From a NYT blog:
Think a $4 gallon of gas is expensive? Consider the prices of these other fluids that people buy every day without complaint.
Lipton Iced Tea, 16 oz @ $1.19 = $9.52 per gallon
Diet Snapple, 16 oz @ $1.29 = $10.32 per gallon
Gatorade, 20 oz @ $1.59 = $10.17 per gallon
Ocean Spray, 16 oz @ $1.25 = $10.00 per gallon
Evian water, 9 oz @ $1.49 = $21.19 per gallon (!)
Wite-Out, 7 oz @ $1.39 = $25.42 per gallon
Brake fluid, 12 oz @ $3.15 = $33.60 per gallon
Scope, 1.5 oz @ $0.99 = $84.48 per gallon
Pepto-Bismol, 4 oz @ $3.85 = $123.20 per gallon
Vicks NyQuil, 6 oz @ $8.35 = $178.13 per gallon
But here?s the kicker:
HP 02 Black Ink Cartridge, 16 ml $18 online = $4,294.58 per gallon.
Yes, that?s right: inkjet printer ink goes for over four thousand dollars a gallon. What?s in there, anyway ? gold filings?
So the next time you?re at the pump, be glad your car doesn?t run on water, Scope, Wite-Out, Pepto-Bismol, NyQuil, or ? heaven forbid ? printer ink!
No se pierdan este video de Jesús Huerta de Soto (Wikipedia) donde habla del socialismo, el estado, la función empresarial, el anarcocapitalismo y los mercados negros.
The following headline puts The Onion to shame: "U.S. Fed Now Accepts Credit Card Debt as Collateral"
The Fed is now expanding that list of asset-backed securities to include collateralized car loans, credit card receivables, and student loans. It's doing so because the lack of demand for bonds backed by those assets has had a real political impact in an election year. Students can't get loans for American universities because investors won't buy bonds issued by the banks who made the loans to the students. No funding, no college.
Now the Fed (and the feds) are looking to guarantee a college education to all by absorbing more debt.
What will they think of next?
Do not miss Tim Swanson's interview of Peter Schiff of Euro Pacific Capital. Mr. Schiff advices Americans to dump the dollar and invest in precious metals, commodities and foreign stocks. He also calls Paulson's plan "facsist."
My favorite part of the interview: "We need to rebuild the foundation of our economy from one of borrow and consume to one of save and produce. Politicians and central bankers will resist this transformation and make the process that much more difficult and painful for all Americans."
Read the rest.
photo credit: 2757
Si algo hemos aprendido en tantos años de spam, es que si este existe es porque lamentablemente funciona y es RENTABLE. Hace poco mencionaba que estaba tratando de buscar una solución para el spam en mi blog, probe WP-spamfree, si bien es cierto no tuve falsos positivos, la cantidad de spam que dejaba pasar era mínima los primeros días y luego entro en el orden de los 300 mensajes diarios, lo cual era para mi inaceptable; asi que lo desactivé y he vuelto a wp-morph de Diego Sevilla a quien voy a tener que contactar para ver si se puede dar arreglo al tema de los falsos positivos.
Volviendo al título del post, mientras me paseaba por el blog de Akismet encontré una presentación de Ross Anderson (trabaja en Google) que es sumamente reveladora con relación al spam y su economía, técnicas y cual es la lógica de toda esta gran maquinaría que esta detrás del spam, se las recomiendo :
http://blog.akismet.com/2007/09/18/spam-and-economics/
My latest article has been published today.
There Are No Flights To Jupiter: Market Failure?
Market failures are everywhere! Read a newspaper or web site and you?ll quickly find pundits saying that the market has failed to solve such and such problem. Most of the claims have to do with the market's supposedly inability to provide the "correct" quality and quantity of a good or service. Let's correct this misunderstanding.
The market is the sum of all of the individuals who are participating in exchange. When there is (free) exchange, A gives B something that A values less than what B is willing to give A in return. In this double inequality, both parties benefit.
There?s no need to call the market "perfect" or "imperfect." This is not because humans are perfect but because people engaging in voluntary transactions expect to mutually benefit. Thus, their expectation of gain is true every time, otherwise they would not trade. In this narrow sense, we can correctly say that the market is efficient. Buyer and seller are better off and thus are wealthier than they were before ("wealth" is used in the economics sense and not the financial or monetary sense ?people become wealthier as they achieve their goals and these need not be financial).
A "perfect" market would imply that every participant is free of error. Every transaction would always be correct and no one would have regrets or would have preferred an alternate course of action. If that were true, however, then this would mean that preferences do not change; that buyers are never swayed to improve their lives by seeking different products or services (or refraining to purchase and save instead); and that sellers and entrepreneurs never change their product lines or seek to improve quality of products. In fact, the exact opposite is what we would expect from imperfect human beings who exchange in order to improve their state of affairs. The discovery of error after exchange is crucial for the advancement of society.
Notice that the market failure crowd tends to criticize specific sectors of the industry, mostly notably health care, education, transportation and sometimes agriculture. Yet these just happen to be some of the most intervened sectors of the economy by government. There is no free exchange and no real chance to opt for a different product. The government "customer" is forced to pay for it all. We see no crisis in the pencil industry, or the computer industry, or in the restaurant industry. Why? Because people in certain sectors of the economy are relatively free to choose, and entrepreneurs are free to search for opportunities to satisfy the needs of others.
Conclusion
Where the critics of the market ultimate fail is when they compare the market to a standard that does not exist. There are no flights to Jupiter or Mars or the Moon even though I want such a thing. Where is the failure? If we understand that the market exists only whenever there is exchange, there is no such failure to be found. Entrepreneurs and consumers have decided that resources are better invested elsewhere and these resources will be able to better satisfy consumer needs. The best way to efficiently make humanity better is to completely allow free markets in everything.
Written by Mark Thornton and Robert Ekelund, Jr., this book shows how terribly economic policies worsen the already devastating efforts of the war. The people of the north suffered from the Union's tariffs and blockades while the Confederacy saw terrible price inflation. At just over 100 pages, this was a breeze to read and very informative.
"[D]uring wartime many people increase their broad support for the government, and hence they are less inclined to challenge its actions even when those actions have little or nothing to do with the war. Hardly anyone was surprised that real defense spending (as measured in accordance with the government's own narrow concept) increased by almost 60 percent between 2000 and 2007, while real GDP rose by only 18 percent. Note, however, that the government's real nondefense outlays increased concurrently by more than 24 percent―an increase one-third greater than that of GDP. When people let down their guard because they 'support the troops,' they permit the government to make greater headway in its ceaseless quest to enlarge its spending in a wide range of areas, many of them strictly civilian in nature." --Robert Higgs
I picked up Taylor's An Introduction To Austrian Economics for under $10 at the Mises Institute a couple of weeks ago. The author has managed to write a very concise, though dense, summary of AE. He covers subjective value, marginal utility, interest, time preference, labor, capital, the ERE and the business cycle, among others.
I read Mark Thornton's "The Economics of Prohibition" (buy here) last week. Aside from the economic analysis, it goes a bit into the history of the various prohibitions: from alcohol and marihuana to opium and heroine. Though the stats are out of date --the book is from 1991-- I'd still recommend it. Hopefully he'll revise the book one of these days.
Some samples chapters here and here.
Prof. Manuel Ayau's "Not A Zero-Sum Game" is a brief but excellent summary of the concepts of comparative advantage and exchange and how this plays into trade. Ayau explains why trade is beneficial and debunks the arguments for government interference in the free market, emphasizing the idiotic anti-freedom "free trade" agreements.
The book can be purchased (in Spanish or English) from the bookstore of the Universidad Francisco Marroquín, which, by the way, is a bastion of Austro-libertarian thought.
Quite an interesting blog entry about and net neutrality. Paul Sweeting summarizes various views espoused by academic economists during a video policy symposium. Some highlights:
"Copyright is a very big issue in the legal world today, but in the business world, when you talk to consumers about protecting copyrights, it's a dead issue," he said. "It's gone. If you have a business model based on copyright, forget it."
According to Faulhaber, the "world of open piracy," created by digital technology will always thwart content owners seeking to leverage the monopoly granted to them by copyright law.
Though today the iTunes/Amazon model seems to be the more popular one, commentators said that a better business model would be one where content providers would "hook up with the conduit guys." Monetizing the content would presumably be easier because providers can control its distribution.
Finally, because the bandwidth required for high quality video is not yet cheap, providers are seeking to economize that scarce resource through traffic shaping or network management. Wharton professor Gerry Faulhaber has said that regulating or prohibiting traffic shaping would make things worse: "Regulating traffic shaping will reduce available capacity. If demand exceeds supply, total throughput on a network declines, sometimes to zero."
[Cross-posted]
I have an article on LRC about privatization, ethics and praxeology.
The Enemies of Privatization
The Causeway is the 24-mile bridge that spans Lake Pontchartrain in the New Orleans area.
Earlier this week, Jefferson Parish President Broussard proposed that the bridge should be leased or sold to an international consulting firm. The council, of course, is shocked by the idea. One councilman has called it "ridiculous" while another is "flabbergasted" because the Causeway is a "public bridge" and "it belongs to the public." Finally, a third council member believes that it "is not in the best interest of the Causeway or the residents of Jefferson Parish."
One must wonder how it is possible for a single human being to know with certainty whether a particular course of action benefits or hurts society. Yet this is exactly what is claimed when we hear that something is or isn't in the "best interest" of everyone else. This is merely an assertion backed by economic ignorance and political pandering. Indeed, because public works are financed through taxation, it is not in the best interest of everyone; some would have preferred an alternate use for their money.
Dealing with the comment that the bridge belongs to the public requires resorting to libertarian principles. If the bridge (or anything else) was built with taxes, then I believe that the bridge should not* be sold to a company that does not have a better claim on the state-managed property. That said, however, that does not mean that I am against the de-socialization of everything. In fact, my libertarian view of this is simple: return the property to the victims to the extent that this is possible (there are various theories on how to do this but those are beyond the scope of this article).
The argument that the members of the council make is that because it belongs to the public, no one company or organization should be allowed to buy it. To be fair, this is not entirely objectionable. What is objectionable is their support for the creation and subsequent managing of public property (I prefer to call it state-managed property). Thus, their objection only gets it half right â??they prevent the improper privatization of public resources on the grounds that it belongs to the "public" but it does not go far enough. For if they really and coherently believed that taking from the public gives the public a right to their tax-financed resources against a potential buyer, then it seems to me that they would have to apply the same at the individual level. That is, private property should give the owner the right against a potential buyer/confiscator.
Now it can be argued that the council does not have a problem with taxation in general and that would be true. After all, they form part of the parishâ??s executive branch and implicitly (and often explicitly) support socialism to some extent. But even here the council would have to resort to economic reasoning to support their claims. Thus, we are back where we started. Because of faulty understanding of human action, they are unable to realize that preferences are ordinal and subjective and can only be demonstrated through action. Since taxation is aggressive and one cannot demonstrate a preference for alternate uses of money, the council takes away freedom of choice and socializes policy in the name of "efficiency."
The Jefferson Parish council cannot know what is best for us. What they lack in understanding they make up in political machinations against property owners. I recommend reading works on praxeology.
* As a market anarchist I support no state action other than its disappearance. The council should manage no property. My case is simply against further victimization. The victims should have first right of rejection on state-managed property. If reasonable methods to return the stolen property fail, then it seems to me that the property in question is then up for grabs â??it can be homesteaded. The state must control nothing at all.
I had never completely read Bastiat's The Law so I decided to get a printed copy and read it on a flight.
The city of Los Angeles is considering an ordinance that would create a paparazzi-free bubble of safety around celebrities whereby the proceeds of the sale of photographs taken within the bubble would be confiscated.
Situations such as this one exist due to a lack of property rights. Roads, parks and other areas are made available to everyone by the state, and in so doing, it has to try to accommodate as many groups as possible, even when each group wishes that the other would disappear. One group will cry out for protection against the swarm of lenses while the other will claim that they have freedom of movement and the right to photograph everyone on public property.
One must ask how come there are no paparazzi in people's homes? Because they have not been invited. Wherever there is private property, there is order as determined by the owner.
When land and other spaces are socialized such that everyone has generally unlimited access to it at no cost (or very little cost), then we can expect chaos --people will want to have as much use as possible and conflicts over usage rules are almost always inevitable.
The state cannot legitimately owner property and thus should not be managing it (or be creating bubbles of safety). The best solution to this government-created moral hazard is to desocialize land as much as possible. It is not inconceivable to think that unlike the city government, road owners, neighborhoods and developers would establish rules. They might then legitimately prohibit certain behaviors and treat intruders as trespassers. Some might ban photographers while some might even ban celebrities!
[Cross-posted]
I have the following article today on LRC.
Income Redistribution Is Not Charity
"I always find it interesting that socialists treat government as a sort of supernatural entity: it affects all things without actually being a part of it. The money and actions they take have no (important) effects apart from what the socialists intend." ~ Robert Wicks
It takes a lot to surprise me these days. It's hard not to be cynical when surrounded by uninformed opinions and comments based on ignorance of economics, and by a disdain for personal freedom. Thus, I was delightfully and honestly surprised when I saw this Mises.org blog entry about an editorial in the New York Times called "Charity Begins in Washington." Having found it so incredibly laughable, I had no choice but to attempt a rebuttal.
In this brief article I shall point out the major fallacies, errors and misunderstandings in the editorial. I ask the reader to forgive my fisking.
Economic imbecility
The problems start right away:
The munificence of American corporate titans warms the heart, sort of. The Chronicle of Philanthropy reports that the top 50 donors gave $7.3 billion to charity last year ? about $150 million per head. Excluding Warren Buffett?s $43.5 billion burst of generosity in 2006, last year?s giving easily beat the record set the year before.
I immediately must question the author's "sort of" remark. Does it not warm the heart? I believe it does, at least most people's heart. Maybe the Times employs heartless people or people so different from the rest of society that they are unable to relate to what others are feeling. This is a minor, non-economic quibble so on to substance:
This is great news for many worthy causes. Last year?s top donor, William Barron Hilton of hotel fame, pledged $1.2 billion to his father?s foundation, which supports efforts to prevent blindness worldwide, curb drug abuse among the young and help the homeless, among other things. Other donors targeted cancer research and children?s health clinics.
Yet we?d be so much happier about all the good things America?s moneyed elite pay for if the government made needed public investments.
Non sequitur! From the fact that billions of people donated money it does not follow that it would make us happier if the government took over the management of private charities. The statements are unrelated. Further, who is the "we" in "we'd be so much happier"? It just takes one person to not be happier for the comment to be false (or they could be indifferent). It also takes just one person to not be "much" happier as the rest for the comment to be false. Suppose that I wanted to donate $500 to a local church. If we were to socialize/nationalize charity, it's likely that those $500 will no longer be available to me. Thus, my charity will not receive those funds and there will be little chance that I would be "much happier."
The snide remarks made by this editorial are symptomatic of a deeper problem. The main assumption is that the state is less likely to make errors than the private sector and thus the government can and should allocate funds; to leave that in the hands of the market would be inefficient and many charities would suffer. These assumptions are wrong.
The assumption that the state is less likely to make errors and therefore this is a preferable arrangement to people donating money on their own is utterly naïve. Free exchange is always ex ante beneficial. When two parties willingly enter into an agreement they both assume that they are each going to be better off otherwise they would not do it. If A buys a loaf of bread for $1.50 from B it means that A values the bread more than his $1.50. B, in turn, values the $1.50 more than the bread. Free exchange is always fair. The discovery of errors comes only after an exchange happens. True, it's possible to expect errors and try to anticipate them, but the knowledge needed to make the calculus of error is based on previous experiences. Only by failing can we determine that failure did in fact occur.
Unfortunately, these insights are bad news for our philistine author. All government action is aggressive; there is no free exchange. Because there is no market, there is no way of knowing whether errors have indeed happened. When the state takes resources and puts it to other uses, it necessarily does so without the consent of those from whom the resources were taken. The conclusion is unmistakable: we are unable to know that the government is making the correct decision. Its decrees do not resemble what people would voluntarily do. Thus, it cannot be conclusively said that "we?d be so much happier" if the government invested in charity.
We now continue with the rest of the editorial.
The flip side of American private largess is the stinginess of the public sector. Philanthropic contributions in the United States ? about $300 billion in 2006 ? probably exceed those of any other country. By contrast, America?s tax take is nearly the lowest in the industrial world. Federal, state and local tax collections amount to just more than 25.5 percent of the nation?s economic output. The Finnish government collects 48.8 percent. As a result, the United States spends less on social programs than virtually every other rich industrial country, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The Finnish government probably has money to build children?s health clinics.
Stinginess of the public sector? Last I heard the budget for the federal government exceeded one trillion dollars. The United States has the largest government in history. Tax collections are barely the tip of the iceberg. The bulk of expenses are financed through debt. I guess the author never thought about this "detail." What the author wants is a better arrangement of expenses. In other words, a typical socialist view.
I take issue with "spends less on social programs" as if this were a terrible thing. What is an appropriate level of spending? How should spending be determined? Who determines the amount of government spending? How do we determine spending relative to other government programs? How do we know if there is too much charity, or too little? These questions are solved by the market when individuals establish scarcity relationships between resources and, by assigning them relative values, prices arise.
Democratic plunder
We move on to democracy and government spending:
Critics of government spending argue that America?s private sector does a better job making socially necessary investments. But it doesn?t. Public spending is allocated democratically among competing demands. Rich benefactors can spend on anything they want, and they tend to spend on projects close to their hearts.
The private sector is composed of people who voluntarily invest resources where they think they should be spent. A mutually beneficial activity, this is called the market. As I mentioned earlier, the market does indeed do a better job of making the proper socially necessary investments because individuals act to improve their well-being. Their actions reflect a demonstrated preference (and such preference is subjective and ordinal) over other possible courses of action. In the case of monetary exchange ? buying and selling goods and services at prices established in units of money ? people will spend on things that they think are important to them. Once those needs are satisfied they will move to other things which are less important to them, and so forth.
The state, because it enforces tax laws (and any law, really) at gunpoint, is not engaging in a mutually beneficially manner. People are unable to express their preference. Yet our author contends that "public spending is allocated democratically among competing demands." To be fair, that much is true. What is not true is that democracy leads to a better allocation of investments. Democracy is simply a chance to cast a vote for a politician or for an issue; it cannot pretend to be, or do, more than that. It can?t allocate like people do every day when they buy any of the millions of products and services offered on the market.
Let?s imagine that you go to a grocery store where your shopping list is written by popular vote. If you?re lucky you?ll get things that you want. Most of it will consist of items you don?t need. And even if you do see what you need on the list, there?s no guarantee that you?ll have it in the right quantity and quality. To further complicate this scenario, there is only one grocery store available to the entire town. Anyone who dares to open another store or refuses to contribute towards the maintenance of the store will be threatened with jail time, fines or execution. That?s democracy in action.
Finally, the remark about the rich reeks of economic ignorance and contempt for the creation of wealth. Wealth is created in the market as needs are satisfied; when people achieve a goal they are wealthier than they were before ? the resources used to achieve those goals were put to good use. The rich are people who obtained their money by serving of others. This is no mystery about this. The editorial seems to imply that "because" they are rich, they can spend on anything they want. But so can the non-rich. I can spend my money on whatever charity I want, or on any product that I can afford. The implication of the author is that the rich are not choosing correctly and that charity should not depend on them and their whims. As was shown above, however, government intervention is unjust and inefficient.
Taxes and statism
The last part of the short but fallacy-laden editorial consists of a squalid call for further government aggression and a greater destruction of private investment.
A study last year of 8,000 gifts of $1 million or more to 4,000 nonprofits found that 44 percent went to higher education, 16 percent to medical institutions and 12 percent to arts and cultural organizations. Only 5 percent were dedicated to social service groups. Nonprofit groups that rely on the largess of the wealthy are doing fine. The Cincinnati Ballet met its 2007 target of $1.1 million in just five months, the Chronicle said. Giving is down at Lighthouse Ministries, which serves the needy in Florida.
The Cincinnati Ballet received donations of $1.1 million but the Florida charity that serves the needy did not receive as much. Is the author not aware of scarcity? There is a limited amount of resources to achieve our goals. Using a specific resource such as money or time necessarily implies that any alternate use is forfeited. The author assumes that government spending has no cost, or very little, and that the costs born by society have either no consequence or that the consequences are reasonable and fair. However, every penny stolen or extorted as taxation is a penny that could have had a better, more efficient use.
But what about the charity that does not see enough money? What?s so wrong with forcing people to be charitable?
Breaking news: charity requires freedom!
Charity is a virtuous act that requires freedom. Forceful charity does not and cannot exist. If A steals from B to give to C, C might be better off but became so at the expense of B. B is a victim and A is a thief. The exchange between A and B is not legitimate. Not everyone is "much happier."
A sordid conclusion
Observe the statist mentality:
Philanthropic contributions are usually tax-free. They directly reduce the government?s ability to engage in public spending. Perhaps the government should demand a role in charities? allocation of resources in exchange for the tax deduction. Or maybe the deduction should go altogether. Experts estimate that tax breaks motivate 25 percent to 30 percent of contributions.
Government public spending is a parasite that destroys wealth. Deductions are islands of freedom and instead of being happy that they exist, this editorial calls for the elimination of tax deductions. Unbelievable!
And the coup de grâce:
In any event, social needs, like those health clinics, are not about charity. They are a necessity. America needs a government that can and will pay for them.
"They are a necessity." How was this determined? There are, after all, people who might value entertainment higher than health clinics and would rather have subsidized entertainment over subsidized health care. Who determines what a necessity is? Who determines the quantity and quality of the products and services needed? And finally, how will the factors of production be chosen from possibly many alternatives? Some would say that democracy answers those questions. As I show above, however, democracy is not Pareto efficient. On the contrary, democracy and income redistribution guarantees that there will be winners and losers ? exactly the opposite of the market.
Ultimately, this NYT editorial is at best confused, and evil at worst. What the author describes is not charity but redistribution of wealth under the guise of charity.
The horrifying attitude exemplified here and, sadly, almost everywhere else, contributes to poverty and disrupts economic growth. Stop believing this nonsense. Charity does not begin in Washington. Washington destroys it.
When entrepreneurs and business owners and managers face difficulties in the market, it is rare for them to throw in the towel, blame the customer, increase prices and hope that the problem goes away. A business that does not live up to the expectations of the customer becomes marginalized and on the long run goes out of business. Because a business must survive on free exchange, it has to continually overcome the challenge of providing goods and services. Some ways to do that, for example, include continually investing in newer and better technology or finding alternate production processes.
The state, however, does the exact opposite of what the market would usually do. It resorts to rationing and often deliberately increases prices to try to lower the demand for a good or service that it is "offering." Road socialism is no different.
The National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission is proposing that the federal government should raise gas taxes by 40 cents per gallon. The purpose is to use the additional revenue to improve highways and bridges but also to ease congestion.
Citing the recent bridge collapse tragedy in Minneapolis, the report refers to government infrastructure as "no longer acceptable." Yet because the state has displaced and replaced road entrepreneurs and finances everything through taxation, consumers are unable to express their preference.
Interestingly enough, the report recognizes that demand is very high (or maybe too high; it wants to reduce demand) but that the conditions of the roads and bridges are no longer acceptable. This is the typical consequence of state intervention, for otherwise how is it possible to have a situation where a good or service offered is of very poor quality and at the same time in high demand?
Thus, the bureaucratic solution is never to deregulate or to privatize/de-monopolize but to create other interventions such as higher gas taxes in this case.
More on road socialism: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
My Christmas article has been published today.
Is Santa Running a Sweatshop?
Recently, world-renowned Christmas critic and occasional disruptor, The Grinch, has accused Santa Claus of exploiting thousands of elves and mistreating animals at Mr. Claus's secretive North Pole compound.
Earlier this month, the Grinch, who normally commutes between his homes in Los Angeles and Milan, embarked on a multi-city campaign accusing Santa Claus of running a sweatshop. The charges have come as a shock to millions of children and parents around the globe. Retails groups have particularly been hit hard. A representative for Macy's who wanted to remain anonymous expressed horror and disbelief. "In a shaky economy, this is the last thing we needed!"
The Grinch has made the following accusations:
- St. Nick has for centuries been exploiting innumerable elves, keeping them in inhuman conditions with little or no pay. The elves are worked to death and complaints will get them expelled into the bitter cold.
- Conditions in the North Pole are brutal and the reindeer are not being kept in adequate conditions.
- One reindeer in particular has not received proper medical attention, and its nose has developed a severe disorder causing it to bleed.
Milk & Cookies Corp., Mr. Claus's company, has issued the following statement which is reprinted here in its entirety:
NORTH POLE, 25 DEC. 2007
The Milk & Cookies Company has learned about the accusations made by the execrable Grinch. Let a candid world know the truth.
First of all, our factory conditions follow the highest industry standards, and our safety record is exemplary. Over hundreds of years we have continually improved work standards; we are a leader in high quality, high volume manufacturing. Exploiting our workers would destroy our good name and reputation. Further, it would lead to a dramatic reduction in the quality and output of our employees.
To the charge that the reindeer are exposed to terrible conditions, we say: utter nonsense. The reindeer are arctic creatures that are able to withstand the coldest of temperatures. Indeed, they thrive when they're outside. Nonetheless, we still provide them with spacious, heated stables and plenty of food. There is a veterinary on our premises around the clock.
The Grinch is being disingenuous when implying that one of the reindeer, Rudolph, has a medical condition. Nothing could be further from the truth. Though rare, his condition is genetic. Rudolph is perfectly healthy. And no, he is not bleeding; his nose is just bright red.
It is the opinion Mr. Claus and the board of directors of Milk & Cookies that The Grinch is once again debunked as an anti-Christmas farce. Incapable of understanding one iota about exchange, the market economy and charity, he has resorted to lies and smears.
Our solid traditions of high quality craftsmanship, built over centuries of innovation, demonstrate our commitment to the spirit of Christmas and to our billions of satisfied customers. No amount of disparaging comments, especially from The Grinch, can take that away.
Mr. Claus himself could not be reached for comment as the work load over the last few days has kept him superbly busy. Mrs. Claus, however, had a message: "You're a mean one, Mr. Grinch!"
One of our journalists is reporting that Frosty had become so agitated and worked up about The Grinch's declarations that he had began to melt. He has been given a mild sedative and moved outside. He is expected to fully recover.
