AUSTRIAN ECONOMICS ADDICT

Student Wants Free College, Debt Forgiveness, and $15 Minimum Wage, at foxbusiness.

I remember when I was in High School I thought that socialism (taking from people who I thought had a lot of money and “giving” it to those who don’t have much) was a good idea. Once I started working I realized how ignorant I was. I feel sorry for the student in this video because she doesn’t even realize how ignorant she sounds. Unfortunately the democrat presidential candidates are saying the same thing. They are just better at hiding the message with verbal slight of hand.

Academic Welfare Queens, by Tho Bishop, at mises.org. Easy money creates bubbles. Bubbles create malinvestment. “Educational malinvestment creates college degrees that are worthless to the students, on the one hand, but profitable to professors and the colleges on the other.

The Fly In The Buyback Ointment: Corporate Leverage Is At Record Levels, at zerohedge.com. Corporations are propping up their stock prices by borrowing money at zero percent interest and buying back their stocks. A shorter supply raises the price of the remaining shares. At some point a companies revenue won’t be able to service their debt. The problem accelerates if there’s a stock holder sell off. The high price shares bought back with debt would now have a lower price. If they have to sell shares to raise revenue, they would be selling at a huge loss.

Managing The Risk Of Hydraulic Fracturing: An Update, at fraserinstitute.org. There is risk in anything man does. The real question is always; does the benefit out weigh the level of risk. When it comes to fracking the answer is yes it does.

News Stories Of At Least 18 Defensive Gun Uses By Concealed Handgun Permit Holders During October, by John Lott, at johnrlott.blogspot.com. No comment necessary.

Scrapped: Maryland Ends Bullet ID Program After 15 Years, $5 Million, and Zero Cases Solved, by John Lott, at johnrlott.blogspot.com. Excerpt from the article, John Lott-“It was clear 10 years ago that this program was not going to work….Millions were spent on funding this program, money that could have been better used for actual police and law-enforcement resources.”

A Tale Of Two Shootings, by Victor Davis Hanson, at victorhanson.com. The differences between the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson and Kate Steinle in San Francisco. It’s politics, race, twisted logic vs. the facts.

Obamacare: It Doesn’t Work Because It Couldn’t Work, by Kevin D. Williamson, at nationalreview.com. Great analysis of why Obamacare doesn’t work. At it’s core Obamacare isn’t insurance even it tries to be. Insurance is about calculating the risk of what will happen. Obamacare is a pay as you go system for what has happened.

Star Trek’s Pseudo-Economics, By Robert P. Murphy, at fee.org. Excerpt from the article: “It is true that Roddenberry thought, and others still think, that high productivity will eliminate the necessity of money for economic coordination. But Roddenberry was simply mistaken on this point — as were the socialist theorists who thought the modern computer would make socialism “work.” Ironically, the socialist theorists (and Gene Roddenberry) got things backwards. In a primitive Robinson Crusoe or Swiss Family Robinson environment, people can make decisions without recourse to money prices, because the system isn’t very complicated; a person can “see” the trade-offs involved. Yet, in a modern economy based on the division of labor, money prices are indispensable. The possible uses of resources become greater — and the economic problem more difficult to solve — as technology expands.”

TIME TO LAUGH

HT – thefederalistpapers.org.