Business & Economics: January 2008 Archives
From various sources is a plan by Robert Zubrin to break the OPEC cartel for $100 per car.
What is needed is for the Congress to pass a law requiring that all new cars sold in the United States be flex-fueled - able to run on any combination of alcohol or gasoline fuel. Such cars are existing technology - in fact about 24 different models of flex-fuel cars were produced by the Detroit Big Three in 2007, and they only cost about $100 more than the same car in a gasoline-only version. But, since alcohol fuel pumps (such as E85, a fuel mix that is 85 percent ethanol, 15 percent gasoline) are nearly as rare as unicorns, flex-fuel cars only command about 3 percent of the new-car market.The reason E85 pumps are so rare is that gas station owners don't want to dedicate one of their pumps to a kind of fuel that only a few percent of the cars can use. If we had a flex-fuel requirement, however, then within three years of enactment there would be 50 million cars on the road capable of running on high-alcohol fuels. Under those conditions, E85 and M50 (a 50 percent methanol, 50 percent gasoline fuel mix; flex-fuel cars can use any alcohol, including methanol) pumps would start appearing everywhere.
But most important, this would not just be happening here. By requiring that all new cars sold in the United States be flex-fueled, we would be forcing all the foreign car manufacturers to switch their lines to flex-fuel as well, effectively making flex-fuel the international standard. So there would be hundreds of millions of cars worldwide capable of running on alcohol, forcing gasoline to compete everywhere against alcohol fuels that can be produced from numerous sources. This would effectively break the vertical monopoly that the oil cartel currently holds on the world's fuel supply and keep prices in the $50-a-barrel range, because that is where alcohol fuels become competitive.
I'm not in favor of government regulation to further social agendas, but this economic manipulation would be to enhance national security. Seems like a valid use of government power that both Lefties and Righties could support.
For decades mortgage lenders were damned for refusing to lend money to poor, minority, aspiring home-owners, and now they're being damned for for lending too easily.
"People of color are more than three times more likely to have subprime loans," concluded the organization United for a Fair Economy in a recent report which estimated that minorities have seen between 163 billion and 278 billion dollars of their equity go up in smoke since 2000.With its weakened economy and a large black population more used to renting, Cleveland has become a poster child of the subprime crisis in a country where some 2.1 million borrowers are behind on their mortgage payments.
City officials estimate that foreclosures have swallowed some 70,000 homes and turned entire neighborhoods into ghost towns.
The city has responded by suing lenders, accusing them of targeting black borrowers and steering them to the loans granted with few formalities and at hefty interest rates to people with poor credit histories.
Naturally the people being thrown out of houses they can't afford want the rest of us to rescue them from the consequences of their bad decision-making.
In the hardest-hit suburb of Cleveland, "nearly 24,000 people have lost their homes to Cleveland's Katrina," he told AFP. ..."More than two years later, 6,000 homeowners (in St. Bernard Parish) have each received an average 65,000 dollars in government funds to rebuild their American Dreams. But in Cleveland and its suburbs, there is no disaster relief, no presidential visits, no good Samaritans to helps us."
"It would have been better if it was an earthquake or a hurricane, we respond better to natural disasters than to men in suits disasters," said city councilor Zach Reid.
First off, it was ridiculous to hand out so much money to Katrina victims. But secondly, at least they were victims of a natural disaster and not just people who bought more house than they could afford.
It seems very simple to me: don't live beyond your means. There's all sorts of things I'd love to own, but I can't because I don't make enough money. If I went out a bought a $10 million home but then couldn't pay the mortgage whose fault would that be? Would these same people be lining up to bail me out?
One can only hope that Wal-Mart solves the "health care crisis" before November....
The issue highlights the difference between the right and the left. Leftists see our health insurance / care system and think the answer is more government regular. Rightists see the same problems but think that the best way to solve them is by unshackling the free market. Wal-Mart's example should be a light for our path.
(HT: Instapundit.)
This story about a "hearty eater" being banned from a buffet can serve as a great example for why socialized medicine doesn't work.
On his most recent visit, he said, a waitress gave him and his wife's cousin, 44-year-old Michael Borrelli, a bill for $46.40, roughly double the buffet price for two adults."She says, 'Y'all fat, and y'all eat too much,'" Labit said.
Labit and Borrelli said they felt discriminated against because of their size. "I was stunned, that somebody would say something like that. I ain't that fat, I only weigh 277," Borrelli said, adding that a waitress told him he looked like he a had a "baby in the belly."
Buffets are very similar to health insurance in that everyone pays nearly the same price, but people use very different amounts of service. Health insurance providers are prevented from many forms of price discrimination by law, which means that like a buffet that can't discriminate all they can do is refuse service to unprofitable customers. Socialized medicine would reduce the ability to discriminate by price even further, leading to even more unhealthy people being denied treatment.
The end result is that unhealthy people won't be able to get treatment from the socialized system because they're too far from the norm, and they won't be able to buy treatment because the free market will have been destroyed. It goes without saying that poor, uneducated people tend to be the least healthy, so who's really going to benefit from socialized medicine?
