Tuesday, February 24, 2015

Good stuff online at the Bluestem Prairie website.

Latest, why hamstring the anti-pollution regulators? Whose interest is being served? Who is serving such intersts? This link.

Sorensen's thoughts on the proposed data privacy Constitutional amendment, which can be viewed as redundant language and as potentially creating false senses of security among citizens and bill/amendment sponsors.

An overdue link:

"Feb 16, 2015
Senator John Marty guest column: working people should not be trapped in poverty."


While it seems so evident it need not be dwelt on, nonetheless it appears needed these days of got-mine, get-yours, where even a corporatist such as Henry Ford understood that if workers were not paid sufficiently to afford food, shelter, medical attention, and one of his cars then his cars would have no market.

The fact that if consumer wealth is suppressed to where consumer spending patterns are impacted, with spending only on the essentials where even there incomes might be insufficient without assistance programs; then the clear likely scenario is more and more production of capital goods among capital goods consumers, and industrial complexes evolving where much wealth is tied up with a populace left destitute and "out of the loop." Scientific economics can look at cause and effect consequential economies attaching to different policies; but it is agnostic to choosing the wisest policy. Notions of Pareto optimality cannot reach to balancing your hardship against my desire for an incremental share of luxurious living; and that is why every person has a vote; the hope being it is used wisely. With economics premised upon rational optimization of utility, i.e., acting in self-interest, policy might best be needed to soften outcomes that are feasible under such thinking. That includes policy to lessen business cycle impacts, as well as questions of distribution of both wealth and income (one presently taxed disproportionately upon lower-rung folks and the other not now taxed at all).

Huey Long did say, "Spread the wealth," and somebody shot him, but that is simplifying Huey and who he was - be it good, bad or indifferent. Yet there also is a fundamental lesson to simplifying things to that level, there being a Japanese adage, the nail that stands out gets pounded down.