We Are Reaching The Tipping Point.

Posted February 20, 2013 by austrianaddict
Categories: Government and Politics
Tags: , , , ,
Teeter Totter

Teeter Totter (Photo credit: lambdachialpha)

Consumption is starting to over take production as these charts show. Government spending is an exchange of confiscated, borrowed, or counterfeited dollars for a good or service that has been produced. These dollars represent certificates of purchase that can be exchanged for anything produced in the market. Legal tender laws decree that these dollars have to be accepted for all debts, public or private. The Fed has a legal monopoly on money production, and the fact that the Fed has counterfeited 3 trillion plus dollars since 2008 means that they have stolen 3 trillion dollars worth of goods and services from the private sector over the last four years. Read the rest of this post »

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Why Do People Think The Government Is The Economy?

Posted February 17, 2013 by austrianaddict
Categories: Econ. 101, Government and Politics
Tags: , , , , ,
leech

leech (Photo credit: KCBIO)

PRODUCTION AND EXCHANGE

Government can only exist if it is funded. In the market, people produce a good or service, and exchange it for a good or service that someone else has produced. You might think that through this exchange process each of us funds each other, but that would be incorrect. Each person funds himself from what he produces. If I don’t produce anything, not only would I have nothing to use for exchange, I would have nothing to consume. If I decide not to produce, I would have to depend on other people’s generosity, or I would have to steal someone’s production Read the rest of this post »

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Random Thoughts And Other Thoughts by Thomas Sowell.

Posted February 13, 2013 by austrianaddict
Categories: Econ. 101, Government and Politics
Tags: , , , ,
Intellectuals and Society

Intellectuals and Society (Photo credit: arellis49)

Read Thomas Sowell’s “Random Thoughts” column.

Here are a couple of samples.

“I can’t get excited by the question of whether Senator Robert Menendez had sex with a prostitute in Central America. It is her word against his–and when it comes to a prostitute’s word against a politician’s word, that is too close to call”.

“One of the talking points in favor of confirming Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense is that he was a wounded combat veteran. How does that qualify anyone to run the whole military establishment? Benedict Arnold was a wounded combat veteran!”

Now read two articles by Thomas Sowell titled “Prophets And Losses, and “Prophets And Losses II”. Dr. Sowell talks about what we have been discussing in the last few articles, Read the rest of this post »

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Is The President Our Boss? No. Each Individual Is His Own Boss.

Posted February 12, 2013 by austrianaddict
Categories: Government and Politics
Tags: , , , , ,

INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM

The battle for individual freedom is summed up in these statements by Chris Rock. Will we allow ourselves to be ruled by an “intellectual elite” , and socialize all of the costs. Or will we allow each individual to rule himself,  with each person being responsible for his actions .  You either believe that top down decision-making by “the intelligent few” creates the best possible order for society, or you believe that each individual cooperating and competing with each other in the market, creates an order that utilizes scarce resources and knowledge more effectively.  This is what the history of the world is all about.

THE CONSTITUTION PROTECTS THE INDIVIDUAL FROM THE GOVERNMENT

The American Revolution set a different course in human history, a course that had never been tried before. It was fought for the idea that the individual was sovereign and had the right to rule himself. The constitution protected him from the concentrated power of Government run by a tyrannical “intellectual elite” from interfering in his decisions. The constitution doesn’t protect the Government from the people, it was set up to protect the individual from the Government. It is very difficult Read the rest of this post »

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A Look Over The Horizon At What Lies Ahead If We Continue Down The Central Planning Road.

Posted February 8, 2013 by austrianaddict
Categories: Econ. 201, Government and Politics
Tags: , , , , , ,
Nebraska tornado, May 24, 2004 (DI02257) Photo...

Nebraska tornado, May 24, 2004 (DI02257) Photo by Bob Henson (Photo credit: AtmosNews – NCAR & UCAR)

Read this article titled, Greek Tax Hikes Backfire As Tax Revenues Plunge 16%, at Zerohedge.com, if you want to see what will happen in the U.S. if we continue to make economic decisions through the political process.

CENTRAL PLANNERS IGNORE THE FIRST RULE OF ECONOMICS

No matter how hard Government and politicians try to create a world of abundance, the reality that we live in a world of scarcity hits them square in the face. Their answer when their plans don’t work as advertised, is to ignore the reality of the first rule of economics, which is scarcity, and continue going ever faster down the same central planning road that created the problem in the first place.

CENTRAL PLANNERS WORK AGAINST ECONOMIC FORCES

As a Government starts its intervention, slowly at first, into the workings of the free market through regulation, and taxes, the economy will reach a point where it will not Read the rest of this post »

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Photos Of The President Skeet Shooting?

Posted February 6, 2013 by austrianaddict
Categories: Miscellaneous
Tags: , , , ,
Shooting (Trap and Skeet)

Shooting (Trap and Skeet) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The photos in this article, at Economicpolicyjournal titled The White House Warns Against Photoshopping Obama But The Internet Can’t Help Itself, are a must see because they are funny, and you must read some of the comments by the readers, they are priceless.

When the ruling elite continually take away people’s rights, and also take their property through taxation, all the while demeaning them during the whole process, how could they think that people wouldn’t respond exactly how they’ve responded. I laughed when I saw the original photo of the president “shooting clay birds”, because I’ve seen the President throw a baseball and shoot a basketball. He doesn’t have to worry about turning in his man card, because he was never given one in the first place.

Watch Marine Cpl. Nick Kimmel, throw out a first pitch, contrast and compare.

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The Fed’s Policies Are Counterproductive.

Posted February 4, 2013 by austrianaddict
Categories: Econ. 201, Government and Politics
Tags: , , , , ,

Host Lauren Lyster interviews Jim Grant on The Daily Ticker in this video from economicpolicyjurnal.com.

Here is a quote from the article, “…the Fed intends to buy 85 billion, with a B, in securities every month. What you might ask is where does it get that money. It creates it, it didn’t exist before the Fed materialized it through the very humble action of a keyboard and a computer, that’s the way it does it. But notice that this money is coming into the system without any commensurate increase in production. This is money in search of mischief, and it is likely to find it. The Feds actions are counterproductive.”

If the Feds injecting 85 billion counterfeit dollars a month into the economy (QE3,4), since September, is considered counter productive, how much more counter productive was QE1 and QE2’s injection of 2.3 trillion total dollars since 2008. An even better question is Read the rest of this post »

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Walter E. Williams Talks About The Role Of Profits And Losses.

Posted February 1, 2013 by austrianaddict
Categories: Econ. 101
Tags: , , , ,

PROFITS AND LOSSES

This is a video from Libertypen.com, starring the great Walter E. Williams. He is speaking about the role of profits and losses in the free market. Many people think that free market capitalism is all about profits, but free market capitalism is a profit and loss system. Losses tell businesses to stop producing because there is not enough consumer demand to support the activity at that particular price. Because the business bears the loss, Read the rest of this post »

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Capital Consumption, aka, Eating Our Seed Corn.

Posted January 30, 2013 by austrianaddict
Categories: Econ. 201, Government and Politics, Hall of Fame
Tags: , , , , , , ,
Corn Seeds

Corn Seeds (Photo credit: Stevie Rocco)

This article on ZeroHedge.com, R.I.P. Retirement: 28% Of Americans Are Raiding Their 401k Plans, talks about how people are withdrawing a portion of their retirement savings and spending it on present consumption. A large part of these savings will be used  to produce capital goods (tools, buildings, vehicles, machines, etc.), which will be used to produce future goods more efficiently. When we start to use money saved for capital formation and use it for present consumption, we are eating our seed corn. If we start to eat a portion of the corn we’ve set aside for use as seed, we won’t produce as much corn for next years consumption. This has been happening for the last four years. Individuals have been using savings earmarked for the future, in order survive in the present.

CAPITAL FORMATION

The money an individual gets paid for the good or service he produces Read the rest of this post »

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Geithner: “I Never Had A Real Job”. Another Example Of Intellectual Inbreeding.

Posted January 28, 2013 by austrianaddict
Categories: Econ. 101, Government and Politics
Tags: , , , , , ,

In my previous post Federal Reserve Policy Makers Have An Incestuous Intellectual Relationship With Each Other, we talked about how our political aristocracy and the intellectual elite have no knowledge outside of their vision of the world, a vision which was inbreed into them by their education, their job, and the people with whom they associate. This video, from economicpolicyjournal.com, is an example.

SELF PROCLAIMED INTELLIGENCE

The interesting part of this video is Geithner’s inability to realize his narrow experience is a bad thing. Going from grad school directly to the Treasury, then spending the rest of your professional life in a policy job, isn’t a recipe for developing a wide base of knowledge on which to make policy decisions. The policies they come up with won’t work anywhere outside of the sterile intellectual laboratory that exists only in the minds Read the rest of this post »

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