Category: Politics

Organic crap

I believe that organic foods and gardening products are a silly and hypocritical fad.

According to Consumer Reports, “There is no definitive proof that organic produce offers a nutritional advantage over conventionally grown fruit and vegetables. Nor is it known how much risk is entailed in consuming the tiny quantities of pesticides on food over a lifetime.” (link to article)

Consumer Reports is a liberal publication. As a case in point, Consumer Reports was an outspoken advocate of single-payer, socialized medicine in the ‘90s. It’s especially poignant that Consumer Reports says this about organic products.

In the absence of hard proof, how do you justify paying the steep premium for organic products? You use junk science. A common premise is that everything synthetic is poison. Go read Howard Garrett’s Dallas Morning News gardening column. He squeals when anyone mentions synthetic stuff.

Everything synthetic is poison? I’d hate to live in a world without modern medicine, much of which uses synthetic products.

Everything organic is good? Go make some tea out of the cyanide that my (now gone) Carolina laurel cherry produced. Or talk to the residents of Greece, Corsica, and Turkey who use naturally available tremolite to white wash their homes. Tremolite is full of asbestos, another naturally occurring substance. Or go check out the environmental impact of organic chemicals like rotenone, sabadilla, or even soap. (Want to know a good way to kill a tank of fish? Add organic soap. Read this link.)

Even more humorous, “A study by the Southwest Research Institute found that the amount of produce containing detectable levels of pesticide residue dropped by half with washed samples. Where residue remained, levels were reduced by 29 to 98 percent.” This is again from Consumer Reports (link to article). This puts the pesticide levels of washed produce on par with organic products, which themselves contain a certain amount of background pesticide levels.

OK, so that argument fails. Aren’t carcinogenic synthetic pesticides and fertilizers causing cancer rates to rise? Not according to the American Cancer Society.

Well, aren’t organic products more environmentally sensitive? Not at all!

A mantra of the green movement is “use less.” Use less food, use less energy, use less paper, use less of everything. Inconvenient fact: organic products cost substantially more than traditional foods. It’s in large part because organic farming is substantially less productive than contemporary farming methods. Ultimately, organic goods’ increased price reflects the increased resource consumption required to produce the organic product.

Organic products have no clear health benefit and are more harmful to the environment. Why do people buy them? I suspect it’s in large part a fad and a social statement. The social statement aspect is misguided, like buying a SUV to give the appearance of being in touch with nature.

The Social Security Trust Fund is a myth and a hoax

IMPORTANT NOTE: This article is not anti-Social Security. It criticizes how the American left has led us to magical thinking about Social Security, that worthless IOUs are in fact a huge, redeemable asset that keeps Social Security solvent for many decades.

The Social Security “Trust Fund” is among the biggest lies of American liberals. It is just a fancy accounting trick, a la Enron and WorldCom.

Consider this analogy:

Sam sets aside money for a future expense, suppose for replacing his house’s A/C. Sam knows it only has a year left, and he needs $2400 to replace it.

Sam save $200 per month. He puts it in the piggy bank on his dresser. At the same time, he “borrows” this monthly $200 so that he can live more lavishly: eat out more, buy more clothes, etc. He replaces this $200 with an IOU.

The 12 months passed. As predicted, Sam’s A/C conks out. Sam needs that saved $2400 to repair his A/C. He opens his piggy bank and finds 12 $200 IOUs. The A/C repairman only accepts dollars, not IOUs. Sam can’t magically produce this $2400, so he has to take out debt to pay the repairman.

Woah, what happene?

If you look at Sam’s savings and borrowings as separate activities, then yes, we can legalistically say Sam “saved” $2400. But only an idiot would look at it that way. Sam is one entity. The only way Sam can save money is if more cash comes in than goes out. That didn’t happen: Sam spent that $200 “savings” as soon as he got it.

What would happen if I replaced “Sam” with “Uncle Sam”?

Uncle Sam sets aside money for a future expense, say for a date about 13 years away when its senior retirement system starts paying out more than it brings in. Uncle Sam sets aside billions per month towards this expense, and he puts it in the piggy bank on his dresser. At the same time, Uncle Sam “borrows” every last penny of these monthly billions so that he can live more lavishly.

Suppose the 13 years have passed, and, as predicted, Uncle Sam needs to pay out more senior retirement money than he takes in? Uncle Sam needs to tap those billions he saved.

Uncle Sam opens his piggy bank and only finds 156 IOUs. Seniors need dollars, not IOUs! Uncle Sam can’t produce these billions of dollars magically, so he has to take out billions and billions of additional debt each year to pay the seniors. (Or he can stiflingly raise taxes or drastically reduce spending or devalue the currency.)

That piggy bank is the mythical “Social Security Trust Fund.” Sam’s piggy bank and Uncle Sam’s “trust fund” are both full of worthless IOUs.

Instead of “IOU,” I could have written “federal bond.” The concept is the same. When you owe money to yourself, it’s an IOU. If the federal government buys its own bond, that is also an IOU. You can’t enforce debt you owe to yourself, so an IOU is just an accounting trick.

How does the government “invest” in its own bonds?

A payroll tax finances the Social Security system. Right now this tax pulls in more than the system doles out in retirement benefits, leaving a surplus. Social Security technically “invests” its surplus into US bonds.

Who issues US bonds? What is the Social Security part of? The answer to both questions is “the federal government.” So the federal government is buying bonds from itself!

You can’t owe money to yourself. Again, that is an accounting trick. A more realistic way of looking at the big picture is that Social Security surpluses are diverted to Congress to pay a chunk of our $2 trillion annual federal budget. Congress has become dependent on this chunk to maintain current spending levels. (See http://archives.cnn.com/2001/ALLPOLITICS/08/28/budget/)

US federal government indebtedness is in two major parts: the “accounting trick” IOU debt and externally held debt, which is are bonds owned by private individuals, foreign governments, corporations, state and local governments, pensions, and mutual funds.

When it comes down to it, the externally held debt is all that matters. A single bill of Congress can legally wipe away all internal debts; again, remember that internally held debt is just IOUs, paper tricks, accounting shams.

A recently published figure is that all US indebtedness is over $7,300,000,000,000 (source). Of that, about $3,800,000,000,000 (52%) is internal debt, the IOUs. The true United States indebtedness, i.e., debt held by external entities, is “only” $3,600,000,000,000.

What is going to happen between now and 2018? Social Security’s payout will gradually increase to where it is 100% of payroll tax revenue. As this happens, Social Security can transfer less and less money to Congress, so we will increasingly see one or more of more taxes, less spending elsewhere, more debt, or devaluing the dollar (printing more money).

When 2018 finally hits, when Social Security transfers $0 to Congress, it just gets worse. Plain and simple, there is no simple fix.

Irresponsible American liberals treat the Social Security system as a separable, independent unit of the US government. They wrap that with complex theories about “contracts” and “generational entitlement” and so on.

No matter how many words apologists throw at that logic, they still cannot escape that the IOUs are worthless.

We’ve got to stop magical thinking. The federal government and all its programs wrap up into one entity. It has various forms of income: income taxes, payroll taxes, tariffs, fines, etc. And it has various forms of spending: military, welfare, Social Security, etc. We will never solve Social Security’s problems until leaders start taking such a holistic view.

Tavis Smiley and Social Security hysteria

After work I went to an SMU Tate Lecture Series student forum featuring Catherine Crier, Ward Connerly, and Tavis Smiley.

It was interesting to see the interaction between Ward, an avowed red state guy, and Tavis, an avowed blue state guy. The discussion was mostly about race preferences and affirmative action. The only apparent point of agreement is that affirmative action programs should focus on socioeconomic conditions. The 10 ton gorilla, however, was how to classify deserving socioeconomic conditions.

I was disappointed with Tavis’s frequently populist and illogical arguments. Despite his agreement on the socioeconomic factor, he continued to support race factors, saying that the vast majority of people eligible under socioeconomic factors are minority. Huh? So what are you saying? Poor whites can’t get anything? Rich blacks should still receive benefits? I don’t get it.

Tavis also happens to be the host of the Tavis Smiley Show, a radio program that broadcasts on NPR affiliates. Yesterday he announced that he is not renewing his contract. At today’s lecture he explained that he felt that NPR is resistant to change and would not put forth the effort necessary to make his show a success. That seems fishy. Regardless, I have enjoyed his NPR show, and I hate to see him go.

At one point, Catherine Crier interjected doom and gloom hand-wringing, citing her interpretation of Running on Empty, a scathing criticism of the fiscal state of the US. Sure, the longer certain economic indicators are ignored, the bigger problem we are facing. But a “perfect storm” of colossal proportions? Far from a certainty.

One of the biggest rationales for this “perfect storm” is a theorized generational “war” between retirees and workers. In a few decades there will only be two workers paying Social Security benefits for each retiree.

Big deal.

Reform or not, Social Security is not going to bankrupt the county, because taxpayer will not allow it. This is a country of laws, and the laws can change! (What a surprise!) In this scary future, guess which group has a larger electoral base, the workers or the retirees? Workers, 2 to 1.

The productive classes will not stand for crushing Social Security taxes. Sorry, retirees, but the losers will be those of you who did not save enough for retirement, not the workers. Retirees will absolutely be outvoted. Better start saving now!

The Dutch have lost it

Few things make me sick to my stomach. This article is one of them: Netherlands Hospital Euthanizes Babies.

The Netherlands is exploring killing terminally ill babies. The practice has already begun at one hospital.

This is wretched and horrific.

It’s one thing to deny expensive, futile, non-palliative treatments to terminal patients. It’s entirely different to affirmatively kill patients.

Legalized euthanasia for the willing is bad enough. Killing off babies is despotic.

Incorrect Understanding of Wright and Shelby Amendments

My understanding of the Wright and Shelby amendments, which regulate air travel out of Dallas’s Love Field airport, was incorrect. I was in good company: even the Dallas Morning News has it wrong!

According to a 1998 US DOT news release, it appears that the 1979 Wright Amendment permits passenger air travel from Love Field, partially upending a then-11 year old agreement between Dallas and Ft. Worth. Under this agreement, Dallas and Ft. Worth will not use their respective airports to compete against DFW Airport. The 1997 Shelby Amendment enhances the Wright Amendment’s permissiveness by allowing flights to go to 3 more states and also allowing no destination restrictions on flights using planes with fewer than 56 seats. (It is humorous to note that Senator Richard Shelby, the amendment’s namesake, is from Alabama, one of these 3 additional states.)

So without the federal Wright or Shelby Amendments, there may be no passenger air travel out of Dallas Love Field.

Edit: See the comment left in the comments section below. (Click on the Comments link.) Simply repealing the Wright Amendment is not enough; that would invite another round of local lawsuits from Fort Worth, American Airlines, and DFW. Congress needs to clearly say that there shall be no restrictions on flights on Love Field.