No Oil for Pacifists

Seen on -- get this! -- a Toyota Prius parked at Whole Foods -- by TigerHawk:


source: TigerHawk

As TigerHawk says, "If you've lost the Whole Foods-shopping Prius-driving voter, you've lost liberal America."

Woo-hoo: a two day break from blogging.

UPDATES: below

I compiled this list of science fiction favorites in 1995:

NOVELS

1. Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Robert Heinlein
2. Dune, Frank Herbert
3. Childhood's End, Arthur Clarke
4. 2001, Arthur Clarke
5. Speaker for the Dead, Orson Scott Card
6. Citizen of the Galaxy, Robert Heinlein
7. Glory Road, Robert Heinlein
8. Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card
9. Mindbridge, John Halderman
10. Mote in God's Eye, Larry Niven/Jerry Pournelle
11. The Gods Themselves, Issac Asimov
12. Starship Trooper, Robert Heinlein


SHORT STORIES

1. Nightfall, Issac Asimov
2. The Star, Arthur Clarke
3. By His Bootstraps, Robert Heinlein
4. All Us Zombies, Robert Heinlein
5. First Contact, Murray Leinster
6. Light of Other Days, Bob Shaw
7. Revival Meeting, Dannie Plachta
8. The Rocket of 1955, C. M. Kornbluth
9. There is a Tide, Larry Niven
10. Air Raid, John Varley
11. Life Line, Robert Heinlein
12. Neutron Star, Larry Niven


NOVELLAS

1. Persistance of Vision, John Varley
2. If this Goes On, Robert Heinlein
3. Flatland, Edwin A. Abbott
4. The Moon Moth, Jack Vance
5. The Last Castle, Jack Vance
6. The Demolished Man, Alfred Bester
7. Farewell to the Master, Harry Bates
8. The Midas Plague, Frederik Pohl
9. In Hiding, Wilmar H. Shiras
10. E for Effort, T.L. Sherred
11. The Weapons Shop, A.E. Van Vogt
12. An Ornament to His Profession, Charles L. Harness

I've read little SF since then, and can remember liking only one: Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash. Outside of that, how well does this 15 year-old ranking stand up?

MORE (June 7th):

In comments, Geoffrey Britain urged reading David Weber's On Basilisk Station. He was right. I'm on page 146, and already rank it as number 6.5 in SF novels. I've already ordered the next four in the series. Another update when I finish this one.

STILL MORE (June 9th):

Finished last night. I'm sticking with 6.5--which is excellent.

Progressives have long promised that investment in renewable energy will produce "green jobs." President Obama agreed, specifically citing the supposed success of such programs in Spain. But the evidence of Spanish green job creation (at reasonable costs) was disputed from the start, notwithstanding flawed Administration efforts to waive-off the data.

A full page article in the May 21st La Gaceta Spanish newspaper further demolishes the President's and progressives' position. Based on a leaked study by the Spanish government, the article is headlined:

Spain admits that the green economy as sold to Obama is a disaster

Chris Horner at Pajamas Media provides a translation, including:

The internal report of the Spanish administration admits that the price of electricity has gone up, as well as the debt, due to the extra costs of solar and wind energy. Even the government numbers indicate that each green job created costs more than 2.2 traditional jobs. . .

The presentation recognizes explicitly that "the increase of the electric bill is principally due to the cost of renewable energies." In fact, the increase in the extra costs of this industry explains more than 120% of the variation in the bill and has prevented the reduction in the costs of conventional electricity production to be reflected on the bills of the citizens.

Which is aggravated by the fraud Spain's renewable subsidies prompted. In sum, Spain should be an example--of what not to do.

No wonder the Administration is considering adding green jobs to Obama's agenda for "faith-based partnerships"--radical environmentalism remains a religion, not science.

(via Planet Gore)

Measures of U.S. wireless network availability and competitiveness (as compared with other countries), from the Federal Communication's Mobile Wireless Competition Report, released last week:


source: FCC 10-81 at 37


source: FCC 10-81 at 197

BTW, HHIs -- the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index -- are a measure of market concentration used by the Department of Justice (see Section 1.5) in evaluating horizontal mergers ---the lower the HHI, the more competitive the market.

No wonder U.S. mobile rates are low (which is, in turn why U.S. consumers use comparatively more airtime per month).

Harvard econ prof Edward Glaeser about the international ramifications of the Kerry-Lieberman climate change bill, in the New York Times Economix blog:

International trade is a third reason that this bill is so complicated, because we are trying to use domestic legislation to handle a global externality. If America charges for the carbon emissions involved in making an industrial product but our trading partners do not, then American producers will be at a competitive disadvantage.

This would not only hurt America’s industrial base but would also make a domestic cap-and-trade program less effective at reducing carbon emissions. At the extreme, a sufficiently high energy charge could lead an American industry to shut down and be replaced by new production in places with no restrictions on carbon leading. This scenario results in 100 percent "carbon leakage" and no net reduction in emissions.

The bill tries to deal with this problem with abundant exhortations to sign effective international carbon-control treaties. If such treaties fail to materialize, the United States may start charging imports for the carbon used in their production.

While I understand the economic and political logic behind this approach, it is a distinctly dangerous path. Our trading partners will argue that these charges are tariffs in disguise. Moreover, the United States won’t have the data to figure out which international producers are green and which are brown, making us singularly ill-suited to impose carbon charges.

(via reader Marc)

Compare and contrast this Administration's attitude toward border controls:

• May 19th Chicago Tribune:

  Echoing comments by President Barack Obama and others in the administration, [U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement head John] Morton said that Arizona's new law targeting illegal immigration is not "good government." The law makes it a crime to be in the state illegally and requires police to check suspects for immigration paperwork.
  
  Morton said his agency will not necessarily process illegal immigrants referred to them by Arizona officials. The best way to reduce illegal immigration is through a comprehensive federal approach, not a patchwork of state laws, he said.
  
  "I don't think the Arizona law, or laws like it, are the solution," Morton said.

• May 3rd Washington Times:

  This is one sleepy border crossing.
  
  At the Morses Line Port of Entry, on the U.S.-Canada border, the border station is located smack-dab in the middle of a Vermont dairy farm.
  
  On average, 2½ cars pass through an hour. The pace is so slow that U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents who man the station have been known to fill their days by driving golf balls in an adjoining meadow, shooting skeet or washing their cars. Some here think the World War II-era brick structure that houses the border station should be abandoned.
  
  Not the U.S. Department of Homeland Security: The government, which received $420 million from the federal bailout to modernize land ports like this, wants to spend about $7 million to build an expanded station. To do it, the government says, it needs an adjoining 4.9-acre parcel now used to grow hay and corn.
  
  Owners of the Rainville dairy farm were told last week that if they won't sell the hayfield for $39,500, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will use eminent domain to seize it.
  
  "The arrogance of it is breathtaking," said Brian Rainville, 37, whose parents and two brothers run the 220-acre farm and milk 80 cows on it. "Why are we being asked to make that kind of sacrifice when they can't demonstrate a public need?"
  
  The public need is national security, according to Customs and Border Protection.

Is it too much to ask the Administration to distinguish real and negligible threats to border security and spend taxpayer dollars accordingly?

(via Small Dead Animals)

Lefties love the pre-school "Head Start" program; President Obama stimulated it with an additional $1 billion. Yet, it's never been proven to help kids.

On top of that, the program may be rife with fraud. A recent GAO report found numerous instances where children enrolled had higher than allowed household incomes. Further, in "undercover" tests, the GAO found that just over half the sampled Head Start programs (8 of 15) accepted over-income kids. GAO testimony before the House Education and Labor Committee added:

dramatic audio clips of fraud being taken by [undercover GAO] agents. In one clip, a New Jersey Head Start worker handed back a $23,000 pay stub to two agents who were pretending to enroll their children in the preschool program.

"Now you see it, now you don't," the Head Start worker said.

ACORN-style ethics for an ineffective entitlement--costing $3.7 billion per year. As John Hawkins of Right Wing News says:

It's time to stop wasting our money. It's time for the Head Start program to die.

From the May 19th Wall Street Journal:

David Cameron last week renewed his promise to cut the U.K. government's carbon emissions by 10% in the next 12 months, and is now taking suggestions on how to achieve that. Here's a thought: How about cutting the central government itself by 10%? That's about the only way the new Prime Minister can simultaneously reduce government emissions and the cost of government.

If, on the other hand, the government's plans for shrinking its emissions involve similar measures as its plans to "green" the private sector, Mr. Cameron might ask himself whether, with a budget deficit of 12% of GDP, he can afford this particular boondoggle.

It's fashionable to profess that "greening" the economy can be accomplished at no cost, so great are the benefits of efficiency gains and renewable energy. But the history of civilization, from start to finish, can be seen as one long drive to make more efficient use of available resources. If something can be done more efficiently, at least outside of the public sector, someone is probably already doing it. And if they're not, it's because the costs outweigh the benefits. This is for the simple reason that "greening" the private economy requires subsidies, or heavy-handed regulation, or both. But government can't subsidize itself, so Mr. Cameron's quest is certain to cost taxpayers more than they get back in the form of more-efficient government energy use.

Agreed.

I've previously detailed this Administration's unwillingness and inability to confront Iran's nuclear ambitions via uranium enrichment. Last week, Iran announced a surprising deal to send part of its stockpile to Turkey "for safekeeping" in exchange for uranium fuel rods for Iran's existing reactor. The problem is that Iran both will retain enough nuclear material for at least one bomb, and vowed to continue to enrich uranium.

So, a skeptical U.S. and Europe will continue to press for United Nations sanctions. Which have been severely watered-down and required concessions to veto powers that otherwise imperil national security. The country most directly threatened by nuclear Mullahs, Israel, "has grown increasingly impatient in recent weeks with the approach and concerned that whatever is agreed to now at the U.N. Security Council will only allow Iran more time to advance its program."

For the most part, the view of columnist Christopher Hitchens is right:

When the day comes that Tehran can announce its nuclear capability, every shred of international law will have been discarded. The mullahs have publicly sworn--to the United Nations and the European Union and the International Atomic Energy Agency--that they are not cheating. As they unmask their batteries, they will be jeering at the very idea of an "international community." How strange it is that those who usually fetishize the United Nations and its inspectors do not feel this shame more keenly. In the meantime, the very force in Iran that holds the keys to the secret nuclear sites is also the force that rapes its prisoners, humiliates its womenfolk, represses its "voters," empties its universities, and murders its national minorities. The urgent task of statecraft is to evolve a policy that can synchronize the disarmament demand with the idea that all Iranians, Kurdish and Azeri as well as Persian and Armenian and Jewish, can have a say in their own "internal affairs." No sign of any such statecraft exists. Welcome, then, to a world in which we will have to be fawningly polite to men like Ayatollah Kharrazi.

But Hitchens also downplays the real-world possibility Iran will use its bomb on Israel:

It will not be possible for the Iranian mullahs to devise a weapon of mass destruction that kills only Jews but that spares, for example, the Al-Aqsa mosque. . . Conclusion: The sooner there is a Palestinian state with a share of Jerusalem as its capital, the safer Israel will be.

I don't propose here to address the pros and cons of Israel's claim to East Jerusalem. Rather, my point is that Hitchens wants the Israelis to give up East Jerusalem precisely so that Iran can't (or won't) nuke them. In other words, he thinks Iran's future nuke potential is enough to warrant concessions today.

The implications are obvious: 1) Iran already is engaged in nuclear blackmail; and 2) capitulation is Israel's sole defense. There could be no more clear demonstration of the threat posed by the Iranian regime and Obama's feckless response. Imagine how much worse it could be when they actually build the bomb:




source: May 24th Dry Bones

J.R. Dunn in American Thinker:

The American left has its own millet system, consisting of ethnic (and other) groups defined in large part by their grievances as victims of America. The left provides these groups with attention, representation, and handouts in exchange for their votes. This system has been in place for generations, and it has become the driving wheel of Democratic politics. It has worked nearly as well for them as it did for the Ottoman overlords. . .

This explains why illegal immigration is so important to the left. It explains why efforts to halt illegal border-crossings, a problem that wouldn't challenge a six-year-old, are executed so halfheartedly and so often left unfinished (see the recent "virtual fence"). It explains the irrational response to Arizona's effort to tighten up existing immigration law (not create new law -- Arizona's statute is no more than a reinforcement of existing federal law). It explains the insistence that any solution to the immigration problem provide for amnesty and citizenship for the millions of illegals already living within our borders. It has nothing to do with compassion, nothing to do with fairness or practicality or any of the other reasons offered by "reform" advocates. As is almost always the case where the American left is involved, what it has to do with is power.

The left wishes to use the illegals as a battering ram against the American polity, the same as they used labor, and blacks, and every other group they ever encountered. Illegals will become a new protected class, with privileges and entitlements denied the rest of the populace (including, ironically, current members of previous such classes). They will be discouraged from learning English, as occurs today under the doctrine of "bilingualism," to assure that they remain a separate presence. A vast bureaucracy will arise to "assist" the new citizenry, funded with billions -- oh hell, make that trillions, this is the Obama era -- and staffed with sociologists, ethnographers, psychologists, and other disciplines unimagined today. All will be of the same political persuasion. A permanent crisis atmosphere will be generated around the new class.

(via Maggie's Farm)

Seattle resident Pat Murakami opposed the city's plan to declare her neighborhood "blighted," allowing use of eminent domain to force owners to sell their property for redevelopment (the process Connecticut employed in the Kelo case five years ago). She started an "unincorporated, nonprofit volunteer association" called "Many Cultures, One Message" that wants to narrow state eminent domain rules.

That alone made Murakami subject to Washington Revised Code 42.17.200, titled "Grass roots lobbying campaigns", which requires groups that:

urge your fellow citizens to contact government officials and spend more than the state’s arbitrarily low ceiling (only $500 in one month or $1,000 in three months [NOfP note: threshold amounts from here]). . . to register with it and report your name, address, business and occupation, as well as the names and addresses of anyone with whom you are working to spread your message. The state also demands to know the names and addresses of each person who contributes more than $25 to your efforts.

Washington then disseminates such information on the Internet.

It's not just Washington State. According to the Institute for Justice:

Twenty‐two states explicitly include grassroots lobbying in the definition of lobbying, while another 14 consider any attempt to influence public policy to be lobbying, as long as a certain amount is spent. Thus, such common activities as publishing an open letter, organizing a demonstration or distributing flyers can trigger regulation and force organizers to register with the state and file detailed reports on their activities, as well as the identities of supporters.

On behalf of Many Cultures, One Message and others, the IJ last month sued for a Federal Court finding that Washington's law is unconstitutional.

As a reminder, the First Amendment forbids laws abridging "the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." And a half-century ago, the Supreme Court found "compelled disclosure of affiliation with groups engaged in advocacy" an impermissible burden on freedom of association. NAACP v. Alabama, 357 U.S. 449, 462-63 (1958).

Hostility to lobbyists is fashionable, especially in the Obama Administration. Yet the President once was a "community organizer." How is that different from Ms Murakami? Or similar activists in other states?

It isn't. The First Amendment still applies. Despite the fact that many progressives want restrictions on political speech. And especially, in Washington State and Washington DC, when progressives are the incumbents.

UPDATE: below

Increased banking regulation is populist, popular, and about to pass -- despite little evidence of effectiveness.

There's various national regulators but, for years, banking oversight in the most advanced countries has reflected the Basel Accords (Basel I principles were widely adopted; Basel II rules mostly are effective in the 13 countries on the Basel committee, including the United States and Europe). The Basel "Core Principles" (BCPs, revised in 2006) for bank supervision include "capital adequacy," "risk management," and "accounting and disclosure." Together, they were "hailed as a milestone on the road towards global financial stability [and] are supposed to be a guideline for prudent banking regulation."

So, has Basel worked? Two international economists -- Asli Demirgüç-Kunt (World Bank) and Enrica Detragiache (IMF) -- recently studied whether compliance with Basel matters (at 3):

In light of the recent crisis and the resulting skepticism about the effectiveness of existing approaches to regulation and supervision, it is natural to ask if compliance with the global standard of good regulation is associated with bank soundness. This is the subject of this paper. Specifically, we test whether better compliance with BCPs is associated with safer banks.

The surprising answer (at 4):

All in all, we do not find support for the hypothesis that better compliance with BCPs results in sounder banks as measured by Z-scores [the number of standard deviations by which bank returns have to fall to wipe out bank equity]. This result holds after controlling for the macroeconomic environment, institutional quality, and bank characteristics. We also fail to find a significant relationship when we consider different samples, such a sample of rated banks only, a sample including only commercial banks, and samples including only the largest financial institutions. In an additional test, we calculate aggregate Z-scores at the country level to try to capture the stability of the system as a while rather than that of individual banks, but also this measure of soundness is not significantly related to overall BCP compliance.

Indeed, the authors found (at 5) "that stronger compliance with principles related to the power of supervisors to license banks and regulate market structure are associated with riskier banks."

As Handelsblatt's international economic correspondent Olaf Storbeck observes:

The result casts doubt on the current principles guiding financial regulation. There is no evidence that complying to the Basel rules is correlating with sounder banks. The same is true when the researcher focus on the stability of the entire banking system in spite of individual banks. These results also hold when the macro economic environment of a country is taken into account, as well as the quality of the political and economical institutes and various bank characteristics like the size and its customer base. . .

These conclusions are appalling, especially in light of the ongoing discussions on the future reforms of banking regulation. Obviously not everything that appears reasonable from a theoretical perspective lives up to the expectations. The study impressively reveals how little economists do know about the effects of current banking regulation.

In that light, it's significant that the same authors reached the opposite conclusion in 2008, relying on pre-meltdown data. EconLog's Arnold Kling finds the new analysis particularly persuasive:

This is an unusual sort of paper, in that it tries to look for evidence that regulation works. Ordinarily, economists proceed directly from the observation that market results are imperfect to the conclusion that regulation is the solution. Faith-based regulation, as opposed to evidence-based regulation.

Because we over-estimate the ability of bureaucrats to out-perform markets, the former is exactly what Congress and the Administration are poised to pass.

MORE:

Blogger Assistant Village Idiot commenting on a different post:

The choice is never between good regulation and corporate bandits allowed to run wild. It is a choice between our current regulation -- mixed at best -- and some new regulation -- mixed at best.

It is the descendant of the marxist argument that communism would work well if only it were tried properly with the right people. But any form of government works well such conditions - even tyranny. What sets free markets and free governments apart is that they work reasonably well even under bad conditions. They are a damage-limiting strategy in a world of imperfect people. As we will always have some bad conditions in this fallen world, that's the point.

John Brennan, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, said Tuesday:

Hezbollah is a very interesting organization. . . There is [sic] certainly the elements of Hezbollah that are truly a concern to us what they're doing. And what we need to do is to find ways to diminish their influence within the organization and to try to build up the more moderate elements.

Brennan has a short memory. Hezbollah remains a bunch of Iran-backed terrorists committed to an Islamic Lebanon and a Palestinian Israel--and Jew-killing globally. They've kidnapped and killed Americans by the truckload (literally). Now armed with Iranian missiles, they have long been "fighting to eliminate [us]." Which is why the U.S. still designates the group a "terrorist organization".

The late humor columnist Art Buchwald once defined a "moderate" Iranian as one who ran out of bullets. Hezbollah won't disarm--and has no meaningful moderates. But that won't stop the Obama Administration from believing that closer ties with thugs promote peace.

I'm still taking Sundays off. . .

UPDATE: Ann Althouse brilliantly details an example of why the Post sheds readers.

According to a Der Spiegel interview with Washington Post Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli, last year, the Post lost $163.5 million. That works out to about $448,000 per day. I'm not surprised.

(via reader Ken R.)

In Reason magazine, Tim Cavanaugh says the "Rater Haters Finally Find a Reason to Turn On Moody's, and It's a Bad Reason":

Olli Rehn, European Commissioner for Economic and Financial Affairs, says the agencies were "behind the curve and reinforced the curve." That sounds a little like grabbing yourself by the hair and holding yourself at arm's length, and it's typical of the illogical complaints being made by European leaders against Fitch and Standard & Poor's for their rapid downgrading of Greece's sovereign debt.

On this side of the pond, the Securities and Exchange Commission is putting pressure on Moody's, and Sen. Al Franken (D-Minnesota) is introducing regulation of rating agencies into the stalled finance bill.

Note that the rating agencies are not getting dinged in response to their legitimate failures -- the famously too-high ratings awarded to Enron, Lehman Brothers and the universe of junk debt instruments. They're being punished for doing the right thing: sounding the alarm on Europe's manifest sovereign debt crisis and America's looming one. By coincidence, Moody's recently issued a widely publicized warning that the U.S. could be looking at a serious public debt emergency by 2013. No wonder Franken wants to rein in the raters that were considered jim-dandy back when President Obama first introduced his financial regulation bill. The agencies have gotten themselves into trouble by trespassing on government property.

See also Nihil Kumar in the Independent (U.K.):

The agencies weren't responsible for Lehman's investment decisions, nor did they pile all this debt on Greece's balance sheet. But how is it that despite being criticised in the recent past, a piece of research from one of their ilk triggers such worry in both dealing rooms and the corridors of power? The answer, many argue, is that the agencies are often backed up by the same governments they can unsettle by shuffling their ratings.

There's certainly something wrong with rating agencies--so perhaps we should deregulate them entirely.

(via Instapundit)

From Harvard prof Niall Ferguson's Complete And Definitive Guide To The Sovereign Debt Crisis


source: Ferguson at 2

Ferguson's source is the IMF, whose latest report (see page 86), predicts net U.S. debt rising from 42.3 percent of GDP in 2007 to 66.2 percent of GDP this year and 81.8 percent of GDP by 2014.

Thus, we're not as awful as Japan or Italy -- though worse than the U.K. (see page 29) -- but otherwise, the U.S. debt picture is about as bad as the Euro area as a whole. Which, as MaxedOutMama details, is pretty bad. So, will Obama continue to ape the EU?

(via Business Insider)

Blogger and commenter bobn might agree with Walter Russell Mead on the meaning of the Climategate meltdown:

[T]he goal that the climate change movement so unwisely set out (Al Gore, what were you thinking?) is so unrealistic that almost nothing could make it work. A universal treaty that effectively regulates global economic activity would be a revolution in the international system significantly greater than the establishment of the United Nations and the world is very far from ready for that kind of change. But the climate change movement is also in trouble because it relies on a social vision that never worked well and is now melting faster than a Himalayan glacier. That model is gnostocracy: the rule of experts. (The initial 'g' is silent in English.)

The word blends two Greek words: Γνωσις (pronounced GNOsis with the 'o' long and the 'g' audible) meaning 'knowledge' and Αρχον (pronounced ARkhon) meaning 'ruler'. In a perfect gnostocracy, the smartest, best educated people make all the decisions for the rest of us. . .

In practice it has only five little flaws. Gnostocrats even at their best are prone to mistakes because scientific knowledge is by its nature evolving; the social sciences and the science of extremely complicated systems (think economics) most vital to politics like economics are the most error prone and the least capable of achieving accurate knowledge; political choices involve matters of morals and personal preference which cannot be decided by scientific procedures; no process of selection can be designed which promotes only ‘good’ and ‘honest’ gnostocrats to power and keeps out the charlatans, and the frauds; and finally as a group scientists have interests other than pure science and knowledge (such as promoting gnostocracy thereby gaining power and wealth for themselves). . .

But faith in gnostocracy is taking a beating these days. After all, it was experts armed with extremely complex computer models who devised the financial system now falling down around our ears. Experts and economists told the Europeans that their new 'euro' currency was ready for prime time. Experts and computer models produced the massive and apparently unnecessary shut down of air travel in Europe following the Icelandic eruption. Experts and computer models were telling us that the hazards of undersea drilling in the Gulf of Mexico were well understood.

In some ways it’s a healthy trend, in other ways it’s quite dangerous, but the Atlantic world today is in the grip of populist revolt. On the left (as in Greece) and on the right (just ask your local Tea Party chapter) people feel lied to and betrayed. The emperors have no clothes; the experts busy certifying one another and vouching for each others procedures and computer models seem less and less relevant to real life.

Meanwhile, life is becoming more expensive. The Europeans now have their own trillion dollar bailout to boast of, and more may still be to come. All of the advanced industrial economies are looking at years if not decades of financial austerity as rising taxes and falling budgets cramp incomes and cut services.

We trust the experts less and less, but they keep coming to us for money. . .

Experts armed with computer models are just guessing: that is the corrosive message coming out of the economic and political turmoil that has engulfed the world economy in the last three years. Look for the populist backlash to grow, and look for the global climate treaty to be one of its victims.

(via Instapundit)

Melissa Clouthier in Pajamas Media:

In a free society, an individual bears sole responsibility for his actions. A whole race, gender, or generation does not bear guilt for the sins of some or even of many in that group of people. It’s unfair and wrong.

But liberals don’t believe this. For example, a white person carries the shame of slavery even if his family members never owned slaves and even if he himself worked to free those in bondage. White equals guilt. Or, as another example, "society" is guilty for creating the psychosexual environment in which frustrated men must rape in order to feel dominant. And then there are the more mundane things like "if she weren’t poor, she wouldn’t be compelled to steal that Ralph Lauren dress."

A criminal wouldn’t be a criminal if he were loved more and society supported him, therefore it’s society’s fault that he is committing the fill-in-the-blank crime.

So who is to blame, then, when a black man rapes a woman? Would it be the rapist? No. . .

This sort of rationalization would absolve white slave owners, by the way. They were simply victims of cultural thinking at the time. And the patriarchy? A remnant of twisted religious extremism.

No one would be responsible for any action at any time, anywhere. There is, after all, a context for every crime.

At the root of this absolution is a desire to push personal responsibility on the collective. Unfortunately, the collective was not in that room that night. One man raped one woman.

He alone is responsible. Excusing his behavior is a moral travesty. A society unravels when evil cannot be named and shamed.

Forget collective guilt. It is a collective shame that this sort of thinking permeates liberal thought. This belief in action will utterly destroy society should it go unchallenged.

(via Linkiest)

The New York Times on May 13th said "With Obama, Regulations Are Back in Fashion":

In a burst of rule-making, federal agencies have toughened or proposed new standards to protect Americans from tainted eggs, safeguard construction workers from crane accidents, prevent injuries from baby walkers and even protect polar bears from extinction. . .

The surge in rule-making has resulted from an unusual confluence of factors, from repeated outbreaks of food-borne illnesses to workplace disasters. Some industry groups, wanting foreign competitors to adhere to the same standards they must meet, have backed new federal mandates. The push for some of the measures began at the end of the Bush administration, a tacit acknowledgment that its deregulatory agenda had gone too far. . .

David Michaels, who became head of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration in December, has asked Congress to allow the agency to impose much larger fines and criminal penalties on employers that knowingly leave their workers at risk. The agency also is adding dozens of inspectors.

"Fourteen workers die every day in preventable events all across the country," Dr. Michaels said. "We have to turn up the volume to make it very clear that OSHA is on the job."

Dr. Michaels typifies the new breed of regulator installed by the Obama administration.

But, as John Stossel observes on FOX Business, passage of OSHA didn't accelerate increased workplace safety, and Bush didn't make it worse--the trend has been essentially flat since the start of the Clinton Administration:


source: John Stossel

Just like, contrary to "conventional wisdom," air pollution's been declining for years--including under Bush.

I don't oppose all regulation, and I willingly concede that some health and safety regulation is both necessary and effective. Still, lefties and the media don't understand cost-benefit analysis and the decreasing returns to ramped-up regulatory oversight. Rather, they "seem convinced the end is near, and zero is the only appropriate ceiling."

In the real world, no regulator is omnipotent. With proper incentives, markets can better assess and avoid dangers. So, I agree with Coyote Blog's Warren Meyer:

Financial incentives like workers comp rates are a FAR more powerful force, at least in my business, to root our safety issues than the arcane and bureaucratic mandates that flow out of OSHA.

Because not even the Obamessiah can rid the world of risk.

(via TimesWatch)

On April 27th, the House Financial Services Committee approved the Homeowners’ Defense Act of 2009, and sent it to the House floor. The bill, H.R. 2555, would authorize the Secretary of the Treasury to guarantee debt of certain state catastrophic natural disaster insurance. In effect, see Section 202, it's a guarantee for earthquake and hurricane insurance, making the Federal government "the insurer of last resort for nearly every disaster-prone home in the country." Though the bill modestly limits (Section 202) the obligations to $5 billion for earthquakes and $20 billion for all other natural disasters, the legislation would allow the Feds to backstop (see Section 304) an "aggregate potential liability . . . sold in any single year" of up to $200 billion.

If passed, the law would be an "implicit subsidy [making] it practical for developers to build in currently wild or lightly developed coastal areas where conventional private companies won't write policies." As Heritage's David John and Matt Mayer conclude, the legislation is:

nothing less than a blatant attempt to have the taxpayers assume much of the risk for property losses caused by hurricanes and similar disasters. In essence, under the HDA taxpayers across the country would be subsidizing the owners of large beach houses.

The bill was introduced by Democrat Florida Congressman Ron Klein. In an amazing coincidence, his district covers coastal areas from Palm Beach to Boca Raton. Another irrelevant fact is that the sole qualifying state catastrophic insurance programs are in Florida and California.

We've seen this movie before--starring Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which bombed at at least $400 billion of taxpayer expense. Implicit Federal backing has a way of becoming explicit.

Closer yet is the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), with losses often exceeding revenues, necessitating repeated Federal bailouts. Because hurricanes and earthquakes re-occur, the Federal program encouraged developing risky land. So, one problem with NFIP was:

many "repetitive-loss properties," which are properties that had claims in excess of $1,000 twice over a 10-year period. These properties represent almost 30 percent of all claims.

Why not rebuild when you've got nothing to lose?

In the current recession, more Federal debt is crazy. Passage of this bill would prove that our government is too stupid to learn.

Matthew Continetti in the Weekly Standard's blog on May 13th:

Since 2008, the federal government has been trying to mitigate the worst effects of the recession while making sure the financial crisis "does not happen again." But in order for the government to succeed, one would have to identify the underlying moral hazards and eliminate them. One would have to say -- and this would be upsetting for many -- that home ownership is not for everyone. One would have to say that, in order to get a mortgage, an individual ought to be able to show that he is personally responsible. And one way to demonstrate personal responsibility is through the accumulation of savings for a down payment.

Sen. Bob Corker, Republican of Tennessee, introduced an amendment to the Senate financial regulation bill yesterday that would have required a 5 percent down payment for potential home buyers. For home buyers who put less than 20 percent down, the Corker amendment also would have required purchasing private mortgage insurance (the Canadians, who emerged from the crisis relatively unscathed, have something similar). We're not talking requiring a 30 percent down payment for new home buyers. We're talking 5 percent.

You know where this is headed. The Senate defeated the Corker amendment, 57-42. Many Democrats argued the requirements would hurt minority home buyers. But what hurts home buyers more -- standards that encourage savings, discipline, and personal responsibility, or putting people into situations where they could face foreclosure and bankruptcy? . . .

But then, why would The World's Greatest Deliberative Body^TM think boldly and imaginatively, when it can just beat up Goldman Sachs?

Lefties everywhere, including the blog of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, are crowing about a recent USA Today story claiming that last year's tax rates were the lowest since the 1950s:

Amid complaints about high taxes and calls for a smaller government, Americans paid their lowest level of taxes last year since Harry Truman's presidency, a USA TODAY analysis of federal data found.

Some conservative political movements such as the "Tea Party" have criticized federal spending as being out of control. While spending is up, taxes have fallen to exceptionally low levels.

Federal, state and local taxes -- including income, property, sales and other taxes -- consumed 9.2% of all personal income in 2009, the lowest rate since 1950, the Bureau of Economic Analysis reports [NOfP note: see Table 2-1]. That rate is far below the historic average of 12% for the last half-century.

This isn't wrong, it's just misleading. Benchmarking against personal income obscures the fact that almost half of all filers pay no income tax (and 40 percent of households contribute only about 5 percent of all Federal taxes). So the USA Today figure of 9.2 percent of income more reflects income transfer, not tax burden.

As Sometimes Right's Dan Rothschild amplifies, it's also incomplete:

[T]aken out of context, the average USA Today reader might well walk away from a quick skim of the article thinking that the government only spends 9.2 percent of gross domestic product. Less than a dime on the dollar. A bargain!

Let’s parse this out a bit. . .

[I]t’s important to get a sense of what state and local governments collect. In 2006, state governments collected over $710 billion in taxes, around 5.4% of GDP. When you include local governments, that figure goes to $1.24 trillion, or about 9.5% of GDP. In other words, in 2006, state and federal revenues were about to the percentage of personal income collected by all levels of government in taxes in 2009. That should give you a sense of how skewed this particular figure is. All levels of government in 2009 did not cost less than state and local governments in 2006.

[Further], the historical tables in the President’s FY2011 budget give a good sense of what tax revenues look like. In 2009, according to table 2.1, the federal government collected $2.104 trillion in revenues. Assuming a GDP of $14 trillion, that means federal revenues were 15% of national income. Including receipts on the state and local level (see the last graf), even assuming they fell to 2006 levels, this means 2009 tax revenues at all levels of government were around $3.35 trillion, or about 24% of GDP.

An even more depressing number:


source: USGovernmentRevenue.com

This doesn't prove the Tea Party right or Bush wrong. But make no mistake--until the recession, tax receipts generally rose, even under Bush while spending increased as well. And don't read more into the USA Today piece than warranted.

(via The Corner)

UPDATE: below

Jeffrey Bergner in the May 17th Weekly Standard:

As Europe is rocked by the Greek financial crisis, which seems likely to spread to additional European states, it may be worth asking why anyone would see in European politics a model for the United States. Yet this is exactly the position of America’s political left, which looks approvingly at Europe’s health care systems offering universal coverage. Now that Obamacare has been enacted, moreover, some progressive voices are already calling for a European-style Value Added Tax (VAT) to pay for it and the other ballooning entitlement programs run by Washington. The left continues to press America to look ever more like a European centrally administered social welfare state.

Most Americans--not just conservatives--are uneasy with the European model. This is not just a matter of national pride or misplaced chauvinism. There is something about the European model that most Americans distrust. . .

Today’s Europe is trying to reduce the genuine political issues surrounding union to administrative questions. This is Europe’s way; this is what it knows how to do. That the next steps toward union are tougher than those taken thus far is testament to the fact that Europe is encountering genuine political issues, not mere administrative niceties. There may indeed be a "democratic deficit" in Europe, but it is not newly emerging from the attempt to form a union. It has been there all along, in the centralized administrative capitals of Europe. As it advances toward union, Europe is confronting its diversity, and the slowness of the process suggests how very difficult this is. Europe has been unable to create a union by administrative fiat because it still has not resolved the foundational political choices implicit in union, much less had its union seriously tested. In all of this, what is there for the United States to emulate? Indeed, perhaps America is the better model.

Second, the predominance of equality over liberty in Europe has led to another predictable result: European central governments are not agents for preserving liberty, but for doing the bidding of their peoples. The European government’s role is not to preserve liberty by checking its own powers, but to serve as an enforcer of equality. The European administrative state is unencumbered by the kinds of limits that restrain the American government. There are no sectors of life into which it should not intrude; there is no need for its actions to be "slowed down" by the restraints of precedent or complicated rules and procedures; there is no need for it to be checked by slavish adherence to a pseudo-sacred document written in the distant past; and there is no reason not to try to impose fundamental equality by administrative rules, as opposed to full political debate.

We see today the unsurprising outcome. Majorities will provide for themselves an ever-expanding menu of entitlements. What reason could exist to oppose them? In the absence of the tempering effect of liberty, which teaches governments prudence about what they should and should not attempt, massive entitlement spending only increases. Majorities demanding entitlements do not much trouble themselves about who will pay the bill. Democratic majorities--as opposed to freedom-loving citizens--are self-entitled. When money for these entitlements run out, as they inevitably will, there is only one way to find new funds: by borrowing from the next generation, for whom it cares little.

Europe is further down the course of self-created entitlements than the United States (though we have gained ground in the last 18 months). As ever new entitlements are provided, ever more taxes are levied; ever more taxes diminish the productivity and creativity of the people; the goals and ends of the populace become ever narrower, until finally even rearing a replacement generation is too great a burden, threatening people’s comfort; and ever more money is borrowed from ever fewer lenders. This is unsustainable, and the fact that it has not yet come to its unhappy conclusion is no reason to emulate it. European politics is a slow engine of self-destruction. The question is not whether, but when, it will collapse. And when it does, the result is likely to be a more rigid and meaner despotism than the soft despotism of today. . .

The only corrective to a too great love of equality is a tempering dose of liberty, that is, a degree of prudence about what the central government should and should not do. The only corrective to bankruptcy short of centrally mandated rationing is restraint of the role of government. In all of this, America still seems a better model for Europe than vice versa.

See also Dan Henninger in the Wall Street Journal:

For Americans, this has been a two-week cram course in what not to be if you hope to have a vibrant future. What was once an unfocused criticism of Mr. Obama and the Democrats, that they are nudging America toward a European-style social-market economy, came to awful life in the panicked, stricken faces of Europe's leadership: Merkel, Sarkozy, Brown, Papandreou. They look like that because Europe has just seen the bond-market devil.

The bond market is a good bargain--if you live more or less within your means. The Europeans, however, pushed a good bargain into a Faustian bargain, which the world calls a sovereign debt crisis. . .

After Europe's abject humiliation, the chance is at hand for the Republicans to do some useful self-definition. They should make clear to the American people that the GOP is "The We're Not Europe Party." Their Democratic opposition could not attempt such a claim because they do not wish to.

And see Robert Samuelson in Monday's Washington Post:

You might think that Europe's economic turmoil would inject a note of urgency into America's budget debate. After all, high government deficits and debt are the roots of Europe's problems, and these same problems afflict the United States. But no. Most Americans, starting with the nation's political leaders, dismiss what's happening in Europe as a continental drama with little relevance to them. . .

The message from Europe is that this approach ultimately fails. Intellectually elegant evasions are still evasions. Though financial markets may condone lax government borrowing for years, confidence can shatter unexpectedly. Lenders retreat or insist on punishing interest rates. Market pressures then impel harsh austerity -- benefit cuts or tax increases -- far more brutal than anything governments would have needed to do on their own. We are, by inaction and self-deception, tempting that fate.

Agreed.

MORE:

The May 23rd New York Times:

Across Western Europe, the "lifestyle superpower," the assumptions and gains of a lifetime are suddenly in doubt. The deficit crisis that threatens the euro has also undermined the sustainability of the European standard of social welfare, built by left-leaning governments since the end of World War II.

Europeans have boasted about their social model, with its generous vacations and early retirements, its national health care systems and extensive welfare benefits, contrasting it with the comparative harshness of American capitalism.

Europeans have benefited from low military spending, protected by NATO and the American nuclear umbrella. They have also translated higher taxes into a cradle-to-grave safety net. "The Europe that protects" is a slogan of the European Union.

But all over Europe governments with big budgets, falling tax revenues and aging populations are experiencing rising deficits, with more bad news ahead.

With low growth, low birthrates and longer life expectancies, Europe can no longer afford its comfortable lifestyle, at least not without a period of austerity and significant changes. The countries are trying to reassure investors by cutting salaries, raising legal retirement ages, increasing work hours and reducing health benefits and pensions.

An update on Ronald Reagan's spot-on analysis:

Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.

This one's from Tom McMahon's 4-Block World:


source: 4-Block World, May 4

(via Carpe Diem)

Mark Steyn in the National Review (links added):

Last week, the American Association of Pediatricians [NOfP note: actually, the American Academy of Pediatrics] noted that certain, ahem, "immigrant communities" were shipping their daughters overseas to undergo "female genital mutilation." So, in a spirit of multicultural compromise, they decided to amend their previous opposition to the practice: They’re not (for the moment) advocating full-scale clitoridectomies, but they are suggesting federal and state laws be changed to permit them to give a "ritual nick" to young girls.

A few years back, I thought even fainthearted Western liberals might draw the line at "FGM." After all, it’s a key pillar of institutional misogyny in Islam: Its entire purpose is to deny women sexual pleasure. True, many of us hapless Western men find we deny women sexual pleasure without even trying, but we don’t demand genital mutilation to guarantee it. On such slender distinctions does civilization rest.

(via Power Line, Ed Driscoll)

Another day off.

UPDATE: below

From the Heritage Foundation:


source: Heritage, Per-Household Spending, Inflation Adjusted

MORE:

Reader Marc in comments:

Obama proclaimed that the oceans would stop rising upon his election. He said nothing about per-household government spending, taxes, national debt, etc., ad nauseam.

Well, actually, he did. But he never meant it.

(via TigerHawk)

Arctic ice is larger (in both area and extent) as compared with last year and with the 1979-2006 average. That didn't stop two National Science Foundation grantees from predicting that ice extent in September will be less than last year.

I couldn't venture my own prediction. But, as Steven Goddard shows, their forecast presumes a "far-fetched" volume of summer melting, and follows the same researchers' underestimated arctic ice minimums last year. It reminds me of the U.K.'s Met Office "seasonal" forecasts, which falsely predicted rising temps so often that they were scrapped.

Question: at what point does adherence to computer models trump reality? You can bet on the answer here.

(via Watts Up With That?)

Attorney General Eric Holder commenting on Arizona's new immigration law on NBC's May 9th Meet the Press program:

I understand the frustration of people in Arizona, but the concern I have about the law that they have passed is that I think it has the possibility of leading to racial profiling and putting a wedge between law enforcement and a community that would, in fact, be profiled. People in that community are less likely then to cooperate with people in law enforcement, less likely to share information, less likely to be witnesses in a case that law enforcement is trying to solve.

Attorney General Eric Holder testifying on May 13th before the House Judiciary Committee, questioned about the same law, as reported in the Washington Times:

I've just expressed concerns on the basis of what I've heard about the law. But I'm not in a position to say at this point, not having read the law, not having had the chance to interact with people are doing the review, exactly what my position is.

Hint: start reading this.

Btw, at least Holder's smarter than Los Angeles City Councilman Ed Reyes, who based his opposition on the insane belief that the Arizona law means "As an American, I cannot go to Arizona today without a passport."

(via reader Marc, AllahPundit, The Corner)

I've returned from traveling to Berlin, for various reasons, including pure tourism. Though I'm a Germanophile, and traveled there often in recent years, and to Berlin itself several times, I hadn't been back to Berlin since 1987--i.e., since the Wall fell. But I've read several histories of the city, the 1948-49 airlift and the Wall itself. The snapshot of East German soldier Conrad Schumann leaping the barbed wire as the Wall was constructed always haunted:


source: Wikipedia

And I'll never forget the front of the closed-off Brandenburg Gate where President Reagan spoke in June 1987:

There is one sign the Soviets can make that would be unmistakable, that would advance dramatically the cause of freedom and peace.

General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate.

Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate.

Mr. Gorbachev -- Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!

After that, I vowed someday to walk through the Brandenburg gate. BTW, the backstory of Reagan's remarks are ably documented by Presidential speechwriter Peter Robinson, who tells how Reagan himself kept re-inserting the dramatic text after White House and State Department flunkies repeatedly deleted it as overly provocative. Well, freedom is provocative.

I recall being glued to the television in the Fall of 1989 when freedom came to Berlin. P.J. O'Rourke captures it best in his essay The Death of Communism from his book Give War a Chance:

We won, and let's not anybody forget it. We, the people, the free and equal citizens of democracies, we living exemplars of the rights of man tore a new asshole in international communism. Their wall is breached. Their gut-string is busted. The rot of their body-politic fills the nostrils of the Earth with a glorious stink. . . . The privileges of liberty and the sanctity of of the individual went out and whipped butt.

For reasons I'm not able fully to explain, the subsequent German re-unification touched me deeply--I was lucky enough to imbibe pure bliss at the Unification Day (October 3, 1990) party at the German embassy in Washington.

Yet, as often as I've been in Germany -- work or holiday -- it's been decades since I went to Berlin. Mostly because I didn't like it: East Berlin was dreary, and home of the Communist-created Memorial to the Victims of Fascism and Militarism"--irony apparently outlawed. West Berliners were heavily subsidized and exempted from compulsory military service--so the city became a magnet for committed leftists. As Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum said:

The result was a city of artists and activists, one that became -- bizarrely, given the circumstances -- deeply anti-American. That American troops protected their freedom to protest against the United States seemed not to bother West Berliners at all. That Johnson and Kennedy had once been cheered as national heroes seemed to be forgotten as well.

Berlin's culture continued to be top-notch (the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra (BPO) might be the world's best)--but I felt unwelcome on either side of the Wall.

Twenty years later, I'm pleased to report that the art remains excellent; that the Unter den Linden looks lively, not gray; that the un-lamented Deutsche Demokratische Republik now is vibrant and exciting. The BPO was as good as I remembered. And the former West no longer seems like a superannuated commune. Instead, as Reagan predicted, "all the inhabitants of all Berlin [are enjoying] the benefits that come with life in one of the great cities of the world." In short, Berlin's now part of what's best about Europe.

On May 8, 2010 -- the 65th anniversary of the surrender of Nazi Germany -- I walked through the Brandenburg gate. It felt like victory and freedom.

Henry Chu of the Los Angeles Times reporting from France:

True to form in this protest-rife land, Sarkozy's announcement that he intends to raise the national retirement age sometime this summer sent thousands of demonstrators spilling into the streets last month in opposition. But this time the French are part of a larger tide of anger and anxiety surging across Europe.

With budget deficits ballooning across the continent, and a huge bailout of debt-ridden Greece on the verge of taking place, officials across Europe say they have no choice but to boost retirement ages if they are to tackle a monumental economic problem compounded by declining populations and longer life spans.

But few issues are as sensitive in a region where the right to retire at a decent age, and retire well, is considered almost an inalienable social right. For many here, it's one of the defining elements of their identity as Europeans, part of what they feel makes them different -- more reasonable, more humane -- from overworked, overstressed Americans. . .

But the retirement age in the U.S., now 66 but set to rise to 67, has until recently outstripped that of almost every country in Europe. In nations belonging to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which includes the U.S. but is dominated by European states, the average retirement age a decade ago was just under 62.

In some countries, it's even lower. Some Greeks -- including hairdressers, who are deemed to work with dangerous chemicals -- are allowed to quit working at 50. Such open-handed policies have bred tension with more frugal countries such as Germany, which is now on the hook to help rescue its Mediterranean neighbor from bankruptcy. . .

That doesn't satisfy defenders of the status quo, who see the European way of life under threat. In February, a Spanish proposal to boost the retirement age was able to provoke street protests that an unemployment rate of nearly 20% failed to do. . .

More than residents of almost any other European country, the French say they want to stop working as soon as possible. Their legal retirement age is already among the lowest in Europe. Most workers actually give up their jobs a little before turning 60.

"Even if today we live better, and our health coverage and healthcare are better, why does that mean we have to use that for working?" said Remy, the railway employee here in Amiens, a once-prosperous town in northern France that has fallen on harder times.

When he began working as a maintenance man for the SNCF railway service 30 years ago, at age 20, his contract allowed for retirement at 55. (Drivers can stop working at 50.) But changes afoot mean that he could be docked as much as 20% of his pension if he leaves the job as early as he planned, a monthly hit of about $400.

(via Betsy's Page)

Greece is in economic free-fall, which might have sunk the rest of the Euro-zone were it not for the recent gigantic bail-out. But, as a result, Greece has been forced into an austerity plan that, among other things, will cut the size of government.

So how does Greece compare to the United States? Surf to OECD data:


source: OECD, Greece At a Glance, 2009


source: OECD, USA At a Glance, 2009

Uh, 14.1 percent vs. 14 percent. A good argument for shrinking government, contrary to President Obama's policies. Predictably, Paul Krugman blames the Euro rather than government spending (actually, both are to blame).

BTW, the New York Times originally listed the Greek public sector at 1/3 of all employment, then (without explanation) deleted that figure from its story.

Similarly is WaPo economics columnist Robert Samuelson:

Budget deficits and debt are the real problems; they stem from all the welfare benefits (unemployment insurance, old-age assistance, health insurance) provided by modern governments.

Countries everywhere already have high budget deficits, aggravated by the recession. Greece is exceptional only by degree. In 2009, its budget deficit was 13.6 percent of its gross domestic product (a measure of its economy); its debt, the accumulation of past deficits, was 115 percent of GDP. Spain's deficit was 11.2 percent of GDP, its debt 53.2 percent; Portugal's figures were 9.4 percent and 76.8 percent. Comparable figures for the United States -- calculated slightly differently -- were 9.9 percent and 53 percent.

There are no hard rules as to what's excessive, but financial markets -- the banks and investors that buy government bonds -- are obviously worried. Aging populations make the outlook worse. In Greece, the 65-and-over population is projected to go from 18 percent of the total in 2005 to 25 percent in 2030. For Spain, the increase is from 17 percent to 25 percent.

The welfare state's death spiral is this: Almost anything governments might do with their budgets threatens to make matters worse by slowing the economy or triggering a recession. By allowing deficits to balloon, they risk a financial crisis as investors one day -- no one knows when -- doubt governments' ability to service their debts and, as with Greece, refuse to lend except at exorbitant rates. Cutting welfare benefits or raising taxes all would, at least temporarily, weaken the economy. Perversely, that would make paying the remaining benefits harder.

Greece illustrates the bind. To gain loans from other European countries and the International Monetary Fund, it embraced budget austerity. Average pension benefits will be cut 11 percent; wages for government workers will be cut 14 percent; the basic rate for the value-added tax will rise from 21 percent to 23 percent. These measures will plunge Greece into a deep recession. In 2009, unemployment was about 9 percent; some economists expect it to peak near 19 percent.

If only a few countries faced these problems, the solution would be easy. Unlucky countries would trim budgets and resume growth by exporting to healthier nations. But developed countries represent about half the world economy; most have overcommitted welfare states. They might defuse the dangers by gradually trimming future benefits in a way that reassures financial markets. In practice, they haven't done that; indeed, President Obama's health program expands benefits. What happens if all these countries are thrust into Greece's situation? One answer -- another worldwide economic collapse -- explains why dawdling is so risky.

Is it merely a "Ponzi scheme"? Just like what's been happening in California.

See also the New Republic's Jonathan Chait and, contra, Assistant Village Idiot on budget cutting in New Hampshire in particular.

(via Thought du Jour, reader Marc)