Mexico's President wants Mexicans to starve

Yahoo News Article

Mexico's President is working with food manufacturers to freeze food prices on 150 food items. Does anyone else see a food shortage coming? I think that it will only be a matter of time before we start hearing about the food shortage problems in Mexico. This will likely lead to even further involvement of the Mexican government. I can hear it already " The government did not due enough by freezing the food prices, the should have lowered them and then froze them". So then the government will be called on for further interference in the market. Let the downward spiral begin...

To read an intelligent approach about Food Shortages, click here for an article by Kel Kelly.

Bambam on Tax Credits

Obama said he would give students a $4,000 tax credit to help pay tuition and fees in exchange for 100 hours of community service. The campaign said the program would cost $10 billion a year.
From Yahoo News.

I sat in court about 2 months ago and was able to observe people trading out their fines for community service. Where I live, the defendants were able to trade out their fines at the rate of $10 per hour. So if your fine was $200 you could opt for 20 hours of community service or any combination between fines and labor that the judge would agree to. Now Bambam is proposing a rate of $40 per hour for the community service. I would venture to say that there are very few college students who are making more than $40 per hour. Which would make this program of great appeal to those who are not too proud to do community service work. The program sounds great at the surface. I mean I would love to be able to work for 2 weeks at 50 hours a week and pay for my schooling for the semester. Perhaps I could work for a whole month in the summer and pay for my tuition for the whole year. One of the problems with this plan is that community service is simply not worth $40 an hour. That is why it the program is estimated to cost $10 billion per year. According to the article:

Barack Obama graduated from Columbia University Michelle Obama received her undergraduate degree from Princeton. Both earned law degrees from Harvard.

Bambam also mentions that both his wife and him had $60,000 of debt each when they got married. Some people pause here and throw a fit. As I have heard a professor of mine proclaim "It is a crime that college students graduate with so much debt". Of course people who are this feeble minded don't understand trade-offs. Bambam and his wife made a combined amount of $4.2 million last year. It seems that they understand the idea of trade-offs. Both of them went to prestigious schools for both their undergraduate and their law degrees. They accumulated debt as they were acquiring skills which they deemed would be of future value greater than that of the debt that they would owe. It seems that both were correct with their judgment and they are benefiting today from a choice they made years ago. This is a trade-off. You can forgo consumption today so that you can consume more in the future or you can consume more today and forgo consumption in the future. This is the key idea of time value of money. I am doing the same thing Bambam did. I have gone into debt in order to finance my college education with hopes of receiving a financial compensation for it in the future. There is nothing wrong with this. This is simply the choice that an individual makes about his future. There is no need for society to pay for the college education of these individuals any more than they already do. On the surface it sounds great that we are going to help make college more affordable for students. However, the question that we should all be asking is; where is the money going to come from?

Interview with Greenspan