It’s time for a good, wide ranging rant…

I was shocked, flat out shocked, to hear not one, but two Democrats (Bill Richardson and Barack Obama) admit during the Facebook debate that taxes on businesses are simply passed on to consumers. I hope none of their constituents heard them. Why do they still insist on punishing companies for having the nerve to make money? Are we on the precipice of a new Democrat approach to taxation?

Speaking of Democrats, I’ve had enough of them using economic ignorance as the foundation of their policies. John Edwards is easily the worst offender. For example, he proposes not only universal health care, but also universal college. There are a couple of major problems that are easily identifiable. The first deals with basic supply and demand. If more people demand a service without an increase in the supply of that service then one of two things (or a combination of the two) will happen: prices will rise or there will be shortages. We already see vestiges of the government’s meddling in the demand for college education in the form of increased federal tuition and loan assistance pushing up the demand for college. Not surprisingly one of the popular complaints these days is that college is becoming too expensive. Gee, I wonder why. Of course the Democrats not only refuse to admit culpability for the price increase, but actually propose programs that will exacerbate the problem. Politicians can take more from taxpayers with the stroke of a pen and transfer that money to others, but they can’t instantly build schools or train teachers by snapping their fingers.

The second problem with Edwards’ “College for Everyone” concept actually goes to the core of his platform. He claims to run as a candidate for the middle class (more on that later), but his plan would both devalue college education and continue to undermine manufacturing in the U.S. The point of an education or any other job skill acquisition is to differentiate yourself from the sea of other potential job applicants. High school diplomas have already been made nearly useless by the ubiquity of college grads; Edwards would deliver the death knell to those with just a high school diploma. And what about those manufacturing and other blue collar jobs? Well, you think college grads with four year degrees are going to change spark plugs or bend sheet metal? Hell no. We’ll have a society full of educated, although not necessarily any smarter, people who all feel they are above such labor intensive endeavors.

Did anyone else notice how foolish Bill Richardson’s answer at the Facebook debate to a question about the price of gas sounded? He bragged about how he tried to get OPEC nations to increase production to help decrease prices while he was Energy Secretary. Later he said we “need to reduce fossil fuels” and praised Al Gore for winning the Nobel Prize. Uh, Governor if you really cared about “global warming” then why are you gloating about trying to increase production of that nasty stuff? Speaking of global warming - why isn’t it getting any warmer?

Energy independence is a common refrain among politicians, but let’s think a little bit about energy independence before we start salivating at the prospect. There are currently no energy sources that are as cost efficient as petroleum. That means that unless we decrease our spending on foreign oil by exploiting our own resources then we’ll get a double whammy: higher cost per energy unit for us coupled with a cost per energy unit of petroleum even lower than today’s price for our foreign competitors like China and India. So we would punish ourselves, give our adversaries a great chance to catch us, and still watch money flow into the pockets of the bad guys. And if you believe in global warming our actions would do nothing to prevent all that fossil fuel from being burned. It would take a global refrain from petroleum to actually hurt the nefarious countries sitting on crude deposits. I’m not going to hold my breath.

On the topic of energy, oil crossed $100 a barrel last week and the media dutifully made a big deal. To give you perspective, a 1 liter bottle of Dasani water costs about $1.50 or $238.50 per barrel. According to the EPA, 1,000 gallons of tap water costs just $2, or about $0.08 per barrel. So bottled water is nearly 3,000 times more expensive than tap water. I filled up with $2.94 a gallon gas the other day, which translates to about $123 a barrel - barely more than a barrel of oil currently costs. And people think the oil companies are ripping us off!

I mentioned the middle class and the Democrats earlier… I heard a segment on NPR’s Marketplace this afternoon that was one of the best descriptions of the Democrat Party I’ve ever heard. Basically Democrats claim to be the party of the middle class, but nearly all of the programs they tout benefit people below the middle class, which provides no motivation whatsoever for an actual middle class individual to vote Democratic. They also tend to focus on pessimism (”Isn’t your life terrible? Vote for me and I’ll make it better!”). Think John Edwards telling everyone they’ve been given a raw deal and that evil companies - you know the ones that hire all those fools in his crowds (the ones with jobs at least) - have been screwing us all.

Ok, I feel better now.

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This entry was posted by Brian on Monday, January 7th, 2008 at 9:47 pm and is filed under Rants. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. Please note the copyright policy.