The phrase that gets used all the time is “affordable housing.” But affordable housing isn’t what gets subsidized. What gets subsidized is affordable home ownership. People who rent have housing. They’re not homeless. Why should there be a policy goal of getting everyone to borrow money? So more can paint the walls the color they want and have the htrill (sic) of mowing their own lawn?

Let’s look at quit rates. Quit rates in the public sector are about one third what they are elsewhere. In other words, government employees sure do seem to like holding on to their jobs. More than just about anyone else, in fact. Doesn’t that tell us everything we need to know about who’s overcompensated?

Too many intellectuals are driven by a disturbing will to believe society can and should be remade by strong leaders. Worse, this will to believe is combined with intellectuals’ childish gullibility for tyrants’ promises and propaganda. Hollander exposes the utter credulity of intellectuals who cheered on the likes of Stalin, Mao and Castro – intellectuals whose faith in central planning and esteem for central planners is simply astonishing to any adult whose mind and soul aren’t deformed by the will to believe in salvation by strongmen.

One way to think about our current economic woes is that we have a lot of “fake assets” like this–things that we invested money in expecting a good return, but which in many cases are now more trouble than they are worth. Working through that asset base is going to be slow and painful.

The case for abolishing Obamacare has three parts, based on its awful effects (a) on health care, (b) on our political system, and © on our character as a people. The first of these, Obamacare’s deleterious effects on health care quality, cost, innovation, and accessibility, has been well made already by conservative policy analysts and, less well but still effectively, by conservative politicians. On their merits, these arguments should have been enough to defeat Obamacare, and almost were. Floating in the debate’s background so far have been anxieties about the legislation’s effects on our constitutional system’s balance of power and on the American character. These concerns will need to be more thought—through and clearly articulated in the days to come, because to clinch the argument conservatives need to show that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is not merely bad or mistaken policy but somehow dangerous to our way of life. Legislative mistakes can be corrected, after all. Their pollsters are already warning Democratic congressmen to keep claims about the law “small and credible,” to stick to “personal stories” of people who will benefit from it, and above all to promise to “improve” it. They’re trying to shrink the target. Conservatives need to expand the target, and to emphasize that the stakes of Obamacare include nothing less than the future of self-government in America.

This blog tends to steer away from short-term market commentary because, as the wags say, “If you must forecast, forecast often,” and keeping tabs on the whims of Mr. Market can easily become an exercise in futility.

In fact, I think that posts like this highlight the reason that so many small business owners vote Republican–and complain that the current health care law is the work of out-of-touch elitists who have never held a real job. I think that health care wonkery is, in fact, a real job, and a very important one. But so is running a small business, and the amount of hassle that this new law imposes on taxpayers is all out of proportion to the benefit derived.

I vividly remember following news of the Tet offensive in 1968 and subsequently fell for virtually every element of the myth of Tet that Robbins exposes in this lucid, important book.

Moreover, student debt contributes to the problem of unloading a massive inventory of homes and a massive shadow inventory of homes on top of that. Many students are so deep in debt and without a job that not only have they delayed marriage, they have moved back home and are not even renting apartments. Banks sitting on foreclosures thinking that a housing recovery is around the corner, have another thing (sic) coming. These structural problems, including boomers headed into retirement wanting to downsize their homes (with no one to sell to), puts additional pressure on home prices. Ironically, falling prices is the cure for this mess, not the problem that politicians see and attempt to fight. Home prices need to drop to affordable levels where there is genuine demand to clear housing inventory.

So the Democratic Obama administration - even the agency (USTR) charged with advancing American free trade interests - has remained silent while Democrats across the country demagogoue free trade and try to scare a vast majority of Americans into voting against their interests.