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August 6, 2009
Cash for Clunkers, Gatesgate, and an Early Patriot’s Message
Let’s begin with the easiest subject to understand – economics. Last week, two important events happened. The Cash for Clunkers program shut down when it burned through money planned for four months in four days. And, based on a previously passed federal law, the minimum wage went up again.
Now, the two programs are different in size. The minimum wage only increased by 70 cents an hour; whereas, the Clunker program is/was giving away up to $4,500 per transaction. So, the change was both larger and faster in the latter instance. I was on the road on family business and saw a hand-lettered sign in a Tennessee Tasty-Freeze that said, “Prices have increased due to wage increases.”
The bottom line is simple, and every student who was awake during the first day of Economics 101 knows it. When the price of anything goes up, people buy less of it. For sure, assorted studies by economists hired by labor unions have produced “academic” studies showing that raising the minimum wage does not cost anyone their jobs. But no honest studies support that conclusion.
A big jump, rather than a gradual change, is easier to see and impossible to paper over. The experts in D.C. expected that $1 billion for Clunkers would last four months. How ignorant do professors, Congressmen, Presidents have to be to think when you give away anything for free (try health care for example) that you won’t have lines around the block? Then total costs will go through the roof until rationing is imposed.
Another story from the last week was the brouhaha concerning the “distinguished” Harvard professor, Henry Gates. This was not about race. This was about Harvard. Seldom do I recommend other people’s columns in full and provide a link. But my friend Iowahawk has written a screamingly funny and spot on analysis of Gatesgate under the title, “Cambridge Police Profiling Still A Grim Reality for Harvard Faculty A**holes.” Here’s the link. Don’t follow it you are offended by that last word in the title.
By the way, I’ve seen Ivy arrogance up close and personal at Yale. It is even found at Princeton, though I’m not sure why. (Hold that tiger.)
And now, for dessert. For almost a decade I’ve been working on a book on Tom Paine. It’s researched and finished. I received a stack of rejection letters, some saying that it was an excellent book, but there was no market for it. My initial reaction was that Glenn Beck’s book Common Sense had smothered the market for mine. Now, I offer a thank-you for Glenn and his book.
Mine is much heavier in history, uses much more of Paine’s original work, and mostly demonstrates how the ideas that Paine wrote down two centuries ago remain true concerning American domestic and foreign policies and challenges today. The success of Glenn’s book convinced at least one publisher that there is room for the success of mine.
I call Tom Paine the “forgotten” Framer. Without his works, the United States would not have come into existence. Yet very few people are familiar with his writings, and the reasons for their effectiveness.
There is one aspect of Paine’s work which no one else has discovered in 227 years of reading and research. The power of Paine’s words come from the same style that can be traced in American historical documents, Presidential speeches, but also in popular writing, songs, movies, etc. That chapter is for writers who want to write better than they do now, who want to learn why Paine was so successful.
My book will be published, with original artwork done by Olga Calco, a Russian-born and -trained artist. There is a chance, just a chance, that it will be ready for the Rally on the Mall in Washington, D.C., on September 12th. The title is These Are the Times that Try Men’s Souls.
That is Paine’s most memorable sentence. It begins the first chapter of “The American Crisis,” which was read to General Washington’s troops before they crossed the Delaware at night in a snow storm to attack the Hessians at Trenton. Washington gambled the whole fate of the American Revolution on that single battle. His troops marched into that battle with Paine’s words fresh in their ears.
The subtitle of my book is, “America – Then and Now, In the Words of Thomas Paine.” Here’s the initial website for my book, with reduced rates for pre-publication purchases: www.TheseAreTheTimes.us.
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor John Armor practiced law in the Supreme Court for 33 years. He now lives on the Eastern Continental Divide in the Blue Ridge of North Carolina. Contact him at John_Armor@aya.yale.edu.
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