Tuesday, March 12, 2013

'Cash for Clunkers' Killed Jobs, Hurt the Environment

I wanted to write a piece about common sense.  It seems that there was somebody who posted something to the effect that a liberal guy somewhere ridiculed the concept of common sense.  Actually took pride in not having any common sense.  I don't have that link, sorry.  Can't find it either, sorry again.

So, I researched such concepts as "there's no such thing as a free lunch" and "supply and demand".  Incidentally, the law of supply and demand predicts that health care prices will go up.  It was promised to be the opposite.  After all, it is called the "Affordable Care Act".    Common sense would tell you, if you considered common sense to be a real thing, that this price increase is going to happen.  That's because 30 million new entrants into the health care market will have to vie for the supply that will essentially remain the same.  More demand and the same supply equals higher prices.  So much for affordability.

No, the left is trying to sell the idea that there really is a free lunch, or that there's nothing to this concept of common sense.  I'd say the latter is postmodern philosophy.  For, if there's no truth, say the postmodernists, then there's no common sense either.  No common sense means no "law of supply and demand".  No such thing as a "law of supply and demand" means free healthcare for all!  Yay!  Or, if that's not the case, then the rich will pay for it.  But that contradicts the "no such thing as a free lunch" postulate and we are all back at square one.  Never mind!  For if the rich pay for it, this will have consequences of some kind that will filter back to you, and you will have to pay one way or another.

We can examine recent history with this administration, with all their free lunches.  There was the "cash for clunkers" program for one.  It turns out to have had hidden costs.  What a revelation!  It was all supposed to be a "win-win-win" kind of a deal.  Turns out, it wasn't all without cost.  It sent the prices of cars up, since the supply of good used cars went down.  Perfectly serviceable used cars were taken out of the system for this so-called win-win-win proposition.  The law of supply and demand kicked in, and voila!  Higher used car prices.  I know that is true since I bought a used van almost a couple years ago.  Before that I sold my own used truck for a cheaper price than I should have.  I failed to take note of the "cash for clunkers" had done to the market.  I sold too cheap.  It cost me real money in that exchange.  It should not have, and it is my fault.  But that doesn't make "cash for clunkers" blameless.

The reason I wanted to write about common sense is that I think there is a lot less of it these days.  Maybe part of that is because the left has drilled it out of our brains and drilled in this postmodern philosophy.  That enables them to more easily sell these foolish ideas of theirs, like 'cash for clunkers" and Obamacare.

It goes much further than these silly programs.  We are heading for a crack-up because the left has too many people believing that you can spend and borrow your way to prosperity.  The spending is being supported by deficit spending which would not be possible if the dollar's reserve status no longer existed.  In order to protect the reserve status requires a force of arms which costs money, but this administration doesn't want to spend money on that.  It also means spilling blood from time to time, but they don't want that either.  Common sense requires that you consider the true costs of your choices, but the left's insistence upon believing in free lunches has them convinced that deficit spending can go on forever.  Or, if even it can't, then they can tax the rich to pay for their schemes.  But that has hidden costs too.

One way or another, reality will catch up to them, and by extension, us.  That's common sense.


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