Tag: policy

Against HMID

by giving a tax subsidy to housing, it distorts investment decisions toward houses and away from assets like factories and equipment that are more productive at the margin.

It is nothing short of a farce that those chiefly responsible for the mortgage mess, i.e., the deadbeat borrowers themselves, have enjoyed a tax subsidy at the expense of the responsible parties (renters) who did not participate in the housing bubble.

Biotech Paternalism

California’s Department of Public Health has issued cease and desist letters to 13 genetic testing startups – most notably 23andMe. They are mandating that the labs demonstrate that they have been certified by both the state and federal government, and, perhaps more importantly, that all genetic tests were ordered by a patient’s doctor, which is required by state law.

completely retarded. overreaching legislation, as usual in the healthcare sector.

Stupidity of Dignity

And what it reveals should alarm anyone concerned with American biomedicine and its promise to improve human welfare. For this government-sponsored bioethics does not want medical practice to maximize health and flourishing; it considers that quest to be a bad thing, not a good thing.

To understand the source of this topsy-turvy value system, one has to look more deeply at the currents that underlie the Council. Although the Dignity report presents itself as a scholarly deliberation of universal moral concerns, it springs from a movement to impose a radical political agenda, fed by fervent religious impulses, onto American biomedicine.

“dignity” in bioethics is thinly veiled religious nonsense.

Fuel efficiency

Europe / Japan have higher standards today than the US is shooting for in 2020. all to prop up detroit. the best thing that could happen is for all of detroit to go bust.
2008-11-11:

Critics might more justifiably flay the Big 3 for failing long ago to seek a showdown with the UAW to break its labor monopoly. In truth, though, politicians have repeatedly intervened to prevent the crisis that would finally settle matters. Even better would be to dump CAFE altogether and replace it with an intellectually honest gas tax. Mr. Obama promised to transcend the old stalemates — let him begin with the 30-year-old fraud that our fuel-economy rules represent.

Beyond FOIA

Abolish the Freedom of Information Act. Turn it inside-out. Why should we be asking for information about and from our government? The government should have to ask to keep things from us. Government information — every act of government on our behalf — should be free by default. We must insist on an aggressive ethic of openness. The exceptions should be rare: the personal business of citizens, national security, ongoing criminal investigations and court cases (while they are ongoing), and little else.

argues that all gov data should be public by default, and all gov meetings videoed. now this would be a reasonable policy.