Tony Stark Knows that War is a Racket

This is too awesome....

.... Great stuff from Peter Santa-Maria ("Attack Peter") matching up the great character of Tony Stark with the legendary piece by Major General Smedly Butler called "War Is A Racket."

Minnesota Needs Mises Not Minimum Wage Laws

The Minnesota House of Representatives passed a bill last Friday that could give Minnesota the highest minimum wage rates in the United States:

"Under the plan, Minnesota’s minimum wage for companies with $500,000 or more in earnings would go to $8 this summer, $9 a year later and $9.50 in 2015. After that, it would rise according to inflation, with possible yearly bumps up to 2.5 percent."

Although the bill is not law yet, its legislative advancement is no doubt celebrated by many as a victory for low wage workers. However, minimum wage laws actually achieve unintended results that end up hurting the entire population.

Economist Ludwig von Mises skillfully explains the situation in only 12 words: "As wages rise, so must the costs of production and also prices." Workers gain an increase in pay due to individual performance towards a productive end. By not allowing wages to rise and fall naturally as businesses attempt to produce to meet consumer demand, minimum wage laws simply make production, labor and consumption more expensive.

Companies are forced to compensate for a government-mandated higher wage rate by setting higher prices in order to maintain their cost of production. This makes prices go up for every class of buyer, including the minimum wage earner who recently saw the now-fleeted raise in his or her pay. The increase in prices forces everyone to consume less and subsequently causes demand to fall. This decrease in the consumer's demand for products sees an equal decrease in an employer's demand for labor. Many of the workers who initially supported the State-enforced increase of their minimum wage now find themselves unemployed because companies can no longer afford to keep them. Meanwhile, current job-seekers cannot gain employment because employers cannot afford to employ new workers at the higher wage rate. Since inflation is seemingly endless, this specific bill will continually "bump" up wages in accordance with inflation and reengage this cycle of unemployment and higher prices for years to come.

Proponents of this minimum wage bill are incorrect when claiming that its only effects will be an increase in pay for minimum wage earners. Raising the minimum wage will result in higher unemployment and higher prices which will hurt workers (especially low wage earners) but also businesses and consumers alike. Clearly, Minnesota should heed the economic guidance of Ludwig von Mises and not bow to more legislative interference into the market.



Thanks to Oakdale Patch for also running this piece.

A Case of Mistaken Identity

One must approach an article published by the New York Times boasting a libertarian position with extreme skepticism. A recent piece by Robert A. Levy of the Cato Institute proves this rule. Levy claims to have a "Libertarian case for expanding gun background checks," specifically supporting the defeated Manchin-Toomey proposal. Well now....

Gun-rights advocates should use this interval to refine their priorities and support this measure, with a few modest changes. If they don’t, they will be opening themselves to accusations from President Obama and others that they are merely obstructionists, zealots who will not agree to common-sense gun legislation.
The focus on background checks should not distract gun owners from the positive provisions in the Manchin-Toomey proposal.

It would allow Americans to buy handguns from out-of-state sellers, which is not allowed currently.

It would explicitly prohibit the creation of a national gun registry, and make it a felony, punishable by up to 15 years in prison, to misuse records from the national database used for background checks.

It would affirm that unloaded guns with a lock mechanism in place can be transported across state lines.

It would immunize private gun sellers from lawsuits if a gun they have sold is used unlawfully, unless the seller knows or should have known that the buyer provided false information or was otherwise ineligible to buy a gun. Extending background checks to unlicensed sellers shouldn’t be cause for alarm. Background checks are already required for purchases from federally licensed dealers, whether at stores or gun shows, over the Internet or by mail. Moreover, gun buyers would be exempt from background checks if they had a carry permit issued within the last five years.

To my mind, the Manchin-Toomey proposal needs additional improvements to satisfy the demands of certain gun rights advocates. These changes might have helped save the proposal, which was supported by 54 senators — six votes short of the supermajority needed to overcome a filibuster.

The proposal prohibits the attorney general (as head of the Justice Department) from creating a firearms registry, but this prohibition should be broadened to cover all government agencies.

The proposal should also exempt certain rural residents who live too far from a licensed gun dealer for a background check to be practicable.

What we have here is a case of mistaken identity since Levy's position on the Manchin-Toomey proposal is clearly not a libertarian one. Levy is basically arguing for the passage of a terrible bill because of its silver lining and because Obama will smear libertarians otherwise. This is not even a logical argument, let alone a libertarian one.

Levy's argument, specifically concerning the merits of the Manchin-Toomey proposal, is fundamentally flawed. First of all, Levy seems ignorant of A) the fact that the 2nd Amendment protects the right of the people to keep and bear arms without giving the government any authority over the matter and B) how requiring background checks for gun purchases will create a de facto registry (and the government always gets caught or punished when disobeying the law, right?). The fact is that the very existence of a background check requirement when attempting to purchase a firearm breaks the inflexible 2nd Amendment which gives government no say on how the people keep and bear arms.

The Manchin-Toomey proposal would not even achieve its goal to prevent future gun violence. It is clear that the Manchin-Toomey proposal is an attempt by the political establishment to appear to be doing something proactive in response to the number of deadly shootings that have occurred in the United States. President Obama surrounding himself with former House Rep. Gabby Giffords and families of victims from the Newtown, CT shooting as he lamented the proposal's defeat two weeks ago is evidence of this. However, background checks will do nothing to stop future gun-related violence. A required background check would have done nothing to stop the Tsarnaev brothers from getting their illegally-owned guns and would have done nothing to stop Adam Lanza from taking his mother's legally-owned guns. The proposal would simply not accomplish anything it set out to achieve.

But watch out! This so-called "libertarian" position warns of "accusations from President Obama and others" in response to resisting this establishment gun control proposal. Are we supposed to be concerned about this? What exactly has stopped Obama or his leftist legions from smearing those who refuse to comply with the regime in the past and since when have those smears stopped libertarians from advocating the message of freedom? Leftists either accept the submission of their political enemies with contempt or they engage in outright smear attacks with no regard for the truth when faced with resistance. So what if leftists call libertarians who believe that human beings have a natural, inalienable right to self-defense names? We are right! Running away from our position out of fear of unpleasant and untrue monikers will not advance the issue and, in fact, does the cause a great disservice. 

With all of this in mind, Levy's greater logic in supporting the Manchin-Toomey proposal makes absolutely no sense. Certainly some of what Levy lists as "the positive provisions" of the Manchin-Toomey proposal would be positive and should be pursued outside of the context of the proposal (UPDATE: Brian Wilson shows that some of what Levy says here is not accurate). They make for a shiny silver lining but are hardly sufficient in the end when weighed up against the final outcome of the proposal which is more Federal control over the rights of the American people to keep and bear arms. Who argues in support of something because of the few positives that come along with a monstrous negative? Levy even goes as far as saying "the taxpayers — and not just law-abiding gun owners — should foot some of the bill" for the background checks and "more F.B.I. staff members to manage the database would also help expedite the process." That's right: Levy's "libertarian position" includes an expansion of the police state and more taxes! What will he think of next?

So in summing up this supposed "libertarian position": The Manchin-Toomey proposal is completely unconstitutional, will not solve any problems regarding violent crime and will act as an unofficial gun registry but Levy supports it because of its silver lining, because taxpayers supposedly do not already pay their fair share, because the FBI is not already big enough and because he wishes to avoid liberal criticisms. Sound libertarian?

The Cato Institute is often a source for excellent information but its significant level of inconsistency and shaky ideological foundations separate it from other reliable libertarian outlets. There is no questioning why Judge Andrew Napolitano resigned his board position over there not long ago.

The Erroneous Rationale for an Internet Sales Tax

Remember when buying things from internet businesses did not include a sales tax? It comes as no surprise that politicians would soon try and put an end to such a great thing. After all, they could not sit idly by and watch money that would otherwise line their pockets be tragically saved or spent on other things in the economy by the consumer.

White House talking piece Jay Carney said Monday that the wrongly-named "Marketplace Fairness Act," currently working its way through the bowels of the House and Senate before eventually plopping in a steaming pile onto the President's desk for signature, "will level the playing field for local small business retailers who are undercut every day by out-of state online companies."

We have recently seen this argument for a sales tax on internet businesses like Amazon.com play out in a number of states.  California recently added a state internet sales tax for the same reason that the current Federal political class now advocates: the issue is that local brick-and-mortar shops, which are forced to pay sales taxes by their respective states, are losing customers to internet businesses like Amazon.com because the sales tax has not been immediately applicable to websites. Naturally, the fact that a business does not even exist in a physical state has not prevented governments from trying to tax it. Give the government time and they will try to legally plunder anything. The basic argument perpetuated by greedy government officials and competing businesses is that Amazon's ability to charge less for an item because of the lack of a sales tax is unfair to Walmart which is required by law to charge the tax and an online sales tax needs to be put in place to make things even.

This argument makes little sense for a number of reasons but the most fundamental problem with it is that the brick-and-mortar businesses are aiming their frustrations at an incorrectly identified source. It seems as if the problem for brick-and-mortar stores is not their internet competitors but the sales tax itself. The brick-and-mortar businesses should not be advocating for a new tax to be forced upon their online competitors when the problem is the very existence of the burdensome sales tax. Would it not benefit all businesses, online or not, if the costly and problematic sales taxes were simply lifted?

Jay Carney attempts to smear online companies from behind his domineering White House pulpit, claiming that they "undercut" local small businesses by not having to pay a sales tax. However, the fact is that governments are what is undercutting local small businesses by forcing them to collect the sales tax in the first place. Interestingly enough, the benefits from ending the sales tax is the exact same as Carney's rationale for the passage of the Marketplace Fairness Act: Ending sales taxes "will level the playing field for local small business retailers."

The Political Spectrum

Some talk of "Left vs. Right" and while that divide exists physically in Washington, political philosophy is far more nuanced. Here is the best picture description of the realities of the political spectrum that I have ever come across....

.... I will say that I think the "Jeffersonian" and the "Jacksonian" labels might be on the wrong side of things; other than that, this diagram is great.

Gun Control = State Monopoly

Talk of gun control in the United States is stronger than ever in this brand new year of 2013. Gun Control is nothing but another more dangerous form of prohibition but it is also, on top of just being a historically bad idea, something that simply creates a dangerous monopoly against the public.

Instead of a responsible public owning guns for hunting, self-defense, etc.; only the government and the criminals will own them. That's a very dangerous monopoly; of course, it is something that some explicitly desire. Criminals certainly want a reduction in public ownership of guns (no one to shoot back) and the government wants it to better control the lives of the public. Isn't it interesting when the motives of both criminals and politicians overlap?

The line from the anti-gun group sounds inconsistent but it really is not inconsistent at all; it fits perfectly into their desired outcome. While powerful people want everyone else to be disarmed, they wouldn't dare give up their guns or gun-toting body guards. Why? NY Representative Jerrold Nadler says that the “state ought to have a monopoly on legitimate violence."

Ah yes, the government, already unfortunately deciding what kind of violence against the public is "legitimate" in the first place, should have all of the guns! What could go wrong?

If guns are to be outlawed or limited in any way, the army, police, secret service, etc. have to give up their guns too. Monopolies are bad, after all - and who honestly believes that they are safer because the army or police own guns?