Cab Thoughts 2/18/12

Kimberly Clark raised the price of their Huggies diapers 7% and immediately lost 8% of their market share.

A huge debate is rising in Pennsylvania over the offering of tax breaks to a company choosing in which state to build a "cracker plant" (a plastics line). This is being called "corporate blackmail" as if the rules were not written by the states. More, did anyone scream very long when the state ignored the referendum and built two stadiums in Western Pennsylvania?

If there ever was an argument in favor of the "shoot him if he runs, cut him if he stands" approach to the drug dealer it is Whitney Houston. This lovely, talented, well raised and complete woman had her life metamorphosed into ineptness, dependency and embarrassment by her degenerate boyfriend and enabler and guide through a demonic world of drug use. No doubt he will become the grieving lover, a subject of unending sympathy and support. It makes you want to return to Dante and figure out which of the layers of hell is most appropriate for him. It might be a good subject for a web site. The entire nation could expiate its feelings trying to figure which torture to put Brown through for eternity. If that is too much for the culture, maybe we should just bring back the duena.

Autor from MIT has published a new paper on disability insurance. In 1988, 4% of men and 2% of women aged 40 to 59 received disability benefits. By 2008, the men's rate was almost 6% and the women's, 5%. Through the 1970s, strokes, heart attacks and cancer were major causes. Now, mental problems and back pain dominate (54% of awards in 2009, nearly double 1981's 28%). As physically grueling construction and factory jobs have shrunk, disability awards have gone up. For many recipients, the disability program is a form of long-term unemployment insurance. Lawyers and other advocates are entitled to 25% of back benefits up to $6,000 per case. Their total payments approach $1.5 billion annually. This could be a metaphor for the problems facing government programs. People in need served by a program with good intentions expanded by greed, lawyers, sympathy and the lack of political will to make hard decisions to control it.

The BMW is the car bought in the U.S. by people with the highest income. Second richest car buyers? The Chevy Volt. Does this mean the tax breaks we give buyers of the Volt go to the upper 1%?

If the government is allowed to turn the recent attack on religious freedom into an argument over birth control, the democracy is too dumb to survive.

The recent meetings that the Feds have been having with entrepreneurs of different states has resulted in some consensus. Most believe that capital is too hard to get and that workers are not trained well enough to take positions. One thing the Feds are saying is that there is an astonishing amount of data available in health care that is waiting to be analyzed and they expect a boom like the boom when the military released their GPS data. As a side note, there is a huge amount of untapped data in government research labs that hold similar promise. Really quite a vision.