AUSTRIAN ECONOMICS ADDICT

Broke Chicago Considering “Testing” Guaranteed Basic Income Program, at economicpolicyjournal.com. If an individual spends more than he is taking in. And his spending includes the debt he has incurred (house, car, college loans, credit cards etc). Should he add more debt by spending more? No.

The idea of a universal basic income is no different from the welfare programs that are already in place. It is just dressed up with a different name.

This is like taking water from the deep end of the pool and dumping it into the shallow end. The new spending doesn’t increase economic activity. Because you are taking what someone has produced and giving it to someone to spend on consumption. No part of this transfer will be spent increasing the capital structure in the process of production. In fact there will be a loss in economic activity because of this transfer.

In order for an individual to consume a good that he desires he must either: 1) produce it himself 2) produce a good that someone else wants and exchange it for the good he wants 3) take what he wants by force (theft) 4) receive the good as a gift from its owner. Over the years individuals using government power have tricked us into believing that they are performing an act of giving (#4), when in fact they are performing an act of theft (#3). The only person who can perform an act of charity is the owner of the property that is gifted. Since government owns nothing that it hasn’t first taken by force, than government giving is not an act of charity.

Obama Floats Support For Universal Basic Income, at freebeacon.com. Here is what President Obama said: “It’s not just money that a job provides. It provides dignity and structure and a sense of place and a sense of purpose. So we’re going to have to consider new ways of thinking about these problems, like a universal income, review of our workweek, how we retrain our young people, how we make everybody an entrepreneur at some level.”

Lets look at what is highlighted. Mr. President, what happens if you give an individual a universal basic income? On the one hand you are giving him the money, and you are taking away his dignity, structure and a sense of place and purpose with the other hand.

When he uses the term “we”, he means the “anointed” individuals in government will come up with the ideas that the “benighted masses” must follow.

He also added: “We’re going to have to worry about economics if we want to get democracy back on track,”

The President has no knowledge of economics. He ignored the laws of economics for his 8 years as President. He thought he could wish away the laws of economics with his utopian decrees backed by the force of government. It didn’t work. He doesn’t understand that people producing and exchanging in a free market, and not government decrees, create the “workweek”, and “training for young people” and “entrepreneurship”. In fact his Government intervention created the results he doesn’t like and wants to change. Having said that, he wouldn’t have liked the results of what a free market would have produced either.

He is like 90% of politicians and bureaucrats. They get into positions of power so they can implement their utopian idea of what the world should look like. Of course they have to use government power to force their idea on individuals who don’t share the utopian ides.

On the extreme end of government power, tyrants like Stalin, Mao, Hitler, Castro, Pol Pot and others used the force of government to bring about their utopian ideas of how the world should work. At the cost of millions of individuals who didn’t want to comply. Most politicians and bureaucrats are mini tyrants. But tyrants non the less.

George Washington said: “Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force, like fire it is a dangerous servant, and a fearful master.”

Washington was in a unique position to understand and be fearful of the power government possesses. Most people today are not in that position.

Predation Never Justifies Predation, by Don Boudreaux, at cafehayek.com. This is about government intervention into free trade. Here is the money quote from the article:

“Beijing’s tariffs and subsidies, in effect, seize the property of some Chinese citizens in order to transfer it to other Chinese citizens. But because these Beijing-engineered seizures take from no American anything to which an American has a property right, what ethical justification is there for Uncle Sam to create identical tensions in the U.S. by seizing the property of some Americans in order to transfer it to other Americans?”

“In what moral universe does A’s forcible transfer of B’s property to C justify X’s forcible transfer of Y’s property to Z? How is justice served if, in response to A’s wrongful creation of tensions between B and C, X creates like tensions between Y and Z?”

6 Reasons Why Trade War With the Chinese Is Pointless, by Patrick Barron, at mises.org. Excerpt from the article: “So, let’s use logic to consider the effects of China’s economic interventions on itself and its trading partners who do nothing to retaliate against China in any way.”

“1) China uses its capital in an inefficient way.”

“2) Monetary expansion to fund an industry causes overall higher prices and malinvestment.”

“3) China’s overall economy will be less developed, weakening the impact of subsidies to targeted industries.”

“4) American products get cheaper and gain market share.”

“5) American industries benefit from the general expansion of all levels of production.”

“6) Chinese subsidies actually become subsidies to Americans’ standard of living.”

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Says Unemployment Is Low “Because Everyone Has Two Jobs,” Which is not How Unemployment Rates Work, at reason.com. Unemployment is calculated by dividing the number of unemployed people by the number of people in the labor force. And by the way only 5% of workers have more than one job.

Can The State Reduce Poverty? by Henry Hazlitt, at mises.org. Excerpt from the article: “All schemes for redistributing or equalizing incomes or wealth must undermine or destroy incentives at both ends of the economic scale. They must reduce or abolish the incentives of the unskilled or shiftless to improve their condition by their own efforts; and even the able and industrious will see little point in earning anything beyond what they are allowed to keep. These redistribution schemes must inevitably reduce the size of the pie to be redistributed. They can only level down. Their long-run effect must be to reduce production and lead toward national impoverishment.”

PC And The Bureaucratization Of The Economy, by William Anderson, at mises.org. Excerpt from the article: “In the former U.S.S.R. and other communist countries, one’s political status has been one of the main determiners of someone’s employment and standard of living. One cannot argue that such a state of affairs made life better for consumers and workers in these states and one certainly cannot argue that imposition of such political directives will do anything but harm our own economy.”

“The larger point here is once companies abandon or limit their entrepreneurial focus and seek political or some other kind of conformity, they succumb to the sclerosis of bureaucracy.”

SATIRE: HEADLINES SAY IT ALL

Ruth Bader Ginsburg Encased In Carbonite Until Next Court Session, at babylonbee.com. She has to hang in for a few more years. The left can’t lose this seat.

Socialist Professor Refuses Salary, Frees Himself From Bonds Of Capitalism, at babylonbee.com. This guy is practicing what he preaches.

Does World Cup Enforce The False Construct Of Borders Imposed On Us By The Ruling Elite, at theonion.com. Do Borders matter?

Liberals Argues Rules Of Basketball Are Flawed After Losing Pickup Game, at babylonbee.com. I guess it isn’t fair that the rules of basketball are biased toward people who have an ability to make shots.

Woodpecker Having Difficulty Remembering Tree Where He Got The Really Good Bugs That One Time, at theonion.com. Concussion protocol anyone. Does the woodpecker have standing to sue God.

PAUL BUNYAN vs THE CHAINSAW.

How much human labor does this machine save?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4HQ_9Xy10w

HT carpediemblog.