Category Archives: Business

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society

That Terrible Pollutant, CO2

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…allows trees to get by on less water. Of course, this can’t possibly be allowed to be good news:

The immense volume of water that trees pull out of the ground winds up in the atmosphere, helping supply moisture to farming areas downwind of forests. So if trees use less water, that could ultimately mean less rain for thirsty crops in at least some regions of the world.

It could mean lots of things — good, bad and indifferent — and the vast majority of them unpredictable, given the non-linear nature of the equations and our lack of understanding of the complexity of all the interactions, which is why it’s crazy to be attempting to make costly public policy on the presumption that Carbon Is Evil.

Business, Economics, Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

Delaying College

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Some thoughts (mostly in comments):

The idea of going to a theme park, on your parents’ dime, with fashionable political fear, having undertaken no scholarly preparation…every single thing about this enterprise seemed wrong.

And expensive and destructive. We have a generation that’s putting off home buying and starting a family because they wasted tens of thousands on either useless degrees or (worse yet) never graduated at all.

Business, Economics, Health, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

The Panicked Democrats

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…of ObamaCare:

Now a central tenet of the fundamentally flawed law, the employer mandate, is collapsing. What ever will Democrats do?

In a word: panic.

Actually, panic and break the law. The unambiguous start date for Obamacare’s employer mandate, according to Section 1513, is the “months beginning after Dec. 31, 2013.” With the delay, however, President Obama has declared that he is not bound by mere law. All he is missing are mirrored sunglasses and a big military hat.

Obamacare’s employer mandate is a microcosm of liberalism itself. What may sound good at first ends up harming the most vulnerable among us. Businesses that dare to provide jobs to 50 or more employees face steep fines unless they provide expensive government-sanctioned health insurance. Because Obamacare now defines 30 hours a week to be full time, the result is entirely predictable: Businesses are laying off workers and cutting back work hours.

Gee, if only someone who understood economics, human nature and incentives had predicted this?

Oh, wait.