Ah, yes. The power of the states to enforce freedom of contract. We were so much better off back in those halycon pre-New Deal days.

And the states could do a much better job of regulating the securities markets, labor law, banks, as well as the food and drug industries. The Jungle and the Pecora hearings were just collectivist propaganda.

Thank you for setting forth in capsule form the kind of statement I consider so idiotic.

Couldn't have anything to do with slavery, or racism, or segregation, or the self-perpetuating nature of economic classes, or anything else. It's "culture," and that alone.

Not the "Southern culture"? What is the "African American culture"? Colin Powell? Condi Rice? Or Snoop Dogg?


Anecdotes are so incredibly helpful. I knew a white cokehead who became president because his parents were rich. 90% of my white cousins are trailer trash despite having the exact same culture as my family, with four kids who all have graduate degrees.

Your thesis is not the thesis of the article -- you are talking about "African American culture," not "southern" culture. I agree that teaching black kids that they cannot succeed is stupid and damaging. But is that "African American culture"? It sure wasn't what Malcolm X taught. It sure wasn't what Colin Powell learned. It isn't the education that Spike Lee got at the same African American universities.

You may have incentives, but you sure don't necessarily have the ability. Have you ever met anyone who worked in a factory?

This is the classic "you can move! get a new job! this is America!" bullshit.

This discussion is following a predictable, time-worn path. Soon Burger will say that government does nothing to help him earn a living and is not a force for economic productivity or freedom. And I will respond, if you hate government so much then move to Somalia, they provide an excellent example of limited federal government and how well a country functions under that condition.

And, with that, I'll see y'all tomorrow.

Perhaps Burger is just building his way up to arguments in favor of unions and against tort reform.

Well, that is the way into my pants.

Obviously that is a stretch. However, I went to the Kentucky Derby, and there is something awfully appealing about hanging out the rest of your life on the miranda drinking mint julips. However, I don't know if it is the culture, it might be the weather. I believe warmer weather produces lazier people. Being a native of California, I can attest to the fact that I am lazy as hell.

I think there is something to be said about first generation Americans. Immigrants are always movtivated and highly productive. They really keep the economic engine going. However, thier children are usually seduced by the American culture, start watching MTV and eating Cheetos. The problem for African Americans, is they did not get that first Generation bounce.

We need immigration to bring in the next captains of industry so the rest of us can keep can keep riding our lounge chairs.

Now you seem to be saying that it's FDR's fault that this drug testing scheme is being proposed by Congress instead of by a bunch of grandstanding state legislators in capitals from Montpelier to Olympia and Tallahassee to Carson City. And yet, how recockulous would it be for professional sports leagues to have to comply with different drug-testing laws in different states? Would the Red Sox have to comply with Illinois's regime when they played at Comisky? If they hadn't complied with Wisconsin's regime, would you have to cancel a Red Sox-Brewers World Series (note: hypothetical requires massive suspension of disbelief).

Any disparities in society for minorities have nothing to do wiht African-American or southern culture but rather Democratic party keep em on the plantation culture.

The anti-black racism of the Democrat party is well known and universal. The elitist left-wing media cabalist co-conspirators will never speak of it. The Democrats, notwithstanding one of their leading light's positions as a Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard, still believe that they have a proprietary right to the votes of black citizens by virtue of the Civil Rights Act, and use that canard to intoxicate the minorities of the inner city with stories of the Republicans being racist. The MSM assists.

My most fervent hope is that the Democrat Party continues to be led by Klansmen like Robert Byrd and doesn't end its plantation politics and the Reverend Sharpton defects to run as a Republican or even as independent and destroys the Democrats racist stranglehold on the African-American populace.

Because there's that whole addiction thing. And because you're talking about an industry which prevented consumers from being properly informed about the health risks -- indeed, misled them for years.

Long experience in the years before the New Deal suggested that there was market failure. Perhaps the problem is that the employment package is a bundle of goods and services, leaving workers poorly situated to re-negotiate their compensation and terms of employment once they realize that the drill presses are prone to remove their left hands, e.g.

Yes - and I blame the gop

Actually, FDR didn't pull us out of the Depression, WWII did. FDR, being an economic conservative, always believed in balanced budgets. He tried very hard not to deficit spend. The economy made a couple attempts at recover, but these momentary lapses of health always collapsed. Keynes tried to explain to Roosevelt that he needed massive deficit spending to pull out of the Depression, but FDR just didn't buy it. After the Depression, it pretty much became convential wisdom, at least among the liberals, that you could spend and tax cut your way out of a recession. Of course, Hayek and Friedman thought this was BS. I have never quite figured out how Friedman thinks you should get out of a recession. It seemed to work for Kennedy in 1960. Bush, surprizingly enough, decided to adopt the liberal position, and tried to tax cut and spend his way out of the recession he found himself in. However, I don't think his plan worked as well as peopel expected.

So has the experience with the NFL not been long enough to show market failure? Steroids have been a problem in sports at least since Ben Johnson. They continue to be a problem, even in the NFL, where players have been caught buying steriods (despite not testing positive) and have admitted to taking them pre-draft. If the league doesn't have sufficiently tough policies, why is that not an area for Congress at least to investigate the possibility of a market failure? If the leagues are engaging in fraudulent behavior, by putting a "product" on the field that's a result of chemical enhancement, why isn't that reasonably within Congress' purview?

I liked the WWE (nee WWF) when I was a kid. At one point, I was jejeune enough to think it was real competition. Then I learned better. There was a market failure because I had been lied to and put more into the product than I otherwise would have.

Then again, I never like barry bonds.

Friedman's against structural deficits. Is he also against transitory ones? You don't tax your way out of recession. You spend your way out, and tax your way back in (or at least out of overly rapid expansion).

[DISBELIEF THAT I'M ASKING YOU THIS]Where's the market failure?[/DISBELIEF]

You and other sports fan have learned about the steroid use. I don't know anyone who wants their money back.

I don't think I said tax, I think I said you tax cut your way out of recessions.

You are Friedman? Who knew.

Wanna have lunch? It's free . . .

This has to be the BOTD.

I suppose the fact that it really would just be lunch, not "lunch," only cements that.

I'm glad you got the joke. How very Ivy of you.

Where's the ongoing market failure with cigarettes?

I agree that market failure should be a necessary condition for government intervention. Unfortunately, a supermajority of the House and Senate have not felt that way for at least 70 years.

[cynicism] I'm sure that has nothing to do with needing to look busy for the constituents. [/cynicism]

Don't you think addiction complicates things? And what regulation are you complaining about?

The Constitution does not enact Mr. Herbert Spencer's Social Statics.

Which is basically my point. Why is sterioids on the wrong side of the amorphous line, when nothing else appears to be? What about a minimum wage fixes a market failure? It's not a market failure that leads to low wages, it's the market. The minimum wage represents a social/moral judgment that people should be paid a certain amount for their labor. Steroids in sports is not a market failure any more so. One could have a steroid-free league and steroid-ridden league, and they could compete to see who gets more fans. But there is a social/moral judgment that sport should be clean, and Congress has seen fit to make those judgments for quite some time now.

I don't think additiction represents a market failure, so long as the possibility of addiction is known beforehand, which it has been for some time (probably 90%+ of smokers still alive).

I have a hard time believing that you think this. Certainly there is a "social/moral" judgment that people should not use drugs. But why does the government have any business regulating which sorts of drugs (e.g., coffee) are OK and which are not? Can you articulate the principle involved, other than "a bunch of Congressman want to do this, and, hey, Congress has done stupid stuff before"?

I think the regulation of the smoking industry is an interesting issue, with some hard questions. As a historical matter, isn't much of the federal regulation prompted, FWIW, by the misrepresentations historically made by the cigarette companies about health risks? As an economic matter, what about the fact that most smokers start as minors?

I have yet to hear a satisfactory response to the first question, despite pounding on it for three years in law school and a sufficient number of posts here to drive Sidd to the bars by early afternoon. So Ihave come the conclusion that the answer is, in fact, a majority of congress want to do some stuff, and maybe it's stupid or maybe it's not, but nothing prevents them from doing it.

Putting aside the big picture question of the regulation of nicotine, I don't have principled objections to drawing a line at 18 and saying people younger than it can't be allowed to purchase cigarettes. So let's enforce that law. But we're massively taxing cigarettes, and supporting an oligopolistic industry, based on the (apparent) sole principle that they did some really bad stuff 50 years ago, and kept doing it somewhat for another 35 years, so current smokers should pay for that past activity. And, no, cigarette taxes cannot be justified by externalities. I'd pay people to smoke, and solve a big part of the social security and medicare problems in doing so.

So, like, what's the pay scale for this gig? Because if it is more than $150,00 per year, I am, like, totally there.

Is there Burger-sponsored health insurance with that?

I'm not talking about the Commerce Clause so much as the principles that Congress chooses to act on. Congress also funds the Lawrence Welk museum in North Dakota, and surely there's no market failure there. So of course they can do it, but why? And why Republicans, who have always been so quick to complain about government regulation impinging on private industry?

Less than totally honest
 

Not always, Toots.

Less than totally honest
 

Necessary but not sufficient.

The minimum wage was necessary not because of market failure, per se, but more because of the fact that the market was not truly free.

In a heavily industrialized society, or even one that is in the process of industrializing, there cannot be a free market because the barriers to entry are too high. One or two workers couldn't go out and just build a textile mill. Consequently, market power was concetrated more in the hands of those who held capital.

The minimum wage was an effort by the government to counteract the imbalance in bargaining power by forcing employers to pay at least a subsistence level to their employees.

Your 11th Amendment almost at work
 

Perhaps part of the answer to your wuestion can be found in the fact that when a federal judge applied the 11th Amendment a few weeks back, Senator Cornyn and Rep. Delay suggested that perhaps their lives should be in danger for not bending to the will of the Congress.

Your 11th Amendment almost at work
 

Maybe, but if you go there, I go back to FDR.

Your 11th Amendment almost at work
 

Boy, the GOP really is the party of personality responsibility. Whatever dumb thing Republican senators and congressman say or do, FDR is personally responsible.

Your 11th Amendment almost at work
 

A chicken in every pot?

http://richard.meek.home.comcast.net/FatTeddy1.JPG

Your 11th Amendment almost at work
 

FDR invented judge bashing.

You say that like there were 4 employers. there weren't except in maybe some company towns. There are plenty of people today working for minimum wage, despite robust competition for employees between walmart, mcdonalds, home depot, etc.

Isn't the first question to ask "what is a drug"? Are vitamins drugs? Sugar? Fat? Nearly everything ingested causes some sort of physiological change. So what is a drug?

Your 11th Amendment almost at work
 

And it worked for him about as well as it is going to work for us.

The more you think about that distinction, the more arbitrary our drugs seem to be.

Your 11th Amendment almost at work
 

Are you saying this isn't going to get Frist elected President in 2008? Oh the humanity!

Your 11th Amendment almost at work
 

Did you know that Frist's dad owns the biggest HMO in the south.