ECONOMIC STUFF
Donald Trump and Peter Navarro Suffer From ‘Trade Deficit Disorder‘, by Mark J. Perry, at carpediemblog. Here is an excerpt form the article: “In his speech and op-ed, Navarro laid out Team Trump’s trade agenda that involves expanding US exports, reducing imports, and thereby reducing America’s merchandise trade deficit and supposedly therefore increasing our nation’s economic growth. Unfortunately, that’s a pure mercantilist trade agenda, which is an approach to trade that has been discredited now for several hundred years.”
How Did Peter Navarro Ever Get A Ph.D In Economics From Harvard? economicpolicyjournal.com. Regular people being ignorant about economics is one thing. But having a Ph.D in economics and being economically ignorant is dangerous.
What Is Laissez-Faire? by Jeffery Tucker, at mises.ca. It simply means ‘Let it be’. A majority of people believe that complex order comes from top down planning by leaders possessing authority. It is inconceivable to them that unplanned order arises when people are allowed to manage their own lives and interact with others. Language is an example of complex spontaneous order. The rules of English were not written by someone and everyone started to follow them. People communicated with people and over time the ‘rules’ were established after discernible patterns (unwritten rules) were recognized. Attempts by Government central planners to control every aspect of society leads to chaos and conflict. Laissez-Faire. Please!
Repeal And Replace Needn’t Be Complicated, by Hunter Lewis, at mises.org. Do you use the term “healthcare system” or “healthcare market” when talking about ‘healthcare’. Most people talk about our “healthcare system”. This shows we think of healthcare as a centrally planned system. The cost will never go down unless we see healthcare as an economic good rationed by prices in a market. Obamacare was 2500 pages of rules and regulations designed to ‘fix’ what was left of a healthcare market already encumbered by mountains of government regulations. The only ‘fix’ to our current “healthcare system” is to allow it to become a healthcare market. LAISSEZ-FAIRE! Get rid of all government regulations and a complex healthcare order will almost magically form itself. It won’t be a perfect order (nothing man does is perfect). But it will be the best that can possibly exist in a world of scarce resources and subjective value.
High Prices Don’t Cause Economic Bubbles, by Frank Shostak, at mises.org. When central banks increase the money supply (counterfeit money), scarce resources are misallocated to activities that would have never come into existence under normal market conditions. The 08 bubble was caused by the Fed electronically printing counterfeit money. It was not allowed to liquidate. More electronically printed counterfeit money was created to stop the correction. This counterfeit money has and is creating our present financial bubble. Excerpt from the article: “The emergence of a bubble or a monetary balloon need not be always associated with rising prices – for instance, if the rate of growth of goods corresponds to the rate of growth of the money supply then no change in prices will take place……what matters is not whether the emergence of a bubble is associated with price rises but rather with the fact that the emergence of a bubble gives rise to the emergence of non-productive activities that divert real wealth from wealth generators. The expansion of the money supply, or a monetary balloon, in similarity to a counterfeiter, enables the diversion of real wealth from wealth generating activities to non-productive activities.”
The Fed’s Dependence On The Consumer Will Backfire, by C. Jay Engel, at mises.org. Production is the creation of wealth and consumption is the destruction of wealth. Spending is consumption. Consumption is the destruction of what has been produced. Spending doesn’t grow an economy. We can only spend out of our own production. What we produce allows us to spend. Consumption has to lag behind production for an economy to grow. When consumption is increased by debt and money printing, we start a process where consumption is out pacing production. We start to eat our seed corn so to speak. Artificially increasing spending is a quick shot of adrenaline. But it has no staying power.
CARTOONS
AUSTRIAN ECONOMICS ADDICT 