Climate Change Pays for its Believers

                  

Since the heat waves of any summer usually replace the dire hardships experienced in severe winter, climate control is bound to always get media attention.

                       

As a result, there are adherents who treat climate control as a religion and have no doubt the earth is warming.

                       

To others it’s a political cause that creates a road to office and helps to keep them there.

                       

To still others in government, it’s a subterfuge for quietly and indirectly raising taxes on consumers, as well as industry. And it’s business in which you can buy and sell so- called cap and trade credits.

                       

They market a green philosophy in a variety of industrial and consumer products that you choose to develop for profit.

                       

Eventually the public will find out the climate promoters can be grouped with the types who used to tell us the world would come to an end by a certain date. When that never occurred we just forgot about the quacks. (See the Earl J Weinreb NewsHole® comments and @BusinessNewshole tweets.)

               

The Dollar's Importance as a Reserve Currency

                  

The potential loss of the dollar as a reserve international currency is actually underway, despite its current relative strength. The ability to protect U.S. global interests in the future could be diminished.

                       

Do not treat unlimited government spending lightly. The repercussions can be extremely serious in matters of our economic and national security. We're in trouble if other countries no longer convert their currency into dollars.

                       

The debt ceiling question is important. Spending below that ceiling resolves the problem. A budget deficit that cannot be overcome without massive taxation, guaranteed to stifle economic growth, to prevent deficit reduction, is the major difficulty. (See the Earl J. Weinreb NewsHole® comments and @BusinessNewshole at Twitter.)

Government’s Fantasy Business Efficiency

                     

Whenever the government proposes a function that is now done by private industry, the taxpayer will be contributing the necessary capital and operating funds. And will be planting all the risks on the stockholders of private industry. As well as responsibility for the losses, which are bound to happen under government operations.

               

Be careful of any government attempt to “reduce” costs by competing with private enterprise. (See the Earl J Weinreb NewsHole® comments and

@BusinessNewshole tweets.)

Flunking Teachers

The National Assessment of Educational Progress has been called the Nation’s Report Card. It reported that only 23% of fourth-graders, 30% of eighth-graders, and 21% of 12th-graders were” proficient” or “advanced” on their national geography exam, given in January to March, 2010. The trend persists today.

                       

I saw one of the simple questions posted in the Wall Street Journal. The newspaper reported that only 33% of eighth-graders got it right.

                       

With a student body such as this in the U.S. we certainly do not get our money’s worth with education cost. But I do notice teachers’ unionized pay and benefits are highest ever. (See the Earl J Weinreb NewsHole® comments and @BusinessNewshole tweets.

High European Unemployment Numbers

                   

Too many European countries are on the edge of bankruptcy amidst well over permanent 10%-Plus unemployment.

                       

With younger workers, who do not get counted as unemployed because they give up early on, and are, in fact, permanently on the dole the moment they leave school in their teens. If they excel at something, it’s in their demand for funds from their neighbors’ taxes. Those neighbors who work.

                       

This is the society many of our politicians fail to point to, when they sell us on government-supervised services the Europeans get so “cheaply.” (See the Earl J Weinreb NewsHole® comments and @BusinessNewshole tweets.)

The Media’s Free Market Training

                 

Few general media reporters, columnists and editors have free market views and, certainly, a background on financial subjects. In addition to what generalities journalists are ever taught, they receive a modicum of economic and financial training in school.

                       

Not theory from economists such as Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, and present-day commentators such as Thomas Sowell, Walter E. Williams, among others.

                       

Thus you get common left-leaning slants in many financial articles. (See the Earl J Weinreb NewsHole® comments and @BusinessNewshole tweets.)

                   

               

           

ObamaCare Efficiency?

                   

Everything the government has done, including its health care under Medicaid, have been inefficient with equally poor service, comparable to that of the Post Office.

                       

Government never fosters competition. It can cut out competition when it is permitted to write rules to have taxpayer money undercut the pricing of products or services of potential private producers. As with ObamaCare.

                                           

The Post Office will not give up its first class mail handling privilege. It knows it cannot compete if it has competition. Other forms of non-first class package shipping are handled by private shippers efficiently and at low cost. While private carriers would love to carry first class mail, the Post Office continues to maintain its monopoly.

                       

The Post Office says it provides service to areas no private carrier will want to service. Not true, as evidenced by cutbacks the Post Office constantly imposes. And destinations to which private carriers now go.

                       

ObamaCare claims to provide everything private medicine can do better and cheaply but government has never allowed real health care reform. Such as interstate competition, tort reform and fraud correction, (See the Earl J Weinreb NewsHole® comments and @BusinessNewshole tweets.)

Teaching the U.S. Constitution

                                        

Our inefficient schools prove to be a waste of so much of our educational funds. They appear to do more for the welfare of the teachers than they do the kids being taught.

                       

As one example I refer to Prof. Walter E. Williams, in a past column. Professor Williams, is now retired as head of the Economics Dept. of George Mason University but still actively writes and comments about his specialty.

                       

According to one survey, Dr. Williams says, only 28% of students can identify the Constitution as the supreme law of the land. And that fewer than 25% of students knew that George Washington was the first president of the United States.

                       

And that only 26% of students knew that the first ten amendments to the Constitution are called the Bill of Rights.

                       

Years ago, kids did better, when they sat, 30 and 40 to a class, and in one-room school houses. And so did the taxpayers funding their education do better. (See the Earl J Weinreb NewsHole® comments and @BusinessNewshole tweets.)

Health Malpractice Courts are the Answer

                

We have special courts for bankruptcies where judges handle creditor and debtor claims, tax liens, workers compensation, and so on.

                       

One of the complications that requires change, and proves costly with health care, is malpractice cost. The problem is primarily due to the huge amounts of lawsuits against providers. And fraud that permeates the system.

                       

The result: The high outlays due to defensive medicine and doctor malpractice insurance premiums.

                       

ObamaCare intentionally does nothing to stop this menace.

                       

The practical solution: Arbitration courts made up of judges, trained in science and medicine. That would eliminate awards because of “junk science.”

                       

The courts could eliminate attorney’s cuts of the award proceeds and put a cap on outsized sums that ordinarily come from ignorant juries and jurists. While seeing that patients are compensated for actual malpractice. The courts would be financed from doctors' insurance premiums. (See the Earl J Weinreb NewsHole® comments and @BusinessNewshole tweets.)

An Independent Fed Bank?

                   

Central banks are supposed to be completely independent, The European Central Bank or ECB took this position until recent years. Thanks to Greece, Irish, and related European Union bailouts, the central bank no longer is an independent vehicle.

                       

In Great Britain, the Bank of England is a centuries older counterpart. The BOE, too, was always an independent, non- political, overseer of the British pound. But the BOE now is also in the management game.

                       

Americans are no better off. The Federal Reserve slowly but surely lost its independence as well, as I have commented over recent years. (See the Earl J Weinreb NewsHole® comments and @BusinessNewshole tweets.)

   

Useless College Extravagance

               

Suggested reading: "Going Broke by Degree: Why College Costs Too Much," by Richard Vedder and "Faculty Lounges and Other Reasons and also Why You Won't Get the College Education You Paid For." by Naomi Schafer Riley,

                               

In the Vedder book, for instance, you learn that two out of five students entering four-year study programs don't achieve a bachelor's degree after the sixth year. And that colleges accept these students because of the money they bring, usually government-guaranteed loans.

                       

Comments are quite instructive; you will learn why it appears so many of our Ivy-League graduates appear to be far dumber than ordinary plain-vanilla grads of the not-so-distant past.

                       

Another example of college being useless: Vedder states there are 80,000 bartenders in the U. S. with bachelor's degrees, and17% of baggage porters and bellhops with college degrees, along with 15% of taxi/ limo drivers. (See the Earl J Weinreb NewsHole® comments and @BusinessNewshole tweets.)

Phony Unemployment Figures

               

We keep getting unemployment reports that have little to do with true unemployment. It’s yet another case of  getting away with chicanery for which the executives of a private enterprise would be arrested. Right now the unemployment rate is supposedly a bit under 5%. The media tells us so, and they are out to report on all the dirt they can find, or so they say.

                       

But if you look deeper in the monthly U-6 unemployment rate, which includes folks who are underemployed and seeking full-time jobs that they can't find, that rate is much, much higher. The U-6 number doesn't include those who have given up seeking work.

                       

I would suggest viewers look up the Bureau of Labor Statistics site at bls.gov for details on the different facets of unemployment the media forgets about. (See the Earl J Weinreb NewsHole® comments and @BusinessNewshole tweets.)