Tornado Activity is a Result of Global Warming?

How often do you hear the media claim that increased tornado activity is a result of Global Warming?
If tornadoes and temperature were directly related, then the decline in violent tornadoes would be indicating that the climate is cooling, not warming. The real answer, of course, is that the two are not related except in media fantasies.

Public Schools: Increasing Staff, Decreasing Results

Imagine you walked into your boss's office and told him you need more staff to give better service to customers. One of the responses you might get is, "I've been increasing your staff for several years, yet the service ratings from our customers keep falling. How is that?"
Your response would be?

Democrats Want the US to Look Like Venezuela

Want to know what will happen to the US if those supporting the Green New Deal are given power? Not even 20 years ago, Venezuela produced 3 times as much oil as the state of Texas. Today Texas produces 7 times what Venezuela does. What happened? Venezuela adopted socialism. Texas adopted fracking. Democrats promise to end fracking while adopting socialism. The result of that is already known.

Making Housing Unaffordable

You know, it almost seems as if there were some sort of relationship between the price of something and the supply of it. Maybe cities like LA and SF and Seattle who constantly complain about housing costs should look into this? But they won't because they are acting on behalf of wealthy incumbent homeowners who can afford to trade off high housing costs for more "open space".



Chart courtesy of AEI and Mark Perry

Are You Safer on the Streets of Chicago or in The Hospital?

It is often cited by the media that there are 30,000 gun-relate deaths each year. That’s all of  .001% of the population.

• 65% of those deaths are by suicide
• 15% are by law enforcement in the line of duty and justified
• 17% are through criminal activity, gang and drug related or mentally ill persons
• 3% are accidental discharge deaths

So, the relevant “gun violence” death count is 5100.  25% of these occur in 4 cities – Chicago, Baltimore, Detroit and DC, all of which have strict gun laws, but lots of criminal activity.  Guns? Or criminals on the street?

200,000+ people die each year from preventable medical errors. You are safer walking around  Chicago than when you are in a hospital.  Maybe we ought to ban hospitals?

Are you beginning to wonder whether the cries for gun control are motivated by something other than simply saving lives?

Income Inequality is NOT increasing

If you turn on CNN or MSNBC you will hear constant reference to "increasing income inequality". If this were true and not just propaganda, you'd expect real data to support that claim. Yet it doesn't. The level of income inequality in the United states hasn't changed in the last 25 years. So, if this wasn't keeping you up at night in 1998, why is it in 2019?

The Gini index, or Gini ratio, is a measure of statistical dispersion intended to represent the income or wealth distribution of a nation's residents, and is the most commonly used measurement of inequality. It was developed by the Italian statistician and sociologist Corrado Gini.

A Gini coefficient of zero expresses perfect equality, where all values are the same (for example, where everyone has the same income). A Gini coefficient of 1 (or 100%) expresses maximal inequality among values .

Illegals Depress Worker's Wages in California.

Supply and demand. Supply and demand. When you import thousands of illegal immigrants every month, it will depress the wages of all lower skilled workers.  The folks in Silicon Valley and Hollywood seem to love this policy. They're doing just fine, and those illegals are cheap labor to tend their gardens and clean their homes.

Government=Higher Prices

It always amazes me that people who desire lower prices on goods and services think the way to get there is more government involvement. Just the opposite is true.  The data is clear. The categories with the highest government involvement (and subsidies) are the ones which have prices increases in excess of the general rate of inflation. Want lower cost healthcare? Lower cost college? Get government OUT of the process and let the market work the same magic it does in other industries.

Prosperity and Free Market Capitalism Are Utterly Linked

The linkage between classic liberalism (free choice, free markets) is so strong, it is a wonder that significant numbers of people -- e.g. virtually all the Democrat candidates for President -- want to move the US  in the opposite direction.  Are they just that ignorant? Or do they actually prefer lower living standards (as long as they get to make the decisions)?

Democrats' Welfare State Cannot by Paid for By The Rich (and they know it).

Heritage foundation makes the point that the sort of European welfare state that Democrats envision cannot be had without significant increases in taxation on the people who pay relative low tax rates today -- the middle class. Of course, Democrats cannot be honest about this because there is no support for raising taxes. The claim that all of this will be paid for by The Rich is simply a lie.

Taxes on the rich cannot raise the necessary revenue to fund large European-style welfare states. If left on the current trajectory, U.S. government expenditures will require large tax increases on middle-class Americans. The current progressive agenda to further increase spending on health care, education, environmental policy, and income supports will require even higher taxes on a larger share of taxpayers. If America’s spending continues to look more and more like that of Europe, U.S. tax policy will also need to shift. In European countries, lower-income and middle-class taxpayers pay an average marginal wage tax rate of 49 percent on income above $37,000 a year, and an average value-added tax (VAT) of 20 percent. Those same U.S. taxpayers face a marginal wage tax of 32 percent and an average sales tax of 6 percent. 

Your Income is Related to What YOU Do. Not White Privilege.

Mark Perry posted these two charts. It's almost as if your income level is more related to things that YOU do (or don't do) than racial issues. Or maybe Asians have some sort of Super White Privilege that they exert over ordinary Whites?

Minimum Wage Recession in Restaurant Employment

Mark Perry posted this chart showing that the effect of the increase in the minimum wage on labor demand is similar to what happens during full-blown recessions.  Too bad there isn't some sort of theory that would have predicted this -- that when you raise the price of something there will be less of it demanded.

Lower taxes and regulation=Rising wages.

To get growth in hourly earnings you need two things:

1. A tight labor (i.e. fewer people not working)
2. Employer optimism about demand

It's pretty clear that around 2017 something changed from the previous 8 years. My strong guess is that it was the election of a government that promised to lower corporate taxes and reduce regulatory burden. Any other guesses?

Want Lower Prices? Reduce Government Involvement.

Think medical care is getting too expensive? How about the cost of college? These are both categories in which the government is heavily involved and which get lots of government subsidies.
Now let's compare those to the costs of categories where the government is not as involved and where the free market generally sets prices. Huh. All of these have inflation adjusted decreases in price.
Huh. 

Income is Inversely Related to Unwed Births

Mark Perry has looked at the rather strong inverse correlation between having unwed births and household income. Clearly, the presence of a spouse adds to household income, so if you don't want to be poor, it's a bad idea to have children without marriage. Liberals, of course, fight this analysis because it does not fit with their conviction that racial discrimination by others is what keeps you from earning more. 

Educational Gaps Do Not Respond to Massive Government Spending

In a new paper researchers document that after 50 years of massive spending programs"gaps in achievement between the haves and have-nots are mostly unchanged over the past half century."
So why would you expect even more money to "solve" this problem? Isn't it more likely that there is something ingrained genetically or behaviorally that won't be erased by more of the same approach? 

Soak the Rich. Lower Marginal Tax Rates

The slogan Make The Rich (or the Tippy Top earners, to quote the au currant Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez) pay their Fair Share is repeated over and over again. But if that were your objective,  historical data (I know, not as persuasive as Feelings) would suggest that you do just the opposite of  what the Democrats want to do -- i.e. raise marginal rates of taxation. Would they really be happier going back to 1960 when the top 0.5% paid far less of the income taxes collected?

People Migrate Both To the US and Within It to Maximize Earning Potential

Just as people migrate from California, Illinois, Connecticut and New York to states like Florida, Texas and Arizona where they can earn more and be taxed less, so do ambitious people from foreign countries migrate to the US in order to maximize their earning potential. Asian countries in particular are suffering a "brain drain" of their most talented individuals. 

High Marginal Tax Rates Do Not Generate More Tax Revenue

The current media darling , Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, was on TV yesterday telling Anderson Cooper that she would pay for all her lavish spending plans with higher tax rates on the "tippy-top" earners (didn't we used to mock Valley Girls?). But reality (as opposed to whatever is playing in AOC's head) tells us that revenues are not affected much by what the top marginal rate is. So what would be the point of a higher top tax rate? Other than to pander to people who are just as ignorant as you.