Rand Paul and Mike Lee Respond To The State Of The Union Address

Posted January 30, 2014 by austrianaddict
Categories: Government and Politics
Tags: , , , , , , ,

Senators Rand Paul and Mike Lee gave responses to the President’s state of the union address. These two are speaking a completely different language than the President is speaking. They are speaking the language of individual liberty, and the President is speaking the language of collective central planning. Unfortunately tens of millions of people in this country don’t understand the language of individual liberty, because they were taught the language of collective central planning. It is our job to educate them that liberty is superior to central planning. I think the tide is turning because these two responses would never have been given just a few years ago.

These responses show the fundamental differences between liberty and central planning that is summed up so well in my favorite quote by F. A. Hayek, “The coordination of men’s activities through central planning or through voluntary cooperation are roads going in very different directions. The first to serfdom and poverty the second to freedom and plenty.”

We have been slowly going down the road to serfdom for too long, it is time to change direction.

Here is Senator Rand Paul’s response.

Here is Senator Mike Lee’s response.

Related Article – Let The Counterfeiting Continue! The Fed Is Stuck In Their Feedback Loop, by austrianaddict.com.

Related Article – Tom Woods Explains The Austrian Business Cycle, by austtianaddict.com.

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Walker’s State Of The State Address vs. Obama’s State Of The Union Address

Posted January 29, 2014 by austrianaddict
Categories: Government and Politics
Tags: , , , , , , ,

These two videos show the difference between a Governor who trusts the wisdom of individuals, and a President who trusts the special wisdom of Government bureaucrats.

In Governor Walker’s state of the state address, he is able to talk about the actual results of policies that have rolled back Government intervention in the free market, although not as much of a rollback for my taste. In the President’s state of the union address, he is painting a vision about a fantasy world that can be created by expanding the decision-making of Government, while shrinking market based decisions by individuals.

Walker’s policies have brought $900 million more in tax receipts than the state spends. Obama’s exponential expansion of Bushes policies, read here,  has increased the Federal debt by $7 trillion.

Walker is going to refund the tax surplus to the individuals who produced it, allowing them to use the dollars as they see fit. Obama is talking about expanding government even farther than he already has, which means taking more from producers. The Federal Government can’t spend anything that it first doesn’t confiscate from you, therefore, all Government spending is simply the substitution of politician’s decisions on how to spend the money taken in taxes, for your decision on how you would have used those confiscated dollars.

Walker understands that real jobs are created by individuals making decisions in the market. Obama thinks jobs are created from top down decrees by Government bureaucrats and politicians.

In this video Walker seems to understand the importance of producers. He understands that you get less economic activity if you burden producers with taxes and regulation.

Contrast what Walker said with what the President says in the video below, if you can get through it. The Presidents speech is more of a theatrical production with soaring rhetoric, appealing to your emotions instead of your brain.

The fact that the Peoples Republic of Wisconsin can change course and slowly start heading in the direction of individual liberty gives me hope for the country as a whole. We may be at a point in history where liberty is on the rise and the state is on the decline. It may not seem that way if you look at the present political situation, but just remember it is dark in the middle of a tunnel. I think more individuals are changing their thinking about the role and scope of Government in their lives. Politics will follow this sea change, it won’t lead it. In Rand Paul’s response to the state of the union show, he talked about how Federal Reserve policies caused our economic problem in the first place. This is an example of the sea change, because the Federal Reserve would never have been talked about, let alone been accused of causing the problem, just five years ago.

Related Article – Walter E. Williams: “Are We Moving Toward More Personal Liberty, Or More Government Control Over Our Lives”, by austrianaddict.com.

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Thomas Sowell Sums Up “Fact Free Liberals” In Part IV

Posted January 28, 2014 by austrianaddict
Categories: Government and Politics
Tags: , , , , ,

Thomas Sowell

Thomas Sowell’s first sentence of this article, “One of the things that attracted me to the political left, as a young man, was a belief that leftists were for “the people.”, reminds me of the time I was a senior in high school and we were given a form to take home and fill out in order to register to vote. One of the questions was, “what party are you going to register under, Democrat or Republican”? I asked my mom, “what party are we”, she said, “we’re Democrats”, I asked , “Why”, she said, “because they’re for the working people”, so I marked Democrat and handed it in the next day. I learned quickly that my mom’s view of the Democrat party was wrong, and I learned much later, after reading Sowell and Hayek in the early 90”’s, that my view of the Republican party was wrong. Since the incentive of a politician is to grow Government, which in turn grows their power, there are big Government politicians in both parties. In the words of F. A. Hayek, “….The battle for freedom must be won over and over again, the socialists of all parties must be persuaded of defeated if they and we are to remain free men.”

Here are some excerpts from the article, Fact-Free Liberals: Part IV read here.

“…Fortunately, I was also very interested in the history of ideas — and years of research in that field repeatedly brought out the inescapable fact that many leading thinkers on the left had only contempt for “the people.”

“That has been true from the 18th century to the present moment. Even more surprising, I discovered over the years that leading thinkers on the opposite side of the ideological spectrum had more respect for ordinary people than people on the left who spoke in their name.”

“Another disturbing pattern turned up that is also with us to the present moment. From the 18th century to today, many leading thinkers on the left have regarded those who disagree with them as being not merely factually wrong but morally repugnant. And again, this pattern is far less often found among those on the opposite side of the ideological spectrum.”

“The vision of the left is not just a vision of the world. For many, it is also a vision of themselves — a very flattering vision of people trying to save the planet, rescue the exploited, create “social justice” and otherwise be on the side of the angels. This is an exalting vision that few are ready to give up, or to risk on a roll of the dice, which is what submitting it to the test of factual evidence amounts to. Maybe that is why there are so many fact-free arguments on the left, whether on gun control, minimum wages, or innumerable other issues — and why they react so viscerally to those who challenge their vision.”

In a previous post, Thomas Sowell Discusses “Fact Free Liberals”, Dr. Sowell explains issues like minimum wages, gun control and many others.

If you want to understand the vision of the left, I suggest reading The Vision Of The Anointed, and A Conflict Of Visions, by Thomas Sowell. In these books he explains, in his words, “…the underlying assumptions behind the very different ideoligical visions of the world being contested in modern times.”

These two books started me on a mind expanding voyage allowing me to see places I never realized existed.

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Must Reads For The Week 1/25/14

Posted January 25, 2014 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)

Teen Employment And The Minimum Wage Over 60 Years, by Mark J. Perry, at aei-ideas.org. The chart in this post shows the decline of teen employment after minimum wage increases.

With Paperless Ticket, Ticketmaster Owns Your Ticket, Not You, by Mark J. Perry, at aei-ideas.org. Just another case of crony capitalism. If Government hadn’t usurped the power to legislate in these areas, businesses wouldn’t try to lobby politicians to make laws that hurt competitors to these businesses.

Chasing The Dream Of Half-Price Gasoline From Natural Gas, by Kevin Bullis , at technologyreview.com. I got here from aei-ideas.org. Unlike  solar, wind, and ethanol , this company will succeed or fail on their own, without being subsidised by our tax dollars. Government didn’t pick this winner, but it sure subsidised those other losers.

Fish Who Are Almost Glad To Be Caught In The Net, at economicpolicyjournal.com. Since the war on poverty started in the 60’s, more and more people have been caught in the net of Government assistance, whether it’s people on food stamps or crony capitalists receiving subsidies.

Moody’s Downgrades Health Insurers Over Obama Care Uncertainty, at economicpolicyjournal.com. Central planners always assure us that their plans will work in order to get us to go along with these plans. Unfortunately the certain uncertainty of the real world always gets in the way of their ability to bring about the certain utopian world that is just around the corner. If individuals would just act as the planners want them to, all problems would be solved. Unfortunately for the planners, and fortunately for liberty, individuals act, well, like individuals, which is why central planners are for the power of the state circumventing the rights of the individual.

Pope Tells Davos Attendees To Go Socialist, at economicpolicyjournal.com. The Pope is ignorant about how wealth comes about. It doesn’t just magically appear and then someone decides how it shall be dealt out . Wealth is produced it is not distributed. He needs to read F.A. Hayek”s book. Prices and Production, before he pontificates about anything economic.

Google Glass Wearer Interrogated, Removed From Easton Movie Theater, by Allison Manning, at Dispatch.com. The police state is getting out of hand.

Parents Call Cops For Help, Cops Shoot Their Nonviolent Schizophrenic Son Dead, by Kristen Tate, at benswann.com. Just another example off our of control police. Here is a suggestion, don’t call the cops try to take care of the situation yourself, you might get a better result.

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Thomas Sowell Discusses “Fact Free Liberals”

Posted January 23, 2014 by austrianaddict
Categories: Econ. 101, Government and Politics
Tags: , , , , , ,

Thomas Sowell

I love when Thomas Sowell writes articles taking the educated elite to the cleaners by challenging  the facts they cite to prove their reality. The first article is titled, Fact-Free Liberals, read here. Here are some excerpts from the article.

“Someone summarized Barack Obama in three words — “educated,” “smart” and “ignorant.” Unfortunately, those same three words would describe all too many of the people who come out of our most prestigious colleges and universities today.”

“……The net results are bright people, with impressive degrees, who have been told for years how brilliant they are, but who are often ignorant of facts that might cause them to question what they have been indoctrinated with in schools and colleges.”

“All too often when liberals cite statistics, they forget the statisticians’ warning that correlation is not causation.”

“But who reads history these days? Moreover, those parts of history that would undermine the vision of the left — which prevails in our education system from elementary school to postgraduate study — are not likely to get much attention.”

After wetting your appetite by tackling issues like women getting paid three-quarters of what men make, income mobility, black applicants for mortgage loans being turned down at twice the rate of white applicants, and other issues , he challenges more Progressive sacred cows in his next article titled, “Fact Free Liberals: Part II”, read here. Here are some excerpts from this article.

“Words seem to carry far more weight than facts among liberal….”

“When words trump facts, you can believe anything. And the liberal groupthink taught in our schools and colleges is the path of least resistance.”

He analyzes rent control laws, and minimum wage laws in this article, and then takes on “the war on poverty, sex education, and the murder rate in this article titled, “Fact-Free Liberals: Part III”, read here. Here are some excerpts from the article.

“The actual signing of the “war on poverty” legislation took place in August 1964, so the 50th anniversary is some months away. But there have already been statements in the media and in politics proclaiming that this vast and costly array of anti-poverty programs “worked”.”

Of course everything “works” by sufficiently low standards, and everything “fails” by sufficiently high standards. The real question is: What did the “war on poverty” set out to do — and how well did it do it, if at all?

“Without some idea of what a person or a program is trying to do, there is no way to know whether what actually happened represented a success or a failure. When the hard facts show that a policy has failed, nothing is easier for its defenders than to make up a new set of criteria, by which it can be said to have succeeded.”

“While the fact-free liberals celebrate the “war on poverty” and other bright ideas of the 1960s, we are trying to cope with yet another “reform” that has made matters worse, ObamaCare.”

Reading Thomas Sowells books is like receiving a vaccine, inoculating you from the lies of politicians, journalists, and the educational establishment, who are unapologetic about pushing their ideology through propaganda.

Other Thomas Sowell Posts You Might Like.

Thomas Sowell’s Vision of the Anointed, at austrianaddict.com. Short video.

Thomas Sowell Used To Be A Marxist? at austrianaddict.com. Short video.

Thomas Sowells Take On The Federal Reserve, at austrianaddict.com. Short video.

Thomas Sowell- “Economic Problems Don’t Have Political Solutions”, at austrianaddict.com. video.

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Must Reads For The Week 1/18/14

Posted January 18, 2014 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)

What You Were Never Told About Obamacare, by Joseph Salerno, at economicpolicyjournal.com. We, the tax payer, are going to subsidize Health Insurance Companies, who would go bankrupt because of the rules under Obamacare. This is going to be a defacto single payer system.

Seven Nobel Laureats Indorse Increase In Minimum Wage, at economicpolicyjournal.com. When someone says, “economists say……” , ask what economist? Just because they are an “economist” doesn’t mean they are smarter than you about economics.

X Marks The Spot Of The Death Of Monetary Policy, at zerohedge.com. The Fed can’t even print their way to a good GDP number.

Leno: “Now That Christie Is Denying Everything He Sounds Even More Presidential”, at economicpolicyjournal.com.

Civil Asset Forfeiture Abuse Takes Away Right To Be Presumed Innocent, by Ken Braun, at mlive.com. Just another example of the erosion of individual liberty.

Beijing Citizens, Shrouded In Pollution, Flock To Giant  Screens To View Artificial Sunrise, at zerohedge.com. And the Government tells us we’re the biggest polluters on the planet. Capitalism creates enough wealth to clean up after ourselves, socialist countries don’t.

Who Has The Time And Motivation To Comprehend The Mess We’re In: Almost Nobody. by Charles Hugh Smith, at oftwominds.com. This is some heavy lifting but it makes you think. Here is an excerpt from the article, “Very few people are willing to work hard enough to figure things out on their own. It’s so much easier to join Paul Krugman dancing around the fire of the Keynesian Cargo Cult, chanting “aggregate demand! Humba-Humba!” while waving dead chicken….”

I saw this cartoon on the burningplatform.com.

142922 600 Obama vs Christie cartoons

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Income Inequality Part II: Increase The Minimum Wage

Posted January 15, 2014 by austrianaddict
Categories: Econ. 101, Government and Politics
Tags: , , , , , , ,

Economic theory suggests an excessive minimum ...

The two recent, but not new, political solutions for income inequality (aka income redistribution), are extending unemployment benefits, and raising the minimum wage. In this post we will look at the consequences of the political solution, “raising the minimum wage”, but first lets start with an understanding of the nature of exchanges.

TYPES OF EXCHANGES

The free market is nothing more than individuals making voluntary exchanges. What is produced and consumed in the free market is the result of these individual decisions. All actions by individuals are exchanges, whether it’s an isolated exchange or an exchange involving other people.

An example of an isolated exchange would be you deciding to run on your treadmill. You are exchanging the time on the treadmill for other activities that could have been done with that time and at that time. This exchange reveals your value preference no matter what you might have said about that preference before your choice. Value is revealed in action and not one second before the action takes place.

Examples of exchanges between individuals, or interpersonal exchanges, would be you exchanging your labor for money, you exchanging that money for a treadmill, a steak dinner, a ticket to a baseball game, or having your roof repaired. These voluntary interpersonal exchanges increase the value for both parties involved, or they wouldn’t have taken place. Put another way, each person values what they are receiving in the exchange more than what they are giving up.

Are there involuntary interpersonal exchanges, or exchanges an individual wouldn’t choose unless he was forced or defrauded? Yes: examples of these involuntary interpersonal exchanges would be a robber taking your wallet at gun point or under the threat of physical harm, a slave owner taking the labor of the slave under the threat of violence, or a counterfeiter stealing what you’ve produced in a fraudulent exchange of something for nothing. So, in review there are two types of exchanges, isolated and interpersonal, and there are two types of interpersonal exchanges, voluntary and involuntary. Now lets look at raising the minimum wage and extending unemployment benefits through this lens.

THE REALITY ABOUT LABOR AND WAGES

When Government officials make a law raising the minimum wage, it voids the wage contract voluntarily agreed on by the employer and the employee. Each person in this exchange decided that the terms of employment were beneficial, or their wouldn’t have been an exchange of the labor for money. The Government is a third-party to the exchange between the employer and the employee. It forces an agreement on both parties that one, or both, would have never decided to make under a voluntary situation. It forces an involuntary exchange to be made.When Government officials mandate a higher wage, the employee would obviously like this exchange of his labor for more money, but the employer wouldn’t voluntarily make this exchange. What if Government officials mandated all wages be lowered? The employers would like these new terms, but the employees wouldn’t voluntarily make this exchange. Labor is ruled by the same economic laws as every other good or service supplied in the market, in spite of the Marxist brainwashing about the specialness of labor, that has taken place over the last seventy plus years.

We know from the law of supply and demand that more is demanded at a lower price than a higher price, and more is supplied at a higher price than a lower price. We have this concept of supply and demand bass ackwards when it comes to labor because we think the supplier is the employer and the demander is the employee. In reality the demander of labor is the employer and the supplier of labor is the employee. The employee is demanding money, not a job, and the employer is supplying money, not a job. When a wage is high, workers will supply more labor at this higher price than they would supply if the wage is lower. When the wage is high the employer will demand less labor than he would demand if the wage was lower. This applies to labor in general, but labor is more complex than this.

Labor is not homogeneous it is specific. Labor can be broken down into specific general categories like construction, healthcare, food services etc; and each general category can be broken down into specific jobs with specific skills like welder, plumber, doctor, nurse, cook, server etc. Each specific skills value is determined by the demand for that skill, balanced by the supply of that skill. If there is a high demand for a skill that’s rare, the price for that skill will be high. If there is a low demand for a common skill the wage will be low. The combinations of how much demand there is for a skill, and how rare or common it is, determines how much money that skill can demand, and how much money the employer will supply.

The demand for NFL quarterbacks is limited to the number of teams in the NFL, 32, and there is no real demand for this skill outside of the NFL. There are roughly 64 quarterbacks in the NFL, counting starters and backups, and these 64 are demanded differently. The demand for the skill level of  Tom Brady or Payton Manning is greater than the demand for the skill level of Ryan Mallet or Josh Johnson, and this difference in skill level determines how much money each can demand.

Millions of people have the ability to dig with a shovel, making it a common skill, and if you add to it the fact that we use machines to dig, we get a situation where there is a large supply of potential labor for the low demand job of digging with a shovel. The result is a low wage for that particular skill. The varying  combinations of the supply for specific labor, and the demand for that specific labor is why wages differ. If you factor in the reality that these combinations are constantly changing, because technology and innovation are constantly changing the supply and demand for labor, you have a situation where no one politician or bureaucrat, or group of politicians or bureaucrats, could possibly have enough knowledge to arbitrarily set wages. Although they certainly have enough arrogance and ignorance to try.

GOVERNMENT MANDATES VS. INDIVIDUAL CHOICES

There is one factor these moral crusaders fail to think about when they make these third-party mandates. Individuals may not comply. In an involuntary interpersonal exchange, like robbery at gun point or forced slave labor, the person being robbed or enslaved can simply not comply and accept being beaten or killed, or he may fight back if he thinks he has a chance of prevailing over his aggressors. In the case of the minimum wage being artificially raised above what labor produces, the employer has options besides complying with the law. The employer can 1)use capital in place of labor,  2) get rid of, or not hire low skilled labor and spread the work among his higher skilled employees, or 3) a combination of the two.

CONCLUSION

The reality is, when the price of labor is artificially set above the cost of labor, there will be less labor. Raising the minimum wage increases unemployment. Politicians really don’t care about the reality that their minimum wage mandate will hurt the people they say they are trying to help. Politicians are only interested in how morally righteous they look in the fight against income inequality. Low skilled workers are being sacrificed on the altar of politics, because political reality is the only reality that interests politicians.

Related Article – Minimum Wage Laws Create Unemployment, by austrianaddict.com.

Related  Article – Politics And Minimum Wage, by Walter E. Williams, at jewishworldreview.com.

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The New, Old, Buzz Words, “Income Inequality”

Posted January 13, 2014 by austrianaddict
Categories: Econ. 101
Tags: , , , , , ,

142763 600 New Years Resolutions cartoons

INCOME INEQUALITY AS POLITICAL BLUDGOEN

As the 2014 mid-term election cycle begins, big government politicians are starting to use the phrase “income inequality” as a talking point. It must be the new focus group tested phrase that appeals to emotions, which is why politicians are using it. The political solutions concerning “income inequality” elicit an emotional frenzy among the economically ignorant, that is difficult to overcome with logical analysis about the economic reality of “income equality”.

INCOME INEQUALITY IS REALITY

The politically self-righteous start from the premise that income inequality is a problem with the free market that shouldn’t exist and something has to be done about it. The political solutions they invoke are simply the forcing of what they want done for the voluntary decisions individuals have made in the market process. These solutions always benefit the politicians at the expense of everyone, including the people they are purporting to help. The invented problem of “income inequality” isn’t a problem with the laws of economics. Inequality in general, and income inequality in particular, are realities of life, and putting the word income in front of the word inequality doesn’t change that reality. These invented problems are made worse when we try to solve them through the political process.

INDIVIDUALS CAN’T BE EQUAL

The simple reason there is income inequality is because people aren’t equal. People have different skills, different desires concerning the use of those skills, different desires on how productive they want to be, with all of these being influenced by where they were born, who their parents are, how much education they have, and who they gravitated to outside of their family structure, among many factors. Could a crab fisherman in Alaska develop the skills or have the desire to grow oranges, or could an orange grower in Florida develop the skills or have the desire to fish for crab. How many hockey players come from the state of Hawaii, and how many surfers come from the state of Minnesota. The fact that we are individuals, means we are not the same, which means we are not equal.

GREEDY CONSUMERS SET WAGES

Another reason for income inequality is the consumer decides peoples salaries. What a person gets paid isn’t decided by the boss, it is decided by what the consumer will pay for a  particular good, or service. The price of a good isn’t decided by adding up the cost of all the material and labor used to produce it, and the consumer pays that price. What really happens is the entrepreneur takes a risk thinking that consumers will pay a certain price for a particular good and then goes about trying to produce that good at a cost lower than the price he thinks the  consumer will pay. The wages of workers are determined by what the consumer will pay for the finished product. The cost of labor is part of the cost of production, nothing more nothing less. Marxist thinking has so permeated our society that we think labor is sacred and shouldn’t be ruled by something as heartless as economic laws. When the cost of production rises, businesses can’t just raise prices to cover the cost, if this were the case no business would ever go under. Put another way if business could have higher total revenue by simply raising prices they would have already raised them. If you are mad about income inequality, don’t point your finger at the greedy owner of the business for not paying a higher salary, blame the greedy consumer for not being willing to pay more for the product. This Peter Schiff Video: Will Wal-Mart Customers Support Higher Wages For Wal-Mart Workers? , at economicpolicyjournal.com, will show you how eager people are to pay higher prices for their consumer goods.

In the next post we will discuss two ways politicians try to fight income inequality, 1) Raising the minimum wage and 2) Extending unemployment benefits. Do they really work, or do they benefit the politicians prospects for reelection?

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Must Reads For The Week 1/11/14

Posted January 11, 2014 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 Forgotten Man (“The War On Poverty” Edition), by Chris Rossini, at economicpolicyjournal.com. The 50 year anniversary of the war on poverty begs the question: how much could have been produced, (including jobs) with all the money spent to fight the war on poverty?

NY Fed President Warns: We Have No Idea If We Will Be Able to Smoothly Unwind the Trillions In Excess Reserves if That Money Starts to Hit the Economy, at economicpolicyjournal.com. Look at the chart of all the electronically printed counterfeit money the Fed has printed since the “08” crisis. This money is blowing up the stock market bubble, it certainly isn’t creating jobs, as the chart in the article below shows.

People Not In Labor Force Soars To Record 91.8 Million; Labor Participation Rate Plunges To 1978 Lows, at zerohedge.com. These charts show the truth about unemployment. The unemployment rate dropping to 6.7% is meaningless outside of politics. A majority of the jobs created last month weren’t full-time, as the chart in the post below shows.

More Than Half Of December Jobs Added Were Temporary, at zerohedge.com. If fewer people are working, and the people with jobs are working fewer hours, are we consuming more than we are producing? Are we reaching the tipping point.

The Real Unemployment Rate, at zerohedge.com. People who aren’t looking for work are not counted as unemployed. I guess the unemployment rate depends on who you count as unemployed. This article shows more of what we are talking about in the previous articles.

Fed’s Jeff Lacker Admits “Asset Bubble”, And Reluctance To Pop It, at zerohedge.com. This isn’t the first time Lacker couldn’t bite his tongue before the truth slipped out. Read Here.

The Most Popular Political Party In America Is…, by Larry Krieger, at Liberty Blitzkrieg Blog, via zerohedge.com. The charts in this article show the increase of people identifying themselves as independents, while identification with the Republican and Democrat parties shrink. The information age is cutting into the monopoly that Government propaganda sources, like the mainstream media and the education system, have enjoyed for decades. The progressive central planners in both parties are starting to lose their advantage and won’t go quietly. The argument for individual liberty is winning.

The United States Of Shame – What Is Your State Worst At?, at zerohedge.com. I think I want to move to Idaho.

The Dumbest New Ban In 2014: Incandescent Light Bulbs, by Nick Gillespie and Todd Karinan, at reason.com. GE, Sylvania, and Philips went to Government to rig the market for their new more expensive CFLs when consumers decided they didn’t want to purchase these light bulbs. Crony capitalism at its finest.

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Pimping The Empire – Progressive and Conservative Style. Charles Hugh Smith Explains

Posted January 9, 2014 by austrianaddict
Categories: Government and Politics

English: The Liberty Bell in 2008.

OUR CHOICE LIBERTY OR SERFDOM

These two articles, Pimping The Empire – Progressive Style, and Pimping The Empire – Conservative Style, by Charles Hugh Smith, help us understand the real battle in our country is between those of us who believe in individual freedom to pursue our interests in the free market, vs. Progressives and Conservatives who believe in Government planning which circumvents our individual decisions,  either totally (Progressives)  or partially (Conservatives).

I like to read CHS  because he lets you to see events through a different lens which allows you to think more clearly.

Here are some excerpts from the first article, Pimping The Empire – Progressive Style.

“Let’s begin by stipulating that ideology, any ideology, is an intellectual and emotional shortcut that offers believers ready-made explanations, goals, narratives and enemies without any difficult, time-consuming analysis, study or skeptical inquiry. This is the ultimate appeal of ideology:”

“The central illusion of Progressives is that an all-powerful central state will not become a self-serving expansive empire, but will be content to wield its vast powers to protect its favored cartels/monopolies and distribute money skimmed from the citizenry to Progressive constituencies such as public unions, healthcare and education.”

“Progressives worship the central state and cede it essentially unlimited powers because they want that state to be powerful enough to impose their agenda on others and reward their constituencies.”

“You can’t have it both ways, Progressives: if you support a central state with essentially unlimited power to protect and fund your constituent cartels, you end up with self-liquidating cartel-capitalism, a state bent on protecting itself from the uncertainties/risks of democracy and a global Empire that is teleologically driven to expand its reach and power by any and all means available.”

Here are some excerpts from Pimping The Empire – Conservative Style.

“… the Founding Fathers were so intent on limiting the powers of the Central State. They understood …. by its very nature (i.e. as a consequence of its essentially unlimited powers), the central state is genetically programmed to become an authoritarian state devoted to self-preservation and the extension of its reach and power.”

“The state with unlimited powers will be ontologically predisposed to protecting its powers by cloaking all the important inner workings of the state behind a veil of secrecy, and pursuing and punishing any whistleblowers who reveal the corrupt, self-serving workings of the state.”

“The state with unlimited powers will be ontologically predisposed to create and distribute propaganda to mask its self-serving nature and its perpetual agenda of extending its powers, lest some threat arise that limits those powers.”

“Conservatives are masters at projecting a preachy devotion to a limited state, democracy, liberty and free enterprise while their support of the Central State undermines every one of these values. Conservatives are like the preacher who issues stern sermons on righteousness every Sunday while skimming big money from pimping sordid, destructive policies Monday through Saturday.”

“Conservatives claim to want to limit the Central State, but their slavish support of Medicare, Social Security, the Pentagon, the National Security State, the Federal Reserve (and thus interest on the national debt), farm subsidies to Big Ag, law enforcement and the War on Drugs Gulag means they support virtually 100% of the Central State’s unlimited powers. Their proposed “cuts” are farcically tiny slices designed for propaganda purposes.”

“You cannot have a state with essentially unlimited power and not end up with cartel-capitalism. So-called Conservatives defend their favored cartel-fiefdoms, yet these cartels are busy bankrupting the nation and destroying the very bedrock of the liberties Conservatives claim to hold dear.”

The Progressives on the left and right are the enemies of the individual. Our founders created our constitution to protect the freedom of the individual from the very Government apparatus that the constitution produced. The individual was sovereign and the state was subordinate to the individual. Not many people understand this important point, as our politicians ignore it as they goose step toward ever increasing power.

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