Cheney finally has a heart

Dick Cheney has got a new heart.  Liberal progressives would uniformly tell you it was his first one ever.  However, due to Cheney's age, the surgery on the former VP's ticker has opened up the debate about whether age should play a factor in determining eligibility to receive a transplant of any kind.  After all, it only makes sense that someone who is 95 years old (not Cheney, he's 71) to not get a new heart if someone who is say 31 is waiting as well.

That is a valid point but there are other considerations, like perhaps wealth.  Or perhaps, importance to the country.  For example, if the choice is between a decorated astronaut receiving a heart and circus clown, my vote is for the astronaut.  The point is when you look at a supply and demand curve and the supply cannot meet the total demand at a given price, there will be a shortage of supply.  That's Economics 101.  When you are in a shortage situation the resolution is that at a given price, demand exceeds supply.  Economists default to thinking about price in terms of money.

Why this Obamacare thing won't work

Sometimes in the summer I drive out to the airport and watch the planes land. There's a Wendy's on one of the main streets that runs past the end of one of the runways, and when the wind is coming from the right direction many of the planes fly in over the gas station next to the restaurant. They're so low you would swear you could touch the landing gear. You can stand directly in the flight path and watch as a 747 flies perhaps 40 feet or so over head as it approaches the runway. On one such occasion, I recall marvelling how a bunch of moving and inert parts could work together in such harmony as to seemingly defy the laws of gravity. That same marvelling and sense of wonder is what so many seem to have invested in the health care bill to be signed into law today by the President.

Saturday Learning Series - Supply and Demand

Today's Saturday Learning Series is about understanding basic supply and demand - a fundamental concept in basic economics.

A lot of the reason for my conservatism (not all of it, by any strech) is economics-based. It seems only right that I take the opportunity of the Saturday Learning Series, to promte discussion on this topic, which I haven't really done yet.

Basic economics - let's hope the White House gets a look at these Youtube videos on the subject - simplified supply and demand explanations for the economics neophyte.

Rather than

The simple basics;

And a little more detailed look

Part 1:



Part 2:

Michael Moore - out of touch on GM.

To no one's surprise now, GM made it official and declared bankruptcy today. More on that in another post. For now I'd like to concentrate on the miracle that is Michael Moore.

Michael Moore, crocodile tears flowing, is calling for the Government Motors to arise from the ashes to build mass transit vehicle. What these green socialist forget to consider is that you can't mandate behavior. If people want to drive cars, it won't matter how amazing Government Motors could become at building zero emission ultra sleek buses with Utopia-on-board, people won't ride in them. Cities will buy them if they have no alternative and they are cost competitive. But consumers, the engine of the economy, will continue to buy cars. They'll just be buying more Japanese cars. And maybe some Korean, Italian, German, Chinese and Swedish cars thrown in to boot. But they won't ride buses.

Why? The same reason they don't ride them today. They're cramped, they're uncomfortable, they don't have the flexibility of schedule that is needed in a free society. America, is still the land of the free isn't it? If someone wants to drive down to the corner store to buy a pack of cigarettes they're still allowed to do so, right? Given that choice or the option to take a bus where smoking is definitely not allowed (I'm a non-smoker by the way), what do you think America is going to choose?

Apparently Michael Moore knows better. And he's pretty happy about it;

It is with sad irony that the company which invented "planned obsolescence" -- the decision to build cars that would fall apart after a few years so that the customer would then have to buy a new one -- has now made itself obsolete. It refused to build automobiles that the public wanted, cars that got great gas mileage, were as safe as they could be, and were exceedingly comfortable to drive. Oh -- and that wouldn't start falling apart after two years. GM stubbornly fought environmental and safety regulations. Its executives arrogantly ignored the "inferior" Japanese and German cars, cars which would become the gold standard for automobile buyers. And it was hell-bent on punishing its unionized workforce, lopping off thousands of workers for no good reason other than to "improve" the short-term bottom line of the corporation. Beginning in the 1980s, when GM was posting record profits, it moved countless jobs to Mexico and elsewhere, thus destroying the lives of tens of thousands of hard-working Americans. The glaring stupidity of this policy was that, when they
eliminated the income of so many middle class families, who did they think was going to be able to afford to buy their cars? History will record this blunder in the same way it now writes about the French building the Maginot Line or how the Romans cluelessly poisoned their own water system with lethal lead in its pipes.

...

But you and I and the rest of America now own a car company! I know, I know -- who on earth wants to run a car company? Who among us wants $50 billion of our tax dollars thrown down the rat hole of still trying to save GM? Let's be clear about this: The only way to save GM is to kill GM. Saving our precious industrial infrastructure, though, is another matter and must be a top priority. If we allow the shutting down and tearing down of our auto plants, we will sorely wish we still had them when we realize that those factories could have built the alternative energy systems we now desperately need. And when we realize that the best way to transport ourselves is on light rail and bullet trains and cleaner buses, how will we do this if we've allowed our industrial capacity and its skilled workforce to disappear?

Let's just be glad this guy is not in charge. Supply does not drive the marketplace. Demand does. Supply results from Demand.

His hatred of the auto industry and bias has been on display since Roger & Me. To see it now, when so many people are scared and in financial trouble and to see it used to promote an agenda, particularly one that won't work, is truly disgusting.