Archives for October 2011

We see plenty of unemployed people with advanced educational degrees today. Want to meet someone with a master’s in English or art? Check behind the counter at Starbuck’s. Those people are pretty angry.

On the other hand, we have companies begging for highly skilled workers who are nowhere to be found. Why is there such a disconnect between what people are trained for and what the market needs?

Some would say it’s a market failure and that we need some kind of system to co-ordinate job training and education. Instead, it’s what happens when you let government rig the incentive structure, even with the best of intentions.

For something like 60 years, government has made it easy to go to college and has taught people that a college degree is the ticket to a good life. Going to college to get an undergraduate degree (or more) has been subsidized and propagandized, so that’s what people do — far out of proportion to its necessity.

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If you happen to be in the Australian state of Victoria, be sure you don’t insult the politician in charge of gambling. (Or his staff, either.) It might just cost you $12,000 under a new law set to pass.

Politicians are some of the most thin-skinned people I’ve ever known. It’s not true of all of them, but many of them believe there’s one set of rules for you, but another set for themselves. They’re free to say whatever they want about you, but heaven help you if you speak ill of them.

The latest example of this double standard comes from Victoria, where the state government is making it a crime to insult the state gambling officials. According to an Australian newspaper, a spokeswoman for the government explains the move this way:

“This provision protects officers of the gambling regulator from bullying or intimidation when exercising powers at the direction of the Minister for Gaming. The minister can look after himself, but does not believe that those working on his behalf should have to put up with harassment.”

Let’s be honest. If you believe in free speech, you believe people have the right to say what they want, even if others find it insulting. If you believe in legal limits to free speech, you don’t believe in real free speech. I want to hold people responsible for fraud or libel their words might be used for, but stopping people from simply insulting others is wrong. That isn’t what free societies do.

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I already knew Warren Buffet was a fool, but I didn’t know until now that he’s also a hypocrite. It turns out that the man who begs the U.S. government to raise taxes on wealthy folks has an ongoing tax liability at the company he runs. Berkshire Hathaway’s own auditors believe the company owes the IRS more than a billion dollars in unpaid taxes.

The grisly facts of Buffet’s situation are laid out in an article by a website run by Americans for Limited Government. It’s not a pretty picture if you’ve been a fan of the Wizard of Omaha. (Download the PDF of the Berkshire Hathaway annual report to see the specifics on Page 54.)

In Buffet’s opinion piece for the New York Times, he said:

“Most [wealthy people] wouldn’t mind being told to pay more in taxes as well, particularly when so many of their fellow citizens are truly suffering.”

It sounds to me as though Buffet is less worried about the suffering of his “fellow citizens” than he is in influencing politics. As I’ve pointed out before, Buffet is very welcome to contribute his own money to pay for big government if he’d like. He’s even more welcome to pay up the billion dollars that his company’s own auditors believe the company is likely going to owe. Since he’s not doing either of these, it suggests something else.

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