What's Worse Than Thieves? Thieving Police - Bloomberg: Applying the Three Languages of Politics Model

What's Worse Than Thieves? Thieving Police - Bloomberg

This article by Megan McArdle looks at civil asset forfeiture through Arnold Kling's Three Languages of Politics model. (For an explanation of civil asset forfeiture, here is what Wikipedia has: "Civil forfeiture in the United States, also called civil asset forfeiture or civil judicial forfeiture or occasionally civil seizure, is a controversial legal process in which law enforcement officers take assets from persons suspected of involvement with crime or illegal activity without necessarily charging the owners with wrongdoing.")

Anyway, this is a nice application of Kling's model (which Kling apparently supports because he posted a link to McArdle's article on his blog).

The Coming Intra-Party Wars - Megan McArdle

Megan McArdle's The Coming Intra-Party Wars - The Atlantic posting on the debt limit battle contains two comments that caught my eye. The first one talks about the choices the Republican and Democrats will have to take.

The Democrats ... are going to face unprecedented conflicts between their constituencies in the decades to come. Fundamentally, we're bumping up against the willingness of the American public to pay more taxes, or accept spending cuts. Some constituencies are going to lose. Republicans are going to have to decide whether they'd rather have lower taxes, or a stronger military. And Democrats are going to have to decide who they care about more: old people, or poor people.

The other comment (which is the real reason I posted this) brilliantly captures the shell game we're playing on ourselves. I also agree with her comment on a single entitlement system. My very first post on this blog summarizes my approach to positive and negative rights.

Me, I'd like a single entitlement system that takes care of people who are actually destitute and unable to work, not this mad scheme whereby America's middle class is supposed to get rich by picking its own pockets.