Must Reads For The Week 9/12/15

Posted September 12, 2015 by austrianaddict
Categories: Must Reads For The Week
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Is There Really A ‘War On Cops’? Data Shows 2015 Will Likely Be One Of The Safest Years In History For Police, by Mark J. Perry, at carpediemblog. These facts show how media coverage can drive perception about reality. If I said at the present rate there will be 35 police officers killed by fire arms this year what would you think? Your first thought should be that 35 is a number without a context. 35 is one of the lowest numbers of police deaths by fire arms from a peak of over a hundred in the early 70’s. The lesson is don’t be swept along by the media current, and always put every number in context.

Over The Last 20 Years, Annual Fires In U.S. Have Decreased By About 50% While Career Firefighters Has Increased More Than 50%, by Mark J. Perry at carpediemblog. You might think that the decrease in fires is caused by the increase in firefighters. But there is no causation because firefighters put out fires after they are started not before they are started. Local firefighter unions have been able to grown the number of their members as the number of fires has decreased. Public sector unions see public tax payer dollars as easier to extort than what they can extort from the private sector.

Happy “$15 Dollar Minimum Wage” Labor Day From McDonalds, at zerohedge.com. Do the central planning do-gooders who raised the minimum wage care enough to look at the consequences of their benevolence and lack of knowledge about economics? You can’t raise the cost of labor above what it produces.

Canada Enters Recession, at zerohedge.com. Is this isolated? Or does it mean more if you also look at what is happening in China, Greece, Japan, Brazil, Venezuela, and Puerto Rico?

Paul Krugman Is “Really Worried” That He Might Have Screwed Up Japan, at zerohedge.com. Does Krugman have any memory of what he has said in the past. Or like an Alzheimer’s patient is every day a new beginning.

Common Core Or “Communist Core“, at zerohedge.com. Lily Tang Williams, a mother of three who grew up in communist China, says common core reminds her of the oppressive statist nature of her childhood education.

Tax, Tax, Tax: Is Rhamaland About To Get The Largest Property Tax In Modern Chicago History? (And that’s just for starters). at economicpolicyjournal.com.  Government officials all over the country, not just in Chicago, have promised more than what their tax slaves payers can produce. At some point there is going to have to be a restructuring or a default on public pensions.

New App For Politically Correcting Your Language, at reason.com. This app alerts you about possible microagression on your emails, texts, blog posts, and articles before you send them out. I don’t think I’m going to download this app. No one has a right to not be offended.

uBeams Wireless Technology Aims To Kill The Power Cord, at entrepreneur.com. From the article, “uBeam has developed technology that transmits ultrasonic waves…that are translated by devices as a microscopic quiver; this vibration is converted back into an electrical charge to power anything with a battery, no wires or wall plugs required.”

Kerry Picks Clinton Donor To Be State Department’s “Email Czar“, at zerohedge.com. You can’t make this stuff up! When I saw the headline I thought it was an article from The Onion.

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Why We’re Losing Liberty, by Prager University

Posted September 10, 2015 by austrianaddict
Categories: Government and Politics
Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

This is a video from Prager University about the original purpose of the constitution and what it has morphed into. Just remember as the power of the State grows the liberty of the individual shrinks.

Alexander Hamilton and James Madison had concerns when other founders wanted to add the Bill of Rights to the constitution. Hamilton stated his concerns in Federalist 84. He thought that individual rights could be limited if they were listed. He asked how could congress infringe on a particular right if the constitution gives congress no power to do so?

To compromise with other founders like Thomas Jefferson, they had the ninth and tenth amendments added to the Bill of Rights. These amendments just restated Hamilton’s position when it came to the enumerated powers of the newly created government.

9th.- The enumeration in the constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Put differently: The listing of certain rights in the constitution, does not mean that the people’s rights are limited to those listed. The people’s rights are many and unprescribed.

10th.- The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Put differently: The United States can only claim the powers listed in the constitution, all powers not listed are reserved for the several states or the people. The United States powers are few and defined.

HOW DID WE GET HERE?

Looking at it with 20/20 hindsight I guess you could say both sides were correct to fear government power in the hands of imperfect human beings. That is why our founders put a governor on the Corvette, so whoever got in the drivers set couldn’t go over the speed limit.

Even with all of their warnings, look at how big government has gotten. We have no one to blame but ourselves. Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom, and we’ve been asleep for a long time. Reigning in government now will have a high cost. Are we willing to pay that price?

Here is a great article by Walter E. Williams titled, Was A Bill Of Rights Necessary?.

Related Article – What Is Tyranny? by austrianaddict.com.

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Must Reads For The Week 9/5/15

Posted September 5, 2015 by austrianaddict
Categories: Must Reads For The Week
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The pen is mightier than the sword...

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

The University Of Tennessee’s Office of Diversity and Inclusion want students to use gender-neutral pronouns. I”m going to put some excerpts from the University of Tennessee’s web site, otherwise you will think I’m making this up. “A few of the common singular gender-neutral pronouns are they, them, their (used as singular), ze, hir, hirs, and xe, xem, or xyr” (My spell check has no idea what to do with these). “These may sound a little funny at first, but only because they are new. The he and she pronouns would sound strange too if we had been taught ze when growing up.” Thats the whole point, we weren’t taught ze, hir, ze, or xem when we were growing up. But wait there’s more. “To learn more about gender identity, gender-neutral pronouns and transgendered topics, consider signing up for a Safe Zone workshop at safezone.utk.edu.” I bet safezone.utk.edu crashed with all of the people rushing to sign up.

I original linked to the University of Tennessee’s web site (here). It was taken down and replaced by this, Clarification On Gender-Neutral Pronouns Article (here).

HT carpediemblog,  and for the video below.

Colin Quinn Nails PC Culture, at thecollegefix.com.

This is funny because it is so absurdly true. When I went to the bank today a female teller and a black teller said ‘can I help you’ at the same time. This is what went through my mind, “I’m going to be a sexist or a racist after this choice”. How have we let political correctness get this far?

Exposed The New American Way Of Life, at zerohedge.com. Government goodies create an incentive to not get married. And maybe even to get divorced.

 

Via On Demand Transit, ridewithvia.com. When Uber starts to get competition from other ride sharing businesses, consumers benefit and the taxi cartel looses.

Obama Administration Pays $400,000 For Harassing ICE Attorney Trying To Enforce Immigration Law, at newsworks.org. Patricia Vroom a top attorney for ICE was bullied and harassed by officials in Washington because she raised concerns about the Obama administration’s prosecutorial discretion related to immigration law. Prosecutorial discretion means not enforcing the law. She sued and the administration paid her ($400 thousand of our tax dollars)  to end the law suit.

Orwellian Justice Upholds NSA Spying On Americans, at globalresearch.ca. The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a warrant is not needed for the NSA to spy on people. Have the judges on the D.C Circuit Court read the Fourth and Fifth amendments to the constitution?

The Feds Need A Warrant To Spy With Stingrays From Now On, at wired.com. Why did the Justice Department put hand cuffs on its power? There must be a reason I can’t see because government never gives up power.

The N.S.P.H.H.B.O.P., The Market, and the “Beepocalypse“, at mises.org. The market works better than government when it comes to everything. In the case of declining bee colonies, market prices worked their magic and now the number of bee colonies is increasing. This year the executive branch launched it’s “National Strategy to Promote the health of Honey Bees and Other Pollinators”. No doubt they will try to take credit for this increase. Just like the Obama administration tried to take credit for the growth in domestic oil production (fracking). When in fact they tried, and are still trying (click here), to hinder domestic production.

Solar Industry Admits Green Energy Only Exists Thanks To Government Subsidies, at economicpolicyjournal.com. The only way wind, solar, and geothermal can compete with carbon based fuels is because of government subsidies (your tax dollars). Of course getting a subsidy means you can’t compete. It would be like me saying I can compete with Usain Bolt in the 100 meter dash if I started 30 40 meters ahead of him. Quote, Robert Bradley Jr. – “When Government tries to pick winners and losers, it typically picks losers. Why? Because the Free market consumers pick winners to leave the losers for Government.”

Clinton Says ‘Sorry’ For Email Confusion, Says She Wasn’t Thinking, at yahoo.com. In her own words: “At the end of the day I am sorry that this has been confusing to people and has raised a lot of questions but there are answer to all these questions”……”I certainly wish that I had made a different choice and I know why the American people have questions about it…..I take responsibility”……”I was not thinking a lot when I got in. There was so much work to be done. We had so many problems around the world. I didn’t really stop and think what kind of email system will there be,”……”It was allowed and it was fully above board. The people in the government knew that I was using a personal account…”

I’m not going to translate this non apology apology. We are all well versed in translating Clinton speak.

 

LETS LAUGH

Political Cartoons by Lisa Benson

Political Cartoons by Nate Beeler

Political Cartoons by Glenn McCoy

 

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Observations From The Margin

Posted September 3, 2015 by austrianaddict
Categories: Observations From The Margin
Tags: , , , , , ,

Observation Tower

Observation  (Photo credit: mooglet)

-There are two groups of people I automatically dislike, politicians and people in the media. It’s about the profession not necessarily the person. If I think the person is honorable and fair I will tolerate them, and if I think the person is arrogant and biased my dislike turns to loathing. Part of the reason Donald Trump is doing so well is he doesn’t give members of these groups the respect these megalomaniacs think should be lavished upon them. Whether it’s Jorge Ramos or Megyn Kelly, I don’t mind how Trump treats them. Watch the video of his press conference (click here) and see him dismiss Jorge Ramos and then answer a question about Megyn Kelly.

-Journalists wrap themselves in their first amendment rights using it as an inoculation against accusations of being bullies. They do have a first amendment right to ask questions, just as each of us has a first amendment right to ask questions. They don’t seem to understand that the person who is asked the question has a right to not answer the question.

-We live in a society that obeys basic rules of conduct that aren’t legislated by government. One of these rules of conduct is we wait our turn in line. When a person tries to cut line, someone usually calls them out by saying, “the end of the line is back there”. The video of Jorge Ramos is an example of someone cutting line. He was not called on and he butted in. When he was told the ‘end of the line is back there’ he kept talking. Most people who aren’t Jorge Ramos followers or Trump haters think Ramos is the anal orifice in this exchange.

-Our country was founded on the rule of law and not of men. When the laws that apply to us don’t apply to the ruling elite, it starts the process of the break down of the rule of law. When we see nothing happen to a politician like Hillary who flat-out broke the law by having her own server, and we get pulled over for ‘following too close’, it pisses us off. Not only do we have less respect for the law and the law givers, we start to push back.

-Journalists in the main stream media have a bias for bigger government. They know their influence increases when big government splits us into groups and pits us against each other. If each of us thought of ourselves as an individual instead of being a member of group, we would be able to see through media bias toward big government.

-For Decades the media has been driving the get-away car for politicians who have been robbing our individual freedom. Mr. Trump has taken out his knife, punctured all four tires and poured sand in the gas tank of the get-away car. They can’t figure out what to do. Trump talks around the media and straight to the people. He understands that many of us think the media is the enemy and he treats them as such. This is a big part of his success.

-Everyone who the media is biased against, yes even some politicians, should look at the Trump template, grow a pair, and treat the media accordingly.

Related Article – Observations From The Margin, at austrianaddict.com.

Related Article – Observations From The Margin, at austrianaddict.com.

 

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Must Read “Leftovers”

Posted September 1, 2015 by austrianaddict
Categories: Leftovers
Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Why The Federal Government Fails, by Chris Edwards, at cato.org. This short article gives five reasons why Government fails. But like a lot of things, judging success and failure depends on the perspective of the person doing the judging. President Obama thought Obamacare was a success for the simple fact that it got passed. I think Obamacare was a failure because the cost of my insurance has risen 40%. Of course I am just an evil person looking after my own self-interest, and the President is just a humble public servant who would never consider his self-interest when making decrees from on high.

Obama: Earning Contempt, at Home and Abroad, by Victor Davis Hanson, at victorhanson.com. If I misread human nature and cultural differences not many people are affected and the clean up has a low-cost. But a misread at the national level affects millions and the clean up has a high cost if it can be cleaned up at all. Could the recipients of Obama’s outreach and deference see this as weakness and worthy of contempt?  “…is naive appeasement more dangerous than wise deterrence, or …. does keeping quiet and carrying a large stick trump sounding off while wielding a toothpick.” Does appeasing a bully or a child, who is a brat, work? It depends on how you define work.

Jim Grant: The Fed Has Turned The Stock Market Into A Hall Of Mirriors, at reasontv.

Sorry Mr. Trump, Canadian Healthcare Is Not Working, at fraserinstitute.org. Excerpt from the article, “Canada suffers from a high-cost healthcare system that delivers only modest performance across most measures of health care. Put simply, Canada’s model of health care delivery and financing is not something to be emulated but rather avoided.”

Venezuela Is Adding More Zeroes To Its Currency To Deal With Hyperinflation, at bloomberg.com. Increasing the money supply is the definition of inflation. Today we think that rising prices is inflation. Rising prices can be caused by many things one of which is increasing {inflating} the money supply {inflation}. The cure for inflation {increasing the money supply} is not increasing the money supply.

 

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Must Reads For The Week 8/29/15

Posted August 29, 2015 by austrianaddict
Categories: Must Reads For The Week
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

SThe pen is mightier than the sword...

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

This Start Up Has Figured Out How To Grow Metal Like A Tree, Katie Fehrenbacher, at entrepreneur.com. Modumetal is a company produces metal through a process similar to electroplating. “It is creating nanolaminated materials that will change design and manufacturing forever.” These stories give me hope that individuals in the market can outpace the growth of the regulatory state.

NASA’s 3D-Printed Rocket Parts Actually Work, by Drew Olanoff, at techcrunch.com. This is an example of what 3D printing is capable of. What normally takes four years to produce, now takes half the time.

How Big Is Uber? at econnoimcpolicyjournal.com. Even a government created monopoly like the taxi cartel is in danger of being beaten by individuals with an ides. Central planners plans are being overturned by the evil consumer, now that the consumer has a real choice.

Only 45% of Electric Car Owners This Year Have Replaced Their Cars With A New Electric Vehicle, by John Lott, at johnrlott.blogspot.com. Consumers who have tried electric cars are now choosing something different after doing the cost benefit analysis of owning an electric car.

The New Era Of The $400 Text Book, at economicpolicyjournal.com. Just part of the Government created bubble in college education. Excerpt from the article. “BTW; The Best textbook on economics (rarely found in government-funded colleges) is Murray Rothbard’s Man Economy and State, and that can be had in paperback for only $17.58 in paperback.”

Seattle Socialist Council Member Wants to Eject “Profit Making Billionaires” From Tech Industry, at taretliberty.com. Socialist Kashama Sawant has already killed minimum wage jobs when she pushed through the $15 minimum wage in Seattle. Now she wants to work her socialist magic on the tech industry. Why do people like her think their utopian vision of the world can be implemented by simple decree at no cost. Individuals will now start to make their decisions factoring in the new set of incentives and constraints created by the new utopian policies.

The Gradual Phase-In of $15 and Hour Minimum Wage Laws as Insurance Policies Against Public Relations Disasters, by Mark J. Perry, at carpediemblog. The gradual phase in of interventionist policies shows that  interventionists understand the consequences of their policies. Remember how Obamacare was passed but not implemented until after the 2012 presidential election? Some of the Obamacare policies have yet to be implemented. Incrementalism gets people use to the new normal the slow implementation produces. Just like boiling a frog.

Government To Creamery: Your Milk Is Entirely Too Natural To Not Be Labeled “Imitation”, by Mary Katherine Ham, at liberallogic101.com. Another example of too many regulations. Get out of our lives!

New National Labor Relations Board Ruling Is Going To Be A Major Problem For Fast Food Chains, at economicpolicyjournal,com. Another example of government intervention into the free market. How are interventions by government agencies in a democracy any different from decrees by the politburo in the former Soviet Union?

US Falls Behind Canada, Finland, And Hong Kong In Human Freedom Index, at zerohedge.com. If this doesn’t wake us up nothing will. The American Revolution changed the world. For the first time in history Government was put in chains by the constitution, and the individual was placed above the state. The American Revolution has been turned upside down by the steady erosion of individual freedom over the last century. We are at a pivotal moment in the history of freedom

LETS LAUGH.

https://i0.wp.com/i.imgur.com/S7jj4DM.jpg

https://i0.wp.com/i.imgur.com/XPb5e3r.jpg

 

 

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Central Planners Hate Economics

Posted August 26, 2015 by austrianaddict
Categories: Econ. 101
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

F A Hayek

F.A. HAYEK  – “The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.”

 

Politicians get voted into office because they promise to use the power of government to ‘do something’ to fix fake ‘crises’. They try to blame the unfettered free market for every inequality or unmet need found in society. Politicians blame economics because it is an easy target since most people don’t understand basic principles of economics.

Economic reality puts a limit on the unlimited designs of planners. The first law of economics, scarcity, especially the scarcity of knowledge, sees to it that everything has limits. Economic laws don’t limit the planners plans. Economic laws reveal the reasons the plans won’t work but they don’t create the underlying economic reality.

Ludwig von Mises

LUDWIG VON MISES  – “Economic history is a long record of Government policies that failed because they were designed with a bold disregard for the laws of economics.”

Planners have charged their central banks to do away with scarcity by using electronically printed counterfeit money. It sounds plausible on the surface if you look at ‘that which is seen’. But we all know from reading Bastiat that ‘that which is not seen’ is more important. The unintended consequences of Central Bankers policies, of money printing and zero percent interest rates, are playing out right now for all to see. Wasted resources and capital consumption are two of these results.

F. A. Hayek – “It has already been suggested that it is not necessary for the working of this system (free market capitalism) that anybody should understand it. But people are not likely to let it work if they do not understand it.“

Central planners condemn free market capitalism because it doesn’t produce perfect results, (which means it doesn’t produce their desired result). Free market capitalism is the best system for allowing individuals the freedom to pursue their desires. This individual freedom has lifted the masses of people to a higher standard of living. Is it perfect? Nothing that man does is perfect. It is the responsibility of each voter to understand basic economic principles in order to protect the free market from the planners who want to destroy it. Start now because your individual freedom to pursue your interests in a free market is under siege.

 

LUDWIG VON MISES  – “Many think that governments are free to achieve all they aim at without being restrained by an inexorable regularity in the sequence of economic phenomena….they maintain that the state is God.”

These quotes by Hayek and Mises came to mind as I was reading an article titled, Economics Is Dead, And It Is Being Killed Again, by Per Bylund, at mises.org. here are some excerpts from the article.

“You have to applaud the anti-economics left for this rhetorical masterpiece. They have struggled for decades to sink the ship of economics, the generally acclaimed science that has firmly stood in the way of their anti-market and egalitarian policies, hindered the growth of big government, and raised obstacles to enact everything else that is beautiful to the anti-economics left. The financial crisis is exactly the excuse the Left has been waiting for. It is a slam dunk: government grows, Keynesianism is revived, and economics is made the culprit for all our troubles.”

“If this weren’t so serious, it would be amusing that the failure of Keynesian macro-economics (whether it is formally Keynes’s theory or post-Keynesian, new Keynesian, neo-Keynesian, monetarist, etc.) is taken as an excuse to do away with sound micro-economic theory to be replaced with Keynesian and other anti-market ideas. But it is not amusing. If most of the discussions heard are to be believed, the failures of central planning is a reason for central planning, just like socialism is a reason for socialism. The success of the market, on the other hand, is not a reason for the market.”

“…. the Left hates all that is economics. Because it points out that creating a better world through central planning, money-printing, and political manipulation is indeed impossible. The market is neither perfect nor efficient, but it is better than any available alternative. In fact, the unhampered market is the only positive-sum means available for human society. The market is indeed the only way of progress; all else is a step backward.“

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

Related Article – We’re All Born In The Middle Of The Story, at austrianaddict.com.

Related Article – Politician’s “Affordable” Ideas Must Obey Economic Forces, at austrianaddict.com.

 

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Must Reads For The Week 8/22/15

Posted August 22, 2015 by austrianaddict
Categories: Must Reads For The Week
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The pen is mightier than the sword...

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

Barber Gives Free Haircuts To Kids Who Read To Him, at odditycentral.com. Here is an example of a person making a difference.

Cab Companies Expanding Technology To Help Level Playing Field With Uber And Lyft, by Janet Moore, at startribune.com. Uber is forcing the taxi cartel to improve their service. The taxi cartel has operated on a playing field tilted in their direction for years thanks to Government. The game is no longer being played on this tilted playing field. Uber has moved the game to a new playing field that does not need to be leveled, it already is. No one kept the taxi cartel from coming up with the Uber model. Their monopoly position sowed the seeds of their own destruction. Read; “Car Wars” Return of the Jitneys.

Californians Roll 96 Million Plastic Balls Into Reservoir To Curb Evaporation, by Craig Rucker, at cfact.org. As it says in the post: “Irony is when Californians blame a natural drought on oil, than protect their reservoir with 96 million balls made from petroleum.” It reminds me of; “Seattle “Kayaktivists” Protest Shell Oil Drilling Rig In Kayaks Made From Oil.

How Much Time ABC, NBC, and CBS Have Spent Covering the Planned Parenthood Videos, by Kate Scanlon, at dailysignal.com. A total of 1 minute and 13 seconds out of a total of 243 hours of coverage were spent on the videos that show Planned Parenthood trafficking in baby parts. If you watch the videos it’s not hard to figure out why they don’t want people to see them. It’s media censorship by omission.

Transporting Oil And Gas By Pipe Line In Canada Is 4.5 Times Safer Than Transport By Rail, by Kenneth Green, at fraserinstitute.com. How much oil will be spilled, unnecessarily in the U S, because the Obama administration shut down building the Keystone Pipeline for “environmental” reasons?

Refrack Resourceship: Why The Carbon-Based energy Era Is Still Young, by Robert Bradley Jr. at masterresource.org. Here is an excerpt from the article: “The fossil fuel era is new…..In fact compared to renewables, natural gas, coal and oil are the real ‘infant industries’. Remember, for most of the last thousand tears, and all of the time earlier, renewable energy (primitive biomass, falling water, wind, solar) held a virtual 100 percent market share: Carbon-based energies have dominated only since the onset of the Industrial Revolution.”

The Agency That Contaminated The Animas River Is About To Start Regulating Water That May Be In Your Back Yard, by Marita Noon, at cfact.org. Unelected EPA bureaucrats are making regulations that squash your freedom, by expanding their regulatory power.

Why The Federal Government Fails, by Chris Edwards, at cato.org. Top down government central planning benefit a few at the expense of the many, while free markets produce increased value for both parties involved in an exchange.

James Harrison Gives Back His Sons Participation Trophies Until They Earn A Real Trophy, at jhharrison Instagram. Pittsburgh linebacker James Harrison wants his sons to have real self esteem earned in the real world, instead of false self esteem assigned for fake achievement.

Sound Familiar? A Clinton Swears Under Penalty of Perjury That Nothing Improper Took Place, at michellemalkin.com.

Are you as sick of the Clinton’s shtick as I am?

 

News Busted. Lets laugh a little bit.

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Human Capital Episode 3: Planned Parenthood Trafficking In Baby Parts

Posted August 20, 2015 by austrianaddict
Categories: Miscellaneous
Tags: , , , , , ,

Here is another video from the Center For Medical Progress. An ex-procurement technician form Stem Express LLC talks about her experiences while working in Planned Parenthood clinics. If PPH isn’t breaking the law related to trafficking in fetal/baby organs than what are they doing? How is this any different from what Abortion Doctor Kermit Gosnell was convicted of murder for doing? You have to watch this video.

HUMAN CAPITAL: EPISODE 3

MEDIA COVERAGE OR LACK THERE OF

Why isn’t the media covering this story? We’re told that journalists can put their personal biases aside and cover a story right down the middle. But, if they don’t cover a particular story, we won’t be able to discern the truth about the assumptions concerning their biases. Or are their biases revealed by the stories they don’t report?

Physicist Werner Heisenberg said, “…separation of the observer from the phenomenon to be observed is no longer possible.” In other words, how you think determines what you see. When your thinking produces an incorrect perception about reality, it doesn’t change the underlying reality, it only masks it in your mind. At some point you have to change your thinking to fit reality, or you have to mask reality to fit your thinking.

If the stories the main stream media choose not to report shows their bias, can you trust they are not being biased on the stories they choose to report?

IS ENDING THE LIFE OF A HUMAN FETUS MORAL?

Here is a video from Prager University which asks the most important question about abortion. “Is ending the life of a human fetus Moral?” Not legal, moral.

 

Related Article – Planned Parenthood Selling Fetal (Baby) Body Parts Under “Highest Ethical And Legal Standards”! at austrianaddict.com.

Related Article – Observations From The Margin: Planned Parenthood and Abortion, at austrianaddict.com.

Related Article – Why Won’t People Watch The Planned Parenthood Videos? at austrianaddict.com.

 

 

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Government Intervention Stifles Real Job Creation

Posted August 18, 2015 by austrianaddict
Categories: Econ. 101, Government and Politics
Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Can government create a job? Yes! Government can create millions of jobs. They could outlaw farming equipment tomorrow which would immediately create millions of farming jobs. But would these new farming jobs be productive jobs?

Government jobs by definition aren’t productive jobs. Does a government job produce more than the cost of the labor? The only way to find this out would be to compete in the market and discover what the price of labor would be according to the law of supply and demand.

High school teaching jobs are examples of jobs that are both free market jobs (private school teachers) and government jobs (public school teachers). What do I mean by this? A private school teacher gets paid considerably less in wages, benefits, and retirement, than a public school teacher. A private school has to provide a quality service at a price that individuals value more than the money they  freely exchange for that service. If they can’t, they will go out of business. A public school has no such incentive to provide quality at a lower price. They receive ever-increasing revenue through local tax levies and state and federal funding. Because of this, teachers unions procure ever-increasing wages and benefits for their teachers who provide a lower quality service. People’s next best alternative,  private schools or home schooling, are considerably more expensive, which is why it is difficult to escape public schools.

Government wages are higher than market wages. The true price a teacher could command if we had a free market educational system, would be somewhere between the monopoly wage of the public schools and the wage paid by the private schools. We can’t know what it would be, all we know is the wage would be revealed through the interactions between individual demanders and suppliers of the service in the market. The true price of a teachers wage can only be discovered through the market process.

GOVERNMENT STIFLES JOB CREATION

Below are two great articles. One is about how Government regulatory costs make it difficult, if not impossible, to create real jobs in the private sector. And the other tells how we must get back to the understanding that the individuals rights as a free person trumps some vague idea of a collective good.

The first is, Our Government Destroyer of Jobs, by Charles Hugh Smith, at oftwominds.

Here are some excerpts from the article.

“Government regulation is supposed to address life safety and exploitation of workers and the public. But unbeknownst to the status quo, it’s supposed to do so with an eye on cost-benefits and diminishing returns.”

“The government’s solution to absurdly high costs of opening a small business is: borrow more money….. we make the rules, you follow them, and if you can’t afford to follow the rules, then don’t open the business.”

“This is how you get an economy of bureaucrats justifying their existence with 500-page manuals regulating private enterprise and abandoned main streets and malls. The government assumes private enterprise will jump through an endless number of hoops to operate a business, and that there is an endless supply of willing entrepreneurs who will volunteer to put themselves at risk of bankruptcy.”

“Back in reality, there is not an endless supply of people willing to jump through an insane number of hoops and risk their capital and health on starting a risky enterprise.”

“Guess what, our government: you forgot that ultimately you live off the private sector. Yes, let’s pile on another 500 pages of regulations–no problem–nothing could be easier for those in secure jobs funded by taxpayers. But if the private-sector jobs go away, who’s left to pay for state employees to shuffle thousands of pages of regulations and enforce countless “improvements”?”

FREE INDIVIDUALS  vs. THE COLLECTIVE

The second is, Agenda For A Freer And More Prosperous America, by Richard Ebeling, at epictimes.com.

Here are some excerpts from the article.

“America must rediscover and reestablish its own founding principles and philosophical ideas…This means recapturing the spirit and meaning of individualism and individual rights. That every human being should be considered a free person, allowed to live his or her own life as he or she wished, guided by their own goals, purposes and ideals that will give their life meaning, value and worth, as they define it.”

“This means liberating ourselves from the false notion that the individual is owned and subservient to the collective, the tribe or the group into which they were born, and to which a political and ideological elite asserts they are to be sacrificed and obedient; that their life is not their own, but the property of the collective.”

“As long as the underlying collectivism is not challenged and overcome, real and sustainable freedom cannot be restored. America was founded on the idea of sovereign individuals, who associated with each other for mutual betterment through voluntary trade and consensual association. Government was meant to secure and protect each individual’s right to his life, liberty and honestly acquired property (meaning peaceful production and/or voluntary exchange).”

“Privileges and favors, subsidies and artificial protections for some at the expense of others must be repealed and abolished. There must be an equality of individual rights before the law, not an inequality of government-imposed “entitlements” and redistributive “rights”….”

“Freeing markets under a regime of equal individual right under an impartial rule and enforcement of the law would do far more to help those that “progressives” claim there are most concerned about in society than the entire array of interventionist and welfare statist programs have done in more than a half a century of coerced redistribution since the heady hopes of LBJ’s Great Society programs.”

VIDEO FROM LEARN LIBERTY

Below is a video from Learn Liberty, that talks about the ramifications of the new sharing economy. This sharing economy is challenging the status quo businesses that are protected by government regulations.

 

Related Article – Why Do People Think The Government Is The Economy? at austrianaddict.com.

Related Article – I’m From The Government And I’m Here To Help, at austrianaddict.com.

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