Which form of goverment would evolution create? I was thinking that a monarchy would be most conducive to evolution. Heads of state are determined by birth. Whatever traits that gave the king the crown is more likely to be carried by their offspring then someone select by the whole community.

Does the car’s internal air conditioner not work? No problem. Nothing some duck tape, window air conditioner, and electric generator can’t fix.

I have thought of the greatest idea in the entire universe:

Pixar should either develop a Calvin and Hobbes series using the old cartoons or develop a full motion picture.

Seriously, is that not the greatest idea you have ever heard?

That statistics show that woman who never marry earn as much as men who never marry. Gary has the details over at AWOL civlization. He quotes from Thomas Sowell’s book: Civil Rights: Rhetoric or Reality.

…an entirely different picture emerges. Women who remain single earn 91 percent of the income of men who remain single, in the age bracket from 25 to 64 years old. Nor can the other 9 percent automatically be attributed to employer discrimination, since women are typically not educated as often in such highly paid fields as mathematics, science, and engineering…This virtual parity in income between men who never marry and women who never marry is not a new phenomenon, attributable to affirmative action. In 1971, women who had remained unmarried into their thirties and who had worked since high school earned slightly higher incomes than men of the very same description. In the academic world, single women who received their Ph.D.’s in the 1930s had by the 1950s become full professors slightly more often than male Ph.D.’s as a whole.

Gary writes:

When all the feminist hype is stripped away, we see that women are paid the same wages for the same work. True, women on average earn less then men, but this is due to (a) their greater tendency to work part-time; (b) interruptions in career due to the demands of motherhood; and (c) type of chosen profession.

Apparently the director for the Memphis police department has requested the identities be revealed of several bloggers who write about local police matters. This got me thinking about gun control.

Some on the left have argued that we don’t need firearms for protection because the police already provide that service. Using the same justification, one can easily argue that bloggers shouldn’t be allowed to write about police matters because professional journalist already provide this service. Would those on the left support laws forbidding citizens from writing about police matters unless they are certified by an official organization of journalism? Such restrictions would reduce some of the more unsavory aspects of freedom of speech such as slander. Honestly, we don’t need non-professionals witting about police matters when we already have a professional journalists who do this work.

One can’t help but think that the those on the left would disagree with such laws on the grounds that it’s to dangerous to leave such an important job up to small groups of citizens. They would worry that such a groups would be weak to corruption and easily controlled by the state. No, it would be better to accept the unsavory aspects of free speech, the noise as it were, and let all citizens report on police matters. Sure the right will be abused but its better than leaving such an important right in the hands of small group of people.

This is the same reason I would give for why our right to bear arms should be protected.

Powerline has a graphic detailing tax breakdown for the richest according to their share of total income and taxes.

Differential treatment of groups of people based on income is a form of a discrimination. Where are the liberals defending the right to not be discriminated against according to income?

More from TaxProf

If Mr. Obama does succeed in raising tax rates on the rich, we’d also wager that the rich share of tax payments would fall. The last time tax rates were as high as the Senator wants them — the Carter years — the rich paid only 19% of all income taxes, half of the 40% share they pay today. Why? Because they either worked less, earned less, or they found ways to shelter income from taxes so it was never reported to the IRS as income.

So if I’m understanding this correctly, if people discover that the income they gain from working hard is taken by the state they are much less likely to work that hard? That seems so surprising. People work to make money? Odd, never thought people were like that.

During the summer I have been using a parking garage near my lab. The only problem is that there has been extensive road work being done on the access road that connects the parking garage to the main road. Quite frequently, the construction requires reducing the road to one lane for both sides of traffic. When this occurs, a construction worker must hold a sign up that on one side tells traffic to stop and on the other side tells the traffic to proceed slowly. Working in pairs the two construction workers control the flow of traffic.

As I was being directed a thought occurred to me. What’s the market value of a guy standing in place and periodically rotating a sign? More to the point, does this job’s market value exceed the cost of a living wage? If I were to hazard a guess I would say no. The market does not put enough value on this skill to support life. If a person were to do nothing but direct traffic all day with a sign he would eventually die of starvation because he does not make enough money doing that to live.

It’s in this scenario that liberals argue that this is precisely why minimum wage laws should be implemented. Let’s take this apart.

Free markets determine the honest value of some good or service. Thus, when the market determines that the value of twirling signs to control traffic is below a living wage we can reasonably argue that people at their most honest are unwilling to pay these traffic controllers more than what is required to survive. I wish to be very clear here. Market value represents the closest measure of what people will honestly pay for some service or good.

When liberals respond emotionally to the worker being unable to support himself by demanding the state implement minimum wage laws, liberals are distorting the honest market determined value of the labor. In this analysis, consumers have expressed their desire to pay less and liberal have expressed their desire to pay more than the living wage for this kind of labor. It’s liberal belief versus consumer belief.

In setting up the analysis in this way I wish to emphasize which group is calling on state coercion to force their beliefs on to everyone else. The consumer, working through the free market, by definition, does not call on the state’s coercion to force people to pay less for traffic control labor. The consumer simply gives their honest response to how much they are willing to pay for that kind of labor, and in the aggregate the market determines that this value is not enough to support a living wage. On the other hand, seeing that consumers are unwilling to pay a living wage for this kind of labor liberals demand that the state use its coercion to force consumers to pay a wage that exceeds the living wage. In sum, liberals unhappy with how much consumers are willing to pay for some kinds of labor, call on the state to force those consumers to pay more for their labor.

Just in case there is doubt, it really is the case that liberals want to force their belief of how much labor should cost on to everyone else. For you see there is no law forbidding one person to give money to another person. If liberals were only concerned with these workers, then all they would need to do is pool their money together and distribute it to the workers. However, this is not enough for liberals, for they want the state to forcibly make consumers, who disagree with them, to pay more than they are willing to for this labor. No matter how liberals justify using coercion at the end of the day they are forcing their beliefs on others.

I honestly can’t see how this is different from conservatives that want to force their morality on to other people. Religious folk find abortion morally objectionable. Since this procedure is open to the free market, we find that is has market value since consumers are willing to pay for the procedure. Conservatives are unhappy with some consumers being able to pay for an abortion since it will lead to the death of a human. This is similar to the outrage liberals express when our sign twirling traffic controller starves to death because he is not paid a living wage. Conservatives call on the state to force other consumers to not use this procedure, in the same way that liberals call on the state to force other consumers to pay more for traffic controlling labor.

It’s in this regard that I can’t see much difference between liberals and conservatives. They both wish
to expand state power simply to coerce people to behave in a manner they prefer.

Fannie Mae and Freedie Mac are anything but private companies.

But I guess getting the facts straight would get in the way of spinning for the sake of funny.

As a side note, I have nothing against spinning for comedic effect, but it seems vaguely hypocritical when you criticize other people who spin for political gain.

‘No Values Voters’ Looking To Support Most Evil Candidate

The only question in my mind is whether this is what Nietzsche had in mind when he set out to destroy Christianity?

Union leader offers the best solution to the energy crisis:

MAYBE THE quickest way to lower oil and gas prices would be this: Immediately enroll every Democratic member of Congress in an entry-level economics class.

The lack of even a basic grasp of economic concepts has led Democrats to oppose sensible policies that would begin to lower oil and gas prices. Instead, they push hair-brained ideas that make no sense.

Afterwards we can send the republicans to climatology school.