Recent innovations, such as easy-open tabs on cans, have prompted the Department of Agriculture to issue a 13-page update to its food container inspection regulations. If you have some spare time on your hands, you can have a look by clicking here.

For example, a police officer who retires with a $105,000 salary after 25 years of service can end up making more in retirement, after 29 years, than he or she did while working.

But that’s not all. Public employee pensions are a ticking time bomb that could bring fiscal catastrophe to the state.

New Jersey’s public employee pensions are under funded by billions of dollars which means there is going to be huge political pressure applied by Public Employees and Retirees to yet again increase taxes on the residents of New Jersey. However, that will simply be a stall tactic. The math will not work over the long term. There are too many employees and retirees in the current pension plans, the benefits are too generous, and there are too few tax payers with enough income to support these pensions. The New Jersey Pension Plans are under funded by roughly $50 billion (some studies and assumptions put the real liability at substantially higher levels). Therefore, on average, every NJ taxpayer will be required to pay more than $20,000to continue these pension benefits in addition to current tax rates. For each day that passes in which these plans are not modified, that tax burden will grow.

New Jersey, California, and Michigan may be egregious cases, but there’s no reason to believe that this situation could not repeat itself in even more states.

For more on public sector unions, see here.

Our political system is only now perhaps emerging from a foolish policy of lowering credit standards to encourage universal home ownership.  We’re now about to lower credit standards for health and energy investments.  In effect, the problems of subprime mortgages are now being universalized.  But, as in the subprime case, we’re assured that these moves will actually lower the national debt! Does reality have any relevancy?

But, the early versions of any technology are often clumsy.  Books, after all, have long been less accessible to the visually handicapped.  This is not unusual; many visual projects - movies, TVs, plays, operas - all remain inaccessible.  But, the goal of civilization is not the utopian goal of making everything available for everyone but rather to make the world more accessible to more people and Kindle certainly advances that goal.  With some skill or with the assistance of a sighted individual, Kindle allows the blind the opportunity to “read” vastly more books than ever before.  While, readers have always been available and audio books are increasingly common, these are generally more expensive.  Moreover future Kindle products will almost certainly embody audio instructions to guide the blind through the various menu functions.

Utopian passions are dangerous.  The search for the perfect can too easily make it impossible to attain the good.

A few things the FCC should consider:

-Subsidies don’t make broadband access any less expensive. They just change who pays for it. In this case, that would be anybody with a phone. Which probably includes you. The great economist Ludwig von Mises observed that “A government can no more determine prices than a goose can lay hen’s eggs.”*

-The tax would make owning a phone more expensive. And when something becomes more expensive, people consume less of it. With tax-exempt technologies like Skype and Google Voice now available, people can switch away from a taxed phone to something cheaper more easily than ever. The more people who do that, the less revenue the phone tax would generate, defeating its very purpose.

-If a company has to share its network infrastructure with its competitors, it loses the incentive to maintain and improve that network. Why invest millions of dollars if it will help your competition just as much as yourself? Quality suffers. So does innovation. In the long run, it is innovation, not FCC intervention, that will make broadband affordable and accessible for everyone. The long-run view is just as important as the short-run view here.

-Land-based networks are expensive to build in rural areas. The cost per customer is huge compared to denser urban areas. Fortunately, that isn’t as much of a problem for wireless technologies. The FCC seems hellbent on the land-based networks since wireless networks aren’t yet advanced enough for mass-market broadband service. But they will be soon enough. And every dollar spent on old-fashioned wired networks is a dollar unavailable for improving wireless service. An unintended consequence of FCC intervention would be slower innovation.

*Ludwig von Mises, Human Action, 4th ed., (Irvington-on-Hudson New York: Foundation for Economic Education, 1996 [1949], p. 397.

We argue that a VAT is:

-Complex; it would require roughly doubling the size of the IRS.

-Untransparent; most VATs don’t show up on receipts the way sales taxes do. Taxpayers are clueless as to how much tax they actually pay.

-Vulnerable to special-interest tinkering; politically incorrect goods are routinely penalized with higher rates. Politically favored goods are granted exemptions.

-Prone to increases; 20 out of 29 OECD countries with a VAT have increased their rates since implementing a VAT.

A point we didn’t make is that VATs affect industrial organization. VATs are applied at each stage of the production process. That gives companies an incentive to reduce the number of taxable steps. That means more vertical integration than would otherwise occur. This can decrease the efficiency of the manufacturing process. Which means higher prices and fewer goods. Plus the tax.

The ban, due to take effect in 2011, has not been repealed outright. But, in response to public outcry, it has been delayed:

The FDA announced it would commission a study to explore alternatives to reducing the illness vibrio vulnificus, and also do an economic analysis of how the ban would impact the oyster industry.

“Before proceeding, we will conduct an independent study to assess how post-harvest processing or other equivalent controls can be feasibly implemented in the Gulf Coast in the fastest, safest and most economical way,” according to an FDA news release.

Billions from the stimulus are being spent on creating tens of thousands of imaginary jobs in 440 phantom Congressional districts, according to the government’s own web site:

Just how big is the stimulus package? Well for one, it has doubled the size of the House of Representatives, according to recovery.gov, which says that funds were distributed to 440 congressional districts that do not exist. . . . The web site operates on an $84 million budget and is tasked with monitoring the distribution of the $787 billion stimulus package passed by Congress–which, for the record, counts 435 members–in early 2009.

The site’s monitors, however, are not too savvy about America’s political or geographic landscape. More than $2 million was given to the 99th District of North Dakota, a state which has only one congressional district. In order to qualify for 99 districts, North Dakota would have to have a population of about 60 million people, almost 24 million more people than California.

From ABC News:

Here’s a stimulus success story: In Arizona’s 15th Congressional District, 30 jobs have been saved or created with just $761,420 in federal stimulus spending. At least that’s what the website set up by the Obama Administration to track the $787 billion stimulus says.

There’s one problem, though: There is no 15th Congressional District in Arizona; the state has only eight Congressional Districts.

There’s no 86th Congressional District in Arizona either, but the government’s recovery.gov Web site says $34 million in stimulus money has been spent there.

In fact, Recovery.gov lists hundreds of millions spent and hundreds of jobs created in Congressional districts that don’t exist.

The Washington Examiner says that “75,000 jobs” Obama has claimed credit for are “clearly imaginary” or “highly doubtful.” Readers can view its interactive map of “Inflated Jobs by State.”

As the Examiner notes, “If his stimulus program was approved, Obama promised, unemployment would not go above 8 percent this year. The reality is that it passed 10.3 percent in October. So now the stimulus books are being cooked to mollify an anxious public worried that real-world jobs continue to disappear and angry that Obama has thrown almost $1 trillion down the stimulus rathole.”

The stimulus package actually destroyed thousands of real world jobs by triggering trade wars with Canada and Mexico that killed jobs in America’s export sector (the stimulus package barred a measley 97 Mexican truckers from U.S. roads, a minor NAFTA violation that led to massive Mexican retaliation against U.S. exports of 40 farm products and kitchen goods worth $2.4 billion).  It also is wiping out jobs by inflicting costly mandates on state governments (such as repealing welfare reform, and imposing costly “prevailing wage” regulations and expensive racial set-asides).

Obama claimed the stimulus package was needed to prevent the economy from suffering from “irreversible decline,” but the Congressional Budget Office admitted that the stimulus package actually would shrink the economy “in the long run.”  Unemployment has skyrocketed past European levels, as big-spending countries have fared worse than thrifty ones.

The stimulus package has since spawned countless examples of government waste and corruption.  Recently, Obama fired an inspector general, Gerald Walpin, who uncovered millions of dollars of waste and fraud in the AmeriCorps program, including by a prominent Obama supporter, endangering the Obama supporter’s ability to administer federal stimulus spending in Sacramento.  Obama’s alleged justification for firing the inspector general turned out to be false.

There may be violence, says Damon A. Silvers, Associate General Counsel for the AFL-CIO and Deputy Chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel for TARP. Silvers spoke on last Friday’s panel “Labor: Wall Street, Labor Unions, and the Obama Administration: A New Paradigm for Capitol and Labor?” Speaking to the panel, he claimed economic downturns which cause people to have their wages cut, can have devastating results.

Silvers pointed to wage cuts in Brazil and spoke of the violence which ensued. He argued that when people are starving they may get violent, that the have nots will take from the haves. Quickly cautioning that this could not happen in the United States, he smirked and added, “but it may.” Not so subtly, Silvers implied that if you cut union wages there may be violence.

Another gem from the convention came from Thursday’s lead discussion “Redistribution of Wealth.” One presenter, when asked what happened to the auto industry in regards to unions, stated, “Unions missed the most basic fundamental economic role they have to play, which is to take wages out of competition. What happened was when they had a monopoly or took wages out of competition for the Big Three people competed more inefficiently…When the transplants came…the union didn’t do its job, it was an anchor to the competitive field as opposed to a help.”

Which right leaning free-market intellectuals stated this fact? None other than any Andrew Stern, the president of the SEIU! That is correct, Andy Stern blamed the collapse of the Big Three in part to the union monopoly of the UAW and called it an anchor to competition.

More characteristically, Stern also spoke of redistribution of wealth saying, “I do no support, I condemn, the redistribution of wealth — that is to say, the redistribution of wealth upwards.”

Advocating the redistribution of wealth? Cautioning of violence if wages are cut? Is this really the message top officials in the two largest labor unions want to be sending? Both Stern and Silvers knew their audience did not agree with them – Stern was sweating during his presentation – but did make an effort to speak to the constitutionally minded lawyers association.

Unfortunately, while tempered, their message was a clear endorsement of class warfare. Espousing unions as the only way for workers to get ahead in America, they chastised the Reagan era and directly blamed the demise of unions for what they claimed were lower worker wages. They ignored facts of other presenters showing that most workers’ standard of living has actually gone up in the last 30 years.

Stern should be given credit for acknowledging that the UAW monopoly helped almost destroy the American auto industry. He must acknowledge that hard work, innovation, and ingenuity are the real engine of the American economy, not collective bargaining. The monopolistic nature of unions in many industries is a liability to both workers and unions. As Stern pointed out in the context of the failure of the U.S. auto industry, unions’ inflexibility can drag down companies and work as a hindrance, not a help.

Calling Intel’s business practices “bribery” and “coercion” is little more than argument by assertion. Rebates and exclusivity deals are normal competitive behavior. Not only is Intel facing increasing competition in its home turf, that small segment is hardly the extent of the relevant competitive market. Intel faces an uncertain future as consumer tastes shift to smaller products powered by non-Intel chips. Cuomo’s antitrust lawsuit does not stand up to scrutiny. It deserves to be dropped.

Antitrust policies thwart the competitive process whenever and wherever they are applied.

Fortunately, it turns out that children handling toy cars or other toys with brass parts does not raise their lead concentrations to anywhere near harmful levels. No harm, no foul, right?

Doesn’t matter, say regulators. No exceptions.

Toymakers presumably choose brass because it is cheap, durable, and better than alternative materials. Now they will have to turn to those second-best materials despite no evidence of harm.

There is also one benefit being overlooked. Copper alloys such as brass have natural antibacterial properties, a definite plus when children are involved.

So the next time you see little Johnny crying because he’s sick and his toy car’s axle is broken, you’ll know who to blame.

Under a PLA, an open shop contractor could be required to employ workers from union hiring halls, acquire apprentices from union apprentice programs, and require employees to pay union dues. The Labor Department acknowledged that the complaing over the PLA was the reason it called off bidding.

This is as surprising as it is welcome. From promoting card-check legislation to imposing duties on Chinese tires to stalling on new international trade agreements, the Obama administration has consistently promoted the interests of organized labor, which strongly supports Obama, hoping that he can implement policy changes to help unions stem their decades-long private sector membership decline. Whatever the reason, this should be encouraging to advocates of open competition and flexible labor markets.

For more on project labor agreements see here.

Unemployment is at 10 percent in France, which refused to adopt a U.S.-style stimulus package, and only 7.6 percent in Germany, which adopted a stimulus package that was smaller relative to its economy than ours was.  (Countries that refused to adopt big stimulus packages have fared better than those that imitated President Obama. And the biggest-spending countries have suffered worst in the recession.)

A “broader measure of U.S. unemployment,” including discouraged workers, puts U.S. unemployment at 17.5 percent, reports the New York Times.

As the Post notes, “For many on the left, the lament for years has been: Why can’t America be more like Europe? Why can’t rustic Americans be more like sophisticated Europeans? The sentiment has resurfaced in recent months as the health-care debate has raged on — why can’t the American health-care system be more like Europe’s?”

Well, America is now more like Europe when it comes to unemployment.  But not when it comes to social benefits and protections.  The American Left knows how to import Europe’s failures, but not its successes.

The massive health-care bill passed by the House on Saturday is a classic example.  It would expand health care coverage somewhat, but not to European levels, and it would vastly increase the costs of our health care system, rather than reducing it to European levels.   It would also increase taxes to “European levels of taxation.”  The health care bill contains politically-correct provisions that Europeans would never put up with, like pork for trial lawyers and racial preferences.  And restrictions on national competition in health insurance, which do not exist in Europe.

In France, doctors don’t need to be paid as much, because competing professions, like lawyers, are paid less.  French law is much more conservative than American law when it comes to lawsuits, including lawsuits against doctors.  There are NO punitive damages, and France discourages lawsuits by making unsuccessful plaintiffs pay the other side’s legal bills.  (Other European countries have specialized health courts, rather than American-style jury trials, to cut lawyers’ bills, speedily compensate the injured, and prevent American-style baseless lawsuits against doctors.)  There are no racial preferences — even my Marxist father-in-law, a French trade unionist who likes Michael Moore’s book Stupid White Men, thinks that racial preferences are evil.  French people do not let political correctness shackle their minds the way American leftists do.

Europe is not as far to the left of America as people think, and America’s business climate is already not much more favorable than Europe’s.  For every three ways in which Europe is more socialistic than America, there are two ways in which it is less socialistic than America.  The Obama administration is getting rid of our advantages, but not our disadvantages.

American tort law and family law are much more burdensome, anti-business, and bent on redistribution of wealth, than Europe’s.

Confronted with the specter of new burdens under the health-care bills and global-warming bills backed by the Obama administration, many businesses with the money to do so are afraid to hire people and create jobs lest they be stuck with a large tab for things like health care benefits for newly-hired, less-skilled employees.

The Congressional Budget Office has repeatedly admitted that Obama’s stimulus package will shrink the economy “in the long run.”  It contained welfare and repealed welfare reform.  Unemployment is higher now than if Congress had voted it down.

Of course, as the economist, Herbert Klein, often noted:  When something can’t go on forever, it will stop! It did and von Mises warned us of that many years ago.

Buffet, according to the Wall Street Journal weekend edition is “betting on good old fashioned stuff - such as grain, coal for power plants and consumer goods imported from Asia - and the need to move it.”  Let’s hope he knows something we don’t - perhaps, Obama is about to do a “Clinton” reversal.  That would be good for America, for affordable energy and (ironically) also good for the Democratic party.  We can hope.

As Garrett Peck, author of The Prohibition Hangover, notes in The Washington Post, this is long overdue. (The op ed is due to appear in the Post’s Sunday edition, but it’s already online.) The ABC system, which several states adopted after the end of Prohibition in 1934, is today an anacrhonism that doesn’t even work very well.

ABC was once about promoting temperance, but the abstinence movement has basically died. Two-thirds of American adults drink alcohol. In reality, Virginia ABC is now about generating revenue for the state — and at that, it isn’t particularly efficient. Virginia can make more money — as can localities — by privatizing the system, both from auctioning the licenses and through ongoing tax revenue. The private sector will assume the operating costs, shifting ABC authority to where it properly belongs — regulation and enforcement.

And then there are the consumer implications.

Virginia’s ABC stores are a tower of mediocrity. They are centrally managed retail outlets that would have been palaces in the Soviet Union, but today they are anachronistic. They offer highly limited choices, often lacking exciting new brands or those with a cult following. Staff members generally aren’t knowledgeable about how to mix drinks or make cocktails. And the prices are artificially high because there is no competition: The state decides what to charge.

For more on The Prohibition Hangover, see here.

rather than fund a new federal job training program through a Department of Labor appropriation, Congress could mandate that all Fortune 500 firms provide, and pay for, such training. The first appears on the federal budget, the second does not. For politicians, it’s the perfect scheme. The government can spend — or, rather, force other people to spend — as much as it wants without adding to the deficit.

Decency demands this trickery stop; fortunately, a bill from Rep. Virginia Foxx looks like it would do some good on that front.

Having solved all of the community’s other problems, regulators now have the time to turn their attention to what is apparently a spat between neighbors. One resident is upset that the 15 cats (!) owned by a neighboring woman have been sullying his yard.

I might suggest that Coaseian bargaining might be a better solution than a law.

A fiat decision in favor of one party will leave at least one disputant dissatisfied. In this case, the cat lady is looking to move to a different town. Why not treat both parties as equals with rights to need to be respected? That approach is far more likely to generate an outcome everyone is happy with.

Presumably the offended neighbor is willing to pay some amount to keep the cats off of his yard. The cat lady is also willing to pay some price to keep her cats. Let them bargain, then. Maybe they can split the cost of building a fence. Whatever they agree on. The point is that there is a missing market here.

Allowing the parties to bargain creates that missing market. It allows the neighbors to come to a peaceful, mutually agreeable solution. Passing a law favoring one over the other is simply unfair.