Unintended Consequences of Welfare States

The content of this item is a very important and speaks to the serious negative consequences of welfare states.  It is focused on our nation and what is wrong with the way our government "attempts" to help people with programs popular for those in need but in reality hurts rather than helps them.  A couple of quotes set the stage: "A nation’s prosperity is determined by the quantity and quality of labor and capital that are productively utilized. Which means that it doesn’t make sense to have policies that penalize either saving and investment or working. Yet that seems to be the favorite hobby of the political class."  And, Casey Mulligan, University of Chicago economics professor has this to say: "...the top rate for these families eligible for various federal aid programs went from 40% to 48% in the immediate aftermath of the recession. In other words, for every extra dollar someone eligible for various aid programs makes, they lose 48% from taxes and benefit reductions. …Mulligan says. “The more you help low-income people, the more low-income people you’ll have. The more you help unemployed people, the more unemployed people you’ll have.”  http://finance.townhall.com/columnists/danieljmitchell/2015/04/28/dependency-work-incentives-and-the-growing-welfare-state-n1991212/page/full 

Ample evidence confirms these observations.  See these four items:  https://danieljmitchell.wordpress.com/2014/01/08/the-war-on-poverty-has-been-a-disaster-for-taxpayers-and-for-poor-people/  and  https://danieljmitchell.wordpress.com/2013/07/03/thomas-sowell-explains-how-the-welfare-state-hurts-the-poor/    and  https://danieljmitchell.wordpress.com/2014/06/25/the-hidden-economic-damage-of-obamacare/  and  https://danieljmitchell.wordpress.com/2014/05/18/obamacare-could-cause-two-million-additional-adults-to-leave-labor-force-and-become-trapped-in-government-dependency/ 

George Burns

It turns out the gridlock was all about Harry Reid

Here’s a story you haven’t seen for a while: Congress is working — well, sort of. Better than it had for the previous six years, anyway.
The difference? Harry Reid is no longer running the Senate — and Republican Mitch McConnell has made the place far less dysfunctional.
Just last week, the Senate cast breakthrough votes on a sex-trafficking bill and the confirmation of attorney-general nominee Loretta Lynch.
The bipartisan trafficking bill was delayed awhile by Reid-style partisanship: Democrats held it up to score “War on Women” points over no-federal-funds-for-abortion language that’s been routine in such legislation for decades.
McConnell broke that logjam by refusing to allow a vote on Lynch until Democrats quit playing games.

http://nypost.com/2015/04/25/it-turns-out-the-gridlock-was-all-about-harry-reid/ 

How the Sierra Club’s Lexus Liberals’ Agenda Hurts Poor Americans

Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Elizabeth Warren and the whole gang of Democratic leaders claim that one of their highest priorities is to lift up the middle class and reduce the income gap between rich and poor.
That goal collides with what they admit is their very highest priority: stopping climate change. Their agenda is driven by the millionaire and billionaire Democratic donors who make the party possible. But the agenda also involves making energy, home heating, transportation and just about everything else less efficient and more expensive to the middle class and poor. The people who lose their jobs when the climate-change Stalinists prevail are the people at the bottom and the middle of the income ladder.
The billionaire club members don’t seem to mind this collateral damage. Last week billionaire Tom Steyer convened the uber-rich liberal donor base at the Four Seasons Hotel in Seattle—nice—to pontificate about how much they care about polar bears, the Arctic ice caps and rising sea levels.

http://dailysignal.com/2015/04/26/how-the-sierra-clubs-lexus-liberals-agenda-hurts-poor-americans/ 

Crony Capitalists Strike Again

There are not many things mainstream Republicans have in common with Elizabeth Warren leftists other than their mutual disdain for crony capitalism. The main difference here is that the Left mistakenly believes that these people who feed at the trough of government are actually Republicans. The Left beds down politically with these affluent bloodsuckers while they live in disdain of the Koch Brothers who take no government support. These crony capitalists have struck again and this time they will live to regret it.
The issue that duped these supposed capitalists was what has been branded as “net neutrality.” This is another term of the left where they have cast the matter in bucolic terms. After all, they call themselves “progressives.” I have said repeatedly that the only thing they are progressive about is progressively restricting your rights and progressively taking more of your hard-earned money for the government.
We all know the internet has worked fairly well unimpeded by government corruption. Anything that allows people vast amounts of freedom eventually is characterized as needing “supervision.” The control freaks have made many advances at limiting the freedom of the internet through either taxing activities or contrived control of the flow of information. The biggest effort came from the naïve supporters of “net neutrality.”

http://townhall.com/columnists/brucebialosky/2015/04/26/crony-capitalists-strike-again-n1989140 

Global-Warming Guacamole

California doesn’t need a global carbon-emissions regime; it needs a better water system. That California’s catastrophic drought is a result of global warming has become a commonplace of contemporary political rhetoric. That truism isn’t true: Most scientific accounts of California’s current dry spell link recent low precipitation to naturally occurring atmospheric cycles, not to global warming.

Indeed, most of the global-warming models relied upon by those advocating more-invasive environmental policies predict that warming would leave California with wetter winters — winter precipitation being critical to the snowpack-dependent state — rather than the drier winters at the root of the state’s current water crisis. What some studies do suggest is that warmer temperatures make the effects of scanty precipitation more intense for California’s end users of water, a reasonably straightforward proposition — higher temperatures will probably contribute to higher demand for water and will certainly contribute to the much more significant problem of evaporation, which steals tremendous amounts of water away from California’s outdated storage-and-conveyance infrastructure and imposes substantial water losses on old-fashioned irrigation systems.

 

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/417396/global-warming-guacamole-kevin-d-williamson

Greece Talks With Eurogroup Hit “Complete Breakdown”

We said as soon as Syriza was voted into office, in How Much Success is Syriza Likely to Have in Ending Austerity? that it was unlikely to prevail:

I see three stumbling blocks for the Greek negotiating position. The first is that there seems to be no overlap between what they want and the northern bloc is likely to be willing to concede….

Second is that the best idea that the Greeks have to square the circle of austerity v. the Greeks wanting a more pro-growth, more humanitarian solution, the so-called Modest Proposal, is not modest at all from the Eurozone perspective. While it is “modest” in that it works within the existing Eurozone institutional frameworks, it is such a radical departure from the negotiating terms that the Troika generally has on the table in these discussions that there is simply no way to get agreement by summer…even if the Troika had an unexpected change of heart and was willing to be far more innovative on the policy front, as opposed to the financial smoke and mirrors front….

Aside from the fact that this plan has too many moving parts to get done in an at best six month runway there is a third, deeper reason it won’t happen. The Germans do not want deeper integration and more cedeing of power to Eurozone/European level institutions. From their perspective, they are footing the bill of their neighbors, and they therefore want to maintain a position which gives them leverage. Of course, Germany is perversely in denial of the fact that it wants contradictory things, namely, to keep running large and sustained trade surpluses within the Eurozone, and not finance its trade partners. Nevertheless, the very assumption that Galbraith set forth on behalf of Syriza, that Syriza is pro the Eurozone project working, and to them that means deeper integration, is not what Germany wants since that would require it to give up its advantaged position.

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/04/greece-talking-eurogroup-hit-complete-breakdown.html

Republican leaders ignore Conservatives again

It happened again yesterday, a painful reminder that the GOP leadership in Congress is pathetic. The President’s radical nominee for Attorney General, Loretta Lynch, was confirmed with ten Republican votes. Without Republican votes, Lynch could not have become U.S. Attorney General. Lynch will now replace Eric Holder, the most controversial and racially divisive Attorney General in American history.

In her testimony to Congress, Lynch made it clear that she would continue the policies of her liberal predecessor, support the Obama agenda, and had no problem with the President’s highly questionable use of executive power to grant amnesty to five million illegal immigrants. According to U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL), “The Senate must never confirm an individual…who will support and advance a scheme that violates our Constitution and eviscerates established law and congressional authority. No person who would do that should be confirmed. And we don’t need to be apologetic about it, colleagues.”

Despite the clear warnings from Sessions and her troubling statements to the Senate Judiciary Committee, ten Republican Senators decided to confirm her to the most important law enforcement position in the country. Among the GOP “turncoat ten” was the Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. Previously, McConnell had promised to oppose Lynch if she supported the President’s executive amnesty action. Thus, McConnell lied to his constituents and caved under pressure once again. It follows a disturbing trend of GOP congressional leaders refusing to take decisive action to oppose the onslaught of liberalism.

http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/71437