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Larry Summers (whose name you may have heard recently — he is head of Obama’s National Economic Council, once published a paper on the causes of unemployment, and part of it is below:

Another cause of long-term unemployment is unionization. High union wages that exceed the competitive market rate are likely to cause job losses in the unionized sector of the economy. Also, those who lose high-wage union jobs are often reluctant to accept alternative low-wage employment. Between 1970 and 1985, for example, a state with a 20 percent unionization rate, approximately the average for the fifty states and the District of Columbia, experienced an unemployment rate that was 1.2 percentage points higher than that of a hypothetical state that had no unions.

Barack Obama, on the other hand, had this response regarding unions and unemployment:

On the economy, President Barack Obama signaled once again the ground is shifting — this time with regard to unions.

With his signature on three executive orders, President Barack Obama expanded workers rights and reversed Bush administration orders that were seen as anti-union.

Then, the president said something that hasn’t been heard in the Oval Office for a long time. “I do not view the labor movement as part of the problem, to me it’s part of the solution,” said President Obama.

[HT: Harvard economist Greg Mankiw]

Speeches have been given and books have been written on this topic. I can only scratch the surface here. But the crux of the matter can be summarized in four main points, which I will explain below.

A Civil War was unnecessary

Does anyone else find it odd that the United States is the only country ever to have had a war over the issue of slavery? Dozens of other countries in modern history have had legalized slavery, and each of them phased it out peacefully. I know, I’m saying that “other countries did it, so the US would have” and this is not good logic. I’m merely suggesting it could have been a *possibility*… yet instead, we had a war.

Of course, the thing that should really be recognized is that the Civil War was not fought over slavery. I think this is now the commonly accepted view in every book except grade school textbooks: supposedly the Civil War was fought to “keep the union together.” Well, this has some truth to it, but doesn’t it sound so positive, altruistic and benevolent? “Keep the union together.”

Let’s try to examine keeping the union together from the proper perspective.

The real reason for a war

Lincoln was a mercantilist. Mercantilism is a political/economic philosophy that incorrectly views trade as a zero-sum game and also tends toward having nationalistic sentiments. Consequently, mercantilists are typically in favor of “protectionist” policies that discourage international trade, which enables domestic producers to charge higher prices at the expense of consumers.

During the mid 19th Century, America’s economy was divided between manufacturing in the North and agriculture in the South. Additionally, Northern Republicans had enacted mercantilist protectionist policies that helped Northern business interests at the expense of Southerners. Desiring to trade freely with businesses in other countries that could supply them with tools and commodities they needed, they were inhibited by Northern-passed laws. As a result of this unjust economic and political treatment, they wished to secede from the United States.

Wartime casualties: civil rights

Northern newspapers were overwhelmingly in favor of Southern secession. They felt Lincoln and the other politicians of the day had overstepped their bounds, and that secession would lead both countries back toward their free roots.

For their opinions, thousands of US citizens were jailed and denied habeas corpus. The ACLU has freaked out about a couple hundred foreigners at Guantanamo Bay for the past couple of years; Lincoln did far worse.

Furthermore, there are dozens of written evidences that Union soldiers specifically targeted civilians in their Southern conquest. This was done under the direction of Lincoln, Grant, Sherman, and other Union leaders.

Goodbye to an inviolable right

Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence,

Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it…

The fact that the United States was born in an act of secession from England points to the irrefutable fact that secession was seen by the Founding Fathers as an unalienable right no less important than life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Jefferson also said in his first inaugural address,

If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated…

Lincoln’s Civil War forever crushed this fundamental right.

Conclusion

Whether Lincoln was the worst president or the second worst is up for grabs. Had he not been there to pave the way, I doubt Woodrow Wilson could have created the Federal Reserve or the income tax. I also doubt FDR’s New Deal would have ever taken place. So, it’s hard to say.

For more information on this topic, visit the Mises.org media page to hear a conference about secession. I highly recommend the discussions by Thomas DiLorenzo, Scott Boykin, and James Ostrowski. DiLorenzo, specifically, has written two very detailed books about Lincoln, which I also recommend.

“Rules: …you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you.”

This survey-esque fad has been going around Facebook for the past couple weeks. I’ve gotten tagged by a couple of people, so I figured I would write my response and publish it on my site.

1. I hate online surveys. I rarely read them, and I fill them out even less frequently. It’s usually one of those activities I only participate in if I’m in a really boring class and I can’t think of anything else to look at on Amazon or Wikipedia.
2. I have developed my own philosophy about self esteem, pride, selfishness, and honesty. Those are the four main themes. Unfortunately, I have never been able to coherently explain it to anyone. I think Ashley and Larson are the only ones who have really heard anything about it. I have a hard enough time keeping it all straight in my own head. One of these days, time permitting, I might publish a book on the subject. The ideas are a combination of my religious upbringing, Ayn Rand’s objectivism philosophy, and others.
3. I have a fairly eclectic collection of music. I used to think I was open to new artists and styles, but I’ve realized I’m not: I’m very particular about voices. I tend to find most singers’ voices really terrible or just boring.
4. I have been to three “video game music” orchestratal concerts – one in Los Angeles, one in San Jose, and one in Las Vegas.
5. The likelihood that I will ever get tattoos is next to zero; however, if I were to get any, I have three ideas: 1) A Japanese war flag on my left chest, with the words 自由か死 (jiyuu ka shi) — which means “liberty or death” — in the center. 2) The words, “I swear, by my life and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.” — This is the oath taken by the individuals in the book Atlas Shrugged who go to live in Atlantis. But due to its length, I’m not sure where I could put it. 3) The words, “In the Name of the Best Within Us” — the title of the final chapter of Atlas Shrugged.
6. I analyze everything. I have to find a rational or logical explanation for things, or I’m likely to be skeptical. And even when I do have sound explanations, I’m still often the cynic.
7. Since I analyze everything, I almost always place a higher value in my own opinions than the opinions of others.
8. I decided to study economics because of my interest in politics. I figured economics would be better than political science because money is involved in every decision made and every action taken by politicians.
9. I have certainly made mistakes and bad decisions in my life, but I don’t regret them. The things I have done in my life make me who I am, and I like who I am. “Regret” implies (at least for me) that I would want to change things about my life.
10. The one exception to this has to do with math. For my junior year of high school, I moved to a school that didn’t require me to take any more math classes, so I took a break. I had already taken two years of algebra and a year of geometry, and I had gotten As. I could have easily taken calculus, but I didn’t see the point. Five years later, I started taking math classes again, and they have been so much harder for me.
11. On the topic of math — it is a subject for which I feel a great deal of ambivalence. As the basis for virtually every form of science, I realize its overwhelming importance. On the other hand, it is now so much harder for me, now at age 23, to learn than when I was a teenager. Ugh.
12. Modern fiction doesn’t do a lot for me. The classics are more my style.
13. I got home from my mission to Japan almost three years ago. In that time, I have not gotten any speeding tickets. Considering how “recklessly” I drive, this is either a miracle, or a testament to the effectiveness of “storm trooper” radar detectors.
14. I collect books, CDs, and movies, in that order of importance. About half of the books in my bookshelf have not yet been read — I will read them all, eventually!
15. I am fastidiously organized. So is Ashley. It’s one of the reasons I love her.
16. I was one of the only people in my mission to intensively study kanji, the Chinese characters that the Japanese people use. The Japanese have about 1900 that they consider necessary to be “literate” in the language, and Japanese children spend their whole K-12 education learning them. I learned 1800 of them in my two years. I was also known to be one of the better Japanese-speakers in my mission (right?). Despite this, I got an A- in my Japanese class the semester I returned to UNLV… because I was habitually late to class.
17. I could have interned for Congressman Ron Paul in Washington, DC. Unfortunately (for them, I think), his office called me back a week after the semester had started, and I couldn’t drop classes without suffering a significant financial loss. So I turned them down.
18. I think Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt, contrary to public sentiment, are the worst presidents in United States history. Lincoln was a mercantilist, murdering tyrant; and Roosevelt was an overly-effective statist.
19. Because I never aspired to go anywhere except UNLV for school, I didn’t challenge myself during high school or college. I graduated high school with a 4.1GPA (though it could’ve been higher), and I will graduate UNLV with about a 3.5GPA. I think this is due in large part to a lack of planning and foresight. Had I known I wanted to go to graduate school ten years ago, I would have put forth more effort. Consequently, I plan to inculcate my children to plan for a top graduate school. Even if they decide not to, they’ll at least have the opportunity.
20. I feel awkward speaking and teaching things at church, because my political and philosophical beliefs are not exactly in the mainstream. For example, I think Republicans are by-and-large idiotic, the Iraq War (and war in general) is evil, illegal drugs should all be legalized, and gay marriage doesn’t bother me in the slightest… just to name a few.
21. I kill bugs for a living, and I love to torment bees. One of the most enjoyable things to do is to douse them with chemical, and then watch them fly away, only to plunge toward the ground about ten feet away. Ha.
22. There are two movies that embody my personality to a T: Braveheart and V for Vendetta.
23. Ashley and I have been married for 8 months (as of Jan 31), but it doesn’t seem like it’s been that long. I think that’s a good thing.
24. Three of my best friends are people I met online — one when I was 10 or 11, the other two when I was 13 or 14. Most of our conversations are held through instant message.
25. I am really mellow. I don’t road rage at people. I don’t get mad when people disparage me. I think this is correlated with #7 above.

The Obama administration fell in line with the Bush administration Thursday (1/22/09) when it urged a federal judge to set aside a ruling in a closely watched spy case weighing whether a U.S. president may bypass Congress and establish a program of eavesdropping on Americans without warrants.

Read the full story here.

I only heard about half of Obama’s speech yesterday, but what I did hear was full of ironies.

For example, he starts off with this little piece of sadness:

Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some, but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age. Homes have been lost; jobs shed; businesses shuttered. Our health care is too costly; our schools fail too many; and each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet.

And ends it with

To the people of poor nations, we pledge to work alongside you to make your farms flourish and let clean waters flow; to nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds.

How are we going to help all these poor nations when we are not in top shape ourselves? It gets better, though:

Nor is the question before us whether the market is a force for good or ill. Its power to generate wealth and expand freedom is unmatched, but this crisis has reminded us that without a watchful eye, the market can spin out of control.

Am I the only one who sees the contradiction above?

And perhaps the most ironic: knowing Obama’s true feelings and intentions toward “the market,” he gives us this little piece:

Time and again these men and women struggled and sacrificed and worked till their hands were raw so that we might live a better life.

But alas, contradictions and ironies aside, I think the best part of the speech was the blatant similarities between his rhetoric and the rhetoric we’ve heard from former President W for the past several years. I’m glad I wasn’t the only one that picked up on this, and I present this wonderful piece brought to us by The Daily Show:

Currently there are three for this year; more may come out as the year progresses, but who knows?

They are Inglorious Basterds (that’s not a typo), Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, and Watchmen. This post is about the last-mentioned movie.

Here’s what the movie is about:

A complex, multi-layered mystery adventure, the film is set in an alternate 1985 America in which costumed superheroes are part of the fabric of everyday society, and the “Doomsday Clock” – which charts the USA’s tension with the Soviet Union – is permanently set at five minutes to midnight. When one of his former colleagues is murdered, the washed-up but no less determined masked vigilante Rorschach sets out to uncover a plot to kill and discredit all past and present superheroes. As he reconnects with his former crime-fighting legion – a ragtag group of retired superheroes, only one of whom has true powers – Rorschach glimpses a wide-ranging and disturbing conspiracy with links to their shared past and catastrophic consequences for the future. Their mission is to watch over humanity…but who is watching the Watchmen?

Now watch the trailer. Notice they use one of the ten rockingest songs. Awesome.

Trailer.

When I took the GRE for the first time back in September, I scored a 720 on the quantitative (math) portion and a 590 on the verbal portion.

I just retook it today, and my score improved a bit!

I got a 770 on math and 620 on verbal. Wee!

If instead you speak percentiles, that moves me from the 88th in math to the 97th, and from the 77th in verbal to 83rd. Not too shabby!

I’ve written before about how my retirement account looks terrible. As you can see from the picture in that post, when I began investing in the fund in 2006, it was around the mid-$20s, then it crept up to the low-$30s by October 2007. Then of course, it fell. Dramatically. It’s currently going for about $16. I’ve lost about 32% over the past year. Yuck.

So I thought,”What if the fund rose back up to its high point from October 2007?” In other words, what if the fund were back up to $31.67? Rather than being worth $3,920 (its value now), it would be $7,627. Considering I’ve only put $5,756 into it, that doesn’t sound too bad! In fact, that’s nearly a 33% increase in wealth.

Though I don’t expect this fund to rebound within the coming days, weeks, or even months, I fully expect that in the coming years it will return to its pre-2008 level, and even surpass it. I base that expectation on the fact that, in the long-run, the economy always gets better.

And that is quite a hopeful thought.

5. Cloverfield
A lot of movie trailers pique my interest and then end up disappointing me when I go see the movie. Cloverfield, however, did not disappoint. The plot of the movie is not entirely new, but the way it was executed was pretty fantastic. Yes, Blair Witch did it a few years back, but the difference this time was that Cloverfield was actually suspenseful and scary. I wasn’t one of the people in the theater who got sick from all the abrupt camera movements, so I really enjoyed it.

4. Burn After Reading
Billed as a comedy, Burn After Reading is more a satire than what I consider a typical comedy. Although Brad Pitt plays an “average Joe” ignorant guy whose naivety is often humorous, the real greatness in this movie comes from the numerous subtle undertones that express the incompetence of government.

3. There Will Be Blood
Despite the movie being fairly action-free and slow-moving, Daniel Day-Lewis is so incredibly amazing that he makes the movie completely interesting, even after the first viewing. Upton Sinclair, though a flaming socialist, is a superb storyteller. [Note: This movie was technically released in 2007, but only on a limited viewing. I didn't see it until well into 2008, so I count it as a 2008 release.]

2. Death Note
The premise: A college-aged guy picks up a notebook that he discovers has the power to kill anyone whose name is written on its pages. Initially, he uses the notebook to “right wrongs”… but of course, that doesn’t last long. Based on a Japanese manga/anime series, a “live-action” version was made and brought to the United States this past year. Anyway, the idea and even more importantly, its execution, are thrillingly original.

1. The Dark Knight
If you haven’t seen this movie, and its precursor Batman Begins, go see them immediately. The Dark Knight in particular was incredible on every level imaginable.

[Updated 4 March 2009: Read change to list here.]