Lively Debate

My last treatment of Crime in Britian has proven surprisingly popular with google. That post dealt with the consequences of banning guns.

Its not uncommon to hear the slippery slope argument against banning guns. Whats next? Banning knives?

Well, today, I ran across this recommendation to ban kitchen knives in Britian to reduce stabbings. Yikes! Where does the slippery slope lead after this?

"Stay away from my girl, or I swear I'll fetch the comfy chair!"

I've been out of town for a while, so this weeks Carnival linkage is way late. This weeks selections from the Carnival of the Capitalists takes on the theme of wasteful government spending.

• Bush should sign the highway bill looks at the benefits of the US highway system and suggests that this years highway bill would pay for itself in increased commerce and efficiency. The problem is that the highway bill doesn't necessarily only apply to highways. Instead, this bill seems to contain severe pork. (See this analysis)
• Until reading this post, I had no idea that the court had declared these kinds of tax incentives unconstitutional. Good for the court. Bribing businesses to relocate is not only wasteful of public funds, but unfair to the businesses that don't participate.
• And finally, Corporate Welfare and climate change. Innovation, not regulation is required for any realistically sustainable environmental effort.

The best of this weeks Carnival of the Capitalists presented in a timely fashion this week:

• minimumn wage and the people it hurts.
• Why walmart doesn't pay more.
• evaluating the impact of presidents on economic growth. Would like to see this one for congress.
• Confessions of an ex-diehard liberal New Yorker

No Federalism on the Right highlights an interesting issue:

For decades, liberals scoffed at federalist arguments that the people of Wisconsin or Wyoming understood their own needs better than a distant Congress. They brought more and more power to Washington, over-riding state legislatures and imposing mandates on every nook and cranny of governance.

Now those chickens have come home to roost. Republicans run Washington, and they're using the federal power that liberals built in ways that liberals never envisioned.

I think there is definitely a long term re-alignment of power in the US. Perhaps issues such as isolationism, fiscal responsibility and states rights can really only belong to an opposition party.

I'm two days late with this weeks Carnival. Top picks:

• In light of yesterdays post, how can I not link to this one about skill sets.
• Private sector regulation, or Are your drugs Kosher?
• A housing bubble?
• A sane view of immigration.
• A marketing joke.

Like a metronome every Monday the Carnival of the Capitalists comes by and highlights when I have missed a beat and not posted anything since last Monday. Even worse, today is Tueday. Today's picks from yesterday's Carnival of the Capitalists:

• Biased reporting on the Social Security Issue.
• Progressive taxation and what it really means. What is fair?
• The problem with subsidies is that the never go away. Ever. Google on sugar subsidies if you want an education. They were enacted two hundred years ago as a temporary measure to protect the United States sugar industry. Two hundred years of temporary protection! Bah!