Junk the Whole System...

The conclusion from a post by Megan McArdle:

When government has power, it will be abused. Sometimes that's the unavoidable side effect of something we need to do. But this isn't. It's time to junk the entire elaborate system.

She's talking about corporate income taxes and charitable deductions.  I'd extend those same thoughts to the rest of the personal income tax system as well.  It's time to start over...

War on Drugs...

Megan McArdle (on a roll yesterday) with a piece on the efficacy of the War on Drugs.  She's reacting to the graph at right, showing that despite all the costs of the War on Drugs, and despite the incarceration of hundreds of thousands of drug offenders...the price of illicit drugs just keeps on falling.

As usual, Ms. McArdle finds some unobvious angles to ponder...

Quote of the Day...

From Megan McArdle:

Rioting in Sweden is the sort of phrase that sounds as if it should be oxymoronic, like "Evil in Candyland" or "Violence among Episcopalians". And indeed, the rioting seems rather tame by American or British standards—cars set ablaze, stones hurled at first responders. In the New York of my childhood, not so far from where I grew up, there were neighborhoods that used to call this sort of thing "Saturday night."

Read the whole thing...

The Sensible Ms. McArdle Says...

...she's going to cut back on red meat.  I can't poke any holes in her logic...

The Art of the Rant...

When it comes to producing collectible rants, few living authors can match Megan McArdle.  She's just published another fine one, this time on the (apparently dead serious) proposal by some Democrats (and their fanboys) to mint a few trillion dollar platinum coins and use them to pay off the national debt.  An excerpt from Megan's beautiful rant on the subject:

The Great Platinum Coin Caper is everything that is wrong with Washington: a stupid partisan maneuver that erodes the institutions of our government for no gain other than an immediate political win. The only good thing that can be said about it is that the President seems to be too sensible to actually consider doing it. Nonetheless, the fact that intelligent people like Professor Krugman are even discussing this debacle, much less endorsing it, is a depressing reminder of just how nasty and short-sighted our nation’s capital has become.

When I was reporting on Wall Street, I used to be told with some regularity that government was needed to counteract the short-term thinking of the business sector, who never thought much beyond the next quarterly earnings report. This now seems as quaintly adorable as picture hats and daily milk deliveries. An ADHD day trader with a cocaine habit and six months to live has considerably more long-term planning skills than our current congress.

That last sentence is my quote of the day.  You will most definitely want to go read the whole beautiful thing!