new taxes will pay the Solyndra CEO’s massive severance bonus when it tanks.  Democrats call this infrastructure; people with common sense call it an outrage.       

But the more dangerous problem with Mr. Obama’s lawful-looting strategy is that it abolishes property rights.  If the government can justify taking the property of the rich simply because government itself exists, then it can claim anything from anyone at any time.  Economic liberty and personal liberty are not separable – the taking of one freedom imperils all others.   

Most Americans are still in denial that we now live in a post-constitutional and post-capitalist world - and it shows.  The reason we find our nation in such dire political straits is that we have rejected the Constitution and replaced it with…nothing.  And the reason we are in such dire economic straits is that we have rejected free market capitalism and replaced it with…nothing.  We elect bad lawyers to high office and they just make it up as they go. 

The President has made his contempt for the Constitution plain to the American people in recent weeks.  He has made appointments without consent of the Senate while in session, ignored the Georgia court in the matter of his eligibility to appear on the ballot, he has taken the authority to indefinitely detain without charge, and he has scoffed at the separation of powers, taunting Congress in their chambers at his State of the Union address – justifying any executive action solely on the basis that Congress did not take it. 

Democrats cheering their guy on for such bold leadership should take pause and remind themselves that each new power ceded to President Obama will be wielded by the next President Bush, or President Palin, or someone even less tolerable. 

Will you guys still be doing your touchdown dance when President Santorum tells the Supreme Court he has banned abortions by decree since they didn’t act?   When President Scott Walker enacts nation-wide Right-To-Work by executive order, will Mr. Obama’s king-for-a-day precedent still seem like such a good idea?   

Of course we need infrastructure.  Of course we need a viable public sector to provide needed services that all Americans benefit from.  But those things make up a small fraction of the government budgets that are now consuming our national wealth and cannibalizing our private sector.  

The President’s “you didn’t act” doctrine removes the protections of separated and limited powers that enabled this nation to flourish.  That Constitutional constraint of government is the real infrastructure which set the stage for wealth creation in this country, not the public universities or the innumerable departments of good intentions that permeate government.   

And the “giving back” that is really needed to restore American greatness is simply the giving back of our Constitution and the restoration of our economic liberty that have been taken from us bit by bit over a century of socialist progressivism. 

The University of Michigan’s fight song is “Hail to the Victors”, not “Hail To Everybody Who Lives In Michigan And Votes Occasionally.”  Well, not yet, anyway. 

    
“Moment Of Clarity” is a weekly commentary by Libertarian writer and speaker Tim Nerenz, Ph.D.  Visit Tim’s website www.timnerenz.com to find your moment and order Tim’s new book, “BRING IT!”     

Behold The Walmart

The largest employer in the United States is Walmart.  The second largest is the United States Postal Service (USPS). 

One is a private sector, for-profit corporation; the other is a government non-profit entity.  One is non-union, and the other is unionized.  One returns profits to its owners, the other must be subsidized by its owners.  One pays an average wage of $11.75/hr with limited benefits, and the other pays an average of $24/hr with generous benefits.  One is younger than I am; the other is older than the nation.   

There are 142,000 products in the average Walmart Superstore.  Each day, 2.1 million people go to work in 9,749 Walmart stores in 14 countries.  There is no government Czar telling them what to do, and none of them know me from Adam.  So what I am about to tell you is really amazing – check this out.    

I never told any one of those 2.1 million employees where I would be today, or what time I would arrive, or which of those 142,000 products I would buy; it is a little ninja test of the capitalist system I run every so often for Quality Control to make sure that markets still work.  The odds against them guessing which products I will choose to buy and from which store are astronomical, and yet they nailed it.

Kingsford, Michigan; 5:45 PM; Colgate Cavity Protection toothpaste and M&M Peanuts.  Scary, man - I’m still shaking.  It’s like they put a chip in my head or something.  And they do it every time; way better than Chriss Angel.

Now let’s give contestant #2 a try.  The United States Postal Service has had over 200 years to perfect its craft.  They have only 28 products.  Each day 700,000 people go to work in only one country.  They deliver my mail to one of only two possible locations once a day, six days a week and they get to pick the time.   

It’s the government, so I had to dumb-down the test quite a bit to even give them a shot. I gave them my location months in advance, let them pick the service, pick the day, pick the time, and pick the parcels. There is only 1/3 as many of them to align their efforts and they make twice as much as the Walmart folks, and for the 30th day in a row, they forwarded my mail to the wrong address. 

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the difference between markets and government. 

Behold the wonder that is the Walmart.  Do any of those hundreds of millions of people from all over the world who designed, built, transported, and merchandised those 142,000 products to their 9,749 stores know or care what I want or why I want it?  Why do they want me to have healthy gums and no chocolate mess more than they want to go fishing with their kids? 

The answer, of course, is that they did not make anything for me; they made it for profit.  Profit is the reason that I can buy generic medicine for $4, a wastebasket for $1.69, 2 dozen golf balls for $9.49, and get my tires rotated while I buy groceries.  I have no idea if the person(s) who made the Garden Weasel is black, white, male, female, gay, straight, Christian, Muslim, disabled, old, young, liberal or conservative. Nor do I care, and neither does he or she; profit makes us do what bumper stickers cannot – coexist.

He or she is working at the best opportunity available to them, and I am buying at the best opportunity available to me.  We both decided what is best for us on our own without coercion.  Two families have optimized our benefit in voluntary and peaceful exchange with each other.  Profit does that every day without breaking a sweat; no government has ever pulled it off, not even at gunpoint.   

It gets a lot better.  A person of modest means can buy high quality goods beyond the reach of the richest people in the world just one generation ago.  Moms who grew up wearing hand-me-downs can buy new clothes for all of their own children.  People who never had to do that probably can’t appreciate the anxiety of that first day of school when you have on your brother’s stuff all patched and darned and rolled up; or the relief when you discover that most every other kid is in the same boat.  And now kids worry if their smart phone battery will run out before the Justin Beiber download is finished.  

Profit did that.  Profit delivers luxury to the poor; government delivers promises to the poor. That is the difference.  That is the thing that the haters of free market capitalism don’t grasp.  There is nothing capable of replacing it - nothing.     

Of all of our governmental agencies, our military is the most able, the most accomplished, and the most admired.  With an almost unlimited budget, the most advanced logistics system of any government entity anywhere in the world, and the most advanced weapons to force compliance, they still run out of socks in the combat zone.   

Do they ever run out of socks at the Walmart?  There’s your moment of clarity.  

The next time you walk into a Walmart, take a minute to look around; think about all the millions and millions of people from all over the world who made the miracle that is the Walmart come together just for you.  All it would take is for one of them – just one – to not do their job, and the product you came in to buy will not be on the shelf.  Now grab your cart and go see if any of them failed.    

Not only did they pass my ninja QC test and deliver a decent return to their shareholders, but Walmart also gave $170 million of its profits to charities here in the United States alone last year.  The USPS lost money and had nothing to give to charities; in fact, it asked for a subsidy from its owners and proposed cutting back service in exchange. 

Lower quality, higher prices, unreliable, unsustainable, uncharitable. And with the benevolent government as the employer and a union workforce, surely the USPS would be a perfect socialist utopian workplace, right?  No, the term “going postal” has become slang for violent workplace rage. 

And they say capitalism doesn’t work? 

And they also insist that we free marketers need the government to step in and fix us?  What can government possibly teach markets?  What could Walmart possibly learn from USPS about giving me what I want, when I want it, where I want it, and at a price I am willing to pay?  Why should I expect people who go postal to protect me from the greeter? 

Forget what rubbish you have been taught by your professors about failed capitalism; go teach yourself about its miracles.  Walk in and trust what you see with your own eyes – and behold the wonder that is the Walmart.    


“Moment Of Clarity” is a weekly commentary by Libertarian writer and speaker Tim Nerenz, Ph.D.  Visit Tim’s website www.timnerenz.com to find your moment and order Tim’s new book, “BRING IT!”     

It's Raining Coin

Like most other “rich” people, I slept in this morning; rolled out from under the spun-gold sheets at the crack of noon, showered in Evian and went outside to fill up my humungous money bucket with the golden coins that fall out of the sky on people like me. 

No, no really – that’s where it comes from, don’t you know.  The raining of the coin doesn’t happen everywhere, as it would be silly of us who already got ours let the middle class siphon off any of the loot.  You have to watch Fox News and know the secret code words to learn where and when the Koch brothers are going to make the next drop.  There’s an app for that, too.

They teach us all about this stuff in that secret rich white boy’s school – how to steal the poor people’s buckets and rig the game so we are always first in line when prosperity rains.  That way there is nothing left for the working class and they all have to go on food stamps so we can belittle them, just like Juan Williams said… 

Sadly, it is necessary to tell some people now that this is satire.  For the record, there is no secret rich boy’s school and wealth doesn’t really fall out of the sky - you have to earn it.  Sorry to burst your bubble, lefties.      

Actually, I don’t even know if I am rich or not – certainly better off than I ever dreamed possible growing up in my little mining town, and super-rich in all the really important ways that don’t involve counting up money.  When the Democrats start the drumbeat for more taxes on the rich, sometimes the line is as low as $106,000 and sometimes it is $250,000 and sometimes you have to be a millionaire or billionaire. 

I guess it doesn’t really matter; it is one of those questions of which came first - the chicken or the chicken-tax. 

The President just gave his State of the Labor Unions address (yawn) and announced that taxing the rich (yawn) will be the backbone of his new plan (yawn) to build the economy.  Funny, since he just decided we wouldn’t be building pipelines, power plants, drill rigs, Gibson guitars, planes in South Carolina, or cars that people actually want to buy.  I guess the economy is something else.      

And incidentally, I think that Republican congressman who boycotted the President’s speech was as wrong as the Wisconsin state senators that fled to Illinois.  Until the day the next President is inaugurated, President Obama is everyone’s President, and we all have jobs with stuff we don’t like to do.  But I digress…

Just in case there is one liberal somewhere whose brain is not bolted down to the deck of the U.S.S. Economic Suicide, let me try one more time to explain why increasing tax rates on the rich is a really bad idea, even though it might feel good to think they won’t miss a couple scoops out of their rain-money buckets.       

The Wall Street Journal did a recent piece on a 2007 Congressional Budget Office analysis of tax burdens – a CBO which was under the control of Nancy Pelosi’s Democrats at the time.  Nancy doesn’t bring up this particular tax study very often.      

CBO found that the average total tax rate of the top 1% was slightly less than 30% of their income, while the middle class paid an average tax rate of 15%, and poor people (bottom 20%) paid just under 5%.  It turns out that the rich indeed do not pay their fair share of taxes; they pay nearly twice their fair share.

And if we raise the top marginal tax rates on the rich – as Democrats like Mr. Obama and Ms. Pelosi propose - it will increase the tax burden on the middle class.  That is not economic theory, it is economic history.

In the 1970’s, when the top marginal tax rate on individuals was 70%, the top 1% paid 19% of all taxes collected, while the rest of us paid 81%.  Today, with the top marginal rate reduced to 35%, the wealthiest 1% pay 40% of all taxes and the rest of us now pay only 60%.  Trickle up economics. 

Imagine if it were the middle class who earned 28% of all the income and paid 40% of all the taxes – would Krugman and Reich be clamoring for tax increases on teachers and firefighters?  Would Buffet’s secretary come forward and volunteer to pay more?  What would the protesters occupy, an Applebee’s? 

The liberals tell us we must increase tax rates on the rich – they say to put them back up to the pre-Reagan rates that were “fair”.  Ok, but if we do, taxes on the rest of us will go back up by 35% to make up for the shortfall in tax revenues.  Been there, done that.

Why do higher tax rates produce less tax revenue?  Because the rich quit earning taxable income when we take away more of what they earn – guys like Michael Moore make less movies (ok, wishful thinking, but you get the drift).  Investment also dries up because half of the reward is no longer worth all of the risk.  Investment is what creates jobs; we do not need less of it.   

And for those who enjoy only a casual acquaintance with the obvious, this is not the only country where it rains money.  The very rich can take their buckets to the Caymans, or Ireland, or Singapore or a dozen other places who would be thrilled to tax them at lower rates than we do.  And 70% of zero is zero, whether you are a Keynesian, an Austrian, or Chicago School economist.  Or just from Chicago. 

Last year the state of Illinois slapped a 67% increase on tax rates for wealthy individuals – the Obama/Pelosi magic pill to cure budget deficits.  But taxing the rich did not reduce their deficit; it made things predictably worse.  Much worse. 

$4.5 billion of unpaid bills sit past due, with another $4 billion coming due that can’t be paid – tax refunds, employee health insurance, invoices for road repair, things like that.  The state is losing residents at a rate of one every 10 minutes.  Hint: the poor and unemployed are not chief among them.  

The President apparently doesn’t get back home much; or he is too busy blaming everyone else for his failures to bother about economics and home-state reality.  “Tax the rich” is good chanting material, and that is what passes for deep thoughts these days.    

If you want to bet your prosperity on Tooth Fairy Government doing any of that stuff the President promised you tonight, then put out your bucket and wait for it to start raining coin.  As for me, I’m getting up early tomorrow and going to work.          


“Moment Of Clarity” is a weekly commentary by Libertarian writer and speaker Tim Nerenz, Ph.D.  Visit Tim’s website www.timnerenz.com to find your moment and order Tim’s new book, “BRING IT!”.    
  

Dr. Tim's Walker Rally Speech

 (Note: a grass-roots rally in support of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker was held today in Wauwatosa, where thousands of Walker supporters stood outside for 3 hours to listen to a virtual who's who of GOP speakers...and me.  If you were not there, here is what you missed.)

 

Well, Wisconsin, they did it; they got enough  signatures to force a recall election for Governor Scott Walker.    

Did anyone really doubt you could find 540,000 graduates of Wisconsin public schools who would demand a sticker and a hug and a do-over when they lose?  That’s how they roll nowadays.  

So now $20 million will have to be cut from state and local budgets for education, the environment, the elderly, cancer research, day care, special needs children, bike paths, and bridge repairs to pay for their little tantrum.  Own that, Madison. 

It also means that more than 3.3 million eligible voters in Wisconsin said no.  We listened to the protests for a year, we thought about our options for 60 days, and we decided not to waste $20 million and to just stick with the guy who was elected fair and square. 

So what do I think of the recall?    Two words:  BRING IT!  

Now, all these other speakers here today are Republicans, and they all came to say “I stand with Scott Walker.”  

Well, not me. I’m not a Republican and I don’t stand with Scott Walker.  I’m a Libertarian - and Scott Walker stands with me. 

I stand for jobs. 

I stand for job-creators. 

I stand for free markets, open competition, lower taxes, and sensible regulation. 

I stand for developing our natural resources responsibly. 

I stand for rewarding hard work, and not punishing success. 

I don't stand with Scott Walker.  Scott Walker stands with me. 

I believe in less government and more liberty. 

I believe in fiscal responsibility. 

I believe in school choice.

I believe in the right to carry.

I believe in the right to work. 

I believe in the right to vote…once…residents only…with ID.

I don't believe in Scott Walker.  Scott Walker believes in me.

In the past three years, 132,000 teachers have been laid off in the other 49 states. 

Why?  Because their Governor is NOT Scott Walker.  There is only one.  And as everyone knows, one Walker beats 14 runners.   

The tens of thousands of teachers and government workers in Wisconsin who did NOT get laid off have Scott Walker to thank for it. 

And those few hundred who DID get laid off – in Madison and Milwaukee - can thank their unions. 

You guys with the signs and cowbells over there are drumming for the wrong team.

If we Libertarians got a mulligan every time we lost an election, we would need a full time department of voter nullification.  Oh, wait – we already have that, it’s called the Government Accountability Board. 

And in a few days they will rule that all those millions of votes we cast in November 2010 didn’t count.  They will hope for better luck this time.   They are wrong.
 
I write a blog called Moment of Clarity, and if there ever was ever a time for clarity, this is it.  So here’s your moment:  this has nothing do with Walker, or rights or any high-minded principle at all – this is the last tug of war between the taxpayers versus the taxeaters. 

There is no fence to sit on; there is no rock to hide under.  It is the State versus you.   Pick your side. 

I’ve picked mine; I’m going to stand on the side of liberty, and Scott Walker stands with me.    

Recall Your Mom

And kudos once again to opponents of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker who celebrated their Dr. Martin Luther King Day holiday yesterday by hissing and chanting at the Governor during a solemn proclamation honoring Dr. King at the State Capitol in Madison. 

In doing so, the Democrats notched yet another important victory for loutish self-absorption over common decency in the continuing battle for the hearts and minds of independent voters in the Badger State. 

The highlights of their perfect season, undefeated by couth, includes shouting down the Pledge of Allegiance, booing the National Anthem, disrupting a ceremony honoring Special Olympians, and hassling returning troops, just to name a few.  Their behavior in our Capitol rotunda would get them thrown out of Walmart.   

Forget Scott Walker; you guys should recall your mom. 

Or whoever it was that raised you to believe it was ok to interrupt ceremonies, hurl vulgarities at 14-year-old girls, disenfranchise cloistered nuns, bribe children with cigarettes to sign recall petitions, stalk the families of public officials, throw beer or coffee on opponents, make death threats, and try to shut down dissenting media outlets. 

That might be what Democracy looks like in Venezuela or Iran, but not here.  That’s not even what 4th grade looks like here.  Our moms raised us to wait our turn, to let everyone speak, to compromise, to watch our language in public, to be gracious in both victory and defeat.  We learned to stand our ground, but not to stand in the path of others’ rights to pass.  We learned tolerance and patience – from our moms.  

We don’t taunt, we don’t bully, and we don’t respect people so undisciplined that they cannot put a sock in it for one hour to honor the memory of a man who sacrificed his life for a cause he carried with dignity and respect.          

I can understand why Democrats and unionists might not think disrupting an MLK commemoration is any big deal; after all, Dr. King had to fight Democrats to get black people their right to vote, and he had to fight unions to integrate the workforce.  It is unlikely that the union/government schools tell students who was the party of the KKK and separate-but-equal back in the day.

So what if Dr. King gave his life?  That is nothing compared to having to pay 12% of a health insurance premium, right?  And how can we equate something trivial like institutionalized segregation with something really awful, like allowing school boards to compete those WEA trust insurance contracts now that the scam is blown?  

I’ve heard the comeback: both sides do it.  No, they don’t; one side does it.  And that one side is not winning over any unaligned voters by pitching fits in public. 

We are about to waste $9 million of our hard-earned money to give our Democrats another mulligan, money that will not be available for education, the elderly, the environment, cancer research, bridge repairs, or bike paths.  Or, God forbid, tax relief for working people who can hardly make ends meet, thanks in part to one of the highest tax burdens in the country. 

2/3 of that recall money will be paid by Republicans and Independents, both of whom overwhelmingly approve of the job Governor Walker is doing – the job he was elected fair and square to do.

It will come out of township budgets across the state, townships run by common-sense people from both Parties who would prioritize snow removal over an unbudgeted election if it were up to them – and us.  If it were up to us, we would have the election to recall Scott Walker in November of 2014, when it was originally scheduled. 

But it’s not up to us. It’s up to people whose moms did not teach them to wait their turn.  It is up to union bosses from out East, together with the Madison liberals who think everyone’s money is their money, the Chicago urban vote factory which views Milwaukee as a colony, and out of state students who will leave us after graduation, taking with them the benefit of one of the best educations taxpayer subsidies can buy. 

Many of those students putting their idealism and energy behind the Walker Recall will relocate to the low-tax, Right-To-Work, concealed carry, energy-friendly, business-friendly states where there is opportunity.  I wish they would use that enthusiasm to help Governor Walker and his successors turn Wisconsin into one of those states, so they could find opportunities here.

That would make all our moms happy.  They could see their grandchildren without having to pay a bag fee and endure a public groping at the hands of TSA. 

 


“Moment Of Clarity” is a weekly commentary by Libertarian writer and speaker Tim Nerenz, Ph.D.  Visit Tim’s website www.timnerenz.com to find your moment.    

Rich Is The New Gay

It’s ok to hate them for who they are.  It’s ok to vandalize their property, taunt them, seize their assets, deny them government benefits, make them register and buy a license to practice their alternative lifestyle. 

You can hound them at their workplace, you can bully them in schools, you can picket their homes, you can send them death threats with impunity, and you can occupy public buildings for months on end chanting bad things about them. 

Rich is the new gay. 

It is no longer permissible in our civil society to hate based on skin color, gender, ethnicity, religion, disability, or sexual preference.  But wealth – that’s a free-fire zone.  Wealth is evil.  Capitalism is sodomy.  Free enterprise is lewd and lascivious conduct.  Wall Street is the new Castro Street, only it’s ok to light it on fire.  Even Tiffany Newt feels free to tee off on Mitt Romney for being (gasp) too rich – think Ellen reefing on Elton John to win George Michael’s vote.          

You can say the most hateful things imaginable about rich people - even the President does it, cheered on by a wealth-o-phobic media.  Imagine how the fur would fly if a President blamed all his failures on homosexuals, or if he expressed support for violent mobs rioting in the streets if it were the 3.6% instead of the 1% whose heads are demanded on a pole.   

The left/right paradigms for wealth and sexual preference are pretty much the same:  liberals insist that material preference is assigned at birth; conservatives believe it is a choice.  Closet richos like Michael Moore or the Obamas possess the same self-loathing false piety as Ted Haggert or Larry Craig.  Their response to being outed is loud, angry denial; wide stance or baseball cap, the disguise doesn’t fool anyone.    

The rich even have their transgendered equivalents – trans-wealthered, I suppose - who have crossed over from the poor side to the rich side.  I don’t think the abuse hurled against Herman Cain was because he was black; it was because he is black and refused to stay poor.  To the haters, that is one sick puppy.  Tim Tebow is even worse – openly rich, openly humble, and openly Christian.  Unforgivable.       

I can’t explain the liberals’ reflexive hatred of wealthy people.  Perhaps they are guilty about the way their own leaders have enriched themselves – Obama, Corzine, Soros, Pelosi, Kennedy, Gore, Trumka, Jackson, Hillary the pork belly whisperer. If all you know is swindling and influence peddling, then maybe that’s all you can imagine. 

Whenever I say something nice about rich people in a column, I can count on a deluge of angry comments and personal attacks.  The number of things haters guess wrong about me reveals a prejudice so deep-seated that it can’t be tempered by reason.  The last acceptable negative stereotype is the rich white guy – presumptively unethical, presumptively privileged, presumptively unaccomplished and undeserving. 

People who hate rich people don’t like it when I credit rich businesspeople for improving our living standards. They say that the only reason that rich people ever improve products, workplace rules, and the environment is because unions or government force them.  Rich people are inherently evil and greedy and left to their own devices would poison us and starve us to death – they can’t help themselves.    

But let’s think about that.  The government only forces them to pay their workers a wage of $7.25 per hour, and yet private employers pay a median wage of $21.10 per hour.  Why?  Who makes them do that?   Not unions - only 7% of private sector employees choose to be represented by unions.  How is it possible that rich people would voluntarily pay poorer people triple what the law requires?  Hmmm.  

And government does not force any employer to provide benefits, either; yet the average private sector employee receives $17,000 worth from his evil rich employer.  Health insurance, holidays, and how about vacation days - nobody forces rich people to pay you to take time off with your family, but they do.  How un-greedy is that?

Want more?  Tuition reimbursement, retirement savings matches, private loans, contributions to charities, service on community boards, partnering with schools and government agencies, funding recreation, the arts, museums – show me the law that was passed by the progressives that makes rich people do any of that. 

Or tell me what union went out on strike until the employer agreed to build a soccer field for inner city kids or fund scholarships for girls in non-traditional careers?   Which one traded a wage increase for increased funding of Boys and Girls clubs or Junior Achievement?  That’s what owners do all the time, into the billions.   

Some employers’ subsidized cafeterias are the only decent meals their employees will eat during the week.  Nobody made them do that; and they want to starve the poor, remember?   Poison their water, take away their health care, shut down schools for their kids, hate women – stuff like that.  Not offer free mammograms.   

Do you think that executives must sit on civic boards under some court-ordered community service sentence?  Is it like the Huber law – we get a pass to get out of work to do it?  Why would rich people give so much of their time and money to the poor, the sick, and the disadvantaged if they really hated them as much as liberals say we do? 

Most of the rich people I know used to be a lot poorer than most of the people I know calling them names.  Now that I think about it, most people I know calling them names have never been poor a day in their life – not really poor, not like the poverty I have seen. 

The average American worker earns 29 times as much as the average worker in the world’s bottom quintile – that is a lot bigger guilt-gap than between our worker and his CEO. What does that prove – that the American workers are even more greedy and selfish than the dreaded CEO?  No, it proves we are very productive top to bottom in the working class, and yes, business owners work their tails off.                     

Rich is the new gay, so go ahead and hate if you must.  But remember this: gay people can’t make you gay, but rich people can make you rich.  That is, if you quit screaming at them long enough to ask them how they did it.  That is how most of us trans-wealthered people started our rise on the updraft.; we shut up and listened. 

I bet you Romney’s $10,000 that any one of them would be glad to tell you if you asked nicely.  Try it.  


“Moment Of Clarity” is a weekly commentary by Libertarian writer and speaker Tim Nerenz, Ph.D.  Visit Tim’s website www.timnerenz.com to find your moment.    

It's Not Complicated

Freedom is difficult, but it is not complicated.  Either you wish to make your own choices in life (freedom) or you wish to let others make them for you (government). 

Ron Paul likes to say “freedom is popular” and he is right, when it comes to our own freedom; none of us wants someone else to spend our money and tell us what to do.  That’s not complicated.  It is when we think about extending that same courtesy to those who spend their money in ways we find offensive (buy drugs, for example) and do things that we do not approve of (take them), that is gets difficult.

Ever since Rick Santorum surged to a virtual tie in the Iowa Caucuses, the national debate has turned back, at least temporarily, to social issues and the central question of what role government should play in promoting morality and values.  Most Republicans think the government should take an active role in promoting civic morality; most Democrats think government is civic morality.  Most libertarians think this is why mute buttons were put on remotes; we’ll check back in when they get back around to war and economic collapse.   

I hate sin as much as any of my social conservative friends do; the difference between us is our willingness to imprison those who hate it a little less. 

Violent crimes are committed by violent criminals, and we need laws and prisons and courts and private arms in order to defend ourselves and property from predators.  Force and fraud are the libertarian lines in the sand where freedom ends and crime begins.  Most of us are actually “tougher” on real crime than the average Republican.  Freedom and consequence are reciprocal; we don’t like either to be metered out in small doses. 

But victimless crimes are something else altogether.  The buyer and seller of contraband – whether it is raw milk, below minimum wage labor, drugs, sex, a wager, scalpers’ tickets, usury loans, alternative medicine, unlicensed haircuts, RYO cigarettes, or Gibson guitars – have forced or defrauded no one. 

As a principled matter, it is none of my business how you choose to live your life, and from a practical perspective, I don’t want to pay the costs of enforcing futility.  If eternal damnation isn’t already enough of a deterrent, adding 260 hours of community service is not going to make anybody sit up straight and fly right. Immorality has survived 7,000 years of moralists; this won’t be the year we snuff it out by electing one guy or another guy.  And just like anything else, the quality of morality suffers when the government takes it over.    

The issue isn’t really morality, anyway; it’s the role of law.  Conservatives think the law should punish what we don’t approve, libertarians think the law should make us tolerate what we don’t approve, and liberals think the law should make us pay for what we don’t approve.  To the Progressives – in both Parties - civic morality is achieved when a few of us pay to impose their beliefs on all of us.   

Over the years, I have come to realize that immorality is its own worst punishment; most people I know who have chosen vice as a lifestyle live in misery and squalor.  I love them, of course, but have zero sympathy for them; the picture was on the brochure when they made their reservation.  Laws are just words; they won’t fix anyone who is broken.  And our obligation to be our brother’s keeper takes a lot more than paying taxes.   

Last year, our units of government passed 40,000 new laws.  The mind boggles.

No one even knows for sure how many laws there are in the United States – hundreds of thousands certainly, millions perhaps.  It is absolutely impossible to be a law-abiding citizen in this country; none of us knows all the laws and we have all most certainly broken several last year…or yesterday, for all I know.  I used to break lots of them on purpose when I was young and fun; no challenge now.     

Have all these laws made us a better society?  Are we more righteous, just, compassionate, prosperous, healthy, and happy because of them?   Do we treat each other better now that we have made it a crime to offend?  Do we hate less because we made hate illegal?   Sure doesn’t look like it on the nightly news.

The miracle that was 19th century America was described by Alexis de Tocqueville in his epic “Democracy in America”.  He correctly identified the parallel importance of liberty and religiosity in a free society:   

“In France I had almost always seen the spirit of religion and the spirit of freedom pursuing courses diametrically opposed to each other; but in America I found that they were intimately united, and that they reigned in common over the same country."

That ascending America that so fascinated de Tocqueville had a limited and distributed government that consumed less than 10% of GDP at all levels combined.   That is a fraction of the footprint that is advocated by either Ron Paul or Gary Johnson, our two most prominent libertarian politicians.  That is how far off the rails we have veered over the past century – even our crazy libertarians aren’t radical enough. 

It was that Constitutional America, where government was limited and morality was privatized, that inspired the industrial revolution, abolished slavery, institutionalized philanthropy, developed a middle class, achieved universal literacy, eradicated disease and improved life spans at a rate not seen before or since.  In the latter half of the 19th century, a flood of immigrants voted with their feet for free market capitalism.  Freedom is indeed popular – always has been.      

Presidential candidate Rick Santorum’s argument that freedom breeds immorality ignores the history of America when it was most free.  We are now at our least free, and at our most immoral, by any measure of social pathology.  We have proven for decades on end that government can deliver neither prosperity nor salvation – no matter who runs it.        

We don’t need 40,000 more laws each year to live free.  The Constitution is just a skinny pamphlet; the Ten Commandments fit on a recipe card.   Even a society of atheists would live peaceably together if they did not lie, covet, steal, kill, disrespect parents, commit adultery, or attempt to play God.  

Some people think we should take those Ten Commandments down from our government buildings.  Not me.  I think we ought to take down the government buildings.    


“Moment Of Clarity” is a weekly commentary by Libertarian writer and speaker Tim Nerenz, Ph.D.  Visit Tim’s website www.timnerenz.com to find your moment.    

AFP Town Hall Speech

 [I was invited to speak as a panelist at Americans For Prosperity "It's Working" Town Hall today in Waukesha, Wisconsin.  Here is my closing speech]

Some of you may have read a piece I wrote recently, entitled “Downward Wisconsin”.  It begins like this:

“We used to make things here in Wisconsin.  We made machine tools in Milwaukee, cars in Kenosha and ships in Sheboygan.  We mined iron in the north and lead in the south.  We made cheese, we made brats, we made beer, and we even made the napkins to clean up the beer we spilled.  And we made money.”

That essay was a celebration of the working men and women in Wisconsin and our great industrial entrepreneurs – those old geezers with beards whose family name was their guarantee to the world that the products made here were the best in the world.  

I wasn’t a very good student in college, but I do remember this:  there are only three ways to create wealth in this world – make it, mine it, or grow it.  We used to do all three of those things here in Wisconsin. 

Reality check: here are our top 10 employers in Wisconsin today:

Walmart, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Milwaukee Public Schools, U.S. Postal Service, Wisconsin Department of Corrections, Menards, Marshfield Clinic, Aurora Health Care, City of Milwaukee, and Wisconsin Department of Veterans Affairs. 

That is where a century of progressivism will get you.  That and a $3.6 billion structural deficit.  

In 2010, a survey of Wisconsin employers showed that only 10% thought we were headed in the right direction.  We came into 2011 year ranked 44th in business climate, and 47th in new business formation.  We are one of the 10 worst states in retention of our college graduates. 

In just one year, Wisconsin has moved up to 24th in business climate, the largest single year jump ever recorded.  94% of employers now believe we are headed in the right direction.   

What changed?  Gee - I don’t recall. 

A state budget that could not be balanced for a decade was balanced. 

Taxes on businesses and business owners were reduced after a decade of increases. 

A hostile regulatory posture was shifted back into neutral.

We quit throwing money at our failing government schools and finally tackled the root cause of our problems in education – Act 10 is working.  

And so is Wisconsin.  Our manufacturing companies are coming back strong.  Wisconsin employers currently have 32,000 unfilled positions – jobs available but no one qualified or willing to take them.  We are doing our job. 

You may have read about the Wisconsin company that just signed a 5-year deal to build Chinese products here.  Man bites dog. 

That is our company; those are our factories and our employees; I’m just the guy who did the deal. 

Do you know what Governor Walker and the State of Wisconsin did to help us get that deal done?  Nothing.  Perfect.  Thank you, Scott Walker. 

In fact, there was no government participation on either side.  It took only two days to work out the details – amazing what you can get done without lawyers and bureaucrats helping. 

We are not alone.  There are thousands of terrific companies in Wisconsin.  Those of us who still build things in Wisconsin are damn good at it.  We don’t need government subsidies to succeed; we just need government to get out of our way.  Get off our back; fix a bridge; go lay by your dish.

Why do 9 out of 10 employers think Wisconsin is headed on the right track?  Because government IS getting out of our way.  Wisconsin is open for business.  

And yet, there are those in this state that don’t want Wisconsin to be open for business; they want to go right back to the way it was.  At least I think that is what they want – I don’t speak drum.

Imagine what a chilling effect that would have upon the people who will make decisions about where to build their next factory, or open their next store or restaurant, or relocate their headquarters. 

You can’t be for jobs and against the corporations that create them.

You can’t be for prosperity and against the things that make us prosper. 

You can’t be for liberty and surrender yours to the state. 

You can’t be for the working man and against his Right To Work.

There are tens of thousands of protesters and occupiers who have spent the last year insisting that theirs are the only voices who speak for the working man.

I have a message for them:  I’m a working man. You don’t speak for me.

And there are 2,350,000 more of us who DON’T work for the government, and this is our state too. 

It’s working, and we all need to get working to keep it that way.   

Thank you. 

[Note: when I accept invitations to speak, the opinions expressed are my own, not of my employer.  Our company does not take positions on candidates or political parties.] 

Worker's Liberation Front

We should change the name of National Right To Work Committee to the Worker’s Liberation Front.  Maybe then we could get some sympathetic press coverage for the real civil rights issue in the employment realm – and no, I am no talking about collective bargaining privileges for public sector employees.  

Indiana is about to become the 23rd state to pass Right To Work legislation, liberating its working citizens from compulsory unionization and adding workplace freedom to the state’s already favorable business climate.  Union leaders have expressed their obligatory condemnation of freedom; they will be joined by liberals, Democrats, media, and timid Republicans for whom liberty is a statue and a bell, not a lifestyle. 

Up North we called it a woofing contest – you know, when the first dog starts barking, which gets the next going and the next, and pretty soon the whole neighborhood is yapping and howling without any idea why; even the first one forgot if it was a squirrel or the postman that got it all agitated.  Mention the word “union” and all the mutts go off – as if the past 100 years hadn’t happened and children were still working in textile mills.  Check that, as if there were still textile mills to work in.   

That’s where the WLF comes in – the media lapdogs wouldn’t know what do with us.  We could wear berets and army jackets and wrap-around shades and cross our arms over our chests while scowling.  I’ve been watching that move for 45 years now; one little guy talks smack into a microphone while some big guys stand behind him and nod on cue - kind of like a stationary Little Anthony and the Imperials with a bad attitude and no talent.  

Nobody on the left ever questions an organization with “front” or “liberation” or “worker” in its name.  They reflexively fawn over berets and army jackets – maybe it is a thing for uniforms, I don’t know.  I read somewhere recently that women like brooding guys, and maybe it’s that sulking pout that does the trick.  Guys are easier to figure – we pretend to like whatever our girlfriends are into until football comes on or they marry us, whichever comes first.  C’mon, get over yourself, it was just a joke...

But rights are no joking matter.  The debate over Right To Work in Indiana will be once again be argued on a false premise, namely that compulsory unionism, imposed by government force, is the default setting from which the departure to workplace freedom needs to be justified.  Wrong. Freedom is the default setting in the land of the free; it is union extortion that needs to be justified.  Good luck with that.

Your individual right to work trumps any collective privilege that allows me plus 50% of our co-workers to deny you that right unless you pay a third party tribute to the organization of my choosing. When the mob extracts protection money from a business, it busts windows and knees to enforce compliance; when a union does it, the state does its dirty work at taxpayer expense.  The tax-paying employer gets beat with his own belt and the workers ultimately bear the welts.

Compulsory union membership as a condition of employment is extortion, and no number of gooey solidarity songs or Sally Field movies can make it anything different.  Forcing an employer to be an accomplice, through mandatory dues withholding, is conspiracy to commit.  If it were any other organization holding the employer and employee hostage – the mob, KKK, Catholic Church, NRA – prosecutors would be drafting RICO charges.  If it were Al Qaeda instead of AFL-CIO, we would be sending drone aircraft to take out Richard Trumka. 

Is Al-Qaeda a bit over-the-top?  Perhaps - but it was Trumka’s unionists, not the Taliban, that literally did take hostages recently at the illegal strikes in our West Coast ports.  That’s what they think of the working man (and woman) over at Team Extortion.  That’s who is doing the war-mongering against the middle class.  Read down the list of Forbes 400 wealthiest Americans – none of them have ever taken hostages.  

Those union knuckle-draggers will excuse their criminal behavior (what criminal doesn’t?) and say that the labor movement has to crack some heads to get justice, that we have a tradition of violence in this country’s labor history.  That is an asinine argument; we also have a tradition of beating gays, killing prostitutes, spiking Haloween candy, abusing Congressional interns, and driving drunk – that doesn’t make any of those things right.     

Invest in Indiana.  Surrounded by fiscal insanity (Illinois, Michigan, Ohio) they will take one more step out ahead of the pack when they pass Right To Work. The people of Indiana are going be very happy they did this; good jobs at good wages beats no jobs at unaffordable wages.  The honchos at the UAW don’t care how many autoworkers they put out of work – they get their new Cadillac every year regardless.   

The Midwest’s best and brightest will flock to Indiana when they pass Right To Work, and a rush of new capital will be there to meet them. The best managers and designers want to work where their ideas can be implemented willingly; it is not just the blue collar workforce that will be upgraded.  They will innovate; they will grow; they will thrive and prosper together. And the unions will either add value or die – and I’m not taking “add value”, even with points.    

The bottom line the unionists don’t want you to know is that states with Right To Work laws have seen their median incomes rise at twice the rate of states without Right To Work protections.  Wisconsin could have been the first Midwest magnet for investment and job growth that Indiana will now become; we missed our chance to be first in line for the updraft.     

But it’s ok to be the second, and it’s not like Governor Walker has to worry that the unions might get mad about it and do something rash, like try to recall him or something.  At this point, it would not matter if he joined the Teamsters and discovered Jimmy Hoffa’s body at the Koch brothers’ HQ, so he might as well give himself and the rest of us a shot at those 250,000 new jobs he promised and pass RTW right now. 

Act 10 gave Wisconsin public employees the right to join a union or work union free; now private sector employees should have the same right.  Wisconsin should join Indiana in guaranteeing workplace freedom for all of its citizens, and let Illinois keep their unions, tax hikes, corruption, the Obamas, and the Bears.               
 
“Moment Of Clarity” is a weekly commentary by Libertarian writer and speaker Tim Nerenz, Ph.D.  Visit Tim’s website www.timnerenz.com to find your moment.    

MOMENT OF CLARITY: They Lie

MOMENT OF CLARITY: They Lie

They Lie

One of the advantages of writing an opinion blog is that opinions are never inaccurate, even when they are wrong.  But we should expect better from government agencies who publish statistics that policy makers, businesspeople, academics, journalists, and citizens rely on to make decisions and draw conclusions – like the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), for example.

Recently, the Bureau named Wisconsin as the state with the worst job loss in November, with a decline of 14,600.  This came on the heels of 9,700 jobs BLS reported lost in October.  The Badger State’s two-month total of 24,300 jobs lost led the nation in workplace suckage; and opponents of Wisconsin Governor Walker eagerly jumped on the November BLS presser to bolster their sagging effort to recall him.  

One anonymous commenter on my blog site asked me (ok, taunted) what I had to say about those BLS numbers, since I had just written a piece opposing the recall.  Instead of reading the BLS press release, I visited the underlying data tables (http://www.bls.gov/news.release/laus.t03.htm) and discovered a slightly different story. 

The BLS data show that Wisconsin’s workforce dropped from 3,057,800 in September to 3,055,200 in November, while the number of unemployed in Wisconsin fell from 238,600 to 223,800.  Since the workforce is only made up of two parts – the employed and the unemployed – simple subtraction reveals there were 2,819,200 people working in September and 2,831,400 in November. 

Do you see what’s wrong with this picture? 

That’s right - the BLS data shows an increase of 12,200 jobs during those two months, not the loss of 24,300 reported to the press by the union humps who run the joint.  I asked them for an explanation – two bucks says I will hear from Dick Clark again before I get any response from the humble public servants who work for me.  Five bucks says no journalist will even bother to ask.             

The BLS data reconciles perfectly; unemployment drops by 14,800 because 12,200 jobs are added and 2,600 leave the workforce (retire, move out of state, go back to school, etc.).  On the other hand, I could find no combination of numbers that can be tortured into a computation of a 24,300 job loss in October/November.  If you can crack the code, I will be happy to print the recipe here at Moment of Clarity. 

So, what do I think about the BLS report of Wisconsin’s job losses in November?  I think they lied; that’s what I think.  It would not be the first time.  

My doctoral dissertation in 2006 (late bloomer) was a study of government contract bundling and its impact on small businesses.  The conventional wisdom at the time was that 34,221 illegal acts of contract bundling had caused the failure of over 15,000 thousand firms since 1990.  My thesis was that the problem was actually far worse than the government was reporting, particularly among minority businesses, and I constructed a study which expected to prove how much worse it really was.

What I discovered, without boring you to tears, is that less than two dozen actual cases were reported by contractors victimized by the practice. The whole issue was bogus – a complete fabrication to increase funding for an agency put on the block during Clinton/Gore’s reinventing government initiative.  The government’s data did not support the headlines trumpeted by its agency heads – sound familiar?

I was invited to Washington to brief the heads of procurement for all of the national security agencies, was received begrudgingly at Small Business Administration, and was invited to testify at Senator Kerry’s committee on small business.  The Senator apparently had misunderstood my research findings, because when his staff was informed that I had disproved the contract bundling myth, he cancelled my testimony.  No hard feelings, Mr. Kerry.     

My work was honored internationally for its methodology, and I published a couple of journal articles to scrutinize my findings through academic peer review and publication.  From time to time someone still contacts me, as my research is still the most recent academic literature on the subject. But it is not my life’s work; I have a company to run, a family to love, friends to laugh with, and a blog to write.     

So I am not surprised that the BLS data does not support its agency heads’ pressers.  It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to guess at possible reasons why Obama appointees at the Department of Unions might want to propagandize against the nation’s top union buster, Governor Walker.  Or perhaps it was just a simple error - two months in a row.  Yeah…yeah, that’s the ticket.       

And don’t even get on your high horse, Demski’s; it’s not about you.  I don’t care if they are Republican, Democrat, or just members of the Permanent Government Workers Party, they say whatever they want if it serves their own interest. If my Libertarian party ever took control, we would soon be corrupted too; human nature does not grant waivers to humans.   

That’s why we need to shut it all down; all but the 18 essential services authorized by the Constitution.  Put the Department of Labor and its Bureau of Labor Statistics high on the list of first to go.  If you want accurate labor statistics, buy them from Manpower; they are a private sector firm that makes their living by accurately assessing job markets.  They are not too big to fail, so they have to get it right. 

Profit is the cure for the sloth that makes government worse than useless.  Of course, that is just my opinion.  And thank you, Anonymous, for asking.

 
“Moment Of Clarity” is a weekly commentary by Libertarian writer and speaker Tim Nerenz, Ph.D.  Visit Tim’s website www.timnerenz.com to find your moment.