January 2012

Federal Government Subsidizes Obesity and Wealthy Urbanites

by Hans Bader on November 24, 2010 · 1 comment

in Health and Illness, Nanny State, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual, Precaution & Risk, Regulation, Sanctimony, Zeitgeist

In the Washington Examiner, David Freddoso explains how the federal Department of Health and Human Services spent $766,000 of your tax dollars to help open an International House of Pancakes in a prosperous section of Washington, D.C. That’s ironic, given that government food nannies depict IHOP’s sugary entrees as a cause of obesity (and even though IHOP serves two of Men’s Health Magazine‘s 20 most unhealthy restaurant dishes). The IHOP is opening in a wealthy yuppie area where even  a tiny one-bedroom apartment rents for at least $1800 per month.

While HHS is busy subsidizing IHOP, another branch of HHS, the FDA, is trying to restrict the salt content of food, which could lead to increased obesity rates, more heart attacks, and “higher death rates among some individuals,” and make it harder to market low-fat foods. Ironically, if salt levels are curbed, people will compensate by eating fattier food, since there seems to be a trade-off between salt and fat.

A recent study funded by NIH (another branch of HHS) encouraged parents to stock their fridges with apple sauce (even though apple sauce has basically no nutrition unless vitamins are artificially added to it, since the natural vitamin C in an apple is largely destroyed when it is processed into apple sauce), while disparaging potatoes, which are rich in vitamin C, potassium, and various minerals.  (Disclosure: I participated in that study for $100).   (Baked potatoes are healthy, although some of potatoes’ vitamin C is lost when you process them into french fries.  Potatoes have much more vitamin C than bananas or apples.  And they have more potassium than supposedly potassium-rich bananas).

The federal government is now banning the use of WIC money by low-income mothers to buy white potatoes, while allowing the money to be used for a host of less nutritious foods.

Photo Credit: Ankur Gulati’s Flickr Photostream

WTO: For Trade Imbalances, Use Value Added For a More Accurate Picture

by Fran Smith on November 24, 2010 · 2 comments

in Economy, International, Trade

The World Trade Organization’s annual report released today is well worth reading, not only for the data on recent trade flows, economic and unemployment trends, and trade financing but also for the cautions against protectionism and the analyses of trade policy.

Policymakers should particularly take note of the discussion on trade imbalances and why current ways of measuring trade flows don’t take account of value added, that is, currently the full value of a product’s imported value is attributed to the exporting country, even when that country has had a very small part in its total production.  Apple’s iPad – produced through a global supply chain – was a prominent example in the media of the distortions that current measurement of trade flows produces.

Here’s the WTO’s discussion (on p. 17):

A factor that is of particular relevance when situating trade and trade policies in the context of current tensions over trade imbalances is that trade flow statistics are recorded universally in gross terms;  the full value of an imported product is attributed to the country that exports it, even if that country contributes only a small proportion of the product’s value-added.  This has long been recognized in trade policy terms, for example when imposing rules of origin requirements on products that are eligible for preferential tariff treatment.  Even so, it can send misleading signals to trade policymakers.  With many manufacturing processes today broken down into separate parts and spread across different countries before the finished product is assembled for export in one of them, attributing the full value of the product to the country from which it is exported to its final consumer destination will give an exaggerated idea of the real importance of trade with that country.

The report notes that when a value-added approach is used to calculate bilateral trade flows between China and the U.S., for example, it would result in “a reduction of the [US] deficit by more than 40%.”

Here are the calculations (p. 19):

US-China trade balance, 2008: Traditional and value added measurement

(Billion dollars)

ItemValue
USA exports to China (traditional statistics)71
USA exports to China (in value added terms)60
USA imports from China (traditional statistics)  *356
USA imports from China (in value added terms)224
Trade balance (traditional statistics )-285
Trade balance (in value added terms)  **-165

* Adjusted for China processing trade.

** While individual bilateral balances are affected by the value-added measurement, the total trade balance of each country -as measured by the balance of payments- remains the same.

Source: A. Maurer and Ch. Degain ”Globalization and trade flows: what you see is not what you get!”,  WTO Staff Working Paper ERSD-2010-12, June 2010.

That is certainly a significant fact that policymakers should have beaten into their heads before they are allowed to discuss U.S. trade imbalances with China.

How Property Rights Saved the Pilgrims After the First Thanksgiving

by Hans Bader on November 24, 2010

in Deregulate to Stimulate, Economy, International, Politics as Usual, Property Rights, Zeitgeist

In Reason Magazine, Nick Gillespie and Meredith Bragg write about how the establishment of property rights among the pilgrims made them more “industrious” and banished the specter of “famine” that had killed many of the Pilgrims. We wrote earlier about how the communal economic system set up by the Pilgrims led to “chronic food shortages” even after the first Thanksgiving that led them to nearly “starve to death,” and how “little food was produced” until the Pilgrims changed their economic system to assign each family “a private parcel of land,” which led to vastly increased production of food.

In much of the world, property rights remain stunted. For example, in Ethiopia, peasants still cannot own land, although they can at least lease it unlike in the days of Communism (international aid has reinforced that country’s oppressive government and thus enabled it to avoid reforms like private landownership and privatization of state monopolies in its economy).

As Gillespie and Bragg note, on Thanksgiving we should “give thanks to the true patron of this holiday feast: property rights.”

A New Course for Wild Tigers

by Brian McGraw on November 24, 2010 · 1 comment

in Environment, Private Conservation, Regulation, Trade

A New York Times editorial highlights a struggle faced by the wild tiger, noting its population is down to approximately 3,200 from a high of over 100,000 just one century ago. Tigers face a number of challenges: their wild populations occupy a dwindling amount of space — putting pressure on their habitats, and a variety of tiger parts are highly valued, specifically by the Chinese.

Read the Times quote:

Ending the international trade in tiger parts, which are still believed to have almost magical powers in China and across Asia, will be harder to solve. This isn’t a matter of stopping a few poachers. It means shutting down hard-core traffickers and a high-profit black market. Wen Jiabao, the Chinese premier, is scheduled to attend on Wednesday, the final day of the meeting, which we hope is a good sign. China banned trading in tiger parts in 1993. It must actively discourage the cultural appetite for them and aggressively pursue traffickers.

You can almost hear the condescension jump off the page. Those silly Chinese and their primitive beliefs about medicine, and their revolting food and drink preferences. If only their government were able to make them more civilized, like us.

Imagine this paragraph is about the trade in drugs rather than tiger parts. Many sensible liberals understand the failure of the war on drugs — the inability of a government to stop market forces from meeting the wants and needs of individuals, the billions of dollars and lives wasted, the futility (and arrogance) of efforts to change a “cultural appetite.” Why are they unable to see that the trade in tigers is no different? I am confident that these same individuals support trade in cows, chickens, pigs, etc. all of which are killed in the same way.

The current wild tiger population is found in a variety of scattered countries throughout the world. One thing that many of them have in common is that villages located near tiger populations (forests) are often still living in poverty. Furthermore, without adequate protections against the tiger, these villages are threatened as tigers are capable of attacking and killing humans. When poachers arrive to kill tiger’s, villagers are more than happy to trade their localized knowledge of the area (to help poaching) in exchange for money and the removal of the tiger — a threat to their lives. Poachers are able to pay significant fees to these villagers for their assistance as one individual tiger can fetch as much as $50,000 on the black market.

The solution? In my opinion, more of the same will not work. Poachers will continue to be allured by large profits and conservation efforts will not succeed.

Allow tigers to be traded internationally. There is some worry that the Chinese truly prefer “wild tigers” rather than one which would be raised by humans, though I cannot imagine that their would be much hesitation when the price of tigers drops precipitously due to market forces. The incentive to poach tigers will disappear, and breeders of tigers will ensure there is an adequate number of tigers remaining to assist with re-breeding efforts if that becomes necessary.

Image credit: wallyg’s flickr photostream.

TSA Sexual Harassment: Disappointing, but Not Surprising

by Ryan Young on November 24, 2010 · 2 comments

in Mobility, Nanny State, Personal Liberty

The TSA claims that it randomly picks some passengers for additional screening. Apparently the process is sometimes less than random.

A woman flying from Orlando International Airport is claiming that two male TSA officers selected her for additional screening because of the size of her breasts:

“It was pretty obvious. One of the guys that was staring me up and down was the one who pulled me over,” said Sutherland. “Not a comfortable feeling.”

The vast majority of TSA screeners are not perverts. Even so, one can expect to see more stories like this in the coming weeks.

Image credit: Inha Leex Hale’s flickr photostream.

TSA Exempts Politicians from Body Scans and Pat-Downs

by Ryan Young on November 24, 2010 · 1 comment

in Mobility, Nanny State, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual

Don’t like dealing with the TSA’s body scanners or pat-downs? Consider getting into politics. The Associated Press ?reports?:

Cabinet secretaries, top congressional leaders and an exclusive group of senior U.S. officials are exempt from toughened new airport screening procedures when they fly commercially with government-approved federal security details.

Maybe Congress and the president would be more willing to rein in the TSA’s excesses if more of them actually had to endure them.

Apparently TSA head John Pistole goes through the same security that you and I do, for which he deserves praise. Though one does wonder why it hasn’t made him realize the absurdity of modern security theater.

Image credit: Brad Eshbach’s flickr photostream.

Morning Media Summary

by Lee Doren on November 24, 2010

in Economy, Energy, Environment, Legal, Personal Liberty, Regulation, Trade

Tech:

Wipeout: When Your Company Kills Your iPhone:
“A few weeks ago, Amanda Stanton’s iPhone suddenly went black.”

34% of all malware ever created appeared in 2010:
“According to PandaLabs, in the first ten months of the year the number of threats created and distributed account for one third of all viruses that exist.”

HTTPS Everywhere gets Firefox “Firesheep” protection:
“The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) today said it rolled out a version of HTTPS Everywhere that offers protection against “Firesheep” and other tools that seek to exploit webpage security flaws.”

Open-source social network Diaspora goes live:
“IDG News Service – Diaspora, a widely anticipated social network site built on open-source code, has cracked open its doors for business today, at least for a handful of invited participants.”

Global Warming / Environment / Energy:

China says it is the world’s top greenhouse gas emitter:
“BEIJING (Reuters) – China acknowledged on Tuesday it is the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases stoking global warming, confirming what scientists have said for years but defending its right to keep growing emissions.”

Final Settlement Phase Starts for BP Oil Spill:
“In the months since the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico, hundreds of thousands of people and businesses have filed for emergency payments from the $20 billion BP fund administered by Kenneth R. Feinberg. More than $2.2 billion is being paid to some 150,000 individuals and businesses with documented claims, according to fund estimates.”

Insurance / Gambling:

Police to enforce new gaming laws:
“A warning to operators of Internet gaming parlors in Martinsville: Quit breaking the city’s rules for the businesses or you will be prosecuted.”

Health / Safety:

San Francisco overrides mayoral veto, bans Happy Meals with Toys:
“The San Francisco, California, Board of Supervisor banned most McDonald’s Happy Meals with toys Tuesday. Despite objections and ridicule from opponents, the vote overrode the mayor’s veto and officially approved the ban.”

Michelle Pushes Funding For 6,000 Salad Bars in Public Schools:
“A White House official says Michelle Obama will announce details of a plan to put 6,000 salad bars in public school lunchrooms within the next three years.”

Daily HIV pill use yields strong results:
“Men who faithfully take a daily pill that contains drugs to treat HIV can reduce their risk of catching the deadly virus by up to 73 percent, the National Institutes of Health said in a study released Tuesday.”

Economics:

List of Problem Banks Grows Despite Solid Net Income:
“The number of banks on the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp’s confidential “problem” list grew over the summer even while the overall industry posted solid net income.”

Legal:

Placards, kilts part of plans for scanner protests:
“Holiday travelers dismayed by airport body scans planned protests at bustling airports Wednesday, while the head of the nation’s transport security agency urged passengers to comply with searches to reduce the possibility of delays on one of the busiest travel days of the year.”

TSA workers face verbal abuse from travelers:
“The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), the union that represents TSA workers, is urging the TSA to do more to protect its employees from abuse from airline passengers angry over the new security methods. The union reports that some members “have reported instances in which passengers have become angry, belligerent and even physical with TSOs (transportation security officers). In Indianapolis, for example, a TSO was punched by a passenger who didn’t like the new screening process,” the union said in a Nov. 17 statement posted on its website.”

More Hope & Change… Feds Are Now Using Mobile X-Ray Vans On U.S. Steets (Video):
“The Obama Administration is not only forcing travelers through naked body scanners, they’re bringing the X-ray scanners into your neighborhood, too.”

University Speech Codes, Reborn As “Anti-Bullying” Rules?:
“The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) is out with this timely warning about the “Tyler Clementi Higher Education Anti-Harassment Act,” a bill introduced in Congress by Sen. Frank Lautenberg and Rep. Rush Holt, both New Jersey Democrats:”

Full-body scanners popping us at courthouses:
“Taking a trip during the holidays isn’t the only time that people might get a full-body scan to pass through security. People heading to court to testify, get a restraining order, pay a ticket or answer criminal charges could also face a full-body scan at courthouses.”

Fuming over anti-smoke spending:
“The Bay State ranks near the bottom nationally in spending on anti-smoking programs, but state health officials say Massachusetts is still tops in preventing residents from lighting up.”

Labor:

Online day of solidarity planned to show support for the long-term jobless:
“The AFL-CIO is planning a day of online solidarity in support of the long-term jobless. On Dec. 7, they’re asking people to replace their Facebook and Twitter images with the Jobless avatar you see above. They are also asking that on that day, people change their status to: “We Are All Jobless.””

Transportation/ Land Use:

Eau Claire Council moves to get high-speed rail back on track:
“The fate of high-speed rail in Wisconsin is in a much different place than it was only a month ago. Now that plans are on hold, the Eau Claire City Council weighs what it should do.”

TSA Roundup

by Ryan Young on November 23, 2010 · 2 comments

in Nanny State, Personal Liberty, Precaution & Risk, Regulation, Tech & Telecom

The Thanksgiving travel rush is officially underway. Airports are clogged with passengers. Many of them are upset at new TSA screening policies. A new poll finds 60 percent support for full-body scanning, and just under 50 percent support for pat-downs that involve touching breasts, buttocks, and genitals.

If that sounds high, remember that most Americans don’t fly. Jim Harper also points out that the poll’s wording is biased. “Before being asked about strip-search machines, poll-takers hear cognates of “terror” three times, “privacy” once.” Wording like that skews the results in the TSA’s favor.

Unsurprisingly, many TSA employees don’t care for the new pat-down policy either. Near-constant verbal abuse and poor passenger hygiene are among their biggest complaints. There is also the matter of having to “feel inside the flab rolls of obese passengers.”

Assuming that most TSA screeners are not sex perverts, it can’t be much fun spending 8-hour shifts inspecting other peoples’ genitals. However, not all TSA employees are mentally sound. A TSA employee kidnapped a woman from Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport and assaulted her.

This was the action of a disturbed individual, and probably unrelated to the backlash against the TSA’s new policies. Even so, that means the TSA has done more harm than good; TSA has yet to catch a single terrorist during its entire existence.

One reason is that its screeners are ineffective. Adam Savage from the television show Mythbusters accidentally arrived at airport security with two 12-inch razor blades. The TSA did not find them, despite giving him a full-body scan.

Ars Technica posts a video of Savage telling his story, and points out that ”If the TSA thinks you can hijack a plane with saline solution and nail clippers, Savage’s 12″ razor blades are the equivalent of a nuclear bomb. Since the blades weren’t anywhere near Savage’s privates, they likely would have been missed by the pat-down as well.”

At least one argument against full-body scanners does not hold ground: that the radiation dose from repeated scans can cause cancer and other illnesses. The dose of so small, that the odds of dying from the radiation exposure is roughly the same as dying in a terrorist attack. Those odds are less than 1 in 10,000,000. Passengers are over 20 times more likely to be struck by lightning.

As with any government agency, the TSA is highly politicized. ?The two companies that make the scanners have ramped up their lobbying efforts? in recent years, getting political heavyweights such as Linda Daschle (the lobbyist wife of former Sen. Tom Daschle) and Michael Chertoff to promote the scanners on Capitol Hill.

One privacy concern about full-body scans is that the images could be stored and possibly leaked on the Internet. This has already happened at a courthouse in Florida (you can see 100 of the 35,000 leaked images ?here?). But the TSA says that won’t be a problem with their scanners. Common sense says otherwise.

Their machines are unable to store images, yes. But any enterprising screener can modify them. Or he could even snap a picture of a naked image with his cell phone. Fortunately, a recent story about a Denver TSA screener who was caught masturbating is a hoax. But the very fact that it is plausible should give TSA boosters pause.

In fact, flying at 30,000 feet exposes passengers to “3 mrem of radiation, an amount that is 150 times greater than the scanner gives you before you board the same flight.”

That’s about the strongest argument in favor of the scanners. But it is outweighed by the fact that they induce some people to drive instead of fly. Since driving is more dangerous than flying, the scanners are expected, on net, to kill people.

They are not expected to actually save any lives, as security expert Bruce Schneier makes crystal clear.

It is well past time to abolish the TSA. Let airlines and airports determine their own policies. Let them compete on safety; if people think flying is dangerous, they won’t fly. Airlines have everything to lose. The TSA has no such incentive. If anything, its repeated failures are rewarded with budget increases.

Afternoon Links: November 23, 2010

by Nicole Ciandella on November 23, 2010

in Zeitgeist

1. Mashupbreakdown.com visualizes GirlTalk’s latest sampling. Watch it to understand why music industry executives are not fans of mash-up artists.

2. It’s true: rich people have no feelings. “Science” proves it.

3. Real-life “superheroes” are now policing Seattle’s streets.

4. Sarkozy uses a strange pedophile analogy in a press conference then ends the conference with, “See you tomorrow, pedophile friends.”

5. A Houston principle gets rid of all the books in the school library and turns the space into a coffeeshop to show the superintendent that he’s a “forward-thinking” guy.

The Case for Private School Vouchers

by Alex Schibuola on November 23, 2010 · 3 comments

in Odds & Ends

If you had a choice between two identical cars, would you choose one that costs $7,500 or one that cost $15,000? The $7,500 one would be a better value, of course. Now, if you had to pay $15,000 for a car because an organization lobbied Congress to force you to do so, would you be angry? Yes, of course.

What if I replaced every instance of the word “car” in that last paragraph with “schools,” would you still have the same reaction? This is what we face in America’s education system. Which organization imposes this forced purchase? Teachers unions—the National Education Association (NEA) and American Federation of Teachers (AFT)—which adamantly oppose school choice and other substantive reforms that could help struggling schools improve, and get kids out of failing ones.

The NEA likes to quote studies showing that public schools have comparable academic achievements to private ones. While that strikes me as unlikely, let’s just say it’s true. Even then, the costs per student at public schools are twice that of some private schools! Once again, given two identical products, with one being half the cost, which would you choose?

Monopolies are undesirable. In addition to charging high prices, they produce inferior products. Why then are we so willing to accept the monopoly of government schools? The opposite of monopoly is a competitive industry. Competition means choices. And choices mean that competitors have to provide a superior product at the lowest price possible.

Ever notice how our university system is world-class, but our primary and secondary schools are considered second-rate among developed nations? What is the primary difference between the universities and the primary and secondary schools? Choice. When competition prevails, society wins. When monopoly exists, society suffers.

A monopoly controls the supply of its products. This allows them to charge a higher price and to produce lower quality goods. Unions are the labor market’s equivalent to monopolies. Unions control the supply of labor, which allows them to charge a higher price for labor, i.e., wages.

Quality in teaching is compromised by the lack of incentives that unionization engenders—outstanding teachers do not get additional compensation, while subpar teachers face little chance of dismissal.

That is why teachers unions fear school choice so much. If most public schools were truly comparable to private schools, then why would parents ever choose to use voucher programs to send their children to private schools? Public schools need to compete. The private school voucher system would allow us to reinvigorate our educational system and cut government spending simultaneously.

Photo Credit: Tncountryfan’s Flickr Photostream

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