Controversy over the nickname of the NFL’s Washington Redskins has been swirling for nearly a year. Today, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) announced that it had withdrawn governmental protection for exclusive use of that name, meaning ironically that anyone (an individual or business enterprise) henceforth can call itself the “Washington Redskins”.

The purpose of the federal government’s trademark and copyright laws is to prevent copiers willy-nilly from using the same name (or symbols for it) in ways that confuse the buyers of a good or service. What would the effects on commerce or on consumers’ welfare be if, for instance, anyone were free to use Nike’s “swoosh” – or Underarmor’s distinctive “H” – to identify athletic apparel? What if a “Gucci” handbag had, in fact, been counterfeited? Consumers easily could be misled into paying more for those fakes than justified by their actual quality, as determined after purchase.

It is for the same reason that existing law grants manufacturers exclusive rights to their registered trademarks forever (in perpetuity). Patents, by contrast, run for at most 20 years.

Until today, the only reason for not enforcing a registered trademark was that the product displaying it no longer was being manufactured or sold. And so, if  the company so chose, Tesla could call its vehicles “Model Ts” without fear of a trademark infringement lawsuit from Ford Motor Co.

Political correctness is now rampant. Rather than focusing on issues of real political moment, such as the clear and present danger of Islamist uprisings on the borderlands straddling Iraq and Syria or the looming disaster of healthcare “reform”, the USPTO has concluded that the nickname of our national capital’s professional football team is worthy of public attention and denial of its exclusive commercial use. Other agencies of the federal government have better things to do. (Washington’s NFL franchise can be called the “Redskins” while the USPTO’s 2–1 decision is under appeal.)

If “Redskins” no longer is acceptable, what about “Rebels”, the monikers of the universities of Mississippi and of Las Vegas, the University of Utah’s “Utes” or Florida State’s “Seminoles”? What about Alcorn State University’s “Braves”?  (Alcorn State is an HBCU – an historically black institution of higher learning and so the federal government must tread lightly.) The University of Mississippi substituted a by and large inoffensive black bear for “Colonel Reb” as its on-field mascot. (But why not “brown” rather than possibly race-baiting “black”?) Stanford University succumbed to political pressure to switch from calling its sports teams “the Indians” to “the Cardinal”.

Will it never end until no one possibly is offended?

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has a good post up on how the patent troll Lumen View just got hit with a fee award in federal court. This is in part because of recent Supreme Court decisions making it easier for defendants to collect attorney’s fees when they win patent suits.  The troll’s patent was but a  description of computer-directed matchmaking—a nonsensical patent that never should have been issued.  The troll expected a quick payoff, but instead got whacked by the judge and has to pay fees as well.

The Obama administration is considering working with the Iranian government to deal with the full-blown horrors currently plaguing Iraq. As a non-interventionist, I’m committed to opposing such an approach. If I were a pragmatic realist or a utilitarian I’d be tempted to agree that such an alliance would be the lesser of evils, although as clear as that might seem today, I’d still have my reservations.

The terror in Iraq itself could be partly traced to a number of interventions where the U.S. government sought to ally with the lesser evil. The al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorists got a boost as America intervened on their side in Libya and, less conspicuously, in Syria. The instability in Iraq generally was a totally predictable consequence of the U.S. ousting Saddam Hussein.

While ousting Saddam stood as the central goal in America’s most horrifically cataclysmic foreign policy endeavor since Vietnam, he was of course every bit as brutal as the neocons claimed. Indeed, for many years the U.S. favored his rule for the precise reason that he was a brutal secular strongman who effectively suppressed Islamist factions (and before that because he was seen as a Cold War ally against radically leftist forces).

Much has been said to refute Thomas Piketty’s important book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, from the perspective of developed countries, but not from the standpoint of emerging markets. His contention that the rate of return of capital, roughly twice the rate of growth of the economy, leads to increasing inequality is not consistent with what has happened in the developing world. His notion that the economy is destined for a modest rate of growth and that the capitalists’ share of aggregate income will increase at the expense of workers runs against the evidence coming out of up-and-coming economies.

Before I get into that, I remind readers that various Austrian School economists have exposed significant flaws in Piketty’s understanding of the value of capital and its relation to the return on capital. Randall Holcombe states that the French author gets it backwards when he makes the return on capital dependent on the starting value of capital. It is by discounting the expected return generated by capital goods in the minds of entrepreneurs who combine them productively that an estimate of the value of capital can be reached. Since the discount factor depends of the rate of interest, the same capital goods can have very different values depending on the environment. And the aggregate value of capital doesn’t tell us how many ventures failed.

Spanish economist Juan Ramón Rallo, for his part, has shown that the rate of return of capital is not the same as the rate of growth of the income generated by capital. It is perfectly possible for the rate of return to be greater than the rate of growth of the economy, and for the ratio between capital and income to be fairly constant throughout the ages, as Piketty himself demonstrates while drawing the wrong conclusion from his data.

None of this disproves that inequality has grown in certain periods. In fact, Piketty shows that the years leading up to the Great Depression and the Great Recession were two such periods. But given that the rate of interest was in both cases manipulated by government, the inequality derived from the increased value of capital was a by-product not of perverse free markets, but of monetary interventionism.

It’s hard to overestimate the importance of the FIFA World Cup, which on June 12 kicked off its 20th tournament, this time in Brazil. Every four years this event captures the hearts and minds of hundreds of millions of soccer fans around the globe. And like the Pied Piper of Hamelin, flags and national anthems align the masses behind their countries’ respective teams.

As in the Olympic Games, the athletes’ individual names and surnames will give way to national affiliations. No longer will the individual player who won the medal, dribbling the ball skillfully down the field or scoring the winning goal, get his due credit. Instead, a collectivist mindset will co-opt the victory by celebrating, not the achievement of talented individuals, but the reflected glory of a winning team’s home country.

Don’t mistake me for an enemy of soccer; I’m not. I believe that most of the time it’s a healthy and fun pastime. But when it triggers primitive, nationalistic feelings, an ugly side emerges.

The World Cup often unfolds more like a battle than a game. Thirty-two national teams fight it out on the playing field using high centering passes and penalties in place of mortars and missiles. The enemy is: a different country, a different language, a different set of customs, a different group of people with a different look. It is exactly the same mentality that erects border fences and requires mandatory passports.

Austin Frakt and Amitabh Chandra propose a common-sense idea at the New York Times:

If [health insurance] plans could compete on the basis of the therapies they cover, consumers could decide what they wish to pay for. This sounds complicated, but it need not be.

Health plans could define themselves at least in part by the value of technologies they cover, an idea proposed by Professor Russell Korobkin of the U.C.L.A. School of Law. For example, a bronze plan could cover hospitalizations and visits to doctors for emergencies and accidents; genetic diseases; and prescription drugs that keep people out of hospitals. A silver plan could cover what bronze plans do but also include treatments a large majority of physicians find useful. A gold plan could be more inclusive still, adding coverage, for instance, for every cancer therapy shown to improve patient outcomes (no matter the cost) as long as it was delivered at a leading cancer center. Finally, a platinum plan could cover experimental and unproven cancer therapies….

This proposal encounters an immediate problem:

….as people become sick, they will prefer plans that cover more treatments, including experimental ones. As sick people disproportionately choose more generous plans, their expenses and premiums will have to rise. This phenomenon, known as adverse selection, is familiar in most health insurance markets, including those for employer-sponsored plans, private plans that participate in Medicare and in the Affordable Care Act’s new marketplaces. One common way to address it is to permit individuals to switch plans only once per year, during an open enrollment period. This locks people into their choice for some time, so they can’t suddenly upgrade their plan after getting sick. If a once-per-year enrollment period proves insufficient in this case, a longer period could be imposed.

This demonstrates the inferiority of open enrollment versus another alternative, health-status insurance (also known as insurance against becoming uninsurable). For example, one area of current conflict between health plans and pharmaceutical companies is the price of specialty drugs such as Sovaldi, for Hepatitis C, which costs $84,000 for a twelve-week course.

Current open enrollment usually happens annually. Obamacare’s open enrollment period ended on March 31. Suppose someone signed up for the cheapest Bronze plan, thinking he was healthy, and then was diagnosed with Hep C in April? Under current Obamacare rules, he has to wait until November 15, 2014, to choose a better plan for January 1, 2015. And current Obamacare Gold plans would still offer skimpy coverage of Sovaldi. Under Professors Frakt’s and Chandra’s proposal, I suppose the Gold plans would offer Sovaldi for reasonable co-pays, but they would be even more nervous about adverse selection. So, they might limit open enrollment to every two years, for example.

Obviously, the person diagnosed with Hep C in April is in a much worse position than someone who remains healthy until November (in either 2014 or 2015) and can switch immediately to a plan with better coverage. This hardly seems just. Under health-status insurance, the insured person can switch plans whenever he wants, and the previous health plan pays a sum to his new health plan that is appropriate to his new health status. Of course, he pays for this optionality with a slightly higher premium initially, but the advantages far outweigh the cost.

“Competition always has been, and always will be, disagreeable to those who are affected by it. Thus we see that in all times and in all places men try to get rid of it.” —Frédéric Bastiat

Last week, the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) sent cease-and-desist letters to app-based, ride-sharing services Uber and Lyft for operating without proper permits. With its decision, Virginia has joined a growing number of states and localities that have taken action against the two popular ride-sharing services.

I personally have the Uber app installed on my iPhone and have used it with great satisfaction. For those unfamiliar, here’s a basic explanation on how it works: In a city where the service operates, you can request one of their drivers to pick you up. The prices are transparent and clearly listed. The app allows you to select the closest driver, see the estimated arrival time, track the driver en-route, and immediately get informed when the driver arrives. Once you reach your destination, you will also receive an opportunity to review the driver and service. There’s no need to fumble for cash or your credit card during payment — the receipt for the ride comes in the form of a text (your payment information is already stored in the initial registration).

The revised budget unveiled in May by California Gov. Jerry Brown seeks to increase the amount of money that public school districts and their teachers would pay into the teacher pension fund going forward. The legislature must approve a budget by June 15 or legislators forfeit their pay until a budget is passed.

The amount that school districts would pay into the California State Teachers Retirement System (CalSTRS) would jump from 8.25 percent of teachers’ salaries to 19.1 percent, based on the governor’s budget plan. Rates would ramp up to the full 19.1 percent over a seven-year period.

Teachers’ contributions to CalSTRS would also increase, from 8 percent of their salaries to 10.25 percent, and take three years to reach the 10.25 percent rate. The State of California—meaning state taxpayers—would also pay more into CalSTRS.

For Alameda Unified School District (AUSD), for example, the district’s share of pension costs would rise from $3.9 million to $9.6 million by 2020, according to the district’s chief business officer, Robert Clark. This would be nearly a 150 percent increase in just six years.

Alameda’s teachers would also be expected to increase their pension contributions, about $500 to $600 a month, depending on each teacher’s salary. But according to one news report, the teacher union president in Alameda, Audrey Hyman, insists “school districts should increase teachers’ compensation to help them meet their rising pension costs if the proposal is approved by lawmakers.”

In other words, union officials want the school district to pay for the teachers’ share of any future pension-cost increases, not the teachers themselves who will benefit from the pensions. This perk, known as “pension pick-up,” is unfair and encourages teachers to “shoot for the moon” when lobbying for higher pension benefits because they know they won’t be stuck paying any of the additional cost. Chicago’s budget has suffered greatly from this “go for broke” teacher response.

All of the additional money needed by AUSD and its teachers for CalSTRS will be grabbed from other parts of the budget. Alameda parents need to realize that if their local school building is crumbling and classrooms are starved for resources, generous teacher pensions are a major cause, swallowing up money that would otherwise fund classroom instruction. This diversion of money to pensions will happen in school districts across the state.

Long term, state taxpayers should not be forced to contribute anything into CalSTRS. Public school teachers are hired by school districts. They are employees of those school districts. They are not state employees. And teachers negotiate pay and benefits with school districts. State taxpayers are not seated at the bargaining table.

It is immoral to make state taxpayers backfill CalSTRS’ deficits. Long term, state taxpayers should be relieved of any obligation to fund public teacher pensions. School districts and teachers should fund their own pensions. Gov. Brown and the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office have each made statements generally supportive of this change.

A serious reassessment of California’s public employee pension systems is long overdue. If changes are not made, schools and other public services will continue to suffer as more money is poured into pensions, leaving less money for traditional public services such as police, firefighters, libraries, roads, and schools.

Jobs in health care, especially in outpatient settings, continue to rally. Of 217,000 nonfarm civilian jobs filled in May, 34,000 were in health care. This was twice the average monthly gain over the previous twelve months.

As previously observed, most of these jobs are in ambulatory settings. Two thirds of the gains (23,000) were in physicians’ offices, outpatient-care centers, and home health care. Hospitals added only 7,000 jobs from April.

Table 1 shows the seasonally adjusted changes over the past twelve months. It continues to become apparent that the hospital sector is undergoing a transformation: Care is being increasingly delivered outside hospitals. Although they still account for one-third of employment in health services, job growth in hospitals is anemic. Although outpatient-care centers employ only 715,000 workers, they continue to add jobs rapidly.

Hopefully, this indicates a shift to more productive ways of delivering care. However, the perverse incentives in Obamacare (which cut hospital payments bluntly) caution against optimism.

Taxpayers in Austin, Texas, are upset that their property tax bills are rising.  This article reports that taxpayer Gretchen Gardner is “at the breaking point” because of her increasing property taxes.

Gardner says, “I have voted for every park, every library, all the school improvements, for light rail, for anything that will make this city better. But now I can’t afford to live here anymore.”  It appears that Gardner strongly supports more government spending, as long as someone else pays the cost.

She is going to protest her tax assessment.

She goes on to say, “Someone needs to step in and address the big picture.”  As I see it, the big picture is that our country has too many voters like Gardner who keep asking for more government spending without thinking that somebody has to pay for it.