FINALLY! AN AUDIO EDITION OF MORE GUNS, LESS CRIME

Over the years, an audio version of "More Guns, Less Crime" has been requested many, many times.  Well, finally an audio version has been released (cheapest version at Barnes & Noble and it is also available at Amazon).

This joins audio versions of The War on Guns and Freedomnomics (which has an extensive discussion on crime) are also available.

Praise for "More Guns, Less Crime"

Milton Friedman -- "John Lott documents how far 'politically correct' vested interests are willing to go to denigrate anyone who dares disagree with them.  Lott has done us all a service by his thorough, thoughtful, scholarly approach to a highly controversial issue."

 

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The Wall Street Journal -- "A compelling book with enough hard evidence that even politicians may have to stop and pay attention. More Guns, Less Crime is an exhaustive analysis of the effect of gun possession on crime rates."

 

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Weekly Standard -- "Lott has gone so far beyond other scholars that his work deserves a central place both in future academic inquiry and in popular and political debate."

 

 

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Reason Magazine -- "An important new book by one of America's most resourceful and fearless econometricians."

 

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Business Week -- "Lott's pro-gun argument has to be examined on the merits, and its chief merits is lots of data.  . . . If you still disagree with Lott, at least you will know what will be required to rebut a case that looks pretty near bulletproof."

 

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National Review -- "By providing strong empirical evidence that yet another liberal policy is a cause of the very evil it purports to cure, [Lott] has permanently changed the terms of the debate on gun control....Lott's book could hardly be more timely."

 

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Booknews -- "Lott takes the position many have supported anecdotally for centuries that the best deterrent to crime is an armed populace. He backs up his argument with the FBI's yearly crime figures for every county in the U.S. over 18 years, the largest national surveys on gun ownership, and state police documents on illegal gun use."

 

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Kirkus Reviews -- "An intriguing and shocking look at crime, guns, and gun control policy. Lott (Law/University of Chicago) writes with a relentless distaste for conventional wisdom, such as the belief that most people are killed by someone they know. That category, Lott protests, is simply too large to be meaningful, and he takes to task the notion that concealed guns increase crime. To Lott's mind, citizens who carry concealed guns protect themselves against both friends and strangers and prevent the death of innocent citizens. Lott cites a host of cases where armed victims managed to outwit or kill their attackers. Common sense approaches like gun buyback programs or waiting periods for gun parchases, the hallmark of the Brady Bill, also seem useless to Lott. He draws on studies and data to suggest that an armed citizen is a safe citizen. Lott stresses that many western states like Arizona, Texas, and Oklahoma have nondiscretionary handgun laws, and crime is significantly lower in those areas. Sure to raise questions and some controversy, and hopefully will draw attention to the complex issue of crime and potential solutions."

Some of Obama's broken promises on the economy

David Asman at Fox Business has a partial list here:

The stimulus will prevent unemployment from rising above 8%, and will fall to 5.6% by 2012. 

Solyndra, “leading the way toward a brighter and more prosperous future.” 

”I’m committed to an all-of-the-above energy program." 

Obamacare, which “…won’t add another dime to the deficit.” 

”Health premiums will go down $2,500 by the end of my first term.” 

Under Obamacare “you will keep your health insurance. This law will only make it more secure and more affordable.” 

"My goal is to strengthen and preserve Medicare.” 

"Since my election…you're starting to see some restoration of America's standing in the world." 

”If I don’t fix the economy in three years, then I’ll be a one-term president."

One should read his explanations for why these are broken promises.

Some news on the Economy: Small businesses angry with Obama and low wage jobs replacing higher paid ones

The National Federation of Independent Businesses and the National Association of Manufacturers has a new poll by Public Opinion Strategies that surveyed 800 small business owners and manufacturers.  Those surveyed were C-level decision makers at companies with between 2 and 499 employees.  Some of the key findings are:

Fifty-five percent of small business owners and manufacturers would not have started their businesses in today’s economy.

69 percent say President Obama’s regulatory policies have hurt their businesses

67 percent say there is too much uncertainty in the market today to expand, grow or hire new workers.

69 percent of small business owners and manufacturers say President Obama’s Executive Branch and regulatory policies have hurt American small businesses and manufacturers.

55 percent say they would not start a business today given what they know now and in the current environment.

54 percent say other countries like China and India are more supportive of their small businesses and manufacturers than the United States.

Since only 46 percent of poll participants are identified as Republicans, there are a lot of Democratic or Independent small business owners who are not to thrilled with Obama.

The findings were summarized this way:

“There is far too much uncertainty, too many burdensome regulations and too few policymakers willing to put aside their egos and fulfill their responsibilities to the American people,” said Jay Timmons, president of the National Association of Manufacturers, which commissioned the poll along with the National Federation of Independent Businesses. “To fix this problem, we need immediate action on pro-growth tax and regulatory policies that put manufacturers in the United States in a position to compete and succeed in an ever-more competitive global economy.” . . . 

“Instead of smoothing the way, our government continues to erect more barriers to growth through burdensome regulations that increase costs for small businesses and all Americans,” NFIB president Dan Danner said. . . .

More evidence that the new jobs are paying a lot less than the ones that were lost.  From the Chicago Sun Times:

The report, authored by Marc Doussard, assistant professor in the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s Department of Urban and Regional Planning, defines low-wage workers as those making $12 an hour or less. 

The report revealed the share of payroll employees ages 18 to 64 working in low-wage jobs rose from 23.8 percent in 2001 to 31.2 percent last year. That’s a more than a 30 percent rise in the proportion of such workers. 

Meanwhile the share of households with a low-wage earner that got all income from low-wage earnings rose from 45.7 percent to 56.7 percent. That’s evidence more people are relying more on those dollars to meet basic needs rather than for disposable income. . . . .

CEOs are lowering their predictions for the third quarter GDP.

Citing uncertainty over the impending “fiscal cliff” and lower demand overseas, an association of CEOs from top companies on Wednesday dropped its growth expectations for the third quarter to the lowest level since the middle of the Great Recession. 

The Business Roundtable lowered projections for sales, capital spending and hiring in its latest CEO Economic Outlook Survey to the lowest level since 2009. 

The fiscal cliff — an end-of-the-year deadline for a long-term budget deal between Republican and Democratic lawmakers — has businesses putting off hiring and spending decisions, because they don’t know what to expect in the coming months and years, said Jim McNerney, the CEO of Boeing who also heads the Business Roundtable. . . . 

Of course, the Q2 GDP number is now in at 1.254% annualized growth rate.  That is incredibly anemic for a "recovery" and shows that over the last few quarters the economy has been slowing down.  Durable goods orders has also fallen off a cliff (see the Dept of Commerce discussion here).

August durable goods orders plunged -13 percent.  The consensus was  -5.0 percent.  It's the biggest drop since January 2009.  Everyting except eletrical equipment orders showed declines. . . . 

More on the drop in household income:

o The August 2012 median annual household income of $50,678 was 5.7percent lower than the median of $53,718 in June 2009, the end of therecent recession and beginning of the “economic recovery.”
o The August 2012 median was 8.1 percent lower than the median of $55,131 in December 2007, the beginning month of the recession that occurred more than four years ago.
o The August 2012 median was 9.0 percent lower than the median of $55,688 in January 2000, the beginning of this statistical series. . . . 

Will it be the third quarter of 2013 before GDP gets back to pre-recession level?

From the WSJ.  Note that to even get to the third quarter of next year there is the assumption that GDP growth will accelerate.  The assumption for that isn't clear.

Washington DC getting the country's money and making life worse

Some graphs from the Washington Post:

Of the 10 richest counties in America, seven are in the D.C. area. To some pundits, that looks like strong evidence of crony capitalism. “Whence comes this wealth? Mostly from Washington’s one major industry: the federal government,” Ross Douthat writes in the New York Times. “Not from direct federal employment…but from the growing armies of lobbyists and lawyers, contractors and consultants, who make their living advising and influencing and facilitating the public sector’s work.” . . . 

Also from the Washington Post: "Health insurance costs grew slowly for two years [before Obamacare kicked in]. Now, they’re speeding up."

Obama on how the working poor can be organized to push for government programs

Starting at 14:10 into the audio: ". . . The new immigrant population is much less skilled, is much more apt to be in this category of the working poor that we talked about, is having the same problems that people who have been here for a while are having, and what that means is that it gives us the opportunity to do organizing that we couldn't do before."

Obama wants to organize welfare recipients and those receiving government assistance so that he can get them more government assistance.

The average tax rate for the top 1% rose during Obama's first year in office at the same time that their after-tax incomes plummeted

Average Federal Tax Rates, 1979 to 2009 By Income Group    

You might have heard about incomes falling during the recession.  Well, the people who experienced the biggest drops were those at the top incomes, and the drop was pretty brutal.  After-tax income for the top 1 percent fell from $1,120,500 in 2008 to $866,700 in 2009 -- a 23 percent drop.  It had already fallen from $1,373,700 in 2007, so from that point there was a 37 percent drop.  Yet, despite this big drop in income, they also were the only ones who faced an increase in their average Federal tax rate.  Of course, Obama raised marginal tax rates for the lower income groups, even as he lowered their average tax rates.

The after-tax income for the highest income 20%, fell by 9%.

By contrast (see Table 3), after tax income rose slightly for the bottom 20% of households and fell slightly for the second and third quintiles.  The income for the 3rd quintile fell by 0.25% between 2008 and 2009.

Some hard numbers from the report regarding the first figure above.

For the lowest income group, the average rate fell from 7.5 percent in 1979 to 1.0 percent in 2009. Almost two- thirds of that decline came between 2007 and 2009, largely as a result of new refund- able tax credits, as discussed earlier. Declines in earlier years were mainly caused by increases in the earned income tax credit, especially in the 1990s. Payroll tax rates rose steadily for the lowest income group, offsetting some of the decline in their individual income tax rates.
Households in the middle three income quintiles saw their average tax rate fall by 7.1 percentage points over 30 years, from 19.1 percent in 1979 to 12.0 percent in 2009. That decline was due primarily to declines in individual income taxes. The average tax rate for that group fell somewhat in the early 1980s and then fluctuated within a fairly narrow band through the 1980s and 1990s. Between 2000 and 2003, the rate declined by 3.1 percentage points, reflecting numerous changes in law enacted in 2001—such as the expansion of the child tax credit, reductions in tax rates, and increases in the standard deduction for married couples—that lessened taxes for households in the middle quintiles. The average tax rate on the middle quintiles then rose slightly over the 2003–2007 period, before falling 2.8 percentage points from 2007 to 2009. 
The average tax rate for households in the 81st to 99th percentiles of the income distri- bution also reached a low point in 2009, about 4 percentage points below its 1979 level. That rate fell in the early 1980s and then crept up over the remaining part of that decade and the 1990s, so in 2000 it slightly exceeded its 1979 level. The average tax rate for that group fell 2.9 percentage points between 2000 and 2003, crept up from 2003 to 2007, and then fell another 1.7 percentage points from 2007 to 2009.

Cost of Federal government regulations totaling about $1.8 trillion, more than 10% of GDP

The Small Business Administration study by Nicole Crain and Mark Crain estimates that "the annual total cost of all federal regulations in 2008 was $1.752 trillion." Hardly the $88.6 billion that the OMB claims exists in 2010 dollars.  Yet, CEI adds up the estimates form different government sources and comes to a number very close to the Crain & Crain number.

Current federal regulations plus those coming under Obamacare will cost American taxpayers and businesses $1.8 trillion annually, more than twenty times the $88 billion the administration estimates, according to a new roundup provided to Secrets from the libertarian Competitive Enterprise Institute. 

And it could grow, warned the author of the report, Clyde Wayne Crews, a CEI vice president.Complying with Health and Human Services Department requirements alone, he revealed, costs $184 billion a year, yet regulators are still drafting the rules for the 2,400-page Obamacare law that kicks into gear in 2014.Crews has made a working project of his "Tip of the Costberg"report which he regularly updates. In it, he compares the cost of regulations estimated by federal agencies to a much broader list of estimates from multiple federal and independent sources. And even then, he said, it doesn't include hard-to-calculate costs associated with antitrust intervention, regulation of electricity networks, or the cost of constrained access to natural resources." 

While OMB officially reports amounts of only up to $88.6 billion in 2010 dollars," said Crews, "the non-tax cost of government intervention in the economy, without performing a sweeping survey, appears to total up to $1.806 trillion annually."But, he added, "according to back of the envelope surveys and roundups, with gaps big enough to fit the beltway through, that up to $1.806 trillion annually and in many categories perhaps even considerably more, is a defensible assessment of the annual impact on the economy." . . .

Yet another ranking of competitiveness showing that the US has dropped dramatically over the last few years

From Fox News:

The United States’ reputation as home to one of the world’s freest economies continues to decline, according to an international report released Tuesday.The U.S. dropped to 18th worldwide, compared to 10th in 2008 and third from 1980 to 2000, the 2012 Economic Freedom of the World report found. The findings are based on information through 2010.
“The U.S. is on the wrong track,” said co-author James Gwartney, a Florida State University economics professor.
He says the 48-page report shows countries with the freest economies grew more rapidly and achieved higher income levels for citizens, while the United States' decade-plus course of government expansion, increased debt and regulation and other moves created a “system of crony capitalism.”
“The declining economic freedom rating of the U.S. provides confirmation of this trend,” Gwartney concludes.
The report, published in the United States by the libertarian-leaning Cato Institute think tank, again ranks Hong Kong first among 144 countries, followed by Singapore, New Zealand and Switzerland.
The U.S. also ranked behind Finland and Denmark – “two European welfare states,” the study authors also pointed out. . . .

Obama In 1998: "I Actually Believe In Redistribution"

Obama remains silent on Public School teachers strike in Chicago

Obama refuses to oppose teacher union in Chicago.  Teachers strongly opposed evaluating teacher quality, but Obama couldn't even make a public statement disagreeing with that position.

No wonder the turnover rate for government employees is so low: Government workers work 4 to 5 weeks less per year than private sector workers

From Federal News Radio:

Federal employees work about a month less per year than private sector workers, according to a report by conservative think tank Heritage Foundation.
The report found federal employees work on average of 38.7 hours a week, compared with 41.4 hours per week in the private sector. That difference adds up to 3.8 fewer weeks per year that feds work compared with private sector workers.

"From a budgetary perspective, shorter work hours in the public sector may cause governments to be less efficient in converting tax dollars into public services. More broadly, the perception that government employees do not work as hard as private-sector employees runs counter to the spirit of public service," according to the report.

Heritage found state and local government employees work even fewer hours — 38.1 hours per week or 4.7 weeks less per year than private sector workers.

Heritage used data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics' American Time Use Survey to reach its findings. Heritage notes the survey only measures work time and not work effort or work effectiveness.

One federal union called Heritage's findings "utterly misleading."

"Private sector averages are low because so many private, non-union employers provide absolutely no paid time off. No sick leave, no vacation, no holidays. That is the disgrace, not the fact that public sector employers recognize that all workers need some paid time off," said Jacqueline Simon, public policy director for the American Federation of Government Employees, in an emailed statement. . . .

Two ways of looking at how hard it is to get a job

The Wall Street Journal yesterday had this diagram.

 

If one looks at hires instead of openings as the measure of how many real opportunities there are and includes both the unemployed and those who have given up looking for work, you end up with a quite different graph than what is shown by the WSJ. I would argue that both of these changes give a much more accurate picture of how hard it is to get a job.

BTW, nice new piece by Walter Williams available here.

Median income for Americans has fallen by 4.1% below what it was when he became president

The percent of Americans in poverty and without health insurance remains higher than when Obama became president and income for the median American keeps falling.  From the Financial Times:

The median income of American households dropped to its lowest level since 1995 last year, extending its decline during President Barack Obama’s tenure and highlighting the depth of the damage to the middle class inflicted by the recession and weak recovery.

According to annual data from the Census Bureau, median income adjusted for inflation – a closely watched measure of the financial health of average Americans – fell to $50,054 in 2011, or 1.5 per cent below its 2010 level and 4.1 per cent below its score when Mr Obama took office in 2009.

Although real median income had already started to slide beginning in 2008, before Mr Obama entered the White House, the fact that he was not able to reverse that downward trend could expose him to criticism from Mitt Romney, his rival, that his policies have not aided the middle class. In addition to the drop in overall median income, the data also showed a rise in income inequality last year. . . .

Obama increases regulations by 7.4% during his first three years

This would imply that Obama could increase regulations by 10 percent or so since he became president.    That is pretty incredible given that Obama has only been president for 5% of the time since Roosevelt became president.  From CNSNews:

Over the past three years, the bound edition of the Code of Federal Regulations has increased by 11,327 pages – a 7.4 percent increase from Jan. 1, 2009 to Dec. 31, 2011. In 2009, the increase in the number of pages was the most over the last decade – 3.4 percent or 5,359 pages.
Over the past decade, the federal government has issued almost 38,000 new final rules, according to the draft of the 2011 annual report to Congress on federal regulations by the Office of Management and Budget. That brought the total at the end of 2011 to 169,301 pages.
That is more than double the number of pages needed to publish the regulations back in 1975 when the bound edition consisted of 71,244 pages. . . .
Randy Johnson, senior vice president of labor, immigration and employee benefits at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, distributed a handout of a Congressional Research Service analysis of a 2008 study commissioned by the Small Business Administration that estimated the annual compliance price for all federal regulations at $1.7 trillion that year.
Seventy percent of the regulations were economic, accounting for $1.236 trillion of the annual cost. The other regulations were, in order of cost, environment regulations ($281 billion), tax compliance ($160 billion) and occupational safety and health and homeland security ($75 billion). . . .

David Plouffe on why Obama should veto the 2011 debt agreement between Democratic and Republican Congressional leaders: “We will not get credit for doing anything."

Bob Woodward on Obama's haphazard way of dealing with the debt limit talks and his concern to get credit for any budget agreement.  Congress was upset that Obama had defaulted on a deal at the last moment, and now Obama was upset that he would be left out of the deal.

. . . Boehner said he believed that he and the others — Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi — had a plan. He told Obama: We think we can work this out. Give us a little more time. We’ll come back to you. We are not going to negotiate this with you.
Obama objected, saying that he couldn’t be left out of the process. . . .
Reid, the most powerful Democrat on Capitol Hill, spoke up. The congressional leaders want to speak privately, he said. Give us some time. . . .

. . . Reid arrived in the Oval Office with his chief of staff, David Krone. . . .
It was highly unusual for someone to pass the ball so completely to a staffer. The 44-year-old Krone outlined the plan, including a secret Republican pledge to count $1 trillion in savings from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan toward deficit reduction. That was surprising. Earlier, Boehner had not been willing to accept this accounting gimmick.“I don’t trust these guys,” the president said dismissively. Krone either would not or could not conceal his anger. . . .
“Mr. President, I am sorry — with all due respect — that we are in this situation that we’re in, but we got handed this football on Friday night. And I didn’t create this situation. The first thing that baffles me is, from my private-sector experience, the first rule that I’ve always been taught is to have a Plan B. And it is really disheartening that you, that this White House did not have a Plan B.” Several jaws dropped as the Hill staffer blasted the president to his face. . . .
“You can’t veto,” Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner told the group. “You cannot be responsible for default.” Anything had to be done to prevent it. Anything to preserve the global economy.“If he caves,” said David Plouffe, Obama’s senior political adviser, “it will have long-lasting political repercussions that we may never get out of. If we draw a line in the sand on something this important and cross it, we may never be able to come back.”Accepting a two-step deal would not work, Plouffe said. “We will not get credit for doing anything. We’ll look like we got bullied by a bunch of very unpopular and irresponsible people.”Geithner had to deal with the possibility that the House bill could reach Obama’s desk. “My recommendation to the president would be, we’ve got to sign this. If that’s what they offer us, we sign it.” . . .

France's richest man moves to Belgium, coincidence?

Is it just a coincidence that Bernard Arnault, France's richest man and chief executive of luxury group LVMH, is moving to France at the same time that the country is increasing its top tax rate to 75 percent?  Arnault says that his move was not triggered by the tax hike.  Note though that he just happened to make a similar move during the last Socialist presidency, though that time he moved to the US.

. . . Arnault, who emigrated to the United States during the last Socialist presidency in 1981, has been critical of Hollande's tax initiative, telling Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault on Wednesday he opposed the move.
But he was not becoming Belgian to cut his tax bill, he said.
"Contrary to information published today, Bernard Arnault clarifies that he is and will continue to be a fiscal resident in France. His possible acquisition of Belgian nationality will not change this situation or his determination to develop LVMH and create jobs in France," he said.
Arnault is ranked as the world's fourth richest man with a total wealth of $41 billion, according to Forbes magazine. In a year, he jumped from seventh position, benefiting from his company's rising sales in Asia. . . .

The Financial Times reports that even Mr. Hollande's government recognizes that incentives matter.  More bizarrely they are exempting sports and movie stars.  Might they think that sports and movie stars are the most mobile?

French business leaders have stepped up the pressure in recent weeks on Mr Hollande to limit the tax, fearing an exodus of top earners and a drought of foreign investors and managers willing to come to France. 

On Wednesday, Bernard Arnault, France’s richest man and head of the luxury goods group LVMH, met Jean-Marc Ayrault, the prime minister, for talks in which he was reported to have discussed the impact of the government’s tax plans. 

Responding to business concerns, Pierre Moscovici, the finance minister, said last week that the 75 per cent levy would be introduced in “an intelligent manner” to avoid prompting an exodus of high earners. 

The websites of the newspapers Les Echos and Le Figaro reported yesterday that the 75 per cent rate would include other marginal taxes that would in effect render the new rate at 67 per cent. They said it would be limited to salary, with sports and other professional stars able to avoid the tax. . . . 

Some somewhat useful charts on the economy

Some of these charts don't put values in real terms and others don't put things in per capita terms.  Either the choice was political or the person picking the charts doesn't understand the issues involved or both may be true.

Labor force participation rate falls for normal working age population and rises for those who normally would have been retired

Political Math reconfirms what I have pointed to previously.  It is pretty hard to look at this change in participation rates from January 2008 to April 2012 and say that the drop in the labor force is simply due to people voluntarily retiring early.  Also note how it is the younger people who are being hammered the hardest.  The BLS data is available here.



The trend continues.  Note that the WSJ has this for the latest monthly change.

US's competitiveness ranking has slipped from 1st in 2008 to 7th in 2011

Unfortunately, the article doesn't mention where we were ranked number 1 by the World Economic Forum from 2004 to 2008.  From the Wall Street Journal:

Northern European countries topped the overall ranking of a global competitiveness report released Wednesday by the World Economic Forum, as the United States slipped for the fourth year in a row. . . . .
This year's survey showed the U.S. fell to seventh position from fifth in the global ranking but the country remains an innovation powerhouse and its markets work efficiently, the WEF said.
Switzerland took the top post for the fourth consecutive year, while Singapore remained in second position followed by Finland, overtaking Sweden which dropped to fourth place. . . .

See more on the WEF ranking here.  A copy of their latest report is available here.

The Heritage/WSJ rankings are available here: 2007 (p. 9), 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2012.