Economics and Social Policy XVIII

Welcome to the October 23, 2006 edition of Economics and Social Policy. Sorry for the delay, as well as the minimal commentary this week. Too much real life intruded over the weekend. Chief among which was the birthday celebration for Mrs. BMD. Overall, a great time, so I can’t really complain – steaks, my secret portabella mushroom sauce, grilled veggies…. Steak - mmmmmmmmmmmmm.

As someone else once noted, there’s a place for all of God’s creatures – mostly next to the potatoes and covered with gravy.

Tom Blumer presents The ?Blue Mutual Funds? Have Fundamental Problems posted at BizzyBlog, saying, "The Blue Funds are out to prove that politically correct companies (i.e., they meet the tests for ‘corporate social responsibility’, and their execs and PACs give more than half of their money to Dems [seriously]) outperform others. But the research done to demonstrate the point is shaky, and only applies to large companies, even though there is a large and small cap fund. And the costs of monitoring social responsibility and of adding and deleting unequal numbers of companies from their "indices," are going to be very high. After the post, I got a not-for-attribution e-mail opining that the SEC *should* have a problem approving these funds."

CSR = your corporate management giving money to leftist groups either because a) they believe in leftist causes (bureaucrats being bureaucrats), or because they mistakenly believe that the “good P.R” will win them points. Stockholders – pay not attention to the mangers shirking their fiduciary duty behind the curtain.

Madeleine Begun Kane presents Trade Deficit, Budget Deficit, Truth Deficit posted at Mad Kane's Political Madness.

There’s certainly a lot of legitimate complaints about the Bush Administration’s trade policy (Doha, & steel quotas, anyone?), but the trade deficit really isn’t one of them. Unless you’re a mercantilist, which Mad Kane might be. But hey! She’s got limericks!

Vihar Sheth presents What Drives Effective Policy? posted at Vihar Sheth.

Drives for unlegislated social traditionalist values are inherently conservative. Recognition that man is far from perfect, and that perfection cannot be attained through the application of the police power of the state is fundamentally conservative. The only core disagreement between the religious conservatives and social traditionalists is how much morality can be legislated. Everybody, even the libertarians (when backed into a corner) agrees that all legislation has a moral dimension. All of these arguments, based on limiting the role of the state, are things that the Democratic Party, as currently constituted, can’t abide.

DWSUWF presents Disunity '06 posted at Divided We Stand United We Fall, saying, "Disunity06 - No contributions. No infrastructure. No political party. No delegates. No convention. No leaders. No candidates. Just common sense, and ... Just Vote Divided."

I would be tempted to agree that divided government is a good thing. If a) we were not in the middle of a war; and b) the Democrats were run by adults, that is, actually had a national security policy that didn’t amount to hiding under a blanket and hoping that the ‘bad guys’ go away.

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