AUSTRIAN ECONOMICS ADDICT

 The pen is mightier than the sword… (Photo credit: mbshane)

WHAT A DIFFERENCE A WEEK MAKES

White House Tells 529 Savers To Just Go To Community College, at economicpolicyjournal.com. At the beginning of the week the President wanted to tax the 529 government tax exempt accounts of people who were saving for their children’s college education. He wanted to fund his free community college idea, with this new tax revenue. So let me get this straight, he wanted to tax money that was set aside to pay for college education, and us those tax dollars to pay for a “free” college education that he was giving away. Isn’t that like taking water from the deep end of the pool and dumping it into the shallow end?

White House Drops Plan To Tax College Saving Plans, at abcnews.go.com. Either the President finally realized how stupid his idea of taxing 529 college saving plans was. Or he figured that even he couldn’t get away with this one.  Read the short article and watch how the White House tries to spin its way out the original decision. But don’t worry, your retirement accounts are safe from central planning politicians and bureaucrats!

 GOVERNMENT INTERVENTION

Egg Prices In California Have Risen From $1.18  A Dozen A Year Ago To $3.16. at economicpolicyjournal.com. Here is an excerpt from the article, “...an initiative passed by California voters in 2008 …. required the state’s poultry farmers to house their hens in significantly larger cages. The state legislature realized this would put home-state farmers at a disadvantage, so in 2010 it compounded the problem by requiring that eggs imported from other states come from farms meeting the same cage standards, effective Jan. 1, 2015.” Anyone with an ounce of common sense should have known what the outcome of this Government mandate would be. The benefits of living in California are starting to be out weighed by the self-imposed costs of living there (read here).

Cash-Only Neuro-Ear Doctor In Louisiana, at selfpaypatient.com. We’ve said here that Obamacare will create a true free market in healthcare and this is an example. Unfortunately a Government run system consisting of Medicare, Medicaid, and Obamacare will exist along side of the free market system, and the people in the free market system will have to pay for both systems.

U.S Government Tracking Cars In Real Time, at targetliberty.com. You have no privacy anymore. You’re phone, computer, emails, credit card transactions, and now your car are all being monitored. Not to mention all the traffic and security cameras that seemingly are everywhere.

New York Muscles Uber To Adopt “Venezuela Rules“, at economicpolicyjournal.com. The State of NY doesn’t want free market prices to ration scarce resources (rides) during disasters and states of emergency. The result will be longer wait times for rides (aka waiting lines). This is the same thing that is happening in Venezuela because of Government price controls.

THE ECONOMY

The Boom In Food Stamps (Children’s Addition), at economicpolicyjournal.com. Food stamp use is going up. This is consumption without corresponding production. Which makes us poorer as a whole.

Welcome To The Wreckovery, at zerohedge.com. Because of the nature of it’s business, Caterpiller is a company that does well in a growing economy. Look at Caterpiller’s world retail sales over the last 25 months in the chart in this article. What would be your conclusion?

Obama Has NO Reason To Celebrate After Hearing This About The Future Of Obamacare, by Jason W. Stevens, at thefederalistpapers.org. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that Obamacare has a $1.35 trillion shortfall. The CBO usually underestimates these shortfalls, so it is probably bigger. They can only get this money by taxing, borrowing, and/or electronically printing counterfeit money. All of these wreck economic activity.

MISCELLANEOUS

It’s Something Of A Miracle That Gas Is $2.00 A Gallon And Cheaper Than Any Other Liquid That Consumers Buy, by Mark J. Perry, at aei.org. Look at the price per gallon of some other liquids we consume compared to a gallon of gasoline.

Kids Are Casualties In The War Against Self-Reliance, by Stella Morabito, at thefederalist.com. We are crippling our kids ability to deal with reality because we shelter them from reality. Many kids today don’t even know how to mow the grass. Many of my friends were driving tractors on their farms when they were 13 or younger. Parents don’t want their children to experience failure. Most of the time you learn more from failure than you learn from success. Don’t shelter kids they are tougher than you think.

Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl To Be Charged With Desertion, by Katie Pavlich, at townhall.com. This is another example of the President running into traffic without looking both ways. Remember how the Cambridge police “acted stupidly”, what about the Trayvon Martin case, or the Michael Brown case. When a situation seems to confirm his vision of how the world works, he doesn’t care to know all the facts. He thinks his narrative will win the day, and unfortunately because of media bias and uninformed people, he might be right.

This entry was posted on January 31, 2015 at 1:08 am and is filed under Must Reads For The Week. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.

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