David McElroy

A commission investigating U.S. wartime spending over the last decade estimates that the federal government has wasted $60 billion in Iraq and Afghanistan due to “lax oversight of contractors, poor planning and payoffs to warlords and insurgents.” Is there a single person who’s surprised at this?

The Associated Press got an advance copy of the report Tuesday from the Commission on Wartime Contracting, but it will be public Wednesday. As disgusting as it is, I just find myself wondering why commissions bother to investigate such things. This happens with pretty much every government-run project of any sort, doesn’t it? Except for some super-scrupulous manager in a fairly small local state office, it’s almost impossible to stop it from happening.

Why can’t we stop it? Simple. There’s no incentive to stop it. When bureaucrats are in the middle of spending money — especially for what counts as a “crisis” — there are no brakes on the system. They simply spend the money and do the accounting later. It’s always this way. It can’t be any other way, because they have no incentive to stop.

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It’s sometimes hard to say whether economic ignorance is more severe among the poor and uneducated or the rich and overeducated.

We recently had Warren Buffet issue a call to raise taxes on wealthy people such as himself in this country. (As I pointed out then, Buffet is welcome to donate his own money, but for some reason, that’s not the route he’s taking.) Now some of the elite of Europe’s rich are getting in on the act, too, as various wealthy people in a number of countries are calling for their taxes to be raised.

A German group is proposing that wealthy people pay a special 5 percent wealth tax for two years. Does anyone sane think it would stop at two years?

Why is it that these people are being treated as sacrificial when they’re actually demanding that other people have their money confiscated? If these people believe they owe their money to their fellow citizens, they’re perfectly capable of voluntarily turning over every bit of their money. Instead, they’re demanding that the state force other people to turn over their money.

Anyone who believes that taxing the rich — however you define that group — will end the coercive state’s economic problems is delusional. What’s more, it’s wrong.

I’m not among the rich. I’d like to be, but I’m not. However, they don’t owe me anything. They have no responsibility to subsidize the lives of the rest of us. Taxation is a moral evil. Progressive taxation — which simply means that you are penalized at an even higher rate if you’re successful — is both evil and stupid.

There’s tremendous pressure in society to conform to what everyone else wants and expects. That might seem like a good thing or a bad thing, depending on your temperament and values. Are you a “conformity enforcer” or a “diversity generator”?

If you drove down my street, you’d have a pretty good indication that the people in one particular house aren’t conformers. While pretty much every other home on the street has closely cropped shrubs like something out of a landscaping magazine, this house has bushes that have been allowed to grow up almost to the roof of the second floor.

The yard is carefully kept and there’s a lot of other greenery in a side garden, so it’s obvious that this is intentional, not just a matter of being too lazy to cut shrubs. Is this a good thing or an eyesore?

It depends on your point of view. Personally, I don’t think I’d want my bushes that high, at least not with such a traditional style of architecture, but it doesn’t bother me in the least. I’ve talked to a couple of people on the street, though, who find it nothing short of scandalous.

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