Duty calls me to a third thankless research project.
- I spent three days trying to find business announcements for Western North Carolina. As I mentioned before, it took a lot of digging to find anybody announcing a new line, a new machine, a new technique, etc., etc. Government is doing a heap load of subsidizing, but I don’t consider government transfers a form of entrepreneurial production. And yet almost every day the news tells of one WNC jurisdiction in which the Great Recession is now definitively over with economic indicators skyrocketing out the yin-yang.
- I spent the morning trying to find a tax form with its appurtenances online. After three hours of nothing, I wished I had had the privilege of taking Common Core math. Then, I would be able to construct deductive algorithms to calculate the name and number of the form I seek, and which parts of four sets of instructions superseded which. I would derive all pertinent case law past and future, and determine the most probable interpretations to be arrived at by the agent who reviews my payments. From there, I went on to fantasize about a world where all production stopped, and all we do is paperwork for the government, and that led to me wondering why I whittle my life away to support government programs that tear away at the fiber that holds society together and PC’s me into value-neutralizing support for things everybody knows take their toll on health, happiness, and the economy.
- Linamar is applying for another ED grant of up to $3.5 million. It’s not really a grant because it’s not really money. It is an incentive, an empowerment, a multiplier, and this time we are going to just be rolling all over ourselves because the waiters and maids are dodging code officers as they live five to a flat, paying escalated rents so the city can service its debt on Linamar’s $39,000 salaries. I was wondering what the total in state and federal donations for this recidivism was to date, but I don’t expect to find it in one place. I’d like to see the value of projected ROI’s too, in terms of how many light-years the end-to-end dollars stretch beyond the cosmos.
Why whine? Government is the anti-economy, right? It’s purpose is to override the efficiencies of the free market for the greater goods du jour.