May 28, 2009
Reading for the Pigou Club
Dan Henninger hits a philosophical home run for ThreeSourcers today in the WSJ. It's a great column, funny, sad, and true.
Funny is his list of suggestions for the President's iPod playlist. Henninger feels that a little Beach Boys, Ronnie and the Daytonas, and Commander Cody music might clarify American culture to a President who says "everybody wins" when we all drive 39mpg biodiesel subcompacts.
Sad is a poignant look at how the scolds are going to redesign our lives:
We are being offered a different world now. One designed, defined and driven by a new set of un-fun obsessions -- carbon footprints, greenhouse gas and alternative energy. This large transition passes before us, barely seen, as the gray water of public policy. Hardly anyone notices how much is being changed.To put a stop to the new sin of spending too much time out on Highway 9, we are getting the mark-up hearings this week in Washington for the Waxman-Markey climate bill. It's 900 pages long, dripping with thousands of Mickey-Mouse rules to reorder how we live. A Senate Finance Committee document last week on the Obama health-care plan proposes "lifestyle related revenue raisers." Lifestyles like drinking beer. This is the "taxing bad behavior" movement. They get to define what's bad.
True is that last line. Certain Harvard Economics Professors (I'm not naming names) praise the efficiencies of Pigouvian taxation without fully appreciating the power they cede to government.
Whole Read Thing Me Trust The.