Touch Me Not — Mary’s Elation

Last night as I was visiting a painter friend, I noticed that he had placed a new painting on one of the living room walls. At first glance, the painting was simple and unremarkable. As if unable to stand, the woman in the painting knelt beside a man in a flowing robe. Only part of the man’s torso was visible as well as the lower part of his arms and hands. His hands carried the mark of the signature nail imprint. This event was post resurrection and pre-ascension. The woman was grasping the robe of the man and the man had placed a gentle, comforting arm around the woman’s shoulder.

The woman’s expression was that of profound elation, faith, love and relief. Her eyes were closed, her mouth partly open and the expression showed why she was kneeling; she was so overcome by the experience that she hadn’t strength to stand. There was great clarity and vision in Mary Magdalene’s aura. The relief came from the physical manifestation of a promised return. The love came from being reunited again with perhaps her husband and at least her friend, in the most profound sense of the word, that she believed she had lost. The faith came from the current and continued removal of death’s permanence. The elation came from a culmination of the turning of overwhelming emotions from loss, distance, suffering and yet hope, to fulfillment, life, love, assurance and fecundity.

The painter told me that several had been gently critical of the paining because of the Master’s command, “Touch me not!” The transliterated Greek word for touch as it is used in the verse is Haptomai. Haptomai does not mean ‘touch’ as in ‘make any physical contact.’ It comes from the transliterated Greek word, Hapto which means to fasten to or adhere to. The additional definition to Haptomai is to cling to.

I love paintings that are able to capture events, especially those events about which I have had a mistaken perception. I had certainly read over the passage in John many times and had perceived a rather majestic Messiah stopping Mary Magdalene cold in her advance and telling her, that for some divine reason I did not understand, she was forbidden to touch him until he had ascended to his Father. The expression on Mary’s face, her clutching his robe and Jesus’ comforting arm in her shoulder feel much better and make more scholarly sense. His ‘touch me not’ should be read as saying, in ultimate gentleness and affection, “I cannot stay and you must not hold (delay) me. I must go to the Father now.”

The fact that the account comes from the gospel of John is noteworthy. I would expect Luke to describe the situation more physically. John did not see the need. I think John describes the embrace between Jesus and Mary with the correct translation of the word, ‘touch.’

The painting is not yet in print. When it is, I will ask for a signed copy. When I have a digital image, I will post it on this site.

Some Defunct Economist

Last night I traveled six hours to watch my daughter play a high school basketball game. The total price for the excursion was about $75. For the price of a cheap seat at the Laker’s game, I got to watch an hour of basketball magic. There were no dunks, no behind-the-back passes, and no buzzer beaters, but there is nowhere in the world I would have rather been than in a loud, crowded gym that reminded me of the one in Hoosiers.

I rode up with a friend who is a professor of agriculture with a specialty on cattle and horses. I spent most of the six hours asking questions. I learned about ruminants, ovine’s, bovine’s, equine’s, feed, waste, flatulence, hooves, horse shoes, wild mustangs, inbreeding, forestry, genetically manipulated, Round-up resistant seed, neutral ruminant stomach Ph balance, stomach capacity, how WWII profoundly damaged demand for lamb, horse evolution, horse dentistry, mule intelligence, horse vs. zebra chromosome count, why most lamb is shipped to the east and west coast, how synthetic fabrics have made shearing uneconomical, cattle steroids (not as bad as you may imagine) llamas and camels. Call me a nerd if you want, but I was fascinated by what I learned.

During the feed discussion I learned that standard pig diet consists of corn and soy. The high sugar content of the corn and the complete protein content of the soy make for fat, healthy pigs which eventually turns into culinary ambrosia (in solid form). “A few years ago, corn went through a price hic-up,” he said. “I know why,” I told him, “Ethanol.”

Negative Externalities

I loathe political expediency! When W set off on a campaign to push ethanol, I am certain that it was a political calculation and that W was told by his Harvard trained advisers that ethanol was a horribly stupid idea but that he might gain political points for the attempt.
An economic externality occurs when the effects of a transaction among one group spills over onto other groups that are not involved in the transaction. Ethanol was supposed to be about reducing dependence on foreign oil or something. It was supposed to be inexpensive. It was supposed to be environmentally friendly. Let’s take that one first.

Nissan announced an entirely electric car. What could be cleaner, right? Wrong. The electricity that is used to charge the car batteries (not environmentally friendly) comes from somewhere. If it comes from a hydroelectric facility, you are endangering salmon populations. If it comes from a coal fired plant, you are polluting the air. The point is that electricity is far from clean. The same holds for ethanol production. UC Berkeley geoengineering professor Tad W. Patzek “has analyzed the environmental ramifications of ethanol, a renewable fuel that many believe could significantly reduce our dependence on petroleum-based fossil fuels. According to Patzek though, ethanol may do more harm than good. According to his research, more fossil energy is used to produce ethanol than the energy contained within it.” http://www.energybulletin.net/node/5062

If that were all, though I can’t find one, I concede that there may be an argument in favor of ethanol production. But that is not all. Corn prices during the ethanol push shot upward. A fifth grader could have predicted this (and it may not even take a fifth grader trained in economics). The impact of the corn price increase is a little slipperier and all of George’s advisors were banking on the inability of uninformed masses to trace causal chains to multiple effects. Here are two of the many effects:

Pigs consume about 3% of their body weight per day in pig feed, which is primarily corn. If a pig weighs 200lbs, and assuming that 66% of pig feed is corn, then the pig is consuming four pounds of corn per day. If the cost of corn, due to ethanol production, increases by 50%, that same four pounds of corn for pig feed costs the farmer the equivalent of six pounds before ethanol. The farmer will take a loss, or have to increase prices. If he takes a loss, he may hold off buying that new GM truck this year. If a bunch of pig farmers do the same, then GM sells fewer trucks and must take greater losses and eventually require a government bailout all for the sake of W’s political expediency. If he increases prices, people will spend more for their pork, switch to beef or something else. In the end, someone will not be able to buy the new GM truck.

The second effect is a little less obvious. The Mexican diet consists of corn tortillas and some other things. When corn prices shot up, millions of Mexicans had to spend their money on more expensive tortillas and not on American made computers, Chevy’s, consulting, software, etc. When fewer Chevy’s were sold, GM took greater losses…you know the rest.
John Maynard Keynes, whom I regard as one of the most destructive men to walk the earth, had this profound insight:

“ideas of economists and political philosophers, whether right or wrong, are more powerful than is commonly under-stood. In reality, the world is ruled by little else. Practical men (and women), who believe themselves quite untouched by any such intellectual influence, are usually slaves of some dead economist.”

Goood stuff, Maynard.

The problem is that neither W nor O have chosen very good masters. They have created a master with Keynsian DNA mixed with the DNA of a drunken sailor, a prostitute and Karl Marx.

Near the end of our drive together, my friend challenged me to come up with a solution to our current economic woes. I told him that it would be better to elect that drunk guy on The Andy Griffith Show than to hire a guy who wanted to go to Washington to do something. Better still would be to elect a rep intent on governmental retreat out of the affairs of business and people. The only way to do this it to write, teach, persuade, influence and wage political war.

AWESOME Video. Hayek vs. Keyens.

Future historians and economists will evaluate Keyensian economics with the advantage of hind site.  Ever wondered what Keyensian economics is?  Check this out.  Very well done.

Your thoughts???

Three Questions for My Readers…

Question 1:  Do you want Khalid Shaikh Mohammed to get either life in prison or the death penalty?

Question 2:  If Mohammed mounts a defense capable of getting him less than either life in prison or the death penalty, are you okay with certain, legal short-cuts to make sure he gets convicted?

Question 3:  To your knowledge, was he read his Miranda rights?

Please submit your answers in the comment section.

Canadian Argument in the Health Care Debate–addendum

During a health care discussion/argument with a friend, my eavesdropping 17 year-old opined that “What we have is a lot better than what Canada has.” I’m delighted that he has an opinion, but his opinion represented a regurgitation of conservative/libertarian talking points. Consider the following chart.

I am curious on what basis pundits judge the Canadian system to be inferior. Canadians spend far less for their health care as a percentage of GDP then we do. They have a higher life expectancy and a lower infant mortality rate. So what makes it so bad? Here are some arguments:

• Tons of Canadians cross the border to get superior health care from the United States.
• There are long lines for non-emergency care.

The truth is that, according to a recent survey of over 17,000 Canadians, only .5% sought health care in the United States.  And of that number, less than one-fourth of those who sought care went to the US specifically to get care.  The survey concludes that somewhere between .1% and .2% of Canadians cross the border for the express purpose of seeking better health care.  That number is to be expected.  You would naturally expect to see one country or another with some specific specialties and advantages.  When those countries share a common border, health care migration back and forth is a natural outcome.  In fact, huge numbers of Americans flock to Canada, either in person or via the internet to take advantage of cheap prescription drugs ($1billion/year).  From a pure money flow standpoint, there is about as much money going north as south.

Long lines are another matter, but are they detrimental to health?  The data say no.  Still, the annoyance factor must be considered.  Canada recently spent $5.5 billion to remedy the line problem.  But what is the trade-off that Americans pay for small waits?  Is 6% of GDP a good trade-off?  To put 6% GDP in perspective, it’s $877 billion or $2880 per year for every man, woman and child in the US in 2008 dollars. Here is another view: $877,000,000,000.

The Canadian system is not the answer.  It ignores pain as the primary and most efficient driver of productive behavior.  Still, it should not be dismissed as inferior by political misinformation.

Copin’ with Copenhagen

On the news, I found out that the United Nations Climate Change Conference held at Copenhagen, Denmark was a failure. Commentators blamed the failure on different players: the rich world, the poor world, President Obama, the Chinese. Here is a list I found of 5 “bird’s eye view” reasons for the failure:

Nation-states are far too self-serving

Democracies are too ill-equipped and irresolute to deal with pending crises

Isolationist and avaricious China

The powerful corporatist megastructure

Weak consensus on the reason for global warming

See http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/dvorsky20100110/

(I am not saying the author of this particular list is a commentator of special significance, just that his arguments seem to me to be typical. I chose this particular article because it was the second result on my Google search).

I disagree that these are the causes of the failure at Copenhagen. The real cause was a failure of logic. Copenhagen suffered from the “false dilemma” fallacy. In the false dilemma fallacy (which seems to be in vogue), two choices are presented when there are actually other alternatives. Usually, one of the choices is clearly superior to the other.

Returning to the article about the failure of Copenhagen, we can read the author’s expectation for the conference, which seems to me to be illustrative of the expectations of many of those who were invested in a particular outcome: “Like so many others, I was hoping for an internationally binding deal that would, at the very least, compel and motivate the nations of the world to address the climate crisis in a meaningful and precedent setting way.”

According to this commentator, what two choices were presented at Copenhagen? (1) do nothing about the “climate crisis” and suffer the consequences or (2) have dozens of countries agree to a “binding deal” that would “compel and motivate” them in a “meaningful and precedent setting way.”

Clearly, the author (as proxy for all those who had concrete expectations about Copenhagen) believes that only the second choice is Good.

But there is much to be said about the undesirability of the second choice. What he is proposing is a “power” that is greater than any national power. This proposition opposes at least 500 years of western tradition of pushing sovereignty toward individuals and away from states or empires. “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” (http://www.economist.com/sciencetechnology/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15328544).

It is no wonder that the author’s first culpable cause of Copenhagen’s collapse is “Nation-states are too self-serving.” Why speak of hiding behind the “sovereignty shield” when the negotiators are merely articulating the best interest of their constituencies? The climate change protagonists have not even come close to justifying any nation giving up its sovereignty over this issue.

Can it possibly be true that “democracies are too ill-equipped and irresolute to deal with pending crises?” I hope I’m wrong, but this sounds like the fascist argument: to resolve the real problems we face, we must have a single authority whose power is protected so he can do the right thing. As Vladimir Putin recently put it: “proper and well organized leaders are always capable of solving any problems and that in the absence of such leaders, anarchy prevails.” (Feb 5, 2010, http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6145UJ20100205).

So if this commentator is wrong because there are other choices, what are they?

When ascertaining climate change choices, the first question that needs to be answered is whether there is climate change at all. If there is not, there is no problem to be resolved. If there is climate change, the follow-up question is whether it is caused by people (the ten penny word for “caused by people” is “anthropomorphic”). Fallaciously, our proxy author put forward this fundamental question as a “reason” for “failure” at Copenhagen. This is a good example of the fallacy—there are only two choices and only one of them is valid, the introduction of a third choice is equivalent to choosing the invalid choice.

If we decide that climate change is occurring and it is caused by people, we must still ask whether the magnitude of the change is significant and what proportion of the change that is caused by people. Apparently, the magnitude of the change is something like 2 degrees Celsius over many decades. Is this a problem? Personally, I can’t tell the difference between 45 and 49 degrees. Can a polar bear? Can coral? Then we must decide whether there are remedial actions that will make any difference at all. Even if we did everything that was suggested, would it make a difference?

The only choice pursued at Copenhagen was to reduce emissions from burning fossil fuels for energy. The problem with this choice is that it would drastically impinge on some people’s lifestyles and prevent others from getting out of poverty. The days of air travel would be over because no one person can be allowed to emit as much carbon as airplanes emit in a given year. Further, it appears that the carbon emission goals that were actually on the table in Copenhagen weren’t even enough to make a difference. Why bother?

Another choice is to accept the problem and deal with the consequences. Worried about raising sea levels? Maybe it’s better to build dikes than to restrict energy. Are the polar bears starving? Feed them—it’s cheaper than stopping the world economy. I have heard other proposals, such as burying charcoal, replanting rainforests (maybe the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is caused by clear cutting forests that soak it up, not from burning fossil fuels that emit it), or pumping carbon dioxide underground. Only when we identify all the choices can we use logic to help us find real solutions.

Copenhagen was only a failure when measured against the one choice that was on offer. It was a great success for those who used logic to reveal the fallacies presented.

Lonn Litchfield is an economist, attorney with degrees from Brigham Young University and The London School of Economics

I Can Solve the National Health Care Problem…No Kidding

This is Installment One of my National Healthcare solution.  Each installment will require vast research, so I may be delayed with each post.

Healthcare reform as proposed by the democrats is big government stupidity.  I will dismiss it out of hand, and if anyone cares to debate it, I require that you first take a basic Econ test to determine whether you are a political hack, a fool, or if you might have something intelligent to say.

What is more disappointing than the big government, liberal health care agenda, which was predictable to a fault, is the dearth of coherent republican solutions to a real problem.  The original republican “do nothing” policy is socially irresponsible.  Reform is needed based on the following discouraging facts.

1. From 1990 to 2008, health care spending went from 714,000,000 to 2,339,000,000.

2. During that time, Public funding as a percentage of the total increased from 40% TO 47%

3. On a Per Capita basis during the same period, spending went up from $2814 per person in 1990 to $7681 per person in 2008.

4. As a percentage, heath care spending has increased 7.1% per year while GDP has increased 5.3%

5. In 2008, health care spending represented 16.2% of GDP as compared to 12% in 1990 and 5.5% in 1962.

If this trend does not frighten you, it should.  In fact, it would have frightened you a long time ago if it had not been for governmental and private pain insulation, intentionally and unintentionally designed to shield you from suffering.  The problem is that when you don’t suffer, you have no incentive to change, which brings me to my first five principals of health care reform:

• People and corporations respond to incentives, both positive and negative
• On the demand side, behavior will not change until perceived pain levels associated with the behavior reach a tipping point
• On the supply side, Opportunity = Number of Users raised to the power of pain
• Markets forces are the greatest ensurer of productive behavior
• Governments are one of the worst ensurers of productive behavior

Employers, insurance companies and the government have all insulated you from the sting which would have changed your stupid health care behavior.  The sting has really never been remove; it has merely shifted.  But the perceived sting has been removed, which is all that matters.  In what should be regarded as a national travesty, the Federal Government has usurped a power that no entity should assume, that of removing pain from generation A and passing it along to generation B.  Because of the above laws, generation A not only has no incentive to behave productively, but has been given every incentive to pillage and plunder and enjoy the spoils of the labor of gen B that can neither protest nor fight for itself.

By way of review, people are insulated from perceived pain by:

• Employers who cover some heath care costs.  The pain is still there.   Only it is disguised as lower business investment pain, which in turn is felt as unemployment pain, which in turn is felt as higher welfare roles pain, which your elected officials have thrown onto the backs of school kids across the nation and even the yet-to-be-born.  But because of the perception shift, you continue to make unproductive health care decisions.
• Insurance companies.  In a way, insurance companies are only acting the way you want them to act.  You said you wanted low co-pays and they responded.  You told them (by your insurance purchasing behavior) that you want subsidized prescription drugs.  You told them that you want freedom to go to any doctor any time you want.  They looked at the actuarial tables, ran a few calculations and offered you a policy that met your needs but that also insulated you from perceived pain.  The monthly premium is only painful once a month and if you pay it as a direct deposit, there is no perceived pain at all.  The pain is still there, of course, but the more frequent pleasure of paying $20 for an office visit exceeds premium pain, at least in your mind, which is all that matters.
• Government.  By increasingly subsidizing health care, the government has shifted pain from health care decisions to tax rates on this and future generations.  Once again, the pain is still there, but there is no perception of pain in your mind regarding health care decisions.

The Power of Pain and how markets respond

When there is no subsidy or other intrusion (governmental or otherwise) into the market, consumers are powerful.  If they demand lower prices, suppliers will emerge that will offer lower prices, like Walmart.  If quality is demanded, suppliers will emerge that will offer better quality, like  Honda.  These suppliers do this because they want to make a profit.  They believe that they can give you what you want and in exchange, you will enhance their wealth.  They do this ONLY because there is a profit motive.

When governments intrude, and there are solid reasons for them to do so, there are nearly always negative, unintended consequences.  It is possible for government intrusion to be positive on balance, but since the vast majority of government intrusion falls on the liability side of the ledger, any attempt at government inclusion in the market should be approached with deliberation, trepidation and fierce debate among reps with public virtue (they care more for the country than for their own aggrandizement).  Lol.

[My private musings: When politicians say that they want to get things done in Washington, or that they want change, I have to laugh.  I would rather government focus on getting things undone.  Also, any change initiated by the government has a much greater chance of making things worse than better--especially with the current reps.]

Insurance Basics

Anthem Blue Cross, one of the nation’s largest insurance carriers is being investigated by the feds for huge rate increases.  California businesses have been told that they will be required to pay up to 30% more for insurance this year and that there will be a reduction in benefits.  People are furious and have demanded an explanation.  Anthem has said that they are calculating rates using the same math that they have always used.  The rate increase is due to the number of healthy people dropping coverage and the number of sick people staying on.  It is not surprising that this would occur during general financial stress.  But those healthy people who are dropping coverage are taking on huge risk that they may not understand.

Although no one really cares to look, hospitals publish rates.  These rates are what you would pay if you were to go to the hospital and pay for the visit or the procedure out of your own pocket.  These are not the rates that insurance companies pay.  Insurance companies negotiate rates with hospitals that are frequently as low as 20% of the published rate.  So, if you are healthy and you go in for an appendectomy with no insurance, you will pay the published rate which is up to 5 times higher than the rate paid by people who have insurance, independent of any reduction associated with deductibles and co-pays.

Economics of Hospitals

Like every business, hospitals have both fixed and variable costs.  The fixed costs include property, buildings, furnishings, equipment, some labor, etc.  The variable costs include consumable medical supplies, paper, utilities, some labor, some equipment, etc.  Overhead figures can be rolled into fixed or variable costs or they may be a separate line item.  Even non profit hospitals are out to make a profit.  All hospitals look at all their variable, fixed and overhead costs and come up with pricing that they hope will cover those costs and add additional profit.

The insurance companies negotiate with the hospitals for every care category possible.  There is really nothing magical about the number negotiated.  The hospital has three main revenue categories and wants to collect from the three enough to cover costs, overhead and a profit.  The three categories are revenues from insurance companies, revenues from uninsured people and negative revenues from free-loaders who go to the ER to get more free cough medicine.  Remember rules 1 and 2?  People respond to incentives, and behavior will not change until pain reaches a tipping point.  Where there is no pain and where people have an economic incentive to free load, they will do it.  I will address this point later.

So the hospital negotiates rates with the insurance company then publishes rates for everyone else.

Hospitals make up 30.8% of total health care expenditures.  If a hospital has no competition, it will act like a monopoly.  It will charge more and be less efficient than it would be if there were alternatives available to the health care decision makers.

In my next installment, I will go over economics for doctors, drug companies and other health care entities.  I will also look at what happens when there is no pain shift and the full economic consequence must be entirely felt by the consumer, as occurs with lasic and breast augmentation.

North Carolina’s Big, Fat But

One of the uses of the word, ‘but’ is to serve as a disjunct, or a crack between two ideas.  Here are some examples:

George Washington, “Be courteous to all, but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence.”

Abraham Lincoln:  “Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.”

The word ‘but’ serves as a partial or complete negation of the previous clause.  The negation can occur with a word or phrase other than ‘but’ but with the same meaning.  For example, you may say, ‘notwithstanding the aforementioned,’ or ‘with all due respect.’

Lately, we have experienced a Glut Maximus of Progressive denial of foundational education and constitutional structure.  Consider the President’s judiciary rebuke during the State of the Union, “with all due deference to the separation of powers.”  That phrase is practically badonka donk in its negation of the President’s respect for the separation of powers.  But this pales in comparison to the new Progressive Moon Hung over North Carolina.  In what could certainly be viewed as the boldest backside exposure of the Progressive movement, the North Carolina Board of Education is considering dispensing with teaching US history before the Hayes Presidency.  The reason and the BUT…

“We are certainly not trying to go away from American history,” Rebecca Garland, the chief academic officer for North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, told Fox News. “What we are trying to do is figure out a way to teach it where students are connected to it, where they see the big idea, where they are able to make connections and draw relationships between parts of our history and the present day.”

The BUT is, “we believe in teaching history, BUT…”  There are so many backside things about this way of thinking that it is difficult to decide where to begin.  So that I am not left behind, here is an attempt to get to the bottom of it.

Problem 1.  Teaching history from Hayes on–which implies a shameless dismissal of Lincoln, Washington, Henry, Adams, Franklin, Monroe, Hamilton and Jefferson–is like trying to teach music appreciation by ignoring the Beatles in favor of the Backstreet Boys. With mush for brains and little or no frontal lobe connectivity, it’s true that today’s kids may “connect” better to the Backstreet Boys.  But that is precisely what school is supposed to remedy.  If you are serious about music appreciation, an exclusion of Classics is inexcusable.

The typical high school angst can be described as, things that check and call into question my quest for immediate gratification.  Teens are typically annoyed by rules, guidelines, structures, conventions and discipline.  They view these as coercive and contrary to their pursuit of happiness. The one thing however that is the most restrictive, deterministic and completely unrelenting in its coercion of their behavior goes entirely unquestioned.  It is their historical context and their situatedness in that context. The notion of family, breakfast, dishes, cars, laws, exchange, and clothing styles are all historically determined.  Even teen rebellion is historically and contextually rooted.  Teen ignorance and denial of the context largely determine the form the rebellion will take.  Ignoring such vibrant, foundational history as the founding of the United States is like changing the school lunch menu to candy bars and soda in the hope that the students will be more ‘connected’ at school.

Figures from Plato to Lincoln provided the thought structure that allows for teen rebellion in its present form and yet, teens hear Plato’s name and wonder what colorful, preschool clay has to do with anything.  They can no more escape Plato and Lincoln than Bill Clinton can escape the simple reality of ‘is.’   A teen is better off, in every way, interacting with Geo Washington than with W, and with Old Hickory than O.  The founders understood this and were well versed in Plato, Hume, Locke and other foundational figures, not some watered down history of the reign of King George.

Problem 2. The 1877 starting point for teaching US history has all of my conspiratorialist friends shouting in unison, “See, I told you so!”  The unremarkable Hayes Presidency began in 1877.  At roughly this same time, Europe was going through several socialist revolutions.  Marx’s Communist Manifesto was published on February 21st, 1848.  ‘Power to the Elite’ was the unspoken mantra hidden behind the more palletable, “Working People of the World, Unite!” Consider Marx’s 10 point program:

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
3. Abolition of all right of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the State, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of wasteland, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
8. Equal liability of all to labour. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country, by a more equitable distribution of population over the country.
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of childrens factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production.

Progressive income tax:  It can be argued that the beginning of a progressive income tax began in 1894 with the enactment of new tax law.

Right of inheritance:  From 1941 until 1976, the marginal tax rate started at 3 percent and climbed to 77 percent on estates exceeding $10,000,000, only a partial win for Marx.

State bank:  Following the closure of the first and second Banks of the United States, the third bank, started in 1913 and became know as the Federal Reserve System.

Centralization of Transportation:  With the exception of Amtrak, Marx is losing on this point.

Gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country:  The Interstate Commerce Act of 1887 (24 Stat. 379 [49 U.S.C.A. § 1 et seq.]) shifted responsibility for the regulation of economic affairs from the states to the national government.

Public Schooling: By 1918 all states had passed laws requiring children to attend at least elementary school

All of the above dates are important to the history of Socialism and all occur on or after 1877.  I have resisted conspiratorialist claims since I first heard them 30 years ago.  Resistance is becoming more difficult.

Problem 3.  Writing history, like everything else in life is an interpretive act.  BUT (I’m going to negate), it does not follow that all historical interpretation is equally legitimate.  Historical interpretation after 1877  is more perilous than interpretation before due to the relative dearth of original material.  Really, the only way to understand even the period 1877 to 2010, you would have to understand context.  Context can only be understood by reading original texts that were written well before 1877.

A politically correct Progressive (or a right wing wacko for that matter) has a greater opportunity to indoctrinate, brainwash and evangelize through historical revision in the absence of text such as, The Federalist Papers, The Work of Nations, The Republic, and the Constitution.

The greatest threat to the Progressive advance is, ironically, liberal education.  Properly understood, and more applicable today than ever, liberal education intends to produce students with powerful capability born of classical studies, including the founding of the country.  As Seth Godin points out, [see, Brainwashed], the day of human cog fabrication (that of preparing students to work in a job until they retire) is over.  The new economy requires a different kind of agent.  If the NC Board of Education gets its way, then, assuming that there are a sufficient number of North Carolinans that are not asleep at the wheel, you will see a home school and charter school surge that will properly educate the fortunate and leave behind the rest to fester and fend for themselves and eventually require subsidy to survive.  But hey, at least they will vote the left…oops, I mean the right way.

Tea Party Momentum

You want to know the impetus for Tea Party momentum?  Check this out!

http://www.pjtv.com/?cmd=video&video-id=3023

Bill is going to be my guest at engagements in Utah on April 8th and 9th.  Anyone interested in attending?