It's all play money anyway, right?
The connection between reality and government spending is pretty much completely gone in the present administration.
This simply can't go on. The government has already spent more money during the Biden Administration on COVID relief than the government spent during the Great Depression, and the economic stimulus/infrastructure bill hasn't even been touched yet.
Cycling back to wiping out student debt, or a portion of it, I can't help but note Elizabeth Warren's support of it. Warren, who went from private practice to law professor, and therefore landed ultimately in academia, is of course for it. Her earlier specialty, oddly enough, was in bankruptcy, and she should therefore be familiar with the concept of "moral hazard". Forgiving student debt disrupts moral hazard.
While this is just one topic in the cranking up of the money press going on right now, it ought to be really obvious that there's no real reason for government backed loans for education to exist except where a course of study fulfills a national need. That's it. Otherwise, it ought to be up to individuals, who will bear the moral and fiscal hazard. Of course, that would pretty much wipe out most student loans, but it would also stop the tempting of students into areas where there is no work, and therefore no ability to pay back the loans.
On Education the Public. . .
As noted in our thread on a bill impacting WICHE, the law of unintended consequences visited the legislature this session, as did throwing the doors open to out of staters. That item appears here:
As a disclaimer, I was a member of the Wyoming National Guard for six years and I'll never regret that.
Having said that, this bill fits into yet another example of how we can foolishly lose money. The university isn't exactly flush with cash right now, nor are the community colleges, and while the number of people this will apply to is small, ever penny counts.
I don't know how many out of state Guardsmen there are, but there will be some. The reason is that: 1) some live in Colorado, where they also work, but are in a relatively nearby Wyoming Guard unit and 2) they moved to Wyoming to attend university and were already in their home state's Guard and had to transfer.
I appreciate their Guard service but I frankly don't see why that entitles an out of state resident to in state tuition. Apparently the legislature does, however.
This is the second bill this session that extends benefits to service members or their families that are poorly thought out. The other one lets licensed professional spouses of service members who move in evade Wyoming licensure laws simply because they're married to a service member. If being qualified simply by marriage is a real qualification, there are no real qualifications at all.
While we're at it, the legislature passed a bill on WICHE funding which appears to have the results of requiring recipients to return to Wyoming upon the completion of their funding.
No doubt the legislators, who approved this overwhelmingly, were of the mind that this was good for the state but its bad for the students. The hope was always that most of them would, and they're all holders of professional degrees, but now it means they're essentially slaves to the state. As the state doesn't directly employ many of them, it will mean that those who have received such funding can now look forward to depressed wages as their first employers will know that there's a pool of applicants whose supply will exceed demand, and who have nowhere else to go.
It's really hard to figure out what the state's current theme on this stuff is. On one hand, if you are in WICHE and become a dentist, or a doctor,, you have to come back no matter what, and no matter what the job situation is. On the other hand, if you are a licensed professional who is married to a service member, hey, just come on it. And of course we've written in the past about the Uniform Bar Exam which threw the doors open to Colorado lawyers en masse.
It's like we're compelling people to come back here to work while we're simultaneously wiping out their ability to get jobs.
Weird.
Green New Deal?
I heard a commentator on Meet the Press or This Week, I can't recall which, comment a couple of weeks ago in response to a query from the moderator about the "green New Deal" if that would be proposed, and the commentator replied that the stimulus package was that.
Shortly after that, I started reading about bridges, which aren't green anything, one way or another, and sort of slightly dismissed that. Then, however, the proposed $80B to Amtrak was announced, and I started to really wonder. I've posted on that here:
Amtrak Expansion. Cheyenne to Denver, and beyond!?
I have real problems, I'll admit, with the scope of the proposed infrastructure spending proposals that President Biden is looking at, but if they go forward, I really hope we do see rail service restored (and that's what it would be) between Cheyenne and Denver.
Like this idea or not, railroads are green. Even the diesel powered ones are. They're so much more efficient than any other means of transportation, it's absurd.
This raises a lot of interesting questions that need to come up in one way or another, most of which deserve an other thread, maybe on Railhead, or maybe here (it'll show up on both no matter what). Anyhow, no matter what a person things about the topic of climate change, railroad provide a real solution to desires to reduce emissions. This is true even in the diesel age in the US we're in, but if we went to nuclear power, which there is no reason not to, this would be all the more the case.
That gets into the topic of over the road transportation, which is basically subsidized by state and Federal highway money. . . although we tend not to think of it that way. The state's expense on the interstates was, however, a topic in this past legislature, which thought about putting in a toll on Interstate 80, but didn't.
This also gets back to the Biden spending frenzy and "pork". When you are spending zillions, everybody gets something, and it makes the medicine go down easier. That's part of the problem. I'm frankly aghast at the level of spending going on right now, but I think Amtrak is cool. It's a something for everyone a circus tonight, type of situation.[1].
We have an upcoming thread on the infrastructure bill, which is truly massive, and interesting.
Nuclear!
And it turns out that the Biden Administration is including nuclear power in its clean energy mandate.
As nuclear is the central piece of any "green" energy policy that isn't propaganda or fantasy, that's real progress.
The other side of the gun control debate?
If I were an Uber driver of any kind, I'd want to be carrying a gun.
It probably ain't the guns, or at least not so much.
I thought about doing a new post on the gun control (not gun safety, it's a debate about gun control) debate. And I might do one later. But for the time being, I'm going to link in an old post I did on this topic and make a few random observations.
Peculiarized violence and American society. Looking at root causes, and not instrumentalities.
And also:
You Heard It Here First: Peculiarized violence and American society. It Wasn't The Guns That Changed, We Changed (a post that does and doesn't go where you think it is)
Maybe the last entry has more to do, overall, with this one.
Some random observations.
As long as we continue to build a society that drops out marginal, for lack of a better way to put it, males from it, so that they aren't participating in meaningful work, and thereby aren't participating in society, this will keep happening and no set of laws is going to fix that.
Not everyone is excited about a career in IT or finance, or whatever. Some busy work best with their hands, even if they aren't master artisans at what they're doing. Some of those guys aren't the sharpest tools in the shed and aren't even mentally okay. But they'll be more okay if they have something to do of value.
When we exported darned near every job in this class overseas, we imported this problem.
A libertine society has no real values, and sooner or later that extends to life. Our society has become as libertine as can be and we're busy taking off what few guardrails exist, even if those guardrails are natural ones.
In the mind of the radicals, a society without boundaries of any kind is one in which everyone is free to be what they want. A lot of people don't know what they want, and some of those people need lots of guardrails up or they'll go over the edge. Values can be instilled at home, but again, not everyone has the same mental makeup, and when people get out on the streets those guardrails can fail.
It's an American bromide that one of "America's strength is its diversity' but that's a statement that's nearly without any evidential backing and contrary to the original concept of the United States as a melting pot.
We no longer use the melting pot analogy as we feel that its insulting to various cultures and we don't want to do that. That's naïve to start with as the level of tolerance of certain things in various cultures is antithetical to what we'd regard as widely accepted values such as they remain in our society. I'll skip listing some of the practices and values of various cultures in the past, or even the present, but this is simply the case.
I note this here, however, as while "there's strength in diversity" is a nice thought, there's also violence in it. That doesn't make it right, but it's such an age old demonstrative human trait that is obviously ingrained in our makeup, unfortunately.
This is not to say there should be no diversity. But wholly ignoring the role of mixing and non mixing at a large level isn't necessarily very smart. Small minorities that come into the country can be targets of violence and helpless due to their small size, and that's bad and even evil. But causing largescale diversity always causes tensions that tend to slide into violence. Indeed, while during times of debate we'll frequently be compared to European countries that "have much lower levels of violence", we don't pay too much attention to the fact that even in those fairly homogenous cultures there's been horrific acts of violence on this sort of tribal nature.
This isn't an argument for segregation by any means, but rather an argument to at least acknowledge that this is an aspect of this problem.
That all has a lot to do with massive immigration levels at a time of massive technological and employment change, with a big dose of COVID 19 thrown it.
Easier just to think, however, on what we might ban or spend money on.
It's not about the deer
One final thought on the gun control debate.
I've really decried the militarization of the sporting firearms culture here on these pages, and have done so over a period of years, so this may seem like a surprising entry, but people who say "you don't need an AR15 to hunt deer are ignorant".
Not stupid, ignorant.
Of course you don't need an AR15 to hunt deer. You don't need a Second Amendment to protect firearms to hunt deer either. Hunting, which I support on an existential level, has nothing to do with the Second Amendment.
The Second Amendment was entirely about precluding the Federal government from restricting ownership of small arms. The framers of the bill of rights were fearful that a future Congress would create a state religion, penalize political speech and seize arms from the people, among other things. It was a restraint on the government as there was a history of the Crown doing things just like that.
Opposite Directions.
Iowa just passed a bill easing background checks and making concealed carry easier.
This is the theme of the era in some ways. In Washington D.C. and on the coasts, retractions are getting tighter while states are trying to go in the opposite direction.
Record
Arrests at the Mexican border are at a fifteen year high.
M'eh
A South Korean couple vandalized a piece of alleged graffiti art, created in the US but on display in South Korea, as they thought brushes out in front of it were for spectator use.
It was understandable. And the "art" was a piece of crap anyway, so no harm, no foul.
Banning vaccine passports.
Florida's Governor just signed a bill prohibiting Florida's businesses from requiring proof of vaccination.
That's a mistake, and one that will likely be challenged in court in some fashion. Requiring workers in places like Disneyland or at Florida's crowded beaches to risk death is not well thought out.
Going forward, vaccine passports are going to be routine. That's the that's going to be, and sticking an entire state's head in the sand on it won't be changing that.
United Airlines puts out the "Help Wanted" sign.
United Airlines, looking at rebounding air travel, has put out the news that it's hiring hundreds of pilots.
That's good news for everyone.
Footnotes
1. We've made dual musical references there, which we should note.
The first, "When you are spending zillions, everybody gets something, and it makes the medicine go down easier" is to Spoonful of Sugar from Mary Poppins. A review of the lyrics makes this song particularly applicable here. The second; "It's a something for everyone a circus tonight, type of situation." is from Something Funny Happened On the Way To The Forum.
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