Must Reads For The Week 6/4/16

Posted June 4, 2016 by austrianaddict
Categories: Must Reads For The Week
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Payrolls Huge Loss: Only 38,000 New Jobs Added In May; Worst Since September 2010, at zerohedge.com. The number crunchers used to figure that 150,000 jobs become obsolete every month because of the creative destruction of the market. So there has to be 150,000 jobs created every month just to start at zero. So 38,000 jobs created means there was a net loss of 112,000 jobs last month. Also the last two months job numbers have been revised down. So how robust is the “recovery”

These Are The 9 Zero Hedge Charts Showing The “Obama Recovery” That Angered The Washington Post, at zerohedge.com. The labor participation rate is the one chart that can’t be spun. The percentage of working age people is lower than at anytime since the early 70’s. If fewer people are working, and many work fewer hours because a lot of the newly created jobs are part-time, how can we possibly be producing more? The GDP supposedly measures production. Even though government spending (financed by borrowing and central bank money printing), is added into the GDP number, growth has averaged around 2% over the last 8 years. We can’t even counterfeit our way to robust growth. We haven’t even found a bottom to the 2008 recession because the Fed has propped up all the misallocations that it produced with the money it printed in the first place.

Allan Greenspan: “We’re Running To A State Of Disaster”, at zerohedge.com. Greenspan says: “Entitlements are crowding out savings, and hence capital investment. Capital investment is the critical issue in productivity growth, and productivity growth in turn is the crucial issue in economic growth…….Unless and until we can rein in entitlements, which have been rising at a nine percent annual rate in the US and comparable levels throughout the world. We are going to find that productivity is going to maintain a very low rate of increase.”

I think it is interesting he is blaming it on congressional spending when it is his Federal Reserve that printed the money that the government borrowed which led to the increased spending. He also fails to mention all the misallocation of resources that were the result of the Feds credit expansion policy.

Lessons From Cyprus: Spending Restraint Is The Pro-Growth Way To Solve A Fiscal Crisis, by Dan Mitchell, at freedomandprosperity.com. Cyprus bit the bullet and cut spending. This has led to a recovering economy. Greece did the opposite, and is still in the toilet.

GM, Ford Us Auto Sales Tumble In “Bellwether” Month Of May, at zerohedge.com. Sub-prime lending brings future demand into the present. Once future demand has run its course, there is nothing behind it to keep demand propped up. Ergo a mismatch of supply and demand. Intervention distorts economic reality.

A Visual Lesson About Economic Freedom, by Dan Mitchell, at freedomandprosperity.com. When governments take off the interventionist shackles, even in a limited amount, their economy grows.

Black Market Ride Sharing Explodes In Austin, by John Daniel Davidson, at thefederalist.com. Austin forced Uber and Lyft out of the market. But the demand for rides is being supplied by black market ride sharing apps. This is the spirit of the American Revolution. Don’t Tread On Me!

Private Restrooms Are Private Property, by Patrick Barron, at mises.org. Respect for private property would solve the made up transsexual bathroom problem. Allow the owner of the bathroom to make the decision how his bathroom will be used. There won’t be a one size fits all to down cluster fox trot. “No Shirt No Shoes No Service.” “No Vagina, Go Across The Hall.”

Eleven Measles Cases In Arizona Traced To Inmate At Immigration Detention Center, at tammybruce.com. People think rules are arbitrary. Most rules have a specific purpose. If you’ve taken the tour of Ellis Island, you would understand that part of our immigration policy was to keep out diseases, like measles, that were under control in the US. but not everywhere else.

Texas Man Pays For $212 Speeding Ticket…In Pennies, at tammybruce.com. People have different levels of tolerance for government regulations. Many have had enough.

 

I Hate To Do it Again.

Have you seen this on mainstream media outlets? All I want is for both Democrats and Republicans to be covered the same by the media. I wish they would show every politicians screw ups. Can you spell P-O-T-A-T-O-E? Who doesn’t know what I’m referencing?

 

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The Greatest Economic Myths by Jeff Deist

Posted June 3, 2016 by austrianaddict
Categories: Econ. 201
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Jeff Deist of the Mises Institute gives a 20 minute talk about the myth that we can consume before we produce. He slams the central state for spending, and central banks for electronically printing counterfeit money. These two things promote consumption before production. Watch the whole talk. It is outstanding. The talk begins at 2:40. Below are some excerpts from the video.

Here are some excerpts:

“If there is one over-riding economic myth that seems to plague us every election cycle….is the motion that society can do collectively what we can’t do individually. Namely get rich by living today at the expense of tomorrow. This is the doctrine of the political class, of central bankers, of professional economists…..and I would like to term it monetary and fiscal hedonism. It’s really hedonism masquerading as economics and technical analysis.”

“When the cumulative effects of certain bad government spending policies are for off into the future, It makes sense that voters are going to vote for them because it’s just a matter of time preference….Voters are going to support things when they don’t necessarily feel the pain themselves.”

“As recently as 15 years ago we still could have dealt with the debt. Now I’m not that the political will existed at that time. I’m saying mathematically it was still possible to cut benefits and do other things to make that debt or restructure that debt to deal with it mathematically….There is nothing that’s going to come along that’s going to make us pay off this debt in any real sense…No change is coming that’s going to have a huge spike in federal tax coffers….The world knows that we are never going to pay off this debt in any real sense.”

“The world is awash in dollars especially Asian creditors of ours. So they’re caught between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand it’s not in their short-term interest for the dollar to sink rapidly but it’s very much in their long-term interest to no longer have the dollar as the worlds reserve currency because the people behind the dollar, the U.S. congress, is completely out of control, and they know this. The debts never going to be paid. Entitlements are never going to be paid….and this is the result of the myth that we can live for today at the expense of tomorrow….This is what congress is doing this is what democracy leads to….”

“There is also a monetary element to this. I’ll call it monetary hedonism. The increase in the money created by the Fed is unprecedented in human history. We have no idea what this is going to lead to. We have never had an example like this in human history where the worlds reserve currency, not a national currency, has done this….We’ve been monetizing debt for so long that it’s beginning to feel like it could go ion forever and ever….It’s monetary hedonism…it’s kicking the can down the road and saying instead of taking the bullet today we’re going to push it off to some time into the future….Is this the new normal, because I think it’s hard to conceive of an event where the Fed would ever reverse this trend or even significantly raise interest rates.”

“The desire to build things beyond ones life time is innately human. We are hard wired as human beings to build societies….Building lasting modes of living is not possible unless people work toward a future that you will not be around to enjoy themselves….. We can see the congress and the Fed are encouraging us to do the opposite.”

“Healthy societies produce capital and consume less than they produce because capital accumulation produces the upward spiral, increases productivity, increases investment and makes the future richer and brighter. Capital accumulation is what’s made it possible for human population to rise up out of subsistence and create agricultural revolution and industrial revolution the digital revolution…..Production Precedes Consumption…We have to produce before we consume. That’s what real world scarcity means…..Society produces goods or we return to subsistence living.”

“The two most powerful forces in the modern world, central states and central banks, work tirelessly to force us into this economic hedonism….. At the root of our problem is mythology. We’ve cast aside our most human impulse to save for a rainy day and build a better tomorrow for ourselves and for future generations and we bought int the myths of politics and political money. We’ve bet them get away with this economic hedonism…..We’ve lived at the expense of our grandchildren. It’s been a great party for America but good luck electing someone who will talk about the hangover.”

Make sure you invest the time to watch the video. Below are some articles related to what Jeff Deist is talking about.

Related Article – What Comes First, Production Or Consumption? at austrianaddict.com.

Related Article – Capital Consumption, aka. Eating Or Seed Corn, at austrianaddict.com.

Related Article – Say’s Law And The Permanent Recession, by Robert Blumen, at austrianaddict.com.

Related Article – Real Savings vs. Counterfeit Savings, at austrianaddict.com.

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Socialism Sounds Great

Posted June 1, 2016 by austrianaddict
Categories: Econ. 101, Government and Politics
Tags: , , , , , ,

The definition of socialism is, government ownership of the means of production. Many countries we call socialist today, don’t actually own the means of production, they just encumber the private owners of the means of production with rules, regulations, and taxes to the point that the businesses have limited freedom to make decisions concerning their business. Government is the silent partner with businesses today. Silent from the stand point of what the public sees, but boisterous from the businesses point of view. “Socialism” today is nothing more than a modern day version of fascism, corporatism, mercantilism, or simply interventionism.

Thomas Sowell

SOCIALISM FOR THE UNINFORMED

In this article, Socialism For The Uninformed (read here), Thomas Sowell gives his insight into, not only what modern-day socialism is, but where it leads. Here are some excerpts from the article.

“Socialism sounds great. It has always sounded great. And it will probably always continue to sound great. It is only when you go beyond rhetoric, and start looking at hard facts, that socialism turns out to be a big disappointment, if not a disaster.”“While throngs of young people are cheering loudly for avowed socialist Bernie Sanders, socialism has turned oil-rich Venezuela into a place where there are shortages of everything from toilet paper to beer, where electricity keeps shutting down, and where there are long lines of people hoping to get food, people complaining that they cannot feed their families.”

“With national income going down, and prices going up under triple-digit inflation in Venezuela, these complaints are by no means frivolous. But it is doubtful if the young people cheering for Bernie Sanders have even heard of such things, whether in Venezuela or in other countries around the world that have turned their economies over to politicians and bureaucrats to run.”

“The anti-capitalist policies in Venezuela have worked so well that the number of companies in Venezuela is now a fraction of what it once was. That should certainly reduce capitalist “exploitation,” shouldn’t it?”

“But people who attribute income inequality to capitalists exploiting workers, as Karl Marx claimed, never seem to get around to testing that belief against facts — such as the fact that none of the Marxist regimes around the world has ever had as high a standard of living for working people as there is in many capitalist countries.”

“Facts are seldom allowed to contaminate the beautiful vision of the left. What matters to the true believers are the ringing slogans, endlessly repeated.”

“…..But the very idea of subjecting their pet notions to the test of hard facts will probably not even occur to those who are cheering for socialism and for other bright ideas of the political left.”
“The great promise of socialism is something for nothing. It is one of the signs of today’s dumbed-down education that so many college students seem to think that the cost of their education should — and will — be paid by raising taxes on “the rich.”

“Here again, just a little check of the facts would reveal that higher tax rates on upper-income earners do not automatically translate into more tax revenue coming in to the government. Often high tax rates have led to less revenue than lower tax rates.”

“In a globalized economy, high tax rates may just lead investors to invest in other countries with lower tax rates. That means that jobs created by those investments will be overseas.”

“None of this is rocket science. But you do have to stop and think — and that is what too many of our schools and colleges are failing to teach their students to do.”

 

 THE LEFT’S SUPPORT OF STATE OVER PROSPERITY
-In this article, Chili, Venezuela, And The Left’s Support Of State Over Prosperity (read here), Dan Mitchell shows the difference between Chili and Venezuela over the last 40 years. Look at the data in the charts from this article. It shows that when a government allows more economic freedom than currently exists, production increases. Since production is the creation of wealth, the country becomes wealthier. When a government takes economic freedom away where it has existed in the past, production decreases. Lower production leads to less wealth creation and ultimately a poorer country. Chili and Venezuela are countries going in very different directions.
 -Here are some excerpts from the article.
 -“Chile’s success starts in the nid-1970’s when Chile’s military government abandoned socialism and started to implement economic reforms. In 2013 Chile was the world’s 10th freest economy. Venezuela, in the meantime, declined from being the world’s 10th freest economy in 1975 to being the world’s least free economy in 2013.”
 -“Chile is not a perfect role model, to be sure, because of an unsavory period of military rule. But the good news, is that economic liberty has led to political liberty. whereas the opposite has happened in Venezuela.”
 -“…..as the people of Chile grew richer, they started demanding more say in the running of their country. Starting in the late 1980’s the military gradually and peacefully handed power over to democratically elected representatives. In Venezuela the opposite has happened. As the failure of socialism  became more apparent, the government had to resort to ever more repressive measures in order to keep itself in power.”
 -“Yes, it’s very desirable for all citizens to benefit from economic growth. But if you look at the charts in the article, it’s abundantly clear which nation is producing better outcomes from average citizens.
this is fundamental flaw of Statists. By fixating on redistribution and equality, this leads them to policies that re-slice a shrinking economic pie.“
 Related Article – Why Socialism Won’t Work? Human Nature, at austrianaddict.com.

Related Article – Milton Friedman – Socialism Is Force, at austrianaddict.com.

 Related Article – America’s Socialist Origins, by Prager University, at austrianaddict.com.
 Related Article – Capitalism vs. Crony Capitalism, at austrianaddict.com.

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Must Reads For The Week 5/28/16

Posted May 28, 2016 by austrianaddict
Categories: Must Reads For The Week
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

How The TSA Kills Hundreds of People Every Year, by Joseph T. Selarno, at mises.org. Regulations aren’t implemented in a vacuum. People have options on how they will deal with any particular regulation. In this case, instead of putting up with the screening process at airports, people are deciding to drive instead of fly. This means a certain percentage of these people are dying in traffic accidents instead of arriving safely via air travel. It’s not possible to know the exact number, but we don’t need to know the exact number to know that more are dying. Another example of the unseen consequences of regulations.

New Poll 9 in 10 Native Americans Aren’t Offended By Redskins Name, at washingtonpost.com. Once again the left makes up a fake crisis in order to dictate their vision of the world on the rest of us. Ever since the Indians sold Manhattan for $24 and some beads, the left doesn’t trust Indians to make good decisions for themselves, so the left will make the decisions for them.

Former McDonald’s CEO Crushes The Minimum Wage Lie, at zerohedge.com. When you raise the price of labor above what it can marginally produce, it will go away. In this case automation will take the place of minimum wage workers. I always ask proponents of the minimum wage this question: What is 15 dollars an hour times zero hours a week? (That which is seen and that which is not see).

EPA Mandates Renewable Fuel Levels Above 10% Blend Wall, at instituteforenergyresearch.org. Government ethanol mandates do three things. 1) Increase the cost of gasoline. 2) Decrease fuel efficiency. 3) Decrease the life of engines. The ethanol industry profits (that which is seen), and the consumer pays the cost of the regulation (that which is not seen).

Bill To Allow 9-11 Victims to Sue Saudi Government Turns Out To Be A Chuck Schumer Led Scam, at economicpolicyjournal.com. Schumer stuck an amendment into the bill at the last minute which allows the Secretary of State and/or The Justice Department to stop any litigation. Who would have thought the Chuckster was capable of something like this?

VA Sec. Compares Wait Times At VA To Waiting For A Ride At Disney, at tammybruce.com. This can’t be true! I thought when Obama got rid of the VA Secretary two years ago, and replaced him with Bob McDonald, everything would get fixed? In my post “Incentives Matter” written when the change was made (2014) we explain why changing the person in charge without changing the incentives wouldn’t make a difference.

Elizabeth Warren: Uber Hater, at economicpolicyjournal.com. She said, “Uber and Lyft fight against local rules designed to create a level playing field between themselves and their taxi competitors.” Mrs. Warren (aka Pocahontas), these rules were put in place to tilt the playing field in favor of the existing cartel. A level playing field would be one with no regulations. Of course there is no role for politicians on a truly level playing field.

India’s Government Just Went Into Overdrive In Its Harassment Of Apple, at economicpolicyjournal.com. This is protectionist regulation that will marginally help the local businesses and hurt the consumers. (that which is seen and that which is not seen).

Why Aren’t Female Soccer Players Paid More? by Ryan McMaken, at mises.org. Just because you work as hard as someone else doesn’t mean you will get paid the same wage. You get paid on the value you produce, as judged by the evil consumer, regardless of how hard you’ve work. In this case, consumers don’t value watching female soccer. If they did, women would get paid more. There’s a difference between merit and value. Merit is me working as many hours as Bill Gates and thinking I should get paid as much as him. Bill Gates produces more value for more consumers than I do, and gets paid for the value he produces, as do I.

Cash Banned, Freedom Gone, by Thorsten Polleit, at mises.org. The recent talk about negative interest rates only works for central banks if they get rid of cash and make everything an electronic transaction. If every exchange is seen by the state: Do you have freedom?

BILL CLINTON COSBY

Freud would have a field day with this!

Sorry I couldn’t help it.

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Thomas Sowell: Commencement Season

Posted May 25, 2016 by austrianaddict
Categories: Government and Politics, Miscellaneous
Tags: , , ,

As only he can do, Thomas Sowell breaks down the purposes of most commencement speeches in this article titled, Commencement Season (click here). Here are some excerpts from the article.

“Two themes seem to dominate Commencement speeches. One is shameless self-advertising by people in government, or in related organizations supported by the taxpayers of donors, saying how nobler it is to be in “public service” than working in business or other “selfish activities”. In other words, the message is that it is morally superior to be in organizations consuming output produced by others than to be in organizations which produce the output. Moreover, being morally one-up is where it’s at.”

“The second theme of many Commencement speakers, besides flattering themselves that they are in morally superior careers, is to flatter the graduates that they are now equipped to go out into the world as “leaders” who can prescribe how other people should live. In other words, young people, who in most cases have never had either the sobering responsibility and experience of being self-supporting adults, are to tell other people – who have had that responsibility and that experience for years – how they should live their lives.”

“In so far as the graduates go into “public service” in government…..They are to help order other people around.”

“….what commencement speakers are suggesting is that inexperienced young graduates are to prescribe, or help dictate, to vast numbers of other people who have the real world experience that the graduates themselves lack.”

“To the extent that such graduates remain in government – “public service” – they can progress….. never acquiring the experience of being on the receiving end of their prescriptions or dictates. That can mean a lifetime of people with ignorance presuming to prescribe to people with personal knowledge.”

Does this sound like President Obama! (my comment)

“However well-educated the students might be in particular narrow fields – and, in too many cases, they have not gotten even that – what the graduates might have, at best, is a foundation for acquiring the real world experience necessary to complete their education and fulfill the ancient admonition, “With all you getting, get understanding.”

“Presumption is not understanding. It is the antithesis of understanding.”

“It was my good fortune not to have gone to college until I was several years older than most people. At an age when too many young people have been told too often how brilliant and exceptional they are – presumably to promote “self-esteem” – I was working at unskilled labor jobs and struggling to buy food and pay my room rent.”

“I learned the hard way that the good grades I had earned before dropping out of school were of no use to me in my low-level jobs. No one told me how brilliant I was. They were too busy correcting my mistakes.”

“It was painfully obvious that adults around me understood much more about their work – and about life. This taught me inescapable lessons and respect for people who had no academic pretensions but a lot of common sense.”

“It would take a lot more than lofty Commencement speeches to undo those lessons. We all have windfall gains and windfall losses. But, all in all, I feel lucky compared to those graduates who are so vulnerable to slick Commencement speakers.”

CONSLUSION

Dr. Sowell has written many books (to see list click here) about the “towering presumptions” of the anointed in government. Here is a quote by Dr. Sowell that sums up what he thinks about the anointed:

“People who are very aware that they have more knowledge then the average person are often very unaware that they do not have one tenth of the knowledge of all of the average persons put together. In this situation, for the intelligentsia to impose their notions on ordinary people, is essentially to impose ignorance on knowledge.”

Here is a shorter summation by Dr. Sowell:

“Credentialed ignorance is still ignorance”

 

Related Article –George Will Outlines What Should Be In Every Commencement Speech, at austrianaddict.com.

Related Article – Michelle Obama vs. Thomas Sowell On The Politics Of Race, at austrianaddict.com.

Related Article – Best Commencement Speech Ever, Adm. McCraven Gets My Vote, at austrianaddict.com.

 

 

 

 

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Must Reads For The Week 5/21/16

Posted May 21, 2016 by austrianaddict
Categories: Must Reads For The Week
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

POLITICIANS AND BUREAUCRATS KNOW BEST

Higher Minimum Wage Causes Wendy’s To Have Self-Service Ordering Kiosks At Its 6000-Plus Restaurants, by John R. Lott, at johnrlott.blogspot.com. This is not a surprise to us who have read, “That Which Is Seen and That Which Is Not Seen,” by Frederic Bastiat, the French economist from the mid 1800s. Quote from Bastiat, “the bad economist pursues a small present good, which will be followed by a great evil to come, while the true economist pursues a great good to come, – at the risk of a small present evil.”

Huge Increases In Health Insurance Premiums To Hit Right Before The November Election, by John R. Lott, at johnrlott.blogspot.com. Because of all the government regulations, health insurance really wasn’t insurance before Obamacare. But with all the new Obamacare mandates on health insurance we can say without a doubt that health insurance today isn’t really insurance. It has turned into a pay as you go system like social security. Read this short article written in 1996 titled, “The Insurance Scam” by Michael Levin, to get an understanding that we haven’t had real health insurance in this country for a while. The progressives want Obamacare to be the penultimate step to a government-run single payer system.

Obama’s Overtime Rule Tried At IBM, And It Didn’t Work, by James Sherk, at dailysignal.com. Obama mandates overtime to be paid to salaried employees. What will be the unintended consequences of these new rules? Where does the Executive branch get the power to legislate in this area? Nowhere, according to the constitution. The employer agreed to pay x amount of dollars for y amount of labor, and the employee agreed to supply y amount of labor for x amount of dollars. Why do politicians and bureaucrats always feel the need to interfere with the voluntary exchanges made by individuals in the free market? Because they have power, and we allow them to use it.

Judge Clears Way For San Francisco Soda Pop Warnings, by Nathan Bomey, at usatoday.com. More nanny state regulations. This is our fault. We’ve allowed government to get so big that they can intervene into every aspect of our lives. It is going to take a lot of hard work to roll back big government. When you don’t discipline your dog when he pisses on your carpet, he will keep doing it.

NYC Mayor Wants To Fine Businesses That Don’t Use ‘Transgender Pronouns‘, at tammybruce.com. People either have an xx sex chromosome and are female, or a xy chromosome and are male. If a person “feels” they are a different sex than what their sex chromosomes say they are, that’s their problem to deal with not mine. I guess politicians are going to make it my problem. Remember when we didn’t discipline the dog? This kind of nonsense is our fault.

IRS’s Lois Lerner Speedily Approved Exemption For Obama’s Brother’s Charity, at thedailycaller.com. She approved this while at the same time dragging her feet on allowing the exempt status of conservative and liberty groups.

What’s Behind The Incredible Long Security Lines At Airports, at targetliberty.com. You mean besides the usual lack of incentives to be customer friendly? From the article: “one reason…..Homeland Security wanted to force more travelers to become “known” to the government via PreCheck programs. Another reason was the TSA’s revolt at the government cutting its funding. According to AP, “in the past three years, the TSA and Congress cut the number of front-line screeners by 4,622 — or about 10 percent — on expectations that an expedited screening program called PreCheck would speed up the lines. However, not enough people enrolled for TSA to realize the anticipated efficiencies.” In other words, PreCheck has been in a failure.”

Venezuelan Apocalypse: Some Updates On The Epic Failure Of Socialism In Oil-Rich Venezuela, by Mark J. Perry, at carpediemblog. In Venezuela there is day long lines to get food and medicine. We only have to wait 3 hours in line to get through airport security. I know we are not going to end up like Venezuela, but look where you end up when you allow government to intervene in the free market.

FIGHTING BACK AGAINST THE STATE

Regulations Force Uber, Lyft Out Of Austin, Arcade City Moves In, Hat Tip to LaissezFaireCapitalism. Ride sharing service, Arcade City, is a step ahead of the regulations in Austin. I love the fact that government moves slower than the market. Christopher David CEO of Arcade City, said:  “this is the beginning of a new wave in business and technology that regulators will be unable to effectively stop…Highly connected peer-to-peer ecosystems that harness the wisdom of crowds can self-organize and self-govern better than some arbitrary third-party ever could. We really will ‘decentralize all the things’. The only question is whether the centralists will stand aside of actively resist the change.” Hope springs eternal.

Federal Judge Hammers DOJ Lawyers For Lying About Obama’s Immigration Order, by Phil Shiver, at conservativereview.com. DOJ lawyers lied about the fact that implementation of Obama’s immigration orders was already in progress when the law suit against these orders was going on. In order to get a federal judge to sanction these DOJ lawyers, you know they were beyond breaking the law. For their lies, these lawyers must attend “a legal ethics course”. I don’t think this punishment is enough to keep these dogs from pissing on the carpet. “The law is intended to retrospectively judge behaviour and to prospectively guide it“, Thomas Sowell. This punishment is not harsh enough to make some future lawyer think twice before breaking the law.

Texas To Ignore Iran Nuclear Deal And Maintain Sanctions, at tammybruce.com. States fighting back against the Federal government is a good thing.

Whole Foods Anti-Gay Lawsuit Dropped After Apology, at cnn.com. Fighting back against politically correct groups. A pastor complained about a gay slur on a cake from Whole Foods. The story was a complete fabrication, aka a lie. I wish Whole Foods wouldn’t have dropped the lawsuit against the gay pastor who made up the story. Remember what Thomas Sowell said about prospectively guiding future behaviour. I have a final comment. If you have to make up a story about gays being slandered, you must not be able to find much “homophobia” in America. Try buying a gay wedding cake in a country where the state religion is Islam. Let me know how that turns out for you.

 

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Education System Is A Monopoly Of The Political Left

Posted May 18, 2016 by austrianaddict
Categories: Government and Politics, Miscellaneous
Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Thomas Sowell

In this recent article by Thomas Sowell titled, Dry Rot In Academia (click here), he makes this statement: “Today one can literally go from kindergarten to becoming a graduate student seeking a PH.D., without ever hearing a vision of the world that conflicts with the vision of the left.”

I’ve coached in high school for decades. My players, most of whom end up just being students in college, tell me about the professors they have. The conversation usually starts something like this, “coach you won’t believe the professor I have for ……” The evidence is overwhelming that academia is biased toward big government central planning. These elites either don’t understand how free markets work, or don’t trust individuals to make their own decisions in a free market.

Here are some excerpts from the article.

“Conservative critics who object on grounds that the views of the left are wrong miss the point. Regardless of whose views become a monopoly, education suffers…. As a young Marxists in college during the 1950’s heyday of the anti-Communist crusade led by Senator Joseph McCarthy, I had more freedom to express my views in class, without fear of retaliation, than conservative students have on many campuses today.”

“Even liberal professors can be adversely affected by the narrow groupthink that prevails. Without an opposition to keep them on their toes, they can develop sloppy habits to dismissing or even demonizing differing viewpoints, instead of practicing and teaching their students how to come to grips with opposing beliefs.”

“There are many examples of the intellectual and moral dry rot on the many campuses across the country where groupthink of the left substitutes for education.”

 

George Will

In this article by George Will titled, Due Process Is Still Being Kicked Off Campus (click here), he states this: “Academia’s descent into perpetual hysteria and incipient tyranny is partly fueled by the fiction that 1 in 5 college students is sexually assaulted and that campuses require minute federal supervision to cure this. Encouraged by the government’s misuse of discredited social science…colleges and universities are implementing unconstitutional procedures mandated by the government.”

These colleges are violating the fourth and fifth amendment rights of students who have had accusations made against them. First of all administrators don’t have enough knowledge to do the job that the legal system is supposed to do. Colleges are going to get their pants sued off for these violations. But it won’t make the people whole whose lives have been ruined.

“The 2006 Duke lacrosse rape case fit the narrative about campuses permeated by a “rape culture.” Except there was no rape. In 2014, the University of Virginia was convulsed by a magazine’s lurid report of a rape that buttressed the narrative that fraternities foment the sexual predation supposedly pandemic in “male supremacist” America. Except there was no rape. Now, Colorado State University at Pueblo has punished the supposed rapist of a woman who says she was not raped.”

“Title IX of the Education Amendments enacted in 1972 merely says no person at an institution receiving federal funds shall be subjected to discrimination on the basis of sex. From this the government has concocted a right to micromanage schools’ disciplinary procedures, mandating obvious violations of due process.”

“In 2011, the Education Department’s civil rights office sent “dear colleague” letters to schools directing them to convict accused persons on a mere “preponderance” of evidence rather than “clear and convincing” evidence. Schools were instructed to not allow accused students to cross-examine their accusers, but to allow accusers to appeal not-guilty verdicts, a form of double jeopardy.”

“Although a “dear colleague” letter is supposedly a mere “guidance document,” it employs the word “must” in effectively mandating policies…..these letters shred constitutional guarantees…..academic administrators nowadays are frequently supine when challenged – it would risk a costly investigation and the potential loss of the 11 percent of their budget that comes from Washington.”

WORDS OF WISDOM

My friend, who had two kids graduate from college tells everyone; “College is the most dangerous place you can send your kids. Not because of any risk of violence. The risk is when they come back, you will not know who they are, unless you’ve constantly communicated with them.”

Related Article – Georg Will Outlines What Should Be In Every Commencement Speech, at austrianaddict.com.

Related Article – Best Commencement Speech Ever? Adm.McCraven Gets My Vote, at austrianaddict.com.

Related Article – Michelle Obama vs. Thomas Sowell On The Politics Of Race, at austrianaddict.com.

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Must Reads For The Week 5/14/16

Posted May 14, 2016 by austrianaddict
Categories: Must Reads For The Week
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

8th-Grader Investigated For Forgery After Using $2 Bill , at tammybruce.com. When a girl tried to pay for lunch using a 2 dollar bill, school officials confiscated the bill, said it was fake, and sent her to the police office. The officer said she could be in big trouble. Why would these “authorities” think that anyone would counterfeit a 2 dollar bill? If someone was going to counterfeit money, wouldn’t you think they would get more bang for their buck, so to speak, by picking a higher denomination bill? Also when you see a 2 dollar bill, doesn’t it catch your eye because you don’t see one that often? Why would someone counterfeit something that brings that much scrutiny? I wish the Fed would have gotten this much scrutiny for printing trillions of dollars over the last ten years.

Wyoming Welder, Facing $16M Fines, Beats EPA In Battle Over Stock Pond, at foxnews.com. Andy Johnson obtained a state permit to build a stock pond on his land in 2012. After it was constructed, the EPA claimed he needed the agencies permission to build it. The Pacific Legal Foundation represented Mr. Johnson in his fight against the EPA. The federal government has agreed to resolve the case. When the full force of the Federal government is used against individuals, organizations like Pacific Legal Foundation are their only chance to fight back, because the monetary cost is so high. This is just another example of tyrannical individuals using the power of their position in government.

Increase in CO2 Is Literally Making The Planet Greener,at libertarianrepublic.com. Who would have thought that increasing the amount of plant food would increase plant growth? Maybe CO2 isn’t really a pollutant, even though the EPA says it is.

Ohio Cities Pre-Sale Home Inspections Unconstitutional, at ohiolibertycoalition.org. This is tyranny at the local level. Some Ohio cities are attempting to collect inspection fees and impose fines by mandating inspections on home sales. This is a warrantless search and is therefore unconstitutional.

How Uber And Lyft Were Driven Out Of Austin, at thefederalist.com. The taxi cartel and special interests colluded with local government to protect their monopoly status. Only government has the power to stop individuals from entering the market. Monopolies can’t exist in a free market. Monopolies are created by Government forcing competitors out of the market. Just another example of government tyranny.

Uber Ends Ride-Sharing Service In Sweden, at economicpolicyjournal.com.  Swedish central planners force out Uber. Uber said “Sweden needs a modern and clearer regulatory framework for the emerging sharing economy.” Actually Sweden is a modern socialist state. What Uber needs is old-fashioned free market capitalism, not the modern day crony socialist or crony capitalist system that exist in todays world.

Raw Venezuela: Looters Burned Alive, While Streets Filled With People Killing Animals For Food, at zerohedge.com. Here is your socialist paradise. I know all you Bernie (and Hillary) supporters think that the only reason socialism didn’t work in Venezuela is because the right tyrants people weren’t in charge of centrally planning the Venezuelan economy. Planning an economy might be a little more difficult than just promising free stuff. Who is going to produce all the free stuff that you want to give away?

Obama Lawsuit Against N.C. Isn’t About Civil Rights. It’s About Crushing Dissent, at thefederalist.com. You never let a serious (or not so serious) crisis go to waste. The President’s Justice department is using the power of the Federal Government to force a one size fits all decision onto 300 plus million Americans. This is simple. Allow property owners to make the decisions on their bathroom policy. Allow state and local governments along with schools to make their own bathroom policies. The Federal government should not be sticking their nose into the business of the people and the states. Tenth Amendment anyone.

“What Could Have Possibly Raised Your Costs”, Hillary Clinton Can’t Answer Why Obamacare Costs Are Soaring, at zerohedge.com. I thought we all knew that adding another layer of Government bureaucracy and regulations to an industry that already had massive bureaucratic and regulatory intervention wasn’t going to bring the cost down. The only question was how would the blame for the increased cost be shifted away from the government and on to the private sector.

California Tax Revenues Miss Projections By $1 Million As Residents Flee The State, at zerohedge.com. At some point people decide the cost of staying in California is greater than the benefit of remaining there. Think of how bad it would have to be for most people to make the decision to leave their state and settle somewhere else? Government regulation and taxes have consequences.

RECENT TORNADO FILMED IN OKLAHOMA

 

 

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Bias In The Unbiased Mainstream Media

Posted May 12, 2016 by austrianaddict
Categories: Government and Politics, Miscellaneous
Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

I was talking to my friend, an admitted liberal (not the classic liberal, but the modern-day liberal), about main stream media bias. He didn’t think there was media bias. When I told him that over 80% of journalists vote for democrats, he still didn’t think that made a difference in their reporting. I asked him; if 80 plus percent of journalists thought like me, would the news be reported differently? He said yes it would be reported differently. I said I guess in his unbiased opinion, only liberal journalists can be unbiased observers.

Human beings have a bias toward their particular world view. Since journalists are human beings, they are biased. There is nothing wrong with admitting it. Full disclosure of a journalists world view should be mandatory. It would help people handicap the stories they read from biased journalists.

Most of the bias is not just what they write. A bigger part of a journalists bias is what he leaves out of a story, or what story he decides not to report. Sins of commission and omission so to speak.

Here are a few recent articles that show blatant journalistic malpractice. Of course I’m only putting in the stories that favor my view that journalists are biased.

I pull back the curtain, you decide what to think about what you see.

 

–Ben Rhodes Reveals How Obama Duped America On Dangerous Iran Deal, by David Reaboi, at thefederalist.com. Even this headline missed the main point of the story. It should read “…How Obama Duped A Complicit American Media Into Carrying The Water On Iran Deal”. Politicians trying to push their narrative through the press isn’t anything new. Unfortunately the narrative gets no scrutiny when a Democrat is doing the spinning as compared to a Republican. I’m not here to defend Republicans. All I wish is that Journalists would treat all politicians like they treat Republicans. I just want a level playing field (Did I just say that. Please shoot me.) I want every politician and bureaucrat to be treated as if they are lying every time they open their mouths.

–Former Facebook Workers:We Routinely Suppress Conservative News, at tammybruce.com. Facebook workers, in the “trending” news section, are dictating what news items 167 million Facebook users in The U.S. have access to at any given moment. I thought this listing of news stories was generated by an unbiased algorithm?

Sheriff Rips Media For Concocting A Racial Narrative Into Crime Report, at lawnewz.com. Here is a sin of omission. A 17-year-old black male is arrested for sexting. The media story makes it seem like there was racial overtones in his arrest. CBS affiliate KSLA in Shreveport failed to mention that a 16-year-old white female was  arrested, pertaining to the same case, before the black male. Sheriff Julian Whittington held a press conference and called KSLA on the carpet for their bias. In my opinion, this story fit the world view of the journalists. It confirmed their bias, and they went with it.

This kind of action by journalists has happened too many times in the past to simply be considered an isolated mistake and swept under the rug. There is a pattern here. Do you remember the George Bush National Guard Story, The Duke Lacrosse Case, Trevon Martin, The Cambridge Police Acting Stupidly, Hands Up Don’t Shoot, The UVA Rape Case, just to name a few off the top of my head. A wise man once said “trust but verify”.  I say verify and remain skeptical.

 

Related Article – The Media Slowly Being Dragged Into Covering Abortion Doctor Kermit Gosnell’s Murder Trial, at austrianaddict.com.

 

 

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Some Econ Homework

Posted May 11, 2016 by austrianaddict
Categories: Econ. 201
Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

How You Don’t Cure Poverty, by Henry Hazlitt, at mises.org. Here are some excerpts from the article:

“From the beginning of history sincere reformers as well as demagogues have sought to abolish or at least to alleviate poverty through state action…..The most frequent and popular of these proposed remedies has been the simple one of seizing from the rich to give to the poor…… The wealth is to be “shared,” to be redistributed,” to be “equalized.” In fact, in the minds of many reformers it is not poverty that is the chief evil but inequality….. all schemes for redistributing or equalizing incomes or wealth must undermine or destroy incentives at both ends of the economic scale. They must reduce or abolish the incentives of the unskilled and shiftless to improve their condition by their own efforts, and even the able and industrious will see little point in earning anything beyond what they are allowed to keep. These redistribution schemes must inevitably reduce the size of the pie to be redistributed. They can only level down. Their long-run effect must be to reduce production and lead toward national impoverishment.”

“This brings us to the subject of minimum-wage laws. It is profoundly discouraging that in the second half of the twentieth century, in what is supposed to be an age of great economic sophistication, the United States should have such laws on its books, and that it should still be necessary to protest against a nostrum so futile and mischievous. It hurts most the very marginal workers it is designed to help…..I can only repeat what I have written in another place…… We cannot make a man worth a given amount by making it illegal for anyone to offer him less. We merely deprive him of the right to earn the amount that his abilities and opportunities would permit him to earn, while we deprive the community of the moderate services he is capable of rendering. In brief, for a low wage we substitute unemployment.”

“We come now to the final false remedy for poverty to be considered in this article—outright socialism. By “outright socialism” I refer to the Marxist proposal for “the public ownership and control of the means of production”…..Now the word “socialism” is loosely used to refer to…….the redistribution of wealth or income—if not to make incomes equal, at least to make them much more nearly equal than they are in a market economy. But the majority of those who propose this objective today think that it can be achieved by retaining the mechanisms of private enterprise and then taxing the bigger incomes to subsidize the smaller incomes.”

Why Private Investment Works & Government Investment Doesn’t, at Prager University.

“When government tries to pick losers and winners, it typically picks losers. Why? Because in the free market consumers pick winners to leave the losers to Government.”

Another reason Government can’t out perform the free market is because it doesn’t have a tenth of the knowledge that exists in the free market. Also, in the market, when the individual takes the risk he knows he takes the loss if he is wrong. When the Government picks a loser it tries to keep it propped up by subsidizing it with tax dollars. The wasting of scarce resources is kept at a minimal level in the market, because the risk taker stops the unprofitable activity before too long. Resources are liquidated and put toward a more productive use according to consumers desires. Government has no such incentive to stop the nonprofitable activity. They continue wasting scarce resources long after the activity had proven unproductive. If Government bureaucrats were truly in the venture capital business, they would have gone bankrupt years ago.

Economics: It’s Simpler Than You Think, by David Gordan, at mises.org.   From the article:

“…. Skilled entrepreneurs succeed, but many in business fail. The market operates by sorting out of the successful from the failures by the test of profitability. Given this fact, it is as essential that the failures be allowed to fail as it is that those who succeed be allowed to keep their profits. Attempts to prop up failures disable the market.”

“This vital point can be used to answer a common objection to free trade. Many people object to free trade because, in some cases, foreign competition drives domestic companies out of business, causing unemployment. To the response that expanded trade creates jobs elsewhere in the economy, the reply often given is, what about the workers who do lose their jobs? They are often unable to secure new jobs as good as those they had previously. The fact that others are better off is small solace to them.”…….“In a free economy, capital migrates to talented entrepreneurs eager to pursue profitable opportunities. Innovations like the automobile, computer, and online retail services destroy jobs, but the process leads to better, higher-paying jobs … to create jobs in abundance, we must allow the free marketplace to regularly annihilate them.”

” According to Ben Bernanke, Timothy Geithner, and many others, only the massive bailouts of financial institutions in response to the collapse of the housing market saved the economy from disaster…in the financial crisis of 2008….. but it is essential to the proper working of the market to allow the businesses that had acted recklessly to fail. Had this been done, the economy could have quickly readjusted. “Capitalist societies can rebound from anything. In particular, they can bounce back from bank failures that do not exterminate human capital or destroy their infrastructure. An interfering government is the only barrier to any society’s revival, and that is why the global economy cratered amid all the government intervention in 2008.”

 

Related Article – Here is Some Econ Homework, at austrianaddict.com.

Related Article – Your Economic Homework, at austrianaddict.com.

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