Must Reads For The Week 4/16/16

Posted April 16, 2016 by austrianaddict
Categories: Must Reads For The Week
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I HATE POLITICS!

Donald Trump Blasts Colorado GOP For ‘Corrupt System’ In Picking Delegates, at foxnews.com. Here are a couple of comments. If you are going to play in the political arena, you have to know all the rules in order to compete against the people who do know the rules. It doesn’t matter what you think of the rules, because you are not in a position to change them. I’ll use a golf analogy to explain Colorado, because Donald Trump plays golf.

Trump is playing Cruz in a match and on a par 4 Trump hits his tee shot in the fairway and Cruz hits his tee shot in a water hazard. Trump hits his second shot on the green. Under the rules, Cruz can play his ball from the water hazard with no penalty, play another ball from the tee with a 1 stroke penalty, drop a ball two club lengths from where his ball last crossed the hazard and play it form there with a 1 stroke penalty, drop a ball behind the hazard as far back as he wants as long as he keeps it in line with the flag and the point where his original ball last crossed the hazard (and you thought delegate rules were complicated) with a 1 stroke penalty. Cruz decides on the fourth option. He drops his ball 150 yds from the green which is his perfect 7 iron distance. He hits his third shot to two feet and taps in for par. Trump three puts for a bogey. Trump now complains the the rules pertaining to water hazards are corrupt. He says it isn’t fair that someone can hit it in the water and win the hole. Cruz knew the rules and used what he thought was his best option. He didn’t cheat. He played within the rules.

What if this situation was reversed and Trump hit his ball in the hazard. He than plays his third shot from the tee because not only does he not know all the rules, the caddie he hired doesn’t know the rules. After he loses the hole he complains the rules are convoluted and impossible to understand. The rules are set up so golf insiders have the advantage. The rules about hazards, water hazards, lateral hazards and out of bounds should all be the same. These rules of golf are set up so golf insiders have the advantage.

If you’re playing a competitive game (which is what politics is) you must first know the rules of the game so you don’t lose because of what some would consider a ‘loophole’. The truth is either Trump didn’t know the rules, in which case he isn’t the winner he thinks he is. He didn’t know the rules and is just trying to spin his way out of his ignorance. Or he did know the rules and decided the cost of doing what Cruz did in Colorado was to high compared to the political hay he could make by complaining about the rules after the fact. The truth is Cruz used the rules to his advantage and Trump didn’t. If you want the rules changed you have to figure out a way to use the existing rules to get in positions of power. When you get enough like minded people in these positions, you will now be able to  change the rules. The establishment became the establishment through this process. The rules are written to protect the position of the status quo by making it difficult for outsiders to overthrow them. The only way to change the status quo party system is through the electoral process. Unfortunately this change is slow and incremental which means non political people get burnt our and lose interest.

‘Equal Pay Day’ This Year Is April 12; ‘Equal Occupational Fatality Day’ Will Be In 2027, by Mark J. Perry, at carpediemblog. The gender pay gap is another political scam. Since politicians continue to think they can gain by politicizing this issue, it is apparent that we haven’t done enough to educated the ignorant. Educating the ignorant isn’t a one time and your done proposition because our education system is constantly producing new generations of ignorant citizens.

Quotation Of The Day, On The Real Minimum Wage Of $0.00 An Hour, by Mark J. Perry, at carpediemblog. Here is another issue that is a winner for politicians and a loser for minimum wage workers. Here is all you need to know about minimum wage. Less is demanded at a higher price than a lower price. This includes labor. Quote from the article by Thomas Sowell: “Unfortunately, the real minimum wage is always zero, regardless of the laws, that is the wage many workers receive in the wake of the creation or escalation of a government-mandated minimum wage, because they either lose their jobs or fail to find jobs when they enter the labor force.” Read Minimum Wage Laws Create Unemployment and Income Inequality Part II: Increase The Minimum Wage and The New, Old, Buzz Words, “Income Inequality“.

Union Leaders Champion Higher Minimum Wages But Support Loopholes To Exempt Union Workers, by Mark J. Perry, at carpediemblog. Do as I say not as I do! Unionized hotels in L.A. have been granted an exemption from paying the higher minimum wage that L.A. city council mandated. Excerpt from the article: “Critics see this as a cynical collusion between politicians and big-city labor interests. By making unions the ‘low-cost option’ for businesses seeking to avoid paying better wages, they assert, the exemptions are designed to drive up union membership – and revenue from dues – at the expense of workers.”

Campaign Lies, by Thomas Sowell, at jewishworldreview.com. From the article: “If you took all the lies out of political rhetoric, how much would be left? Apparently even less than usual this year…..The success of campaign lies depends ultimately on how willing the public is to be stampeded without bothering to stop and think.”

 RELIGIONS AREN’T EQUAL!

Canadian Newspaper Censors Refugee Abuse Of School Children, at tammybruce.com. Muslim refugees criminal behavior is happening all over the world. This is close to home. We are not exempt from this.

Gay Air France Attendants Refuse To Fly To Iran, Fear Executions, at tammybruce.com. Homosexuals are figuring out who they should fear. It’s not Christians who are carrying out executions.

ECONOMICS

The Fed Can’t Save Us, by Robert J. Murphy, at mises.org. Excerpt from the article: “Janet Yellen and her colleagues are stuck with a giant asset bubble that her predecessor inflated. If they begin another round of asset purchases, they might postpone the crash, but only by making the subsequent reckoning that much more painful…You don’t make the country richer by printing money out of thin air, especially when you then give it to the government and Wall Street.”

Cash Banned Freedom Gone, by Thorsten Polliet, at mises.org. In order for central banks (Government) to steal your money with negative interest rates, the Government must first ban cash. If negative interest rates are implemented and people still have the ability to take their cash out of the banks, Negative interest rates are useless.

Austria Just Announced A 54% Hair Cut In Senior Creditors In First Bail In Under New European Rules, at zerohedge.com. An example of government force being used to steal people’s money. I know…It can’t happen here!

THE DAY AFTER TAX DAY

“Brutus” And Our Brutal Taxes, by Gary Galles, at mises.org. One of our founders Robert Yates was a profit when he talked about the taxing power of the federal government over 200 years ago. His predictions are amazing.

101 Years Of The Income Tax, at zerohedge.com.

CARTOONS

 

 

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Must Read “Leftovers”

Posted April 13, 2016 by austrianaddict
Categories: Leftovers
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Smartphone App Allows Citizens To Rely On Each Other For Emergency Services Instead Of Police, at truthvoice.com. Instead of calling 911 when you need help, you can call the app CELL 411 and alert you friends and neighbors when you need help. This is the Uber world. Great idea.

Democrat Fiscal Mess Forces Connecticut To Spurn Needy, by Mark Fitch, at thefederalist.com. Tax revenue decreased in Connecticut after to large tax increases by the Democratic legislature. Companies and retirees are fleeing to lower tax states. Young people are leaving because they can’t find jobs. When companies leave, jobs leave. You can’t tax your way to prosperity. Economic forces always prevail.

First Denmark, Now Belgium Is Paying People To Take Out A Mortgage, at zerohedge.com. How bad must it be if people are getting paid to borrow money? If loaning electronically printed counterfeit money at low-interest rates to people who couldn’t pay it back created our housing boom and bust in 08, how do you think this will turn out? Negative interest rates can’t be logically defended. Can they?

EPA Putting Red Light On Amateur Car Racing, by Kenric Ward, at reason.com. Here is an example of a tyrannical government agency. When congress creates these agencies, it abdicates its power to a bunch of petty tyrants unelected bureaucrats. Just another example of government being too big.

California Department Of Justice Raids David Daleiden’s House, at thefederalist.com. David Daleiden made the undercover videos of Planned Parenthood Selling Fetal (Baby) Parts Under “Highest Ethical And Legal Standards!“. A Grand Jury Indited David Dalieden for Organ Trafficking because he purchased baby body parts while undercover. They issued no charges against Planned Parenthood. Daleiden said, “….buying fetal tissue requires a seller as well.” Unfortunately Mr. Daleiden is on the wrong side of this issue, and Planned Parenthood is on the right side. This is an example of absolute power corrupting absolutely.

VA Strips 250,000 Vets Of 2nd Amendment Rights, at thehill.com. And people have tried to assure me that the administration doesn’t want to take our guns away. Veterans who are having trouble with their finances are being put on a gun ban list. Tyrants are good at incremental tyranny.

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Must Reads For The Week 4/9/16

Posted April 8, 2016 by austrianaddict
Categories: Must Reads For The Week
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 These Have To Be From The Onion, Don’t They?

Sec. of DOT Denounces Inequitable Distribution Of Sidewalks, at tammybruce.com.  Statements from bureaucrats, like Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx, reveal what they think of our intelligence. I don’t think they realize these statements also reveal what some of us think of their stupidity. From the article. “Only 49% of low income neighborhoods have sidewalks compared to 90% of affluent neighborhoods.” Since 51% of low income neighborhoods have sidewalks and 10% of affluent neighborhoods don’t have side walks we can safely say that sidewalks are not the cause of the economic status of a neighborhood.

Obama Administration To Landlords: You Cannot Refuse To Rent To Criminals, at tammybruce.com. Quote from the article, “The Fair Housing Act doesn’t include criminals as a protected class, but HUD says refusing to rent based on a criminal record is a form of racial discrimination, due to racial imbalances in the U.S justice system.….” What if a landlord refuses to rent to white criminals, is that racial discrimination? What if black landlords refuse to rent to black criminals, is that racial discrimination? You have to have a useless degree from an elite university and no common sense to say things like this. Or as my friend has so eloquently said, “One of us in this conversation is a real dumb ass.”

Watch TA’s $1.4Million ‘Randomized iPad App Randomly Point Right or Left, at tammybruce.com. I can’t even explain this. You have to watch this short video to even believe this is real. This is what 1.4 million in tax payer dollars gets you. If they would have paid me $1.4 million, I would have drawn an arrow on a piece of cardboard and instructed the TSA agent to randomly flip it to the right and left.

Bubbles Bubbles Everywhere.

Here We Go Again: Obama Pushes Banks To Lower Home Loan Standards, at zerohedge.com. Lowering lending standards (along with central bank money printing) lead to the housing bubble of 2008. If at first you don’t succeed try try again.

Why The Auto Loan Bubble Matters, by Edward Niedermeyer, at thefederalist.com. Sub-prime auto loans allows people, who wouldn’t meet normal lending standards, to get car loans. Remember the 08 housing boom and bust.

More Than 40% Of Student Borrowers Aren’t Making Payments, by Josh Mitchell, at wsj.com. Many of these student loans were made to young people who shouldn’t have gone to college in the first place. Graduates can’t find jobs that pay enough to live on let alone pay their student loan debts. The government student loan program is making debt serfs out of students. It’s a student loan bubble.

Green Energy Boondoggle.

Ethanol Is Bad For Cars, The Environment, The Poor, And America, at fee.org. This is an example of why it is hard to shrink government. Even though ethanol increases green house gas emissions and is more expensive than gasoline, Big Agriculture will not allow their government subsidies to go away. This proves government is too big when it can’t even get rid of this boondoggle.

Another Government Backed Green Energy Company Goes Bankrupt, at dailycaller.com. Once again tax payer dollars are wasted because politicians and bureaucrats are”investing” in our future. Read – Green Energy Proving Venture Capitalist Are Smarter Than Government Bureaucrats.

Check Mate.

Oops: Hillary Supporters’ Twitter Hashtag Backfires, at tammybruce.com. Hillary supporters were playing checkers while everyone else was playing chess.

Bill Clinton Sec’y Of Labor (Unknowingly) Gives 4-Point Endorsement Of Ted Cruz, at tammybruce.com. One mans condemnation is another mans endorsement.

Making A Stand Against Political Correctness.

Standford Students Fight Campus Iconoclasts For Western Civilization, by Joy Pullmann, at thefederalsit.com. Here is an excerpt from the article, “Most Americans, who are part of Western civilization, know nothing of its achievements, making them prey to precisely the sort of grievance-mongering now infecting not just American campuses but our politics and culture….How Can Standford and other name-brand graduates go on to lead our society if they dislike it so much they do not want to learn its history? How can they hope to correct Western civilization if they do not know what it is?” …..”One does wonder how young people who confuse tantrum-throwing with argument managed to get admitted to Stanford in the first place.”

Cartoons

Political Cartoons by Glenn McCoy

 

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Must Reads For The Week 4/2/16

Posted April 2, 2016 by austrianaddict
Categories: Must Reads For The Week
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Feds To Fine Schools For Not Following Michelle Obama’s Lunch Rules, at tammybruce.com. The Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service is going to fine schools who don’t abide by the regulations set forth by The Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act. They will fine schools for ‘egregious or persistent disregard’ for the rules imposing limits on sodium and calorie intake and banned white grains. Two questions. 1) Did you know there was a Food and Nutrition Service agency as part of the Dep. of Agriculture? 2) Who decides what constitutes ‘egregious” and “persistent disregard’? This has been a disaster from the start, read, Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act Doesn’t Work As Planners Planned. Read, Michelle’s ‘Eat What I Tell You To Eat’ Program is Crashing. Read, Black Market In Food Items Springs Up In Schools, Thanks Michelle. I like that people have decided to not complying with the law. This is the spirit of our founding fathers.

At Emory University, Writing ‘Trump 2016’ On Sidewalks Is A Racist Microaggression, by Robby Soave, at reason.com. No comment needed.

Mises: The Individual Within Society, at mises.org. Article taken from ‘Human Action’ by Ludwig von Mises. Here is an excerpt; “The natural condition of man is extreme poverty and insecurity. It is romantic nonsense to lament the passing of the happy days of primitive barbarism. In a state of savagery the complainants would either not have reached the age of manhood, or if they had, they would have lacked the opportunities and amenities provided by civilization. Jean Jacques Rousseau and Frederick Engels, if they had lived in the [p. 166] primitive state which they describe with nostalgic yearning, would not have enjoyed the leisure required for their studies and for the writing of their books.”

When Will This Awfulness Be Over?, by Jessica Hagy, at thisisindexed.com. Jessica Hagy puts a lot of insight on 3 by 5 cards using venn diagrams, charts, and graphs. Here is the best insight I’ve seen about the election season.

card4829

Apple Has Done It Again, at theburningplatform.com. I don’t know if this is true, but it is funny. “Apple has announced that it has developed a computer chip that can store and play Hi Fi music in women’s breast implants.” Go to the article for the punchline.

CIA Leaves Explosive Materials On School Bus, at targetliberty.com. The CIA borrows a bus for a training exercise. They return it to the school district but forgot to take the explosives out of the bus. Mechanics found the explosives after the bus was back in service for 2 days. I can here the agents conversation when the exercise was over; “Are you sure we have everything? I feel like we’re forgetting something.” And we’re trusting government with our healthcare? Whisky Tango Foxtrot!

The Climate Change Central Planners, by Robert J Murphy, at instituteforenergyresearch.org. Excerpt from the article; “It is an unbelievable act of hubris to suppose that a group of natural scientists and economists, armed with computers, can today make quantitative predictions of how much massive new taxes and draconian regulations will make people better off in the year 2150. And yet this is precisely what today’s central planners do from 9-to-5 in the office.”

Hillary Investigation Enters a Dangerous Phase, by Andrew Napolitano, at lewrockwell.com. Is the FBI just dotting all the I’s and crossing all the T’s? Is the ruling aristocracy trying to figure a way out of indicting the Democrats nominee? Are the Clinton’s trying to bribe someone to take the fall? Will the rule of law prevail; or will the break down of the rule of law continue?

Price Controls May Be On The Way, by Paul-Martin Foss, at mises.org. If fixing the Fed fund rate at 0% since 08 hasn’t worked, why would central planners think price controls would work? Nixon tried wage and price controls in the 70’s. How did that work out?

The Seen and Unseen, by Walter E. Williams, at jewishworldreview.com. Walter E. Williams examins the results of the Bush administrations 2002 tariff on imported steel using Bastiat’s suggestion to look beyond what is in front of you so you can see the whole picture.

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America’s Socialist Origins, by Prager University

Posted March 31, 2016 by austrianaddict
Categories: Econ. 101
Tags: , , , ,

Some of the first settlements in America were set up as socialist or collective societies. No one owned property. Everyone’s production was ‘given’ to the public store. These early settlements were examples of socialist ideas that Karl Marx popularized in this saying form the mid 1800’s ,”form each according to his abilities to each according to his needs“. These lab experiments didn’t work because, although everyone was willing to consume, not everyone was willing to produce. If these socialist ideals couldn’t work in small groups, where everyone knew each other and had the similar end of just surviving the next day, how can these ideas be expected to work in countries with tens of millions of people who don’t know each other and who desire a variety of ends?

Here is a video from Prager University titled,

AMERICA’S SOCIALIST ORIGINS

 

Here are some excerpts from my post, The Real Thanksgiving Story: I quote Richard J. Maybury.

“In the harvest feasts of 1621 and 1622, “all had their hungry bellies filled,” but only briefly. The prevailing condition during those years was not the abundance the official story claims, it was famine and death. The first “Thanksgiving” was not so much a celebration as it was the last meal of condemned men.”

“But in subsequent years something changes. The harvest of 1623 was different…….. In fact, in 1624, so much food was produced that the colonists were able to begin exporting corn.”

“What happened? After the poor harvest of 1622…..They began to question their form of economic organization.”…..in 1623 Bradford abolished socialism. He gave each household a parcel of land and told them they could keep what they produced, or trade it away as they saw fit. In other words, he replaced socialism with a free market, and that was the end of the famines.”

 

Related Article – Private Property vs. Collective Ownership: Which Deals With Scarcity Better Than The Other, at austrianaddict.com.

Related Article – Why Socialism Won’t Work? Human Nature, at austrianaddict.com.

 

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Observations From The Margin

Posted March 29, 2016 by austrianaddict
Categories: Observations From The Margin
Tags: , , , ,

Observation Tower

-On his recent visit to Cuba our President looked envious of the power the Castro’s have been able wield over Cuba. If only he had the power to implement the total “fundamental transformation” of America that he spoke about during his campaign, we would have more economic equality. Unfortunately the gap between the ruling aristocracy and politically connected (crony capitalists) on the one hand, and the masses on the other would be much larger. Although the masses would be equally less prosperous overall.

-Why didn’t any of the players from the Tampa Bay Devil Rays try to defect to Cuba while they were playing an exhibition game there?

-Last week we heard that literacy rates in Cuba are very high and infant mortality rates are very low. Obviously these fantastic rates are the results of education and healthcare being provided by the Cuban Government. I have to ask two questions; 1) how is literacy defined in Cuba compared to the US? and 2) does the Cuban government count infant deaths during child-birth, like the US does? Apples to apples.

-Hillary Clinton recently said foreign leaders are privately reaching out to her and asking if they can endorse her to stop Trump from becoming President. She told them no, this up to the American people (read here). Does anyone believe her? Do you think she told them their donations could be laundered through the Clinton Global Initiative?

-Do you remember Charlie Trie and the Chinese funny money during the first Clinton administration?

-Central Bankers are talking about and in some cases implementing negative interest rates. It doesn’t pass the smell test but most of us don’t know why. Interest rates reveal time preference. People prefer goods in the present as opposed to goods in the future. To incentivize people to loan money (the ability to purchase x amount of present goods) to you, you would have to promise repayment of the money plus a fee, aka interest. Negative interest rates mean that depositors would be depositing money (the ability to purchase x amount of present goods) and at some point in the future would receive less money (less purchasing power) than was originally deposited. How many people would sign up for this deal? Central bankers are always trying to override economic principles. It is what Hayek called ‘The Pretense Of Knowledge‘.

-The Presidents recent indignation that the Republicans are shirking their Constitutional responsibility because they said they would not vote on his supreme court nominee is pathetic. This President, who has made it a habit of using the constitution as toilet paper, is now wrapping himself in it. Unfortunately this is not peculiar to this President. Almost all politicians show little fidelity to their oath when it doesn’t serve their political ends.

-If Hillary is elected President, will she be able to pass a FBI background check in order get a security clearance?

-Do you remember the first Clinton administration had people working for it who couldn’t and didn’t get a security clearance?

CARTOONS

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Menos Marx – Mias Mises (Less Marx – More Mises)

Posted March 28, 2016 by austrianaddict
Categories: Econ. 101, Government and Politics
Tags: , , , , , , ,

The global economic slowdown provides an opportunity to spread the ideas of Austrian economics and individual liberty. People know something is wrong but they don’t know the cause. Government intervention by politicians and bureaucrats, along with our central bankers policy of money printing and zero interest rates is what caused these economic distortions.

It is easy for political leaders to sell the belief that the solutions come from bureaucratic central planners. People can see concrete things built from the plans of engineers and architects, so it makes sense in our minds that plans can bring about the ends sought by the planners.

Getting people to understand that order can be created spontaneously when individuals pursue their own plans and cooperate voluntarily with each other in what we call a free market, is much more difficult because of its abstract nature. The concepts of money and interest rates aren’t easy to wrap your head around. When they are manipulated by central banks, it’s even harder to grasp.

Education about economic principles has to come from the bottom up (0ne on one), because we know the truth can’t come form politicians and bureaucrats.

In this article, Hope In Brazil As Millions March Against Rouseff, by Tho Bishop, at mises.org, we see growth of bottom up change. Here are some excerpts from the article: “Due to the work of Helio Beltrao and Mises Brasil, Ludwig von Mises and Austrian economics have made unprecedented gains within the country. As I noted last year, Mises is the most searched economist in all of Brazil. Meanwhile the media was forced to take notice as signs reading Menos Marx, Mais Mises (Less Marx, More Mises) were seen being waved during an earlier round of anti-Rousseff (President Dilma Rousseff) protests.”

“Ludwig von Mises: “In the long run even the most despotic governments with all their brutality and cruelty are no match for ideas. Eventually the ideology that has won the support of the majority will prevail and cut the ground from under the tyrant’s feet.”

MORE HOPE FOR LATIN AMERICA?

Here is a video from libertypenblog.blogspot.com. John Stossel talks to Gloria Alvarez who is a free market activist in Latin America. Here are quotes from the video:

Gloria Alvarez: “..In Latin America we still don’t know how economics works. We have seen Cuba fail and it should be enough to see Cuba failing…….and since we don’t know history because Latin Americans are oblivious to what happened in the Soviet Union, in China…..”

Stossel asks, “How did you learn this”

Gloria Alvarez: “….I studied in a libertarian university…UFM….It has von Mises library…”

 

Miss Alvarez, Latin Americans aren’t alone in their ignorance of history or how economics works. We Americans have become blissfully ignorant. And we have no excuses because we have a culture of liberty and free markets. How much farther down the Road to Serfdom do we have to travel before we wake up?

Click here to see video Gloria Alvarez speak at CPAC.

Related Article – People Want A President Who Will “Get Something Done“, at austrianaddict.com.

Related Article – Private Property vs. Collective Ownership: One Deals With Scarcity Better Than The Other, at austrianaddict.com.

 

 

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Must Reads For The Week 3/26/15

Posted March 26, 2016 by austrianaddict
Categories: Must Reads For The Week
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

This is from Mark J. Perry at carpediemblog. “Scaling Back Government: a) A state legislative subcommittee in North Carolina recently approved draft legislation that would dissolve 15 occupational licensing boards in the state, and b) Nebraska hair braiders can’t be jailed for performing their services without a government permission slip, thanks to a new law.” This is a move in the right direction. Shrinking government is possible at the state and local levels. It is difficult at the Federal level.

Venn Diagram Sunday, by Mark J. Perry, at carpediemblog. Mark Perry’s Venn diagrams are always interesting. He shows 12 of his most recent diagrams in this post. Here is an example.

Venn7

Obamacare Turns 6 – $55 Billion In Waste, So Far, at investors.com. We had lower cost healthcare when the 30 million who didn’t have health insurance went to emergency rooms for their care. Why did we pass 2500 pages of rules to help 30 million people when they weren’t denied healthcare in the first case? Answer. Politicians wanted more power.

Under Revised Policy, College No Longer Threatens To Lock You Up For Passing Out The Constitution, at thecollegefix.com. I bet the college administrators are worried that the Marxist propaganda they’re feeding the students might have some competition.

Transgenders And School Bathroom Question Solved, at targetliberty.com. This is an outside of the box solution. “Abolish the public school system.” This would also solve a lot of other problems.

Forget “Unity” We Need The Freedom To Disagree, by Gary Galles, at misesca. In a world of scarcity and subjective value, there can be very little agreement. Using government power to force people to agree has a high cost. To have less contention between people all we need to agree on is individuals have property rights and voluntary exchange (contract). Our country was founded on these basic principles.

This Place Needs A Recession, at economicpolicyjournal.com. From the article: “The power center of America (Washington D.C.), where politicians, crony capitalists and lobbyists plot, continues to grow……..built on the backs of US taxpayers. DC needs a recession.” The growth in the power of government has allowed politicians to split Americans up into groups and pit us against each other. While we waste time bickering with each other about which party or politician has the “solutions”, government power continues to grow. We don’t realize that answers to our problems can’t come from government because the problems were caused by government “solutions” in the first place. Read (People Want A President Who Will ‘Get Something Done”.)

The Nanny Always Wins: Fantasy Sports Stop Operations In New York, by Scott Shackford, at reason.com. This is an example of private property and voluntary exchange being trumped by politicians and bureaucrats using the force of government.

German Response To Negative Interest Rates, by Paul-Martin Foss, at mises.org. Just as Japanese people responded to negative interest rates by purchasing more safes, German people are responding by withdrawing money from their accounts and putting it in safe deposit boxes. This is a perfectly logical response. But it is a response that our anointed central bankers somehow failed to see. Do you think the banks, sanctioned by government, would go into these safe deposit boxes and take the money and leave an IOU?

THE MUST READ OF THE MUST READS

Markets Are Our Best Hope For Peaceful Cooperation, by Andres Syrios, at mises.org. Excerpt from the article: “…although selfish, human beings are a social species who long for a sense of community….and while morality – such as the golden rule, may be applied universally – human cooperation and empathy are not…The question left before us is what societal arrangement does such a nature best lend itself to. Karl Marx envisioned a future that would be “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” But as the biologist E.O. Wilson cleverly noted of communism, “Wonderful Theory, wrong species.” Yes, what works well for ants doesn’t so much for human beings.”…….”Cooperation is a great thing, but it has only been shown to work in small groups. All that’s left with regards to large group interactions is force or exchange. So democracy, on a large scale, is merely people voting on if, when and how to use force against each other.” Read, Individual Liberty Is The Least Contentious Way Of Settling Differences.

 

BERNOPOLY: NEW BOARD GAME FROM BERNIE SANDERS

bern

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Must Read “Leftovers”

Posted March 23, 2016 by austrianaddict
Categories: Leftovers
Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Federal Judge: Drinking Tea , Shopping At A Gardening Store Is Probable Cause For A SWAT Raid, by Radley Balko, at washingtonpost.com. Hard to believe that a judge said that at no point did the police violate the constitutional rights of the people whose house was raided because of a false positive test. “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

St. Louis Taxpayers Aren’t Finished Paying For The Stadium The Rams Abandoned, by Travis Waldron, at huffingtonpost.com. City and State taxpayers still owe $100 million on the bonds used to finance the building of the stadium. Fool me once……..

Well-Armed Activists Openly Defy Texas Law To Feed The Homeless, at thedailysheeple.com. Dallas law says you can’t feed a lot of people unless you jump through the hoops they’ve placed in your way. The activists decided not to comply with the law.

Solar City And The Silver Spoon, by Marita Noon, at cfact.org. Can you blame Solar City from chasing after government funding (taxpayer dollars). There will always be a line of people trying to get their hands on taxpayer dollars. This is just another green energy scam.

Hillary Clinton’s False Hopes, by Andrew Napolitano, at reason.com. Excerpt from the article: “Clinton’s job as secretary of state was to keep secrets. Instead, she exposed them to friend and doe. The exposure of state secrets, either intentionally or negligently, constitutes the crime of espionage.” My brother had a security clearance when he worked for the Air Force. He said if he had done what she did, he would still be in jail.

How Congress Is Giving Up Its Power, by Brittany Hunter, at generationopportunity.org. Congress has given up its law making power to unelected bureaucrats in federal agencies. From the article: “…. in the appendix of the Administrative Conference of the US, there are 115 agencies listed with a disclaimer saying “There is no authoritative list of government agencies.” The federal government has grown so large that no one can even keep track of it anymore.” Can’t the left and right agree that the federal government has reached a point that it is too big?

Wait A Minute – Who’s Fascist, by Charles Hugh Smith, at oftwominds.com. Excerpt from the article: “The Carrot dangled by the Fascist state is always the same: there is a free lunch for everyone who cedes control over their lives to the state. For corporations, the free lunch is a quasi – monopoly; for debt serfs, new programs that erase their debts (i.e. transfer them to others), and for everyone, more entitlements, up to the Nirvana of the fascist state, Guaranteed Minimum Income for all.”

Our Forgotten Statesman, by Walter E. Williams, at jewishworldreview.com. James Madison was called the father of the constitution. Excerpt from the article: “During the Constitutional Convention, a proposal was made that would have allowed the federal government to suppress a seceding state. Madison rejected it….. “A Union of the states containing such an ingredient (would seem) to provide for its own destruction. The use of force against a state would look more like a declaration of war than an infliction of punishment and would probably be considered by the party attacked as a dissolution of all previous compacts by which it might be bound.” States have a right to secede.

Cartoons.

Political Cartoons by Gary Varvel

 

 

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Here Is Some Econ. Homework

Posted March 22, 2016 by austrianaddict
Categories: Econ. 201
Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

When knowledge is allowed to flow unhampered through the market, mainly through the price system, it works to coordinate all activities as optimally as possible. But when Government interventions don’t allow this knowledge to flow freely, malinvestments and dislocations are the result. The only way to cure these problems is for the interventions to stop. This allows the market to purge itself of these wasteful activities via a recession. Unfortunately no politician, bureaucrat, or Fed policy maker wants to have this correction happen on his watch.

Even tough hampered markets have an appearance of sustainability, they ultimately succumb to economic forces.

Here are two articles that talk about hampered markets. The first article is titled, Mises Was Right: The Hampered Market Is Unsustainable, by Sandy Ikeda, at mises,ca. Here are some excerpts from the article:

“Regulatory Dynamics Are Worse Than Transfer Dynamics. This is all because of the central role that prices play in coordinating market processes. That means that the government’s attempt to execute macroeconomic policy by manipulating the quantity of money and credit is perhaps the worst aspect of regulatory capitalism. Monetary manipulation eventually impacts all market prices directly and severely. Other things equal, it is the most distortionary form of intervention.”

“We can rank the major categories of intervention in order of their distortionary effects and thus in order of their unsustainability: 1) Large-scale monetary manipulation, 2) Large-scale price control, 3) Large-scale income redistribution.”

“So, other things equal, a country that pursues a pure form of welfare state capitalism might last longer than a country that pursues a pure form of regulatory state capitalism……”

“……Every country that has attempted interventionism in the past 100 years or so has experienced repeated economic crises. In Russia, crisis led to the Bolshevik Revolution and later the collapse of the Soviet Union. In Germany, the failure of the Weimar Republic conditioned the rise of National Socialism and then later the “economic miracle” under Ludwig Erhard. And in the United States, regulation and monetary manipulation produced the Great Depression and, decades later, the so-called Great Recession of 2007–09, with the “Reagan Revolution” in between.”

Ludwig Erhard And The German Economic Miracle.

 

Here is the second article titled, We Live In A Time Of Piecemeal-Planning & Incremental Interventionism, by Richard Ebeling, at mises.ca. Here are some excerpts from the article:

“Wherever we turn we are confronted with politicians, political pundits, television talking heads, and editorial page commentators, all of whom offer an array of plans, programs, and projects that will solve the problems of the world – if only government is given the power and authority to remake society in the design proposed.”

“Even many of those who claim to be suspicious of “big government” and the Washington beltway powers-that-be, invariably offer their own versions of plans, programs, and projects they assert are compatible with or complementary to a free society.”

“The differences too often boil down simply to matters of how the proposer wants to use government to remake or modify people and society. The idea that people should or could be left alnoe to design, undertake and manage their own plans and interactions with others is sometimes given lip service, but never entirely advocated or proposed in practice.”

“In this sense, all those participating in contemporary politics are advocates of social engineering, that is, the modifying or remaking of part or all of society according to an imposed plan or set of plans.”

“The idea that such an approach to social matters is inconsistent with both individual liberty and any proper functioning of a free society is beyond the pale of political and policy discourse. We live in a time of piecemeal planning and incremental interventionism.”

“Society is a spontaneous order not a planned one.”

“Hayek argued that the true individualism starts from the premise that “society” is not some ethereal entity having an existence of its own, nor the designed creation of one or a handful of minds imposing a “plan” on people that produces the social order.”

“Instead, society is the cumulative and interactive outcome and result of multitudes of individual human beings making their separate individual plans that interact and generate connections and associations with other individual plans to produce the overall social order and its coordinated patterns.”

 

If you really want to do some home work, read The Use Of Knowledge In Society, by F. A. Hayek at mises.org.

Related Article – Spontaneous Order = Free Market Economy, at austrianaddict.com.

Related Article – Central Planners Hate Economics, at austrianaddict.com.

Related Article – Charles Hugh Smith; Why Suppressing Feedback Leads To Financial Crisis, at austrianaddict.com.

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