Comments on: Economic Sugar Rush http://www.someblogsite.com/archives/600 random thoughts, plus a Bible verse Wed, 08 Sep 2010 22:22:12 -0500 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 hourly 1 By: js http://www.someblogsite.com/archives/600/comment-page-1#comment-3402 js Sat, 22 Aug 2009 19:54:01 +0000 http://www.someblogsite.com/?p=600#comment-3402 I too am getting tired of government programs that are designed to appease the general population but whose net effect is to hurt poor people. Cash for clunkers - as you've mentioned, helps those who can buy a new car, but not those who can buy only used. Minimum wage - makes it harder for businesses to hire more people at the bottom of the wage pyramid. Yes, those that get hired make more, but fewer poor get hired. Pushing ethanol, which raised corn prices, which made lots of food more expensive - since food is a bigger percentage of poor people's budget, this push ended up affecting poor people the most. Lotteries may increase schools' budgets, but increased funding does not clearly correspond to better education. What is clear is that a disproportional number of poor play the lottery, making it effectively a tax on poor people. Making all kinds of loans for education available based on need. All that does is allow tuition increases to, year after year, far surpass inflation indices. The net effect is probably to raise presidents' or head football coaches' salaries; it certainly doesn't help the poor, ultimately. How arrogant do you have to be to think that you can solve all the country's problems with the little programs you think up? What in any country's history gives politicians a hope that government intervention in economic affairs generally turns out efficient in the long-term? While I'm rambling, here's a related myth that needs to be busted. I've seen articles which report that certain wealth redistribution programs have or have not helped tax-payers. This is misleading, because, as long as all parties involved are tax-payers, shifting wealth doesn't hurt or help the group as a whole. New tax breaks for one subset of tax-payers helps that group, but that just means another group will have to pick up the tab for the balance. The only government program that helps tax-payers is one whose budget is reduced. Usually, there should be some of kind of balance of ideals among politicians, so we don't end up with a government program for every societal problem. It seems like that balance is gone, and everyone assumes government is the answer, instead of - at least occasionally - the source of the problem. On an unrelated note, "indices" in this program is underlined in red, indicating it's not a word. More money for schools should fix that. I too am getting tired of government programs that are designed to appease the general population but whose net effect is to hurt poor people. Cash for clunkers – as you’ve mentioned, helps those who can buy a new car, but not those who can buy only used. Minimum wage – makes it harder for businesses to hire more people at the bottom of the wage pyramid. Yes, those that get hired make more, but fewer poor get hired. Pushing ethanol, which raised corn prices, which made lots of food more expensive – since food is a bigger percentage of poor people’s budget, this push ended up affecting poor people the most. Lotteries may increase schools’ budgets, but increased funding does not clearly correspond to better education. What is clear is that a disproportional number of poor play the lottery, making it effectively a tax on poor people. Making all kinds of loans for education available based on need. All that does is allow tuition increases to, year after year, far surpass inflation indices. The net effect is probably to raise presidents’ or head football coaches’ salaries; it certainly doesn’t help the poor, ultimately. How arrogant do you have to be to think that you can solve all the country’s problems with the little programs you think up? What in any country’s history gives politicians a hope that government intervention in economic affairs generally turns out efficient in the long-term?

While I’m rambling, here’s a related myth that needs to be busted. I’ve seen articles which report that certain wealth redistribution programs have or have not helped tax-payers. This is misleading, because, as long as all parties involved are tax-payers, shifting wealth doesn’t hurt or help the group as a whole. New tax breaks for one subset of tax-payers helps that group, but that just means another group will have to pick up the tab for the balance. The only government program that helps tax-payers is one whose budget is reduced.

Usually, there should be some of kind of balance of ideals among politicians, so we don’t end up with a government program for every societal problem. It seems like that balance is gone, and everyone assumes government is the answer, instead of – at least occasionally – the source of the problem.

On an unrelated note, “indices” in this program is underlined in red, indicating it’s not a word. More money for schools should fix that.

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