There’s an important fight going on in the Federal Housing Finance Agency that you may not have heard about. Actually, you might not even have heard of the FHFA. They’re the guys who oversee Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the state-run mortgage buying businesses. Here’s the trouble–Fannie and Freddie possess a lot of mortgages for which the owners of these mortgages are “underwater”. Not that there’s been any flooding, of course.
Tag: Government
Nanny State Ethics and NYC
Recently New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg has gotten into the business of regulating his citizens’ health choices. Two prominent recent examples come to mind:
- Restricting soft drink sizes to no more than 16 ounces
- Discouraging the use of baby formula in favour of breastfeeding
Today I would like to discuss whether or not such regulations or “nudge” policies are within the state’s ethical purview. First, let’s look at what sort of argument opponents of these policies have at their disposal:
Paul Ryan’s Magical Fantasy Budget
So Mitt Romney has chosen Paul Ryan to be his running mate in the US Presidential election. It is a very telling choice. As regular readers will know, Mitt Romney proposed a tax policy that was more or less mathematically impossible without inflicting severe tax penalties on the bottom 95% of tax payers. It just so happens that Paul Ryan is guilty of precisely the same magical thinking. Let’s explore.
The Romney Tax Plan and “Media Bias”
Increasingly, whenever anyone tries to talk about political or economic facts, no one listens, because it is assumed that all “facts” are really opinions and that the evidence in inconclusive, with an equal amount of distortion by all sides and parties involved. However, the result of this kind of thinking is that it becomes absolutely impossible to inform people, because any factual evidence that contradicts a person’s preferred position will be assumed away as “media bias”.
Debunking Metaphors: “Government is like a Business”
“Government is like a business”. You’ve heard the metaphor before. In order to make it easier for a lay person to understand a complex political issue, pundits and politicians will try to relate it to something familiar, and one of the most frequently chosen metaphors is the business or household. Mitt Romney’s candidacy for US President is predicated on the notion that, because he has successfully run businesses, he can successfully run the government.
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Benjamin Studebaker 