Tuesday, November 20, 2012

The Election

Fifty two percent of voters are happy, and forty eight percent unhappy. I count myself in the latter category but, like Tolstoy's families, I'm unhappy in my own way.

 
It's not who won, neither candidate nor political party makes much difference. It is the enormous consumption of calendar time and our nation' s attention by what turns out to have been a diversion from real issues. As readers know, I believe that the nation's number one, and over-riding, problem is corruption, the corruption of special interests that have high-jacked our democracy. But let's think of other issues for now, issues that have been acknowledged by the major players.



Income inequality is a characteristic of unbalanced economies as found in countries like Russia and China. In addition to being unfair, it leads to social unrest and slow growth. I'm all for taxing the rich--until the number of jobs lost (the money is currently not under mattresses) becomes excessive, and I would prefer to do it in accordance with Clayton Christensen's concepts. But taxing the rich is merely a side-show relative to this problem.
 
 
 
We need to restore equality of opportunity which means we have to take on, among others, the teachers unions and the prison industry. Note that we have a disproportionate number of young black men in jail (most for non-violent drug offences of the type that white men walk away from). The effect has been to wreak havoc on the black middle class; black women have trouble finding suitable husbands, and the eligible men left tend to take advantage. Too many black families are without fathers. I could go on; suffice it to say that this is a social tragedy of our time. And who benefits? We now have a prison industry rich and powerful enough to corrupt our legislatures. We also have a drug enforcement agency (another special interest) that is allowed to confiscate private property and add the proceeds to the department’s budget (How about we add traffic fines to the police department budgets?)


Compounding this problem is another travesty which victimizes poor black and white children alike—our lousy K-12 school systems, brought to us by another powerful special interest, the teachers' unions, a major source of campaign dollars and workers. To say that we have equality of opportunity in this country is a lie. A black child born in certain school districts has no chance. Attempts to fix things after the fact with college scholarships and affirmative action tend to fail because basic skills were neglected and can’t be made up.



We have high systemic unemployment. This will not go away until our private sector, free of Crony Capitalism and excessive, cost ineffective regulations, invests heavily in free and open competition. Regulations are mostly good and provide a better standard of living for all of us. But it's the nature of bureaucracies to keep going, doing more and more of God's work, until stopped. We need some controls here--checks and balances.


Last, we have climate change and our, less than stellar, attempts at moving to renewable, clean, energy. Attached is a book review.* The author argues that good government policy (including a carbon tax) will allow the markets to find a cost effective path to clean energy without relying on our brilliant politicians to pick winners. (And yes, G.C., I use brilliant here in the Irish sense of the word.)



A BIRD NAMED ENZA & WILL’S WAR are now available as e-books on all major sites including www.smashwords.com (in all formats) for $2.99

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