Dude, Uh, You're IRRELEVANT?!

Awwww.

Wook at da wittle poor vice presidenty wenty.

Why exactly does he think he matters now?

Poor Bush

Guess that's what happens when you try to be everything to everyone.

Then again, when you go to the web site, his links are to leftist blogs, but I'm inclined to believe the figures given the inaction of Bush.

Brits Got Balls

Would never happen here in the US with that communist group known as AARP.

What a HORRIBLE Economy

The one thing Bush won't get credit for, even though his tax cuts deserve it.

Cultures Aren't Superior, They're Just Different

My ass.

We DON'T Have National Health Care?

Again, if I hear the left complain that we don't spend enough on health care, I'll post a chart the will be shown to millions of Americans over the internet and with this newfound economic knowledge, the masses' minds will be freed! They will realize that they've been being duped by the left for all these years. And soon, they will vote for capitalists across the board. And then chicks will ask "who was that devishly handsome fellow that showed us the chart that freed our minds and showed us we were being duped by the left?" And people will say, "That handsome fellow is Captain Capitalism." And then there will be Captain Capitalism groupies! And a Captain Capitalism Fan Club. And a Captain Capitalism Cheerleading Squad! And then the world will at last know true peace and experience RGDP growth of 5,000% per year without inflation.

Ego Superceding the Cause

Remember the post I had a while ago about how leftists don't particularly care about helping the poor, or eliminating disease in Africa, because what is really driving them, what their ulterior motive is, is that they want to feel good about themselves but without putting forth the hard work and effort that would actually result in a tangible benefit to society?

"Hi, I'm Al Gore, and I'm irrelevant now, but my ego needs masterbation."

Get your ass in academia you has-been.

Business Friendliness

Found via Libertarian Jason.

I'll say it again.

Treat business like you treat your wives. If you want them to come to you and invest in you, then give them incentive by treating them nice.

Don't beat them and hit them with high taxes, regulation and vitrolic, socialist hatred.

I highlighted a couple states of interest since I've always advocated (and advised some) Minnesota companies to move to Sioux Falls, SD and we have pretty heavy readership out on the west coast.

Air America

So now that I’m a big hoopla talk radio show guy thing, it got me thinking a little more about liberal talk radio, particularly Air America. And the question I can’t answer is “how will liberal talk radio work?”

Sure, we all listen to Rush and how he bombastically scoffs at their chances. Sure we all know why right wing, patriotic, Republican, Capitalism talk shows work since they serve an underserved market. Sure, we all know that the chances of liberal talk radio succeeding are minimal because we can get it already on NPR. But the answer to the question why, is much more insightful than most of us would realize. Not in as much as it points out the obvious, but that it highlights the fundamental differences between the capitalist and socialist ideologies purported by the Republicans and democrats, respectively.

First, radio talk shows of the right leaning sort have succeeded in the traditional manner that radio has operated; the market.

A host or show entices sponsors to spend money on advertising which finances the show. If the show is successful enough, it attracts enough listeners, and enough listeners then patronize the sponsors which begets more advertising dollars. This is a very simple, yet beautiful example of the market at work.

A service (the radio show) is essentially provided for free (via sponsor’s dollars). The market.

Yet after thinking about it, the only real way liberal talk radio would work is purely out of charity, or confiscatory taxes to subsidize it. No legitimate business, concerned about their own survival is going to support left wing radio. What sense does it make for a business to pay somebody to spout ideas of increasing their taxes and vitriol for the entrepreneur? It’s counterintuitive.

Therefore, liberal radio is relegated to primarily three main sources of financing:

Charitable contributions from spoiled brat trust fund baby or Hollywood leftists

Socialist political interest groups such as unions or bona fide parties like Democratic Socialists of America, etc.

Organic Coffee Shops

Oh sure, I’ve heard a couple private sector firms make an advertisement on Air America, primarily investment or insurance shops. Car dealerships and what not. I’m sure socialists buy cars and reluctantly buy insurance (because the government should pay for that, DUH!). But they’re eclipsed by the sheer volume of pathetic ads put up by unions, non-profits and other appendages of the democratic and socialist parties in the US.

Thusly, it is this, that is the fundamental reason that liberal radio will at worst fail, at best, never achieve the greatness of right leaning radio, simply because it is not based in the market and will rely on handouts for their financing. No person is willingly going to pay to hear how they should pay more taxes, forgive the terrorists, feel guilty for being white, or pay reparations for minorities of 300 years ago. Only the public sector and those to benefit from such inanity would be willing to pay for it, if for any other reason than job security.

It is the classical battle between the establishment and the people. The people willingly patronizing those that sponsor the right leaning shows, while the left leaning has to go out and (role befitting) beg for their money.

Alas the only real difference I can see between liberal talk radio and NPR is that NPR feigns its objectivity while liberal talk radio emphasizes its bias.

Time to Resort to Conspiracy Theories

I'll say it again;

Democrats, socialists and other varied leftists will always resort to conspiracy theories because they are unable to accept the reality that their policies don't work.

Rather than accept reason, facts, research, statistics and common sense, they insist on living in their own little world where wealth is magically produced out of thin air, socialism works, the terrorists are simply misunderstood, and their relatively low incomes are the result of racism, sexism, ageism, glass ceiling, boys network, Bush and Haliburton.

So what I want you to do is pour yourself a nice tall drink, pull up a chair, and watch the left immediately default to their "Conspiracy Theory Mode" when they read this.

I say they're going to go with the "Big Oil owns Bush and Bush owns this administration and therefore controls the antitrust department" schtick.

Work Smarter, not Harder

If you think about it, the vast, VAST majority of economic growth and wealth production has come in the form of innovation and creation. Jamal may work 80 hours a week in a field in Nigeria, and Sim Yon may work 70 hours in a factory in North Korea, but in that same amount of time a combine can harvest 1,000 times the amount of wheat than Jamal can and a robot will produce 1,000 more widgets than Sim Yon can, thereby freeing up labor to pursue more advanced, higher end trades.

Of course if you listened to those ignorant leftists and their labor union stooges, any change in the status quo is horrible for today workers and will put millions out of jobs. Again, if today's modern leftists were around in 1898 we'd still all be riding horses, because they'd be more concerned about how many people would be put out of work in the horse industry, instead of how much of a benefit the automobile would bring to society.

This might also explain why leftists abhor the real sciences of engineering, physics, accounting, biology and gravitate towards el-crapo studies of sociology, women's studies, feelings, public policy, health management and basket weaving.

Regardless, for those of you that appreciate reality and would like to see standards of living increase and have no problem with creative destruction, the following chart should explain in part why the US and Korea have had higher than average economic growth rates and why people from Mexico insist on moving here.

I'm Hurt By My Irish Bretheren

It hurts more because it is the Irish that have stabbed my heart, for despite a thorough, indepth post that glorified Ireland, my ancestrial brothers have seemed not to notice their American cousin for all I've gotten was one lousy stinking hit from the homeland.


Come on here guys!

So, in a desperate hope to get more representation from the economic emerald in my eye, I will repost the post on Ireland.

There was a comment made on one of my posts about how he was shocked that Ireland was such an economic success. And I suppose I never really gave much thought about it, but it did occur to me that there are probably some people out there who are still under the impression that Ireland is still the armpit of Europe and are unaware as to just what an economic success story Ireland has become.

Thus, I've decided to highlight some of the key statistics about Ireland and compare them to the UK, the US and the EU for reference.

First things first. Ireland used to have high tax rates, but has since lowered them to become some of the lowest in Europe going from above 50% of GDP in the 80's to 35% today.



Overall taxes weren't the only things being lowered, as Ireland effectively has become a tax haven for corporation, attracting investment from foreign firms wishing to establish a beach head and gain access to the European markets.


While leftists will contest otherwise, history has shown us that as taxes are lowered, certain things have a tendency to go down.

Things like unemployment;


Note the precipitous drop in unemployment from French levels to American levels.

But while unemployment may drop, other things increase when taxes are lowered...like economic growth. Ireland is by far the only European Tiger and leaves most other modern day countries behind, lending credence to my theory that an economy can never grow "too fast."


Higher economic growth results in higher standards of living. This should particularly piss off the Brits since as of 1998, Ireland has surpassed their former overlord's in standards of living and looks set to surpass even US standards (don't ask me why the OECD doesn't have 2003-2005 data).


Today there are very few countries that enjoy higher standards of living than Ireland


Of course statistics and economics isn't everything. I remember a socialist getting into it with me saying, "You know, the whole world isn't all statistics, Statistics Man. There's things like love and friendship count too..."

I couldn't agree more. What is life I ask you, without love? And how can you possibly measure or apply statistics to love?

Thus a comparison of who I can fall in love with from varying countries is warranted;

I could fall in love with a German, such as Chancellor Merkel;

I could court Judi Dench, a renouned, Oscar-winning British actress who currently portrays M in the new James Bond films;


To be fair and representative of all Europeans, we should include some Scandinavians like the head of Sweden's feminist party;


Oh, and let's not forget there's a lot of fine selection in them there US American babes!


And then we have those god-awful redheaded monsters that pass for women in Ireland;

Yuck! What sane, rational-minded, red-blooded male would EVER contemplate moving to Ireland?

Flowers, Now This

As you know the Captain has had a surprising amount of luck in the past year or so, some of that luck manifesting itself in the form of a fetching babe that happens to find your beloved Captain Capitalism fetching himself.

And while the Captain is continually amazed how sweet and kind she is, there have been several things that she has done which have just completely floored him and taken him off guard. Things that have gone beyond what most women have done. For example

She said yes to a date.
She showed up for the date.
She agreed to go on a second date.
She surprised him by taking him out to a place he had never been before.
And of course she bought the Captain flowers which he posted on this blog.

However, the fetching babe of capitalism has outdone herself this time;


I am the envy of all economists.

A Smug American am I

Another good chart in The World in 2006 that I've been meaning to post.

Of course, the knee jerk reaction and retorts to this are;

1. GDP is not a measure of happiness, health, standards of living, candle light vigils, and fluffy good feelings.
2. Europe has free health care and education
3. George Bush sucks
4. This doesn't account for intangible extenalities like pollution, scenery and that George Bush sucks.
5. But the wealth is distributed insanely unequally and you have a very high Gini Coefficient...even though your "poor" is wealthier than the average Frenchman.
6. "Oh yeah, well, did you know that more people in the world watch soccer than American football??? Yeah, that's right!"

All those things being said, we know deep down inside, you're jealous.

And that's OK, because the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem. And once you admit you have a problem, then the road to capitalistic recovery and higher standards of living can take place.

Slave Labor

I used to work for a software firm that had a fair amount of its programming done in Shanghai. That was of course several years ago, but since then I was always interested in what programmers made out there versus their spoiled, hoity toity American counterparts in Palo Alto (yeah, those $70,000 per year C++ programming jobs didn't last out there did they, boys?)


Anyway, my personal interest aside, what I noticed with these figures is how (BY GOSH!) they're making decent money out there in dem der third world countries. In Kuala Lumpur one can almost make $10,000 a year as a programmer. And don't even get me started about how it isn't adjusted for purchasing power parity.

Regardless, the whole point is how I remember back in the late 80's and early 90's being told that American companies were taking advantage of these poor third world laborers and paying them nickels per decade. That you shouldn't buy Nike because they force children with one arm and 3 toes to work 15 hours a day and drink acid for lunch, if they're lucky enough to have a lunch!

Yes, well every country must start somewhere. Last I recall working on the American frontier in the 1820's wasn't exactly up to UN Human Rights Code. And look, within 15 years and billions of dollars worth of FDI, decent jobs with decent pay are starting to show up in the developing world...well maybe not Bolivia or Venezuela, but the developing world that at leasts wishes to progress.

"Americans Should Stop Complaining"

And become brainwashed dolts like Europeans and spread their ass cheeks a little wider and learn to embrace high taxes on gas and never knowing the feeling of hitting the open road with a full tank knowing you can drive cross country and still afford rent that month.

Current Account and Federal Deficit

From The World in 2006 from The Economist.

This Ain't Africa!

Eh, with deteriorating standards in the west and how we should all embrace cultural diversity. Maybe it's inevitable.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/health/healthmain.html?in_article_id=385968&in_page_id=1774

Sorry guys, try that link.

More Representation

Well, seems Captain Capitalism has readers in some more exotic locations.

Seems Hawaii finally came around and joined the remaining 49 states.

Mauritius. That's what I'm talking about! What blog can claim representation in Mauritius!?

And by the looks of it, I'd say Churchill off of Hudson Bay. The only reason I know of this town is because the meteorologist in Minneapolis would always check in the temperatures there in January to make out -17 degree day seem balmy. I hate that effer.

And, last, but not least, no doubt my good buddy Hugo down there in Venezuela read my post about what a piss sh!t job he's done running that country into the ground. Great article in The Economist about how he's claiming we're about to invade his country and he'd burn all the oil before he'd let us have it. Such posturing before an election. But that's alright, millions of ignorant Americans will still shop at Citgo everyday giving this impotent dictator enough money to stay in power...not to mention the ignorant Venezuelan simpletons who think socialism is the way to grow the economy.

Hard Time Finding Reason to Vote Right

http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pnoonan/?id=110008359

And with Bush trying to get his brother to run, yeah, I'm thinking it's time to punish the Republicans for their insolence.