Monthly Archives: April 2009

Your Legislators Would Never Lie to You

This entry was posted in Federal Government Government on by

Or would they?

But a professor at Oxford University in England has done a compelling series of studies trying to get at why big public-works projects such as bridges, tunnels and light-rail systems almost always turn out to be far more costly than estimated.
“It cannot be explained by error,” sums up one of his* papers, matter-of-factly. “It is best explained by strategic misrepresentation — that is, lying.”

Don’t think for a minute that this problem is limited to large public-works projects.
It permeates every branch of government and every political party.
It’s not just that they don’t know what they are doing:

It’s not technical challenges or complexity or bad luck, he asserts. If that were so, you’d get more variation in how it all turns out. He concludes the backers of these projects suffer from two main maladies.
One is “delusional optimism” — they want it so badly, they can’t see its flaws. I know about this firsthand from when I supported the monorail.
The second is worse: They knowingly are lying to the public.

Large public-works projects are small compared to wars and massive social programs and the same maladies apply.

*The person referred to is Bent Flyvbjerg. See here and here for more detailed information

Clarifying Middle Class

This entry was posted in Anarchism Economics Government Libertarianism Politics on by

Here is a chart that makes clear exactly what being middle class means in terms of income: an average annual household after tax income for the middle fifth of households in 2006 of $52,100. Simple interpolation suggests that the top of the middle income group is around $62,950.
Yglesias thinks the chart as a whole implies that:

…the trend is unmistakable. Higher taxes, more transfers, and more government services.

This is undoubtedly true as long as so many believe that government’s role, as our politicians state repeatedly, is focused on protecting and assisting those in the lower 2-3 quintiles.
The chart makes makes a pretty good case, though, that government actions have been around protecting and enhancing the wealth and power of that upper 20% and most particularly the upper 1%.
More taxes, transfers and services are palliatives applied to win votes and do little, if anything, to fix the structural problems that lead to such a poor distribution of income.

The only effective way to make the results among the quintiles more equal will be to change the structure of the economy so that the top 1% is no longer favored. This will require eliminating the extensive government interventions that feed the wealthy on the backs of the poor; on the backs, if you will, of the lower 90+%.

Friday Ark #240

This entry was posted in Bird Blogging Cat Blogging Dog Blogging Entymology Friday Ark Invertebrate Blogging Pet Blogging Pets Vertebrate Blogging Weekend Cat Blogging on by

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