Voice For Liberty

Category: Capitalism

  • What’s wrong with Charles and David Koch?

    In a column on his website, Fran Tarkenton wonders why Charles and David Koch are the targets of so much criticism. He writes: “So why do we vilify people who represent the greatness of America? Is it just because they have different political beliefs? It’s time to stop demonizing people who do things the right way and generate tremendous wealth — and value to all Americans. Those are the people we should celebrate, whether you agree with their politics or not! If we want to preserve America as the great place it is, we need more entrepreneurs, more innovators — and a free market to foster them.”

    Tarkenton writes of “how poisonous our political atmosphere is.” Here’s an example: A common complaint by leftists is that Wall Street is overly focused on short-term results — the quarterly profit numbers — rather than on long-term investment and growth. Koch Industries, however, is privately held, and in a recent Wichita Eagle article, a company official said “[private ownership] allows us to focus on the long term as opposed to quarter to quarter.” You’d think liberals would be happy with a company that can afford to ignore the short term and focus on the long term, but instead they criticize Koch for not being public, wondering what it is the company has to hide.

    By the way, this focus on the long term may be why since 1960 the value of Koch Industries has increased faster than the value of the broad-based S&P index of the 500 largest U.S. Companies, by a factor of 16 times.

    Tarkenton several times mentions Charles and David Koch’s fight against cronyism. Contrast this with General Electric, a company headed by a friend of President Obama. A report from ProPublica shows some of the lengths that GE goes to avoid paying taxes: “General Electric’s tax department is famous for inventing ways to pay Uncle Sam less. So it should come as no surprise that its CEO, Jeff Immelt, is in the crosshairs as the new chairman of the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. … GE’s tax department is well known for its size, skill and hiring of former government officials. About 20 years ago, GE’s tax employees totaled a few hundred and were decentralized. Today, there are almost 1,000. The department’s strong suit? Reducing the taxes GE reports for earnings purposes.”

    A New York Times article explains the lengths that GE went to to protect a tax loophole that it benefited from. The tax system is a major vehicle for the implementation of cronyism.

    The shelters are so crucial to G.E.’s bottom line that when Congress threatened to let the most lucrative one expire in 2008, the company came out in full force. G.E. officials worked with dozens of financial companies to send letters to Congress and hired a bevy of outside lobbyists.

    The head of its tax team, Mr. Samuels, met with Representative Charles B. Rangel, then chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, which would decide the fate of the tax break. As he sat with the committee’s staff members outside Mr. Rangel’s office, Mr. Samuels dropped to his knee and pretended to beg for the provision to be extended — a flourish made in jest, he said through a spokeswoman.

    That day, Mr. Rangel reversed his opposition to the tax break, according to other Democrats on the committee.

    The following month, Mr. Rangel and Mr. Immelt stood together at St. Nicholas Park in Harlem as G.E. announced that its foundation had awarded $30 million to New York City schools, including $11 million to benefit various schools in Mr. Rangel’s district.

    Other companies that are revered by the political left play the game too. A report from the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center explained how Starbucks manipulated the tax system to its benefit: “By shifting paper profits among divisions, firms can reduce their overall tax liability. Such efforts will lead to unnecessary accounting and compliance costs for firms and unnecessary enforcement costs for the IRS. For example, The New York Times reported that Starbucks successfully added a provision to the bill that deems coffee roasting, but not coffee preparation, a manufacturing activity. This provision gives Starbucks a tax incentive to increase the bean prices charged to its retail outlets, making the roasting part of the business more profitable and the retail part of the business less profitable. Such efforts could decrease Starbucks’s tax bill, but serve no other discernable public policy purpose.”

    What’s Wrong with the Koch Brothers?
    By Fran Tarkenton

    To succeed in football and in business, I worked with a lot of people. I learned how to figure out who the great people were, people who were doing the right thing, people with great ethics who I could trust and learn a lot from. I also learned how to identify people who weren’t trying to do the right thing.

    It’s very important in business to be able to tell the difference, because a great mentor like Sam Walton, Bernie Marcus, or Robert Woodruff can have a monumental impact, but a bad influence can cause big problems.

    This political season, there has been one business name that has been demonized and vilified above all others: the Koch brothers, Charles and David Koch of Koch Industries. They have been demonized as right-wing zealots, and I’ve even seen the work of scholars dismissed just because their organization has some connection to the Koch brothers.

    The kneejerk attacks and venom that comes out whenever their names are even mentioned really bothers me, and it’s a sign of just how poisonous our political atmosphere is. I don’t know the Koch brothers personally, but I know people who do, and who know them well. And I’ve also been able to observe the things they do, and the way they conduct themselves publicly. Everything I’m seeing and hearing tells me that these are exemplary business leaders who we should be celebrating, not attacking.

    Start by looking at how Koch Industries grew to become the juggernaut it is today. The family patriarch, Fred Koch, built the company on an innovative process he developed in the oil business. Then his sons grew the company the right way. They didn’t cozy up to the government for subsidies, handouts, or preferential treatment. Instead, they came up with great ideas that solved problems in the lives of people, ideas that provided real value. Their business empire was built on innovation, reinvention, and hard work, not cronyism. I greatly admire that! And they’ve donated millions to medical research and the arts, among other causes.

    Now, the Koch brothers are more known for the money they spend on political activities. They fund a variety of think tanks and organizations, all dedicated to promoting free market practices and small government. And that is where they are demonized and tarred and feathered by their political opponents. But from everything I have ever seen, what is remarkable is that none of their political activities are dedicated to cronyism, setting their company up for a big windfall if it wins the debate. Rather, they are advocating for more competition, reduced barriers to entry for new players, and less connection between the board room and the DC halls of power, not a special place at the table.

    The only reason for doing that is because they really believe in it. Why should we demonize people who deeply believe in something and do whatever they can to promote it? If the Koch brothers spent millions of dollars on politicians who would subsidize their products and outlaw their competitors, that would be wrong. But instead, they advocate for an end to market distortions, government interventions in the private sector, and cronyism in general. They’re not trying to get more of the government pie; they just really believe they have a vision to help America, because they love this country and the values it stands for.

    The truth is that everything we have in this country is because of entrepreneurs, large and small. From the corner store up to the most successful business people — whether conservatives like the Koch brothers, liberals like Steve Jobs at Apple, or libertarians like Jeff Bezos of Amazon — the great wealth of this country comes from people helping other people by creating value. Without value, when businesspeople are just in it for themselves and don’t care about value, only about accruing benefits to themselves, everything falls apart — including the business itself! Those who do create value are the reason we have the great society we have. Since their business began, the Koch brothers have been part of the value-creating class, not the crony class of business owners.

    So why do we vilify people who represent the greatness of America? Is it just because they have different political beliefs? It’s time to stop demonizing people who do things the right way and generate tremendous wealth — and value to all Americans. Those are the people we should celebrate, whether you agree with their politics or not!

    If we want to preserve America as the great place it is, we need more entrepreneurs, more innovators — and a free market to foster them.

    And in case you’re wondering, the Koch brothers did not approve this message.

  • Free will and government charity

    Those who call on government intervention to take care of the less fortunate and who rely on Christian teachings to support such government action, often conveniently forget that government is based on coercion, not the free will that God created us with. As P.J. O’Rourke wrote: “There is no virtue in compulsory government charity, and there is no virtue in advocating it. A politician who portrays himself as ‘caring’ and ‘sensitive’ because he wants to expand the government’s charitable programs is merely saying that he’s willing to try to do good with other people’s money. Well, who isn’t? And a voter who takes pride in supporting such programs is telling us that he’ll do good with his own money — if a gun is held to his head.” Below, Jason Karber elaborates.

    Jesus did encourage people to help the less fortunate. What I don’t recall from Sunday school is any instance where Jesus implored the government to use force to transfer resources from one group to another.

    Indeed the Christian belief system is not exclusive of free-market capitalism. Free-will in Christianity, and free markets in economies appear complimentary to me. While the citizens of government planned economies starve, the poor in the United States are threatened more by obesity than starvation. Many people who are on record as staunch free-market capitalists are generous donors of time and money on their own accord. Freedom provides better lives for everyone, and less freedom via a bigger government will ultimately reduce the quality of life for all.

    While I understand that not everyone within a political group think alike, I do chuckle a bit when the policies embraced by liberals include removing any religious ideology and prayer from public schools, while calling our leaders hypocritical for not mandating Biblical principals using public policy.

    Jason Karber

  • Charles G. Koch: Corporate cronyism harms America

    “The effects on government are equally distorting — and corrupting. Instead of protecting our liberty and property, government officials are determining where to send resources based on the political influence of their cronies. In the process, government gains even more power and the ranks of bureaucrats continue to swell.”

    The editorial in today’s Wall Street Journal by Charles G. Koch, chairman of the board and CEO of Wichita-based Koch Industries contains many powerful arguments against the rise of cronyism. The argument above is just one of many.

    In his article, Koch makes an important observation when he defines cronyism: “We have a term for this kind of collusion between business and government. It used to be known as rent-seeking. Now we call it cronyism. Rampant cronyism threatens the economic foundations that have made this the most prosperous country in the world.”

    “Rent-seeking” was always a difficult term to use and understand. It had meaning mostly to economists. But “cronyism” — everyone knows what that means. It is a harsh word, offensive to many elected officials. But we need a harsh term to accurately describe the harm caused, as Koch writes: “This growing partnership between business and government is a destructive force, undermining not just our economy and our political system, but the very foundations of our culture.”

    The entire article is available at the Wall Street Journal. Koch has also contributed other articles on this topic, see Charles G. Koch: Why Koch Industries is speaking out and Charles Koch: The importance of economic freedom.

    Charles G. Koch: Corporate Cronyism Harms America

    When businesses feed at the federal trough, they threaten public support for business and free markets.

    By Charles G. Koch

    “We didn’t build this business — somebody else did.”

    So reads a sign outside a small roadside craft store in Utah. The message is clearly tongue-in-cheek. But if it hung next to the corporate offices of some of our nation’s big financial institutions or auto makers, there would be no irony in the message at all.

    It shouldn’t surprise us that the role of American business is increasingly vilified or viewed with skepticism. In a Rasmussen poll conducted this year, 68% of voters said they “believe government and big business work together against the rest of us.”

    Businesses have failed to make the case that government policy — not business greed — has caused many of our current problems. To understand the dreadful condition of our economy, look no further than mandates such as the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac “affordable housing” quotas, directives such as the Community Reinvestment Act, and the Federal Reserve’s artificial, below-market interest-rate policy.

    Far too many businesses have been all too eager to lobby for maintaining and increasing subsidies and mandates paid by taxpayers and consumers. This growing partnership between business and government is a destructive force, undermining not just our economy and our political system, but the very foundations of our culture.

    With partisan rhetoric on the rise this election season, it’s important to remind ourselves of what the role of business in a free society really is — and even more important, what it is not.

    Continue reading at The Wall Street Journal

  • Charles Koch: The importance of economic freedom

    Charles Koch, chairman of the board and CEO of Wichita-based Koch Industries, contributes the following article on the importance of economic freedom and the harm of cronyism. Another article written by him on this topic is Charles Koch: Why Koch Industries is speaking out. Koch is also the author of the book The Science of Success: How Market-Based Management Built the World’s Largest Private Company. More about the importance of economic freedom may be found at www.economicfreedom.org, a project of the Charles Koch Institute, and also at Perspectives.

    In 1990, the year before the collapse of the Soviet Union, I attended an economic conference in Moscow.

    Like my father during his visits to the U.S.S.R. in the early 1930s, I was astonished and appalled by what I saw.

    Simple necessities, such as toilet paper, were in short supply. In fact, there was none at all in the airport bathroom stalls for fear it would be stolen. Visitors using the facilities had to request a portion of tissue from an attendant beforehand.

    When I walked into one of Moscow’s giant department stores, there was next to nothing on the shelves. For those shoppers who were lucky enough to find something they actually wanted to buy, the purchase process was maddening and time-consuming.

    Although the government provided universal healthcare, I never met anyone who wanted to stay in a Soviet hospital. Medical services might have been “free,” but the quality of care was notoriously poor.

    Reality check
    My experiences in the Soviet Union underscore why economic freedom is so important for all of us.

    Nations with the greatest degree of economic freedom tend to have citizens who are much better off in every way.

    No centralized government, no matter how big, how smart or how powerful, can effectively and efficiently control much of society in a beneficial way. On the contrary, big governments are inherently inefficient and harmful.

    And yet, the tendency of our own government here in the U.S. has been to grow bigger and bigger, controlling more and more. This is why America keeps dropping in the annual ranking of economic freedom.

    Devil’s bargain
    Citizens who over-rely on their government to do everything not only become dependent on their government, they end up having to do whatever the government demands. In the meantime, their initiative and self-respect are destroyed.

    It was President Franklin Roosevelt who said: “Continued dependence on [government support] induces a spiritual and moral disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fiber. To dole out relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit.”

    Businesses can become dependents, too. If your struggling car company wants a government bailout, you’ll probably have to build the government’s car — even if it’s a car very few people want to buy.

    Repeatedly asking for government help undermines the foundations of society by destroying initiative and responsibility. It is also a fatal blow to efficiency and corrupts the political process.

    When everyone gets something for nothing, soon no one will have anything, because no one will be producing anything.

    Cronyism
    Under the Soviet system, special traffic lanes were set aside for the sole use of officials in their limousines. This worsened driving conditions for everyone else, but those receiving favored treatment didn’t care.

    Today, many governments give special treatment to a favored few businesses that eagerly accept those favors. This is the essence of cronyism.

    Many businesses with unpopular products or inefficient production find it much easier to curry the favor of a few influential politicians or a government agency than to compete in the open market.

    After all, the government can literally guarantee customers and profitability by mandating the use of certain products, subsidizing production or providing protection from more efficient competitors.

    Cronyism enables favored companies to reap huge financial rewards, leaving the rest of us — customers and competitors alike — worse off.

    One obvious example of this involves wind farms. Most cannot turn a profit without the costly subsidies the government provides. Meanwhile, consumers and taxpayers are forced to pay an average of five times more for wind-generated electricity.

    We see far too many legislative proposals that would subsidize one form of energy over another, penalize certain emissions from one industry but not another, or place protective tariffs that hurt consumers.

    Legacies
    Karl Marx famously said: “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.”

    The result of this approach is not equality, but rather a lowering of everyone’s standards to some minimal level.

    Some people worry about the disparity of wealth in a system of economic freedom. What they don’t realize is that the same disparity exists in the least-free countries.

    The difference is who is better off.

    Under economic freedom, it is the people who do the best job of producing products and services that make people’s lives better.

    On the other hand, in a system without economic freedom, the wealthiest are the tyrants who make people’s lives miserable.

    As a result of this, the income of the poorest in the least-free countries is one-tenth of what it is in the freest.

    Elected officials are often asked what they would like as their legacy. I’m never going to run for office, but I can tell you how I would answer that question.

    I want my legacy to be greater freedom, greater prosperity and a better way of life for my family, our employees and all Americans. And I wish the same for every nation on earth.

  • Wichita-area economic development policy changes proposed

    The City of Wichita and Sedgwick County are considering a revision to their economic development policies. Instead of promoting economic freedom and a free-market approach, the proposed policy gives greater power to city bureaucrats and politicians, and is unlikely to produce the economic development that Wichita needs.

    A new feature of the proposed policy implements property tax forgiveness for speculative industrial buildings, with a formula that grants a higher percentage of tax forgiveness as building size increases. And, in a stroke of pure bureaucratic central planning, the ceilings of these buildings must be at least 28 feet high.

    The policy requires that projects have an estimated ratio of public benefits to public costs of at least 1.3 to 1, although there are factors that allow exceptions. This ratio should be met for both the city’s general fund, and its debt service fund. This — if the city actually enforces this — would be a welcome change. But within the last year, the city ignored a large negative cost-benefit ratio for the Ambassador Hotel, and instead used a positive ratio for the city’s general fund. See Fact checking the Wichita Ambassador Hotel campaign.

    Wichitans also need to realize that the “benefits” in the calculation are in the form of increased tax revenue paid to the city, county, etc. There is no consideration of actually rewarding the taxpayers that pay for — and assume the risk of — economic development incentives.

    There is also the curious focus on jobs that pay above-average wages. But what about workers who don’t have the skills to earn above-average wages? Shouldn’t they be able to benefit from the city’s economic development efforts?

    There is also the focus on exports: “A ‘Value-Added Job’ produces goods and/or services that are sold predominately outside of the MSA. Importing wealth into the community through value added jobs grows the local economy. Whereas non-value-added jobs typically re-circulate wealth within the community.” This is reminiscent of mercantilism, an economic strategy where exports are prized and imports are discouraged. It ignores the benefit that Wichitans receive from trading with themselves.

    There are also targeted industries and a list of eligible business activities.

    Clawbacks — the recovery of incentives if a company fails to live up to its agreed-to goals — are important in the new proposed policy. But the city has had clawbacks in effect, in the form of personal guarantees from TIF developers, for example. But last year the city decided not to enforce that agreement, and instead refinanced the debt at credit risk to the city.

    The record on economic development

    Earlier this year Greater Wichita Economic Development Coalition issued its annual report on its economic development activities for the year. The shows us that power of government to influence economic development is weak. In its recent press release, the organization claimed to have created 1,509 jobs in Sedgwick County during 2011. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the labor force in Sedgwick County in 2011 was 253,940 persons. So the jobs created by GWEDC’s actions amounted to 0.59 percent of the labor force. This is a very small fraction, and other economic events are likely to overwhelm these efforts.

    In his 2012 State of the City address, Brewer took credit for creating a similar percentage of jobs in Wichita.

    Rarely mentioned are the costs of creating these jobs. These costs have a negative economic impact on those who pay these costs. This means that economic activity and jobs are lost somewhere else in order to pay for the incentives.

    Also, at least some of these jobs would have been created without the efforts of GWEDC. All GWEDC should take credit for is the marginal activity that it purportedly created. Government usually claims credit for all that is good, however.

    Danger going forward

    The danger we in the Wichita area face is the overwhelming urge of politicians to be seen doing something. For example, in response to the departure of Boeing, Wichita Mayor Carl Brewer called for the community to “launch an aggressive campaign of job recruitment and retention.”

    It is likely that we will become susceptible to large-scale government interventions in an attempt to gain new jobs. Our best course would be to take steps to make Kansas and Wichita an inviting place for all firms to do business. The instinct of politicians and bureaucrats, however, is to take action, usually in the form of targeted incentives as a way to spur economic development.

    We’ve seen the disappointing results — not only with Boeing, but also in a report showing that Wichita has declined in economic performance compared to other areas.

    These targeted economic development efforts fail for several reasons. First is the knowledge problem, in that government simply does not know which companies are worthy of public investment. In the case of the Wichita and Sedgwick County policy, do we really know which industries should be targeted? Are we sure about the list of eligible business activities? Is 1.3 to 1 really the benchmark we should seek, or we be better off and have more jobs if we insisted on 1.4 to 1 or relaxed the requirement to 1.2 to 1?

    This lack of knowledge, however, does not stop governments from creating policies for the awarding of incentives. This “active investor” approach to economic development is what has led to companies escaping hundreds of millions in taxes — taxes that others have to pay. That has a harmful effect on other business, both existing and those that wish to form.

    Embracing Dynamism: The Next Phase in Kansas Economic Development Policy

    Professor Art Hall of the Center for Applied Economics at the Kansas University School of Business is critical of this approach to economic development. In his paper Embracing Dynamism: The Next Phase in Kansas Economic Development Policy, Hall quotes Alan Peters and Peter Fisher: “The most fundamental problem is that many public officials appear to believe that they can influence the course of their state and local economies through incentives and subsidies to a degree far beyond anything supported by even the most optimistic evidence. We need to begin by lowering expectations about their ability to micro-manage economic growth and making the case for a more sensible view of the role of government — providing foundations for growth through sound fiscal practices, quality public infrastructure, and good education systems — and then letting the economy take care of itself.”

    In the same paper, Hall writes this regarding “benchmarking” — the bidding wars for large employers that Wichita and other cities engage in: “Kansas can break out of the benchmarking race by developing a strategy built on embracing dynamism. Such a strategy, far from losing opportunity, can distinguish itself by building unique capabilities that create a different mix of value that can enhance the probability of long-term economic success through enhanced opportunity. Embracing dynamism can change how Kansas plays the game.”

    In making his argument, Hall cites research on the futility of chasing large employers as an economic development strategy: “Large-employer businesses have no measurable net economic effect on local economies when properly measured. To quote from the most comprehensive study: ‘The primary finding is that the location of a large firm has no measurable net economic effect on local economies when the entire dynamic of location effects is taken into account. Thus, the siting of large firms that are the target of aggressive recruitment efforts fails to create positive private sector gains and likely does not generate significant public revenue gains either.’”

    There is also substantial research that is it young firms — distinguished from small business in general — that are the engine of economic growth for the future. We can’t detect which of the young firms will blossom into major success — or even small-scale successes. The only way to nurture them is through economic policies that all companies can benefit from. Reducing tax rates is an example of such a policy. Abating taxes for specific companies through programs like IRBs and other economic development programs is an example of precisely the wrong policy.

    We need to move away from economic development based on this active investor approach. We need to advocate for policies — at Wichita City Hall, at the Sedgwick County Commission, and at the Kansas Statehouse — that lead to sustainable economic development. We need political leaders who have the wisdom to realize this, and the courage to act appropriately. Which is to say, to not act in most circumstances. Wichita and Sedgwick County are moving in the wrong direction.

  • Palmer, activist for capitalism, to speak in Wichita

    I’d like to call your attention to, and invite you to attend, a lecture next week in Wichita. The speaker is Tom G. Palmer, and he will be speaking on topics from his recent book The Morality of Capitalism.

    I met Tom last year when I spent my summer vacation attending Cato University, which Tom is director of. He is a fascinating speaker. His background includes feats such as smuggling books, photocopiers, and faxes into the Soviet Union. Currently he is Vice President for International Programs at the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, General Director of the Atlas Global Initiative for Free Trade, Peace, and Prosperity, a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute, and Director of Cato University. He travels across the world speaking on political science, public choice, civil society, and the moral, legal, and historical foundations of individual rights. His appearance in Wichita is presented by the Kansas Policy Institute.

    The Wichita event is on Wednesday May 16th, at the Hyatt Regency Hotel. A reception begins at 5:30 pm, with the presentation at 6:30 pm. He’s also appearing in Overland Park the day before.

    RSVP is requested by e-mailing James Franko at james.franko@kansaspolicy.org or by calling 316-634-0218. Or, click here to RSVP online.

    For more information and to register for these events see The Morality of Capitalism.

  • Intellectuals vs. the rest of us

    At a recent educational meeting I attended, someone asked the question: Why doesn’t everyone believe what we (most of the people attending) believe: that private property and free exchange — capitalism, in other words — are superior to government intervention and control over the economy?

    It’s question that I’ve asked at conferences I’ve attended. The most hopeful answer is ignorance. While that may seem a harsh word to use, ignorance is simply a “state of being uninformed.” That can be cured by education. This is the reason for this website. This is the reason why I and others testify in favor of free markets and against government intervention. It is the reason why John Todd gives out hundreds of copies of I, Pencil, purchased at his own expense.

    But there is another explanation, and one that is less hopeful. There is an intellectual class in our society that benefits mightily from government. This class also believes that their cause is moral, that they are anointed, as Thomas Sowell explains in The vision of the anointed: self-congratulation as a basis for social policy: “What all these highly disparate crusades have in common is their moral exaltation of the anointed above others, who are to have their very different views nullified and superseded by the views of the anointed, imposed via the power of government.”

    Murray N. Rothbard explains further the role of the intellectual class in the first chapter of For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto, titled “The Libertarian Heritage: The American Revolution and Classical Liberalism.” Since most intellectuals favor government over a market economy and work towards that end, what do the intellectuals get? “In exchange for spreading this message to the public, the new breed of intellectuals was rewarded with jobs and prestige as apologists for the New Order and as planners and regulators of the newly cartelized economy and society.”

    There it is: Planners and regulators. We have plenty of these at all levels of government, and these are prime examples of the intellectual class. Is it any wonder that the locus of centralized planning in south-central Kansas — sustainable communities — is at a government university?

    As Rothbard explains, intellectuals have cleverly altered the very meaning of words to suit their needs:

    One of the ways that the new statist intellectuals did their work was to change the meaning of old labels, and therefore to manipulate in the minds of the public the emotional connotations attached to such labels. For example, the laissez-faire libertarians had long been known as “liberals,” and the purest and most militant of them as “radicals”; they had also been known as “progressives” because they were the ones in tune with industrial progress, the spread of liberty, and the rise in living standards of consumers. The new breed of statist academics and intellectuals appropriated to themselves the words “liberal” and “progressive,” and successfully managed to tar their laissez- faire opponents with the charge of being old-fashioned, “Neanderthal,” and “reactionary.” Even the name “conservative” was pinned on the classical liberals. And, as we have seen, the new statists were able to appropriate the concept of “reason” as well.

    We see this at work in Wichita, where those who advocate for capitalism and free markets instead of government intervention are called, in the case of Wichita Mayor Carl Brewer and Wichita Eagle editorial writer Rhonda Holman, “naysayers.”

    The sad realization is that as government has extended its reach into so many areas of our lives, to advocate for liberty instead of government intervention is to oppose many things that people have accepted as commonplace or inevitable. To advocate that free people should trade voluntarily with other free people — instead of forming a plan for them — is to be dismissed as “not serious.”

    Rothbard further explains the role of intellectuals in promoting what they see as the goodness of expansive government:

    Throughout the ages, the emperor has had a series of pseudo-clothes provided for him by the nation’s intellectual caste. In past centuries, the intellectuals informed the public that the State or its rulers were divine, or at least clothed in divine authority, and therefore what might look to the naive and untutored eye as despotism, mass murder, and theft on a grand scale was only the divine working its benign and mysterious ways in the body politic. In recent decades, as the divine sanction has worn a bit threadbare, the emperor’s “court intellectuals” have spun ever more sophisticated apologia: informing the public that what the government does is for the “common good” and the “public welfare,” that the process of taxation-and-spending works through the mysterious process of the “multiplier” to keep the economy on an even keel, and that, in any case, a wide variety of governmental “services” could not possibly be performed by citizens acting voluntarily on the market or in society. All of this the libertarian denies: he sees the various apologia as fraudulent means of obtaining public support for the State’s rule, and he insists that whatever services the government actually performs could be supplied far more efficiently and far more morally by private and cooperative enterprise.

    The libertarian therefore considers one of his prime educational tasks is to spread the demystification and desanctification of the State among its hapless subjects. His task is to demonstrate repeatedly and in depth that not only the emperor but even the “democratic” State has no clothes; that all governments subsist by exploitive rule over the public; and that such rule is the reverse of objective necessity. He strives to show that the very existence of taxation and the State necessarily sets up a class division between the exploiting rulers and the exploited ruled. He seeks to show that the task of the court intellectuals who have always supported the State has ever been to weave mystification in order to induce the public to accept State rule, and that these intellectuals obtain, in return, a share in the power and pelf extracted by the rulers from their deluded subjects.

    And so the alliance between state and intellectual is formed. The intellectuals are usually rewarded quite handsomely by the state for their subservience, writes Rothbard:

    The alliance is based on a quid pro quo: on the one hand, the intellectuals spread among the masses the idea that the State and its rulers are wise, good, sometimes divine, and at the very least inevitable and better than any conceivable alternatives. In return for this panoply of ideology, the State incorporates the intellectuals as part of the ruling elite, granting them power, status, prestige, and material security. Furthermore, intellectuals are needed to staff the bureaucracy and to “plan” the economy and society.

    The “material security,” measured in dollars, can be pretty good, as shown by these examples: The Wichita city manager is paid $185,000, the Sedgwick county manager is paid $175,095, and the superintendent of the Wichita school district is paid $224,910.

  • Political cronyism has become the way

    “A society whose businesses engage in cronyism instead of serving people will not be prosperous, and in America it is clear that cronyism is becoming a more common choice,” writes Sam Patterson at EconomicFreedom.org.

    Cronyism is the practice of seeking business success through government rather than through markets. The difference is that business succeeds in the market by providing goods and services that people are willing to buy. Political cronyism, on the other hand, results in people being forced to buy from, or to otherwise involuntarily subsidize, certain business firms that have succeeded in the political arena.

    In Kansas, despite the fiscal conservatism of Kansas Governor Sam Brownback and many members of the legislature, political cronyism thrives. An example is the increased powers given to the Kansas PEAK program (Promoting Employment Across Kansas). A more recent example is the vote to extend the STAR bonds program. Both programs provide business firms a way to obtain money isolated from market forces. Instead, applicants must meet the guidelines of a government program.

    In Wichita and Sedgwick County, cronyism is firmly established as economic development policy. It’s little wonder that our policies are failing and we are losing people and income to other states.

    Cronyism Undermines the Beneficial Role of Business in Society

    By Sam Patterson

    The role that business plays in society is straightforward — businesses produce goods and services that people consider beneficial. If a business can do that while wisely using resources, it makes a profit. Successful businesses benefit society by producing goods or services which improve people’s lives, and are then rewarded with profit. Those profits enable businesses to innovate or offer more goods and services, further improving people’s lives. Businesses must cater to the needs of society or they will find that they are not rewarded with profit and may well no longer exist.

    At least, that’s how it works in a free market. There is another path for businesses to make profit other than providing valuable products. It’s called cronyism. Cronyism occurs when a business colludes with government officials to create unfair legislation and/or regulations which give them benefits they could not have otherwise obtained voluntarily.

    Continue reading at Cronyism Undermines the Beneficial Role of Business in Society.

  • Raising minimum wage not the solution

    As calls mount to raise the federal minimum wage, we need to remember that this law — as well-intentioned as it may be — is not the solution to unemployment or raising the standard of living of workers.

    The great appeal of a higher minimum wage mandated by an act of Congress is that it seems like a wonderfully magical way to increase the wellbeing of low-wage workers. Those who were earning less than the new lawful wage and keep their jobs after the increase are happy. They are grateful to the lawmakers, labor leaders, newspaper editorialists, and others who pleaded for the higher minimum wage. News stories will report their good fortune.

    That’s the visible effect of raising the minimum wage. But to understand the entire issue, we must look for the unseen effects. Milton Friedman explained in Capitalism and Freedom:

    Minimum wage laws are about as clear a case as one can find of a measure the effects of which are precisely the opposite of those intended by the men of good will who support it. Many proponents of minimum wage laws quite properly deplore extremely low rates; they regard them as a sign of poverty; and they hope, by outlawing wage rates below some specified level, to reduce poverty. In fact, insofar as minimum wage laws have any effect at all, their effect is clearly to increase poverty. The state can legislate a minimum wage rate. It can hardly require employers to hire at that minimum all who were formerly employed at wages below the minimum. … The effect of the minimum wage is therefore to make unemployment higher than it otherwise would be.

    The not-so-visible effect of the higher wage law is that demand for labor will be reduced. Those workers whose productivity, as measured by the give and take of supply and demand, lies below the new lawful wage rate are in danger of losing their jobs. The minimum wage law says if you hire someone you must pay them a certain minimum amount. The law can’t compel you to hire someone, nor can it force employers to keep workers on the payroll.

    The problem is that people lose their jobs in a dispersed manner. A few workers here; a few there. They may not know who is to blame for their situation. Newspaper and television reporters will not seek these people, as they are largely invisible, especially so in the case of the people who are not hired because of the higher minimum wage level.

    If we are truly concerned about the plight of low-wage and low-skilled workers we can face some realities and deal with them openly. The primary reality is that some people are not able to produce output that our economy values highly. These workers are not very productive. Passing a law that requires employers to pay them more doesn’t change the fact that their productivity is low. But there are ways to increase productivity.

    One way to increase workers’ productivity is through education. Unfortunately, there is ample evidence that our public education system is not producing graduates with the skills needed for well-paying jobs. But this is a problem that can be fixed.

    Another way to increase wages is to encourage more capital investment. But capital is a dirty word to liberals, as it conjures up images of rich people. But as the economist Walter E. Williams says, ask yourself this question: who earns the higher wage: a man digging a ditch with a shovel, or a man digging a ditch using a power backhoe? The difference between the two is that the man using the backhoe is more productive, although the worker using the shovel is undoubtedly working harder. But it is productivity that is valued. That productivity is provided by capital — the savings that someone accumulated (instead of spending on immediate consumption or taxes) and invested in a way that increased the output of workers and our economy.

    These savers and investors are not necessarily wealthy people. Anyone who defers current consumption in order to save and invest — no matter how small the amount — provides capital to industry.

    Education and capital accumulation are the two best ways to increase the productivity and the wages of workers. Ironically, the people who are most vocal about raising wages through legislative fiat are also usually opposed to meaningful education reform and school choice, insisting on more resources being poured into the present system. They also usually support higher taxes on both individuals and business, which makes it harder to accumulate capital. These people and organizations should examine the effects of the policies they promote, as they are not in alignment with their stated goals.