Tag: rent-seeking

Why Government Should Not Give Nutrition Advice

By
Michael F. Cannon

There are plenty of reasons why politicians and government bureaucrats have no business telling you what you should eat.  The Constitution grants the federal government no authority to do so, for one thing.  Even if it did, it is simply wrong to force people to pay taxes so that other people can hand down nutritional advice or – God forbid – mandates.

A terrific article by Jane Black in The Washington Post illustrates why, furthermore, the government’s advice isn’t likely to be very good:

[H]istorically, the government has shied away from offering controversial advice. And with food, everything is controversial: A boost for one type of food in the guidelines can be viewed as a threat by providers of competing products. The result, critics say, is a nutritional education system so politically influenced that it is ineffective.

This year’s process appears to be no exception. In public comments, the meat lobby has opposed strict warnings on sodium that could cast a negative light on lunch meats. The milk lobby has expressed concerns about warnings to cut back on added sugars, lest chocolate- and strawberry-flavored milks fall from favor. Several members of the Massachusetts congressional delegation also weighed in against added-sugar restrictions in defense of the cranberry…

In 1977, a Senate select committee led by Sen. George McGovern (D-S.D.) was forced to beat a hasty retreat after it initially recommended that Americans could cut their intake of saturated fat by reducing their consumption of red meat and dairy products. Its revised guidelines suggested choosing “meat, poultry and fish that will reduce saturated-fat intake.”

McGovern, whose constituents included many cattle ranchers, lost his seat in 1980. Since then, in case after case, the guidelines have refrained from suggesting that Americans eat less of just about anything.

Public health advocates say that kind of vacuum is precisely the problem: By avoiding blunt messages about what not to eat, the government has spoken in a way that baffles consumers.

“The only time they talk about food is if it’s an ‘eat more’ message,” said Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition at New York University and a longtime critic of the food industry. “If it’s a question of eating less, then they talk about nutrients.”…

[A]s in the past, translating scientific data into clear and useful recommendations poses political pitfalls. The advisory committee’s emphasis on a “plant-based” diet, for example, has caused much consternation among the powerful egg and meat lobbies who say the term might be misunderstood as advocating a vegetarian diet.

This problem trips up all big-government schemes.  Right-wing and left-wing statists think they have a terrific idea: give the government power to do this or that, and Experts will use that power to improve mankind.  But then the people with a financial stake get involved, and the effort ends up serving them more than mankind.  See also health care, national defense, etc..

Topics: 
Government and Politics, Health Care, Regulatory Studies

Vikings and Pirates and Taxes, Oh My!

By
David Boaz

Today’s episode of “Hagar the Horrible” could be an epigraph for the new Fall 2009 issue of Cato Journal.

Hagar_The_HorribleThis issue includes Greek economists Michael Mitsopoulos and Theodore Pelagidis on “Vikings in Greece: Kleptocratic Interest Groups in a Closed, Rent-Seeking Economy” as well as Peter Leeson, author of The Invisible Hook: The Hidden Economics of Pirates, writing (with David Skarbek) on the effects of foreign aid. As for taxes, well, editor Jim Dorn has assembled a number of useful papers:

  • Andrew T. Young on taxing, spending, and “fiscal illusion”
  • Michael J. New on the “starve the beast” hypothesis
  • Alan Reynolds on Paul Krugman’s misunderstanding of the monetary and fiscal lessons of the Great Depression and Japan’s lost decade

And on the general rapaciousness of the state, don’t miss Jason Kuznicki’s careful review of government racial discrimination from the end of Reconstruction until the civil rights movement.

Topics: 
Cato Publications, General, Tax and Budget Policy

Health Care Bill Improves Lawyers’ Financial Health

By
Ilya Shapiro

The great thing for legislators about a nearly 2000 page bill – such as, oh, the House’s latest health care salvo – is that very few people bother to read the whole thing.  So it’s easy to bury little gifts to favored supporters.  Or big ones. 

For example, check out section 2531  – that’s pages 1431-33 for those following along at home – which has gone largely unnoticed in the major news cycle.  These three pages of the bill reward states that refrain from setting (or repeal) any caps on medical malpractice rewards – and the accompanying lawyers’ fees! – by requiring the Secretary of Health and Human Services to provide them a bribe an “incentive payment.”

As Hans von Spakovsky notes at NRO’s Corner, this “alternative medical liability law” aims to eviscerate cost-saving measures that protect doctors from frivolous lawsuits that increase the cost of health care to the consumer.  So this has nothing to do with providing better or cheaper care, covering the uninsured, or even eliminating waste and fraud.  Instead, it’s a pure sop to one of the Congressional Democrats’ key constituencies: trial lawyers.

For more information on free market health care reform alternatives, please visit Cato’s Health Care website here.

Topics: 
Government and Politics, Health Care, Law and Civil Liberties

How Government Really Works

By
David Boaz

In a profile of Virginia Democratic gubernatorial hopeful Creigh Deeds, the Washington Post tells us about the grandfather from whom he got his unusual first name – and his interest in political power:

Creigh Tyree mattered. While serving as chairman of the Bath County Democrats, during the Depression, Tyree’s house was the first private home in the county to receive electricity from the federal Rural Electrification Act, proof of the power of government, he told his grandson.

Or at least proof of the practice of government. And that is in fact the lesson that young Creigh learned:

Watching the elderly man work the circuit of county shops and farms, the boy saw the power of political maneuvering, the influence it brought a man, the way it enabled the well-connected to pick up a phone and get something previously ungettable. Young Deeds started telling elementary school teachers that he wanted to be, would be, governor someday, and then president.

Using political connections to get things other people can’t get – that’s the lesson young Creigh Deeds learned from his granddad’s experience with the New Deal.

In a story earlier this week, the Post made it clear that that’s still the way politics works:

Sen. Thad Cochran’s most recent reelection campaign collected more than $10,000 from University of Southern Mississippi professors and staff members, including three who work at the school’s center for research on polymers. To a defense spending bill slated to be on the Senate floor Tuesday, the Mississippi Republican has added $10.8 million in military grants earmarked for the school’s polymer research.

Cochran, the ranking Republican on the Appropriations subcommittee on defense, also added $12 million in earmarked spending for Raytheon Corp., whose officials have contributed $10,000 to his campaign since 2007. He earmarked nearly $6 million in military funding for Circadence Corp., whose officers – including a former Cochran campaign aide – contributed $10,000 in the same period.

In total, the spending bill for 2010 includes $132 million for Cochran’s campaign donors, helping to make him the sponsor of more earmarked military spending than any other senator this year, according to an analysis by the nonprofit group Taxpayers for Common Sense.

Cochran says his proposals are based only on “national security interests,” not campaign cash. But in providing money for projects that the Defense Department says it did not request and does not want, he has joined a host of other senators on both sides of the aisle. The proposed $636 billion Senate bill includes $2.65 billion in earmarks….

The bill, however, would add $1.7 billion for an extra destroyer the Defense Department did not request and $2.5 billion for 10 C-17 cargo planes it did not want, at the behest of lawmakers representing the states where those items would be built. Although the White House said the administration “strongly objects” to the extra C-17s and to the Senate’s proposed shift of more than $3 billion from operations and maintenance accounts to projects the Pentagon did not request, no veto was threatened over those provisions….

Sen. Daniel K. Inouye (D-Hawaii), chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, ran a close second to Cochran’s $212 million in earmarks this year, having added 37 earmarks of his own worth $208 million, according to the tally by Taxpayers for Common Sense.

Almost all of Inouye’s earmarks are for programs in his home state, and 18 of the provisions – totaling $68 million – are for entities that have donated $340,000 to his campaign since 2007. His earmarks included $24 million for a Hawaiian health-care network, $20 million for Boeing’s operation of the Maui Space Surveillance System and $20 million for a civic education center named after the late senator Edward M. Kennedy….

In Cochran’s case, the proposed earmarks would benefit at least two entities that hired his former aides.

Folks, this is the way government works. If you think the programs of the New Deal or the stimulus bill or federal highway programs are necessary, fine – and certainly a defense bill is necessary – but understand that all such government programs involve taking money by force from people who didn’t offer it up voluntarily and then distributing it to others, in many cases to people with more political clout. People in the reality-based community should recognize this reality.

For more on this, see chapter 9 of Libertarianism: A Primer, “What Big Government Is All About.”

Topics: 
Government and Politics

Wrong, Wrong, Wrong, Wrong, WRONG!!

By
Michael F. Cannon

The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review quotes Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele on how Congress should go about reforming health care:

Having Congress reshape health care puts “the wrong people at the table,” Steele said. He said stakeholders — “doctors, lawyers, health care employees, insurance companies” — should develop a solution and present it to Congress, rather than the other way around.

Steele needs to brush up on his Adam Smith:

People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.

Like I said, Jonathan Chait was on to something.

Topics: 
Government and Politics, Health Care, Political Philosophy

Yoga Instructors: Enemies of the State(s)

By
Tad DeHaven

The NY Times reports today on various state government efforts to regulate yoga classes by forcing instructors to obtain a government license. 

I’m not going to get into why government licensing is a pernicious racket here. Rather, I just want to make a point about the nature of the mini–Washington DCs currently in charge of laundering Uncle Sam’s so-called economic “stimulus” money.

From the NYT article:

In March, Michigan gave schools on the list one week to be certified by the state or cease operations. Virginia’s cumbersome licensing rules include a $2,500 sign-up fee — a big hit for modest studios that are often little more than one-room storefronts.

Lisa Rapp, who owns My Yoga Spirit in Norfolk, Va., said she had canceled her future classes and was preparing to close her seven-year-old business this summer. “This caused us to shut down the studio all together,” Ms. Rapp said. “It’s too bad, because this community really needs yoga.”

A nice little story to keep in mind the next time you hear some politician or government apologist claim that the states’ current inability to spend as they did before the recession is somehow endangering an economic recovery.

I think what disgusts me the most about this story is the fact that the yoga “industry” opened itself up for attack by creating an online registry “to establish teaching standards in an effort to have the industry regulate itself.” As a friend sarcastically intoned to me in an email, “They tried to self-regulate and Leviathan just ended up using it to impose regulation.  Brilliant.” 

The NYT captures the mentality of these bureaucratic thugs:

The conflict started in January when a Virginia official directed regulators from more than a dozen states to an online national registry of schools that teach yoga and, in the words of a Kansas official, earn a “handsome income” in the process…

“If you’re going to start a school and take people’s money, you should play by a set of rules,” said Patrick Sweeney, a Wisconsin licensing official, who believes that in 2004 he was the first state official to discover the online registry and use it to begin regulating yoga teaching.

The bright side is that these yoga instructors are feeling the government’s boot on their throat and not liking it:

Brette Popper, a co-founder of Yoga City NYC, a Web site that has closely chronicled licensing developments, said that the yoga community — described on the site as “a group that doesn’t even always agree about how to pronounce ‘Om’ ” — was finally uniting around a common enemy. (Emphasis mine.)

The NYT quotes one regulation opponent as saying the conflict is about “bureaucracy versus freedom.”  Amen, my friend.  I don’t know much about yoga, and I’m as flexible as steel, but today we lovers of liberty are all yoga instructors!

Topics: 
Regulatory Studies, Tax and Budget Policy

Pages