Look At It This Way (#LAITW)

The government can only give to someone what it has taken from someone else.

It’s pretty clear to me that the American government is going to grow and grow and grow, and drift left and left and left as it does. “Regular Americans” are toast; actually, chattel. There will be the in-crowd rich, and there will be poor. And not much in between. The very principles that created a vibrant middle class, you know, the “old white guy” stuff from the 18th century (you might as well say Middle Ages to true believers), are in deep dog doodoo. Limited government, freedom, liberty, capitalism, you know, that stuff. It’s all going down the crapper at lightning speed.

I ponder every day whether the boat can be turned at this point. Lately, I answer myself with a no. What it’s going to take now is similar to what it takes for an addict. We’ve got to hit rock bottom before we wake up and do something about our plight (which we put ourselves in). That’ll take a while. We’ve created much wealth over the 250+ years, and it will take some time to deplete it all. But depleted it will become. Physics wins every time. So does doing the math.

Shortly after coming to this conclusion (and I go back and forth a lot), I get to the next logical spot. Get rich. Get rich ASAP. It’ll be your only defense.

To those who fought the good fight, good luck. To those who supported big government (knowingly or not), good luck at the Pearly Gates; you’ll need much.

Since the Great Society and with some 22 trillion dollars spent on the War on Poverty, poverty still exists in roughly the same percentages as it did then.

Big, centralized government is not the answer.

This may be hard to swallow, particularly if you get most of your info from the mainstream media. But it’s true nonetheless: CO2 is not a pollutant.

It’s a mainstay for life on this planet. Ever hear of the carbon cycle? It’s what animals (including humans) breath out, it fuels the metabolism of plants, and it’s recycled on a grand scale by geologic processes.

And contrary to a common misconception, CO2 levels do not lead global temperatures, they follow them. Generally, CO2 levels go up AFTER global temperatures go up, and CO2 levels go down AFTER global temperatures go down.

Controlling carbon levels, carbon credits, etc. are total hooey, a total waste of resources that would be far better spent on real problems.

How do you define unemployed?

The official unemployment rate is down to 6.1%. That’s what they say. They also say that there are but 9.6 million people out of work. They use a very specific (and I’d say misleading) unemployment calculation, and it doesn’t reflect what us regular folk would think of as unemployed.

Try, instead, what they call the U-6 number. That gets closer as it includes not just the unemployed searching for jobs, but also the underemployed and those who have flat out quit looking for work (but would work if they could). The U-6 number is over 12% these days. That’s closer, at 20 million plus unemployed.

Add in students who should be working, immigration effects, and such and the unemployment rate starts pushing 20%. Now we’re getting closer to 30 million out of work.

There are actually 90+ million adults (>16), out of about 250 million, who are not working, including retirees, stay at home parents, etc. To the extent that any of these is on social security, medicare, welfare, or the like, that’s a current taxpayer burden.

There’s a right size for everything. Both too much and too little can be too bad.

Money spent over protecting is money spent immorally. It’s money that would have been far better spent on real problems.

Let’s say that we can show that 2 ppm SO2 in the air is harmful. And, there is no evidence that 0.2 ppm SO2 in the air has any harmful effects. Requiring plants to scrub emissions to 0.02 ppm as opposed to 0.2 ppm is wasting money. And the amounts of money spent to get that “last little bit” can be outrageous compared to getting to a reasonable emission. The difference between the money spent getting to reasonable and getting to unreasonable is money immorally spent. It’s wrong to force the emitter to cough that much extra up, and it’s wrong to mandate that it be spent on “just in case”.

So, yes, the details matter. You do have to do the math. If the evidence changes regarding what’s harmful and what isn’t, then fine; reevaluate. Otherwise, find better fish to fry.

But then, I’m conservative.