Silicon Valley Redneck

Getting it even more wronger

Via Insty: Matt Yglesias proposes fixing middle-class retirement savings.

By making the middle class pay more into Social Security.  Or forcibly collectivizing retirement savings into government-run pension plans.  With special extra mandatory savings.

(Wait, hasn't that idea been bouncing around Sacramento lately?  Force most private-sector workers to pay into CALPERS, ostensibly so their retirement will be taken care of, but mainly as a temporary bailout for the underfunded government pension plan?)

Here's the thing: the past couple of decades, this country has had a severe case of malinvestment.  And: it isn't the little guys, with their own money, doing it.  Large-scale malinvestment happens when you have a small number of fund managers deciding how to invest vast amounts of other people's wealth, with an incentive system that separates risk from reward.  (See also: CALPERS investing in the big Sand Hill Road venture-capital firms.  And losing.  Further: politically-motivated investment decisions based on social engineering rather than sound money management.)

Officially abolishing private investment decisions and handing everything over to the same damn idiots who brought us the dot-com bubble, the subprime-mortgage bubble, the insolvent state pension funds, and negative real returns on Treasury bills... yeah, that's great public policy.

And then there's this: I haven't been able to save anything toward my retirement lately - even if there were any positive-return investments available to non-insiders - because I don't have the money available.  If the Feds weren't "borrowing" (at a negative real interest rate) sixteen-point-mumble percent of every damn dollar I earn, I'd have cash available for investing in stocks, building up my own business, or otherwise making preparations for a better future. 

And I'd be making my own decisions, with my own little bit of money.  If I screw up my retirement planning, it affects me and a few other people.  If the central planners screw up....

Getting it exactly backward

Here's this, from MoDo:

The job of the former community organizer and self-styled uniter is to somehow get this dunderheaded Congress, which is mind-bendingly awful, to do the stuff he wants them to do.

Bzzt!  No, his job is to take care that the Laws be faithfully executed.

Making domestic policy is exactly nowhere in the President's job description.  To the extent that the making of domestic policy at the national level is authorized at all, that job is assigned to Congress.

The President is responsible for carrying out the policies made by Congress.  That's what "executive" means.

Presenting the temporary chief exec with a kingly crown both doesn't work and is extremely dangerous.

Yeah, this makes lots of sense.

Among the pre-written Demands For Government Action is a perennial favorite: we should require loaded-chamber indicators on all guns!

Um.

Do the people who keep proposing this have any clue at all what they're talking about*?

A loaded-chamber indicator is a subtle little thing, intended to provide a properly-trained user with reassurance that the weapon is indeed ready to go bang when needed.

It's not something that shouts out to the unaware, "DANGER!  This gun is loaded!**"  (Imagine a revolver, with six such voices calling out simultaneously.  Or asynchronously.)

If you've had appropriate training, and are familiar with the particular weapon, the loaded-chamber indicator is useful, in specific circumstances... but it does not in any way prevent negligent discharges.

If you aren't proficient with the weapon in question, the loaded-chamber indicator is of no use whatsoever.

And... this is now being pushed in response to intentional misuse of a weapon.  ("If only he'd known it was loaded!  Maybe then he wouldn't have kept on pointing it at people, one after another, and pulling the trigger!")

* No.

** Though, if they did work like that, it could alert bystanders, after the fashion of belling the cat.  It would also make life more interesting for cops, what with their guns constantly shouting out a warning to evildoers.

The real trickle-down economics

Spotted on Yahoo:

The Federal Reserve needs to do more to keep money flowing through the economy because the recovery hasn't been forceful enough, Chicago Fed President Charles Evans, a known backer of additional easing, indicated Monday.

Yeah.

Dude, the high-level capital markets are saturated.  Governments and large financial institutions are already borrowing at negative real interest rates.  Banks don't want more money - or at least they don't want it enough to pay more than a pathetic fraction of a percent interest on deposits.

In aeronautics, this is called a stall, and continuing to haul back on the stick is called pilot error.

In politics, allowing people to keep more of their earnings in the hope that they'll spend it on things they want is sneeringly called "trickle-down economics."

What then shall we call a policy of shovelling money into governments and banks, in the hope that it will somehow end up on Main Street?  And what shall we call it when its only results are to drive up our collective debt and drive down the value of our retirement savings, and its proponents insist that the only possible course of action is more of the same?

Incompitude

A small-businessman of my acquaintance (no, not me) recently spent a couple of days on the phone with sundry representatives of a bank which, on advice of my parrot, I will not name, but refer to only as "Hell's Cargo."

SB has personal checking and credit-card accounts, and business checking and credit-card accounts, with HC.

The adventure began when he attempted to use HC's on-line banking system to transfer funds from business checking to business credit card.  (Apparently the business credit card is more of a debit card, or a prepaid credit card, or some such deal.  My own business credit card is a real credit card, but then I'm not dealing with Hell's Cargo.)

He set things up, and clicked the magic button.  The specified funds promptly evaporated from business checking, but, a few minutes later, had not materialized in business credit card.

Well, oops.  He'd selected the wrong destination, and moved the funds to his personal credit card account instead.  Except... that account hadn't been credited yet, either.

And so, SB called HC, and found himself conversing with an array of HC Customer Service Representatives.  As I understand it, the multi-day conversation went something like this:

SB: Hi.  I accidentally transferred some funds from my business checking account to my personal credit card account, and I need to get the money into my business credit card account so I can place an order before the noon cutoff.

CSR1: I can't do that.  The money isn't in your personal credit card account yet.

SB: Yes, I was wondering about that too.

CSR1: It will take one to three days for the transaction to post.

SB: But the money left my checking account instantly.

CSR1: And it will take one to three days to arrive at your credit card account.

SB: How's that?

CSR2: Sir, the funds were promptly loaded into an armored car in Wells, Maine.

CSR3: And are en route to your credit card account in Mitchell, South Dakota.

CSR1: When the armored car arrives and the funds are verified, your account will be credited.

SB: I'm on a deadline here.  Can we just change the destination from personal credit card to business credit card?

CSR4: It will take one to three days to arrive at your credit card account.

SB: Can we cancel the transfer and start over?

CSR5: Sir, the funds are already on the armored car.

CSR4: Your personal credit card account will be credited in one to three days.

CSR1: After which, we can reverse the transfer.

CSR3: And the funds will be returned to your checking account in one to three days.

CSR2: After which, you can transfer the funds to your business credit card account.

CSR6: Which will take one to three days.

All of which is just great for a small business.  Hey, the company's entire supply of working capital is going for a ride on the Gordian roller-coaster, so SB might as well just take the rest of the week off, right?

And I have to wonder how HC gets away with helping itself to use of its customers' money during the 1-3 days it takes to process an intra-bank transfer.  (No, I don't really wonder.  It's called "regulatory capture.")

Doonesbury logic

1. All these years we haven't checked voter IDs nor scrutinized registration lists, we haven't seen any voter fraud!
2. Therefore, there's never been any!!
3. Therefore, any attempt to detect or prevent voter fraud can only be RAAAACIST!!!

That does sum up this week's theme, right?

Let's hear it for the Supreme Court!

Yes, our wonderful SCOTUS has ruled that you - yes, you, Mr. or Ms. Unemployed and Broke American - can be compelled to pay hundreds of dollars a month to Big Finance for the privilege of breathing.  And!  While you can't legally be penalized for non-compliance, you can be taxed for non-compliance.  Even if you have no income.  How this doesn't fall under the "capitation or other direct tax" clause escapes me, but apparently it's allowed by the general taxation power (which is only to be found in the Special Edition of the E Plebnista*, along with the general police power and the President's power to declare war).

* Which is kept locked away in an ornate trunk, safe from the prying eyes of the unworthy.

A grand case of the stupids

This story, much linked of late, reports that on yet another underperforming "green jobs" program:

A $38.6 billion loan guarantee program that the Obama administration promised would create or save 65,000 jobs has created just a few thousand jobs two years after it began, government records show.

The program — designed to jump-start the nation’s clean technology industry by giving energy companies access to low-cost, government-backed loans — has directly created 3,545 new, permanent jobs after giving out almost half the allocated amount, according to Energy Department tallies.

But wait!

Suppose it actually did what it says on the label: "created or saved" 65,000 jobs.

It would still be costing $594,000 per job "created or saved."  And for how long would those jobs exist?  Just until the subsidy ran out?  Two years?  Six months?

Yeah, yeah: it's not a direct subsidy, just a loan guarantee that puts the taxpayers on the hook in the event that these ventures fail.  How likely is that?  Or is that even considered a legitimate question?

 

The stupidity-enrichment centrifuges must be working overtime

Following links from TSM this morning, I arrived at this tale of fire extinguishers, and the banishment thereof from English apartment buildings (excuse me, blocks of flats).

Notable quotables:

Dorset Fire and Rescue defended the move, saying: 'Obviously, in some cases, an extinguisher could come in useful but, with new building regulations, every escape route should be completely fireproof.'

Yup.  Right up until someone actually moves into the building and piles a bunch of excess cardboard under the stairs.  Or the landlord covers up damaged carpet with incompletely-fireproof throw rugs.

The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents backed their removal because different extinguishers should be used on different types of fire.

Riiiight.  And those cheap 1A; 10B:C extinguishers I keep scattered around my house would be totally inappropriate for use on a flaming block of magnesium (or, for that matter, uranium), for which you'd want a D extinguisher.  For anything you're likely to encounter in a residential setting, though, the basic multi-purpose extinguishers are just fine.

Your politicians at work!

California may not have a budget, but that could never stop our esteemed state legislature from pursuing higher priorities.  Like, say, mandating noisier cars.

Yup.  Makes lotsa sense.

Oh, and the beneficiaries of this wouldn't so much be the 116,000 blind people... more the vast number of idiots who can see, but who don't bother looking where they're going before wandering in front of cars.

If we're intent on creating Nerfworld, why not just mandate Nerf cars?