You Gotta Live

The "cost of living increase" was a brilliant scam to disguise the insidious effects of inflation.  The powers that be convinced the masses that each year they had to work harder and get bigger raises just to maintain their standard of living.
That flies in the face of common sense. Every year we come up with more efficient ways to build better products. Technology improves, allowing us to make more goods more quickly while consuming fewer resources and taking less working hours. According to the laws of supply and demand that means the consumer should enjoy more and cheaper goods.
That was the result during the agricultural revolution and the industrial revolution, where food and goods became cheaper and more plentiful. Why is that not the case today? Because the government intercepts these gains.  By printing more money to finance deficit spending, they create inflationary pressure causing prices to rise.
In some cases like the tech field, the downward pressure of innovation is able to overcome inflationary pressures, but in other areas that are more stagnant (notably oil and food) we see prices continue to rise.
This is not the "cost of living" it is the cost of inflation created by government debt and the working class bears the burden most of all. The sooner people realize there is no free lunch the sooner we can work to change this pattern and return the fruits of progress to the People.

Government Motors Wins Again

Let's recap, shall we?  Taxpayers were tapped to provide bailout money to cover for GM's poor decision making.  Then bondholders and pensioners were pinched to cover for GM's unsustainable union contracts (and potentially as a political "thank you" from the previous election).  Then taxpayers were hit up again to subsidize the Volt program specifically, whether they wanted to pay for an electric car or not.  After all of this, we wind up with a car that still costs about $10k more than its target market and randomly catches on fire.  Da Komrade, the system is working fine!

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-29/gm-s-volt-battery-fires-threaten-to-knock-moon-shot-off-target.html

Bad, Productivity! Bad!

Are Workers Too Productive?

Increased productivity is exhausting the workers?  Yet the source of the increase in productivity is tools which multiply the effects of their labor... which creates more output for the same effort. Really?  Yeah, that doesn't quite jive when you think about it...

You can find similar doom-and-gloom predictions in historical documents from the agricultural revolution and the industrial revolution (and I'll bet all the way back to the Bronze Age "Woodcutters will be WAAAAY too productive!"). Times of change often result in displaced workers, which eventually frees up enough people to shift into new or expanding industries. Productivity in one area or another may create saturation in that particular market, but I can't believe that we've exhausted the capacity of human demand. First, that doesn't mesh well with accusations of "boundless capitalist greed" and it also conveniently ignores large parts of the world where people's wants and needs for goods and services are certainly not being met.

The big factor here is globalization. Localized industries (like retail and other services) remain little changed, while easily transferred industries (like manufacturing and export) shift to developing countries. But with 15% annual salary growth in India, how long do you think it will remain profitable to shift jobs there? The short term impacts are unsettling, but the long term result will be more countries with populations that produce things that we want and that want things we produce. The alternative is to condemn entire nations of people to living in squalor and subsisting on handouts: much better to allow them the dignity of work.

Grading Solyndra on the Adoption Curve

So Solyndra goes bankrupt and the taxpayer is left holding the bag, to the tune of five-hundred million dollars ($500,000,000).  This really isn't a surprise and is a stellar example of why the free market, rather than government, is much better suited to speculative investment.  This is especially true in the case of technology.  Now, I'm a dollars and sense kind of guy, and I'll adopt "green" technologies when it makes sense.  Kinda like the commercial where all these folks are badgering this guy to "save the planet" and finally the technician says "The money you save on the washer will pay for the drier" and the guy says "Why didn't you say that in the first place?"

For example, ten years ago I looked at hybrids and there was just no way; they were too expensive.  Five years ago I looked again and I actually considered it; but the numbers still didn't quite work out.  I imagine in a few years the return on investment will be there and I'll buy some sort of low fuel consumption vehicle.  Until then, I'll keep driving my 27 mpg sedan.

This is known as the technology adoption curve:















Full Size Version

Once something becomes indisputably efficient and easy to adopt, it becomes mainstream and the majority of consumers buy it.  Until then, people buy the technology for other reasons: because it's "cool" or a status symbol, they like "new" things or because they want to make an investment (and possibly make a profit).

Those early adopters can afford to throw money away, and it's their choice to do so.  However, when government gets into the game it makes ALL of us into early adopters, whether we want to or not, whether we can afford it or not.  This sort of "venture cronyism" is a bad parody of its free-market equivalent.

I accept that businesses fail.  That doesn't bother me.  What makes me mad is that someone else forced me to cover a throw of the dice and they came out snake-eyes.