Do Talk To Strangers

In November 2014, two children belonging to Alexander and Danielle Meltiv were picked up by police officers while walking home from a park a third of a mile from their home at 5 p.m. The authorities did not contact the parents about the whereabouts of their kids until three hours later and would only release the children into their custody after they had signed a "temporary safety plan" promising not to leave their children unattended.[1]

There is a big problem with perception vs reality in the United States today. I'm talking now, specifically, about the misinformed and idiotic trend toward reporting, arresting, and charging parents with child endangerment for allowing their kids to play outside unsupervised. Given the reality of the risks involved, this embarrassing state of affairs constitutes a true tyranny of ignoramuses in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.

In the US, a child aged 14 or younger is more likely to die of a sudden, unexpected heart attack than to be abducted by a stranger. We have 60 million kids in this age group[2] and, in the latest year of compiled statistics, 115 of them were abducted by strangers.[3] That works out to a 0.00019% chance that, in a given year, a child aged 14 or younger will be abducted by a stranger. In fact, you are more likely to find a child dead of accidental drowning in a bathtub than you are to have him or her abducted by a stranger in any given year.

The most laughable (and tragic) misunderstanding of these odds is that many people feel that exposure to society is more dangerous for kids today than it was 20, 30, or 40 years ago. But this is not the case. From 1990 to 2007, for instance, "substantiated cases of child sexual abuse have declined 53% and physical abuse substantiations have declined 52%."[4] Rape, attempted or completed, against children fell a further 43% from 2003 to 2011.[5]

I could launch here into an exposition about why more people today are more likely to imagine that American society is more dangerous than it was in previous decades. But I'm not going to do that. It would only give a false air of legitimacy to the perpetrators of this trend. In the end, it is an uninteresting mystery to solve -- in the face of the active curtailment of liberty that is going on due to the breathless intervention of uninformed busy-bodies.

It really just comes down to this for parents: are you going to be influenced more by the true facts of the world or by fear of looking bad to people who are going to judge you regardless of how well you take care of your children? And to law enforcement, the courts, and the various child protective services agencies out there we need to say, "Enough is enough." What happened to the Meltiv family in Maryland should never happen to any family.

[1] Slate.com story about the Maltivs
[2] 2013 US population numbers by age range, US Census Bureau
[3] May 2013 Washington Post opinion piece by the director of the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hamshire
[4] Trends in Childhood Victimization, Crimes Against Children Research Center, University of New Hamshire
[5] Free Range Kids.com crime statistics page

Why Does A Higher Minimum Wage Lead To Higher Prices?

The main reason why prices tend to rise with wages is that public corporation stock prices are tied to their quarterly/annual earnings. Corporations that desire their stock prices to rise are always looking for ways to increase their profits and show earnings growth.
Increased wages raise expenses for a corporation by a factor of its total workforce affected by the wage increase. This lowers earnings/profits, and causes a chain reaction (via analyst downgrades) that results in their stock price declining. An obvious candidate for making up for the lost profits is to raise prices and/or find cheaper labor (Asia/Mexico) and cheaper materials/ingredients.

One complicating factor is that a general workforce with higher wages has higher purchasing power. Yet, as the workforce exercises this power in the market place, it signals higher demand which tends to trigger both higher prices from current suppliers and the entry into the market of alternative suppliers who try to compete on price and volume.

Not saying any of this is good or bad. Just pointing out the general mechanism. Perhaps someday we can return our society back to a 1950s/1960s business mentality when "maximizing shareholder value" wasn't the A#1 priority of corporate CEOs.

On Obamacare and the Free Market

Many of my contemporaries are posting and blogging about the PPACA, also known as "Obamacare", which rolled out its public health insurance marketplace in October. The most consistent complaint I read about the program is that it sets a new precedent of governmental intrusion on private citizens by requiring us all to purchase a product, namely: a health insurance policy. The law is set up this way so that the economics of heath insurance underwriting will work -- healthy individuals' premiums today cover sick individuals' costs today and provided a reserve for the costs of tomorrow.

It is worth considering how we as a county find ourselves crossing this precedent of intrusion. You would think (wouldn't you?) that industries operating in a free market would police themselves from a standpoint of enlightened self-interest so as to not require regulatory intervention. But in case after case, industries have failed to do so.

Take the revelations about the US meat-packing industry in 1905 that led to the founding of the (precursor to) the FDA. Or the 1910 phosphorus match industry study that produced high taxes, forcing the industry to innovate a safer technology for their workers. When the harm done by an industry flying the free market banner outweighs the benefits of waiting for the unseen hand to remedy the situation, governments have acted and always will act.

You may not be of the opinion that there was a crisis in healthcare access (via premium inflation or underwriting restrictions). However, a sober survey of business articles from 2003 until the housing crisis shows that US health care costs were consistently cited as one of the top problems threatening the US economy.

When you consider the trend of US demographics going forward toward the next 30+ years, it becomes less surprising that the PPACA is the new FDA or SEC of our time.

Wrapping Your Head Around the National Debt, Deficits, Surpluses, and the Debt Ceiling

The following is not a perfect explanation of the concepts of our national debt, deficits, surpluses, and the debt ceiling. But hopefully my readers will find it helpful in understanding what these terms mean and how they differ from one another.

Lets say we start a country and we have zero debt. In the first year, we collect $10,000 in taxes and spend $10,000. So we had no deficit, because all the bills were covered. We had nothing left over, so no surplus either. And we did not borrow any money, so no debt.

Year 2, we still collect $10,000 in taxes on $10,000 in expenses but we also decide to light a new national Christmas tree. This will cost $300 extra for tree, lights and electricity. We print 10 pieces of paper with the words "IOU $30.00" printed on them and tell people we will pay back $30 plus some interest on them in 5 years. 10 people buy our bonds, so we now have the $300 to cover the Christmas tree. Result: no deficit, no surplus, but now we have a $330 debt (including a flat 10% interest rate on the $300).

In year 3, we will need to set aside a little more than $10,000 (around $66 more) to make sure we will have the $330 ready to pay back the people who bought our bonds when they come due. However, if we still only bring in $10,000 in taxes, we will incur a $66 deficit for the year. The way we cover that is to print more IOUs and sell them so the money is set aside and our creditors believe we are taking our responsibilities seriously. So we see that the deficit incurred this year causes the debt to grow.

Skip ahead 230 years... We now have a military, a department of social services, tons of federal employees in each, etc, etc. All of these programs were approved over time by the people's representatives -- including the financing schemes to pay for them over time with future tax receipts. The amount of all the bonds we've permitted ourselves to print and sell (to cover our past and future spending commitments above the taxes that have come in) is our "debt ceiling".

Let's say the total amount we've agreed to pay above all of the combined tax income so far is now $17 Trillion. That's the debt. If, in this year, we incur more expenses (including payments on the debt) than we bring in from taxes, we have a deficit for the year. If we had a deficit last year and we have a deficit this year, but the amount we went "over" this year is half of what we went over last year, we have cut our deficit in half. If we bring in more tax revenues this year than this year's expenses, it is a surplus - but that doesn't help us pay down the debt unless we agree to apply some or all of this year's surplus toward paying off the total debt.

On American Exceptionalism

Once again, this time during a civil war in Syria, atrocities perpetrated by some group or other have roused sentiments that "America had ought to do something" about the situation. It has taken the surprise wisdom of an an internationally acknowledged tyrant and thug, published in a US newspaper, to give us all pause from our rush to near-unilateral military intervention. A major point of the published thesis is that America's exceptionalist self-image poses a threat to lasting world peace.

Oh for the days when we were not a so-called "Superpower". The decades -- well over a century if they were gathered up and packed together -- when we meddled with and aggressed only the unlucky other governments that happened to inhabit the land now known as the Continental United States. Even when our aggressiveness began spilling beyond those borders, our invasions involved only our nearest neighbors and our false flag operations were conducted within 90 miles of the Florida Keys. The Presidents in office during the years at the start of both world wars won their elections by promising to keep America out of them. We used to go to war for old-fashioned, unexceptional reasons: the gaining of territory and the weakening of other expansionist nations operating near our borders.

Supposing America were found to be exceptional, would that be a good thing? This is an important question, worth pondering and debating. Perhaps the Roman Empire did not fall because of greed or invasion by barbarians or due to the neurological effects of drinking from heavy metal goblets. Perhaps the Roman Empire fell the way every great society does in which an exceptional class of its citizens comes to control its policies. (always in the name of the "good" of the unexceptional) Under every such regime, only a generation or two passes before the old guard, consumed with defending its power and privileges grows increasingly blind and irrelevant to the concerns and aspirations of the very people it imagines it is serving. As an example, the architects of America's Cold War policies in the 1970s and 80s had about as relevant a contribution to make to the question of Iraq's danger to the world in 2002 as a horse might offer to an octopus regarding the question of sea-floor territory.

The same holds true for movements and institutions. Were Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement exceptional? Without a doubt, they were. Simply witness the situations in American society before and after the movement to judge the question correctly. Yet, only Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton remain muted voices in American politics today. And, this is as just as it should be. Today's societal struggles are not -- cannot -- be led by the heroes of yesterday's movements. Without a doubt, past heroes can inspire and advise new movements and help society understand the broader context in which the struggle continues. Yet, the fire that refines us in every generation is kindled with the tinder of today's hearts, not borrowed from the cooling embers of yesterday's. I assert this to be true also of heroic nations within epochs of international crisis.

So what is the conclusion? Are we Americans "exceptional"? To silently suspect one's own exceptionalism can be a source of great inner strength that motivates one to attempt acts of virtue or valor corresponding with a blossoming greatness sensed within. This is a mature, inner fountain of self-motivation, healthy to cultivate in children and in the unassertive. But to claim rights or privileges due to exceptionalism or -- worse still -- to defend one's claims to exceptionalism seems to me to be a sign of immaturity and weakness rather than of strength. It conjures up the image of a former ballerina Prima Donna, having lost her youthful beauty, grace, and flexibility, clumsily crashing the stage of a new production in a tattered, ill-fitting costume to demand fresh applause.

Did the world, once upon a time, give America a "pass" for using atomic weapons in war or for participating in the choosing of other nations' borders or their forms of government? What of it? We must have, at the time, so earned those privileges and so conducted ourselves in the immediate redemption of them as to invite the awe and respect of the greater mass of humanity rather than their outrage and vows of vengeance. Exceptionalism, then, like any other accolade or privilege, is best observed in ourselves silently or conferred upon us by peers worthy of our respect. As with any other virtue, it has a shelf life and begins to spoil and stink when hoarded too long. Only the insecure claim it as a right or use it as a justification.

Back to My Center, Politically

I'm not really sure which post or image I first responded to on Facebook that made me start sounding like a perpetual Barack Obama supporter the last couple of months. The truth is that I am not. I just felt it was important to take a stand against obviously slanderous information. I guess there's just something in my DNA that rages against intentional misrepresentation. No one may say I have not done the same for Romney when I saw similar distortions.

But I identify most closely with the Libertarian point of view: "Lord, save me from those who try to help me, I can handle my enemies by myself." If the Republican party had had the balls to nominate Ron Paul, I'd be all over that. In the end we need less centralized power, not more. Just think of it - instead of one convenient place for corrupting, pandering lobbyists to go (Washington, DC), just think if they'd have to spread out across all 50 states Capitols. Or, even better, thousands and thousands of county seats. Alas, I may not see that come to pass in my lifetime.

But I know that a Republican party yes man is also not what this country needs in the White House. The Neo-cons still control the Republican party and it is thanks to them we had the runaway spending of the Iraq war and the erosion of our civil liberties in the form of the so-called Patriot Act, warantless wire-tapping, the TSA, etc. If I must choose between a tax-and-spend Democrat or a borrow-and-spend Republican, I will go for the guy who's gonna at least bankrupt us peacefully.

Which brings me to our role in global affairs. I've said it before, I'll say it again: We cannot preserve our Republic while we try to maintain an Empire. The problem with maintaining a Superpower-class military long after the Cold War has ended is that you end up looking for excuses to get a return on your investment. I'm all for strength, but "larger than the next 10 militaries combined" is at least seven or eight times too large. Continually bleeding debt money for this - as well as the Federal entitlement programs in their current forms - will certainly force the hard choices, in a more painful way (like in Greece today), than if we made them today, intentionally.

Remebering June 4, 1989

Twenty years ago this week, hundreds of Chinese pro-democracy student demonstrators paid the ultimate price for their courage to stand up against the corruption and repression of their government. I haven't often reflected on the events of that magical summer which heralded the end of world Communism. But all it took was a photo in the news this week of that solitary Chinese student standing peacefully yet defiantly in front of a column of tanks to bring back a rush of deep emotions. My guts wrenched, my lungs heaved, my tears flowed, and I was 21 again - full of idealism and belief in the ultimate triumph of what is good. Connected, in some mysterious way, with my brothers and sisters from that time in Warsaw, and Bucharest, and East Berlin, and Beijing, and Moscow.

It is, frankly, irrelevant to ask whether the Tianenman Square massacre "accomplished" anything useful. Pundits will debate whether or not it was a wake-up call to the leadership of the Chinese communist party, or whether it helped lead to the years of economic prosperity that many more Chinese citizens now enjoy. What it means to me is that our species occasionally surprises itself in bright, shining moments when nothing matters to us more than the freedom of the human spirit. We cast off the conniving, calculating, resignation we feign (in order to "get by" in modern society) for something far greater and worthier. We put everything the world has told us is valuable at risk in order to win a prize that is impossible to justify or even quantify with mere numbers or arguments.

As Jim Reeves used to sing, "Life goes on and this old world just keeps on turning." There are jobs to do and spouses to love and kids to raise and bills to pay. These incredible events rise and fall and rise again when they are called for. But I was quite surprised by how viscerally and profoundly I could feel the emotions of my 21 year-old self. Perhaps you will experience this some day. When you do, do yourself a favor and feel it fully. Let the tears flow and the lungs heave. It is good practice for keeping the human spirit free.

The McCain Nausea Reflex - Guilt By Association?

With the 2008 election coming up, I'm asking myself, "Who will best lead the USA as president in the next four years?"  From where I sit, it's not as cut-and-dried a decision as one might think.

I am a believer in limited central government - as you might have guessed from this previous post.  One of the reasons why I am so disappointed with the current US administration is that "W" won me over during his campaign in 2000 with his talk of "learning the lessons of Vietnam" and "reaching across the aisle".  I had no idea the neo-conservative branch of the Republican party would render him into little more than a goofy-talking sock puppet mascot for their agenda of global economic and military supremacy.  Yeah, this from a guy who bought the Iraq WMD argument and voted for "W" again in 2004.

Of the two major candidates, John McCain embodies my political and philosophic views more accurately. (of all cadidates, that would be Ron Paul)  Yet, I am just as susceptible to a reaction of disgust for what we have all been through in the past eight years (let alone the shocking meltdown of the US financial system in recent weeks) as anyone else.  In 1993, the Democratic leadership of the House of Representatives was implicated in a sordid fraud scheme that involved the House post office.  That straw was enough to break the camel's back and give the House of Representatives a Republican majority for the first time in 40 years.  1980 gave us Reagan Democrats and I suspect 2008 will have its share of Obama Republicans.

And yet, I wonder, is all this reactionary decision-making serving us well?   Taking a step back from the whole scene, it is highly unlikely that a John McCain presidency would look anything like "W"'s regime.  He's not one of the Washington good ol' boys with a hundred butts to kiss, he wouldn't have a rabid war hawk with ties to the defense industry as a VP, and there isn't a snowball's chance in hell he (or any other Republican president for the next decade) will get a rubber-stamping legislature.  Put simply, just because he voted the party line 90% of the time doesn't make him a "W" clone.  It makes him a Republican.  George H. Bush's presidency didn't look anything like Reagan's did before him.

A Democrat president with a Democrat-majority congress could lead to the kind of "We've got a mandate" mentality that leads to cures far worse than the diseases they intend to cure.

Well, I'll tip my hand.  All I want for Christmas is some old-fashioned gridlock in Washington for the next four to eight years.  Like the kind we had under Clinton, where congress would squash the president's agenda and then the president would veto congress's bills.  As far as I'm concerned, that was a key contributor to the prosperity we experienced from 1995 to 2000.  And if this somehow manages to suffocate the global military hegemony we've got going on (long after its purpose, winning the Cold War, died out) as well as atrophy the federal bureaucracy by oh, say one third to one half, that would be nice too.  OK, now I'm really dreaming, but hey - why not?

See, my problem is, I'm just old enough to remember the reactions to oil, war, and power which swept Jimmy Carter into the presidency.  Such a great smile.  Such a thoughtful, gracious person.  Such a disaster for the country, policy-wise.  Whoops, that looks like guilt by association as well.  Maybe I'll just stick to my guns and write in "Ron Paul" on my ballot.