The pen is mightier than the sword… (Photo credit: mbshane)
Why Freddy’s BBQ From “House Of Cards” Couldn’t Really Exist, by Johnny Fugitt, at the federalist.com. Government is messing with my BBQ! Now they’ve gone too far. Government has to regulate everything, remember the lemonade stand article from last weeks must reads. I can see it now, a BBQ speakeasy.
Tesla Leases Former Solyndra Building In Fremont, by David Baker, at sfgate.com. Crony capitalist Tesla has leased bankrupt crony capitalist Solyndra’s former building. Some of our tax dollars are paying for the lease on a building built by our tax payer dollars. Not a very productive use of scarce resources.
Fans Can Bring Their Weed To The U.S. Open, Outside Water Bottles Still Banned, by Dan Regester, at foxnews.com. A few questions. 1) Are they allowed to smoke the weed they bring in? 2) Are people allowed to smoke tobacco products at the open? 3) If weed was sold at the U.S. Open, would people be allowed to bring their weed into the event? 4) Does it seem like everything is upside down?
Those Were The Days, My Friend, at the-econotrairian.blogspot.com. Look at the first chart from this article. It shows GDP growth in the 23 quarters after the bottoms of the 8 recessions dating back to 1961. This “recovery” is the worst, and the tech bubble of 2001 is the second worst. These were both bubbles caused by cheap credit and electronically printed counterfeit money. The Fed can’t even print a good GDP number.
Economics At Its Best – The Story Of The Iowa Car Crop, by Mark J. Perry, at aei.org. Great story on how free trade works. If you tax or ban imports, you are taxing our own industries. If you protect a specific industry, you are damaging other industries.
Micro-Totalitarianism, by Thomas Sowell, at jewishworldreview.com. Thomas Sowell is always a must read. Here is an excerpt from the article. “The Left is not necessarily aiming at totalitarianism. But their Know-it-all mindset leads repeatedly and pervasively in that direction, even if by small steps, each of which might be called “Micro-totalitarianism“.”
Culture and Social Pathology, by Walter E. Williams, at jewishworldreview.com. Walter Williams is also a must read. Here is an excerpt from the article. “If it were only the economic decline threatening our future, there might be hope. It’s the moral decline that spells our doom.”
Thomas Jefferson summed up not only the purpose of the constitution, but also what he thought of Government in this quote; “The two enemies of the people are criminals and Government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first.”
In this short video Walter E. Williams talks about our constitution.
Here is an excerpt from the video.“…the language of the Bill of Rights says, “congress shall not infringe, congress shall not disparage, congress shall not prohibit,” I mean all this distrust for congress. Because the founders knew that Government was the enemy of mankind… I point out that when we die, and if at our next destination, we see anything like the Bill of Rights, we know that we are in hell! Because a Bill of Rights in heaven would be an insult to God.”
Many people want to change reality when it isn’t “convenient”. Unfortunately reality can’t be changed, but that doesn’t stop their attempt. In this article titled, “Reality May Be Optional”, Walter E Williams starts by saying, “One of the wonders of modern times is that reality is often seen as a social construct and therefore optional. Thus, if one finds a particular reality offensive or inconvenient, he just “changes” it.”
He then gives examples. Here is one.
“Say that one is born a male or a female but believes that nature made an error. Some believe that nature’s “error” can be corrected by calling oneself another sex. Possibly a medical procedure on one’s genitalia can correct nature’s error. However, Mother Nature is ruthless. Sex determination is strictly chromosomal. Females are XX, and males are XY. There is no medical procedure that can change that. Once male or female, always a male or female.”
The pen is mightier than the sword… (Photo credit: mbshane)
A Ticket To Prosperity, by Walter E. Williams, at jewishworldreview.com. Quote from the article, “Today’s third world poverty is mostly self-inflicted….The growth-promoting characteristics of the non-poor countries that are all but absent in poor countries are protected private property rights, personal liberty, enforcement of contracts, rule of law and a market-oriented economic system.”
UAW Reaps What Obamacare Sows, at detroitnews.com. Obamacare’s “Cadillac tax” on gold-plated healthcare plans will be implemented in 2018, and many UAW workers have such plans. The UAW helped pass the bill that is going to cost members their healthcare plans. Does anyone want to bet that the UAW gets a waiver on the Cadillac tax?
Obamacare Heading For Death Spiral: Premiums Rising Rapidly, Young And Healthy Bailing Out, by Sean Parnell, at econmicpolicyjournal.com. When insurers are forced to raise premiums to cover Obamacare mandated benefits, healthy policy holders drop coverage. This causes insurers to raise premiums again, which leads to more policy holders dropping coverage, which leads to……..
The Irony Of Michigan’s Film Incentive Program, at michigancapitalconfidential.com. Michael Moore received more than $800 thousand from The Michigan Film Office, for making a film criticizing corporate welfare.
Oh, Just Secede Already, Arizona Legislature, by Laurie Roberts, at azcentral.com. The Arizona House approved a bill declaring that, “the sovereign state of Arizona will not enforce any executive orders issued by the president of the United States or any policy directives from the Department of Justice unless they are affirmed by Congress and signed into law.” Reclaiming freedom will come from the bottom up.
Elvira Nabiullina: I Am Not Ben Bernanke, at economicpolicyjournal.com. Russia’s central bank governor Elvira Nabiullina will do the opposite of what other central banks around the world have done. She has the guts to do what will work, instead of what is politically beneficial.
Lane Bryant Joins The “Let’s Rewire Men” Craze, by Chris Rossini, at targetliberty.com. Lane Bryant is trying to “redefine society’s traditional notion of sexy with a powerful core message: ALL women are sexy”. Good luck with that!
Portsmouth Regulators Voting To Eliminate Taxi Regulations In Response To Uber, by Elizabeth Dinan, at seacoastonline.com. Here is an excerpt from the article, “…the Taxi Commission on Wednesday recommended the elimination of taxi medallions, regulation of taxi fares, city taxi inspections and the Taxi Commission itself.” But don’t jump for joy yet. The city council is going to rewrite the city’s taxi ordinance to try to regulate the existing taxi cartel as well as the new ride sharing industry. Governments at every level exist for the sole purpose of intervening into the decision-making process of individuals.
Thanks Obamacare: This Is What Americans Spent The Most Money On In Q4, at zerohedge.com. People are spending more on healthcare. I thought the official name of Obamacare was the Patient Protection And Affordable Care Act? It obviously isn’t protecting patients from higher costs.
More Guns Less Murders, at libertypenblog.blogspot.com. The video below shows the US comes in first in per capita gun ownership. In spite of this , the US comes in number 111 in per capita murder rate. There is no correlation or causation here.
If the rule of law is defined as 1) general rules, 2) known in advance, and 3) applying to the rulers as well as the ruled; than the breakdown of the rule of law is caused by government, 1) making laws that are micro managing, 2) so numerous we can’t possibly know them in advance, and 3) not applying to the rulers, only to the ruled.
When our Government betters think of themselves as being exempt or above the law, and act in a way that flaunts this attitude, regular people will start to push back against such lawlessness by disregarding laws. (There are examples in the related articles below). Here are some excerpts from the article by Dr. Williams.
“President Barack Obama said just before the recent Ferguson, Missouri, riots, “First and foremost, we are a nation built on the rule of law.” Most Americans have little or no inkling of what “rule of law” means. Many think it means obedience to whatever laws legislatures enact. That’s a vision that has led to human tragedy down through the ages…….“
“Let’s ask ourselves what the characteristics of laws in a free society should be. Let’s think about baseball rules (laws) as a way to approach this. Some players, through no fault of their own, hit fewer home runs than others. In order to create baseball justice, or what’s sometimes called a level playing field, how about a rule requiring pitchers to throw easier pitches to poorer home run hitters? Alternatively, we could make a rule that what would be a double for a power hitter is a home run for someone who doesn’t hit many homers…….“
“You say, “Williams, you can’t be serious! Can you imagine all the chaos that would ensue: players lobbying umpires, umpires deciding who gets what favor, and lawsuits — not to mention violence?” You’re absolutely right. The reason baseball games end peaceably — with players and team owners satisfied with the process, whether they win or lose — is that baseball rules (law) are applied equally to all players. They’re fixed, and umpires don’t make up rules as they go along. In other words, baseball rules meet the test of “abstractness.” They envision no particular game outcome in terms of winners and losers. The rules that govern baseball simply create a framework in which the game is played……”
“Laws or rules in a free society should have similar characteristics………. Laws envision no particular outcome except that of allowing people to peaceably pursue their own objectives. Finally, and most importantly, laws are equally applied to everyone, including government officials”.
Walter E. Williams writes in this article, Obama vs. Us, how the President isn’t incompetent at all. His actions are perfectly compatible with his ideology, and he will not allow something like the constitution get in the way of his agenda. Here are some excerpts from the article.
“In my colleague Dr. Thomas Sowell’s column last week, he says, “Pundits who depict Obama as a weak, lame duck president may be greatly misjudging him, as they have so often in the past.” After suffering an elective trouncing at the polls, President Barack Obama issued Congress an ultimatum, saying that if it doesn’t enact the kind of immigration law that he would like, he will unilaterally issue an executive order to change the nation’s immigration laws. This threat, along with other abuses of his office, is not a sign of presidential stupidity or incompetence“.
“Obama is doing precisely what he promised during his 2008 presidential campaign, to cheering and mesmerized crowds: “We are going to fundamentally change America”….. Obama is living up to those pledges by subverting our Constitution and adopting the political style of a banana republic dictator. He showed his willingness to ignore the Constitution when he eliminated the work requirement in welfare reform laws enacted during the Clinton administration. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare, was enacted by Congress and hence is the law of the land. Obama has used executive orders to change the law on several occasions. Ask yourself whether our Constitution permits the president to unilaterally change a law enacted by Congress“.
“Seeing as all branches of federal government ignore most of the provisions of the Constitution, I think we can safely say that we’ve reached the post-Constitution stage of our history. Washington politicians are not to blame. It’s the American people who’ve lost their love and respect for our Constitution. Washington’s politicians are simply the agents for that contempt“.
THE PROGRESSIVE IDEOLOGY
The President is the current face of an ideology that stretches far back in time. The people who believed in the ideals of the French Revolution shared this ideology as did the progressives in the early 20th century. These people think that their superior wisdom gives them the right to decide whats best for us. This ideology is pervasive in Washington DC in both parties. The constitution is suppose to be a check on governmental and bureaucratic power grabs by people with the central planning ideology. Unfortunately as the late Joseph Sobran stated so well, “The constitution is no threat to our current form of Government”.
SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE SKIT
Here is a skit from Saturday Night Live that drives the point home about the Presidents lack of respect for the rule of law in general and our constitution specifically.
The pen is mightier than the sword… (Photo credit: mbshane)
China’s Latest Ghost Town: A $50 Billion Fake Replica Of Manhattan, at zerohedge.com. If you build it they will come. Not really. Printing counterfeit money by China’s central bank has created a real estate bubble that can’t be supported by economic reality. When counterfeit money is created and pushed into and economy, it creates counterfeit economic activity. These counterfeit activities will eventually be liquidated. Scarce resources, land, and labor that could have been used in real economic activity is instead wasted on activities that was made possible by the central banks counterfeit money.
Venezuela Using Fingerprint Scanners To Ration Food Basics Including Milk, at economicpolicyjournal.com. Free market prices coordinate production and consumption. When prices are fixed by central planners in Government, information about supply and demand is distorted and shortages are the result. Prices ration scarce resources in a free market, and Government planners ration scarce resources in a centrally planned system. If you don’t know someone important in Government, expect to be hungry.
Reducing Capital gains Taxes Would Encourage Investment And Grow Canada’s Economy, at fraserinstitute.org. Rolling back Government intervention, no matter how small, will encourage economic activity. Governor Scott Walker didn’t roll back government very much in Wisconsin and the States economy improved. What would happen economically in the US if Government intervention was rolled back by just 5%?
Landrieu Pushes Keystone Vote In Bid To Boost Energy Industry, Runoff Chances, at foxnews.com. If she truly wanted to boost the energy industry, Senator Landrieu would have been pushing this for the last 4 years. The only reason she is pushing this now is to save her political skin. I hate politics because staying in power is the over-riding incentive in every decision politicians make. Public servants, or self servants? You decide.
Africa: A Tragic Continent, by Walter E. Williams, at jewishworldreview.com. The answer to all of our problems in America is, in the words of Dr. Williams, ” a political system in which there are guarantees of private property rights, free markets,…and the rule of law.” Unfortunately, as Joseph Sobran said decades ago, “the constitution is no threat to our current form of Government.”
Legislators Block Low-Cost Eye Exams In Michigan, by Anne Schieber, at michigancapitalconfidencial.com. Either Government wants to make decisions for us because they 1) think they are smarter than us, or 2) they want to protect status quo businesses who disdain competition. Either way we loose. I saw this article at carpe diem blog.
I Love Cell Phone Cameras, at targetliberty.com. The more police overstep their authority when dealing with the people they are supposed to “serve”, the more citizens will escalate their resistance to cops. The young men obviously have no respect for the police, and with good reason. The good will, that was accorded fireman and cops after 9/11, no longer exists. Who’s fault is it? The militarization of police forces started the escalation.
The left always comes up with words or phrases that ridicule the ideas and/or policies of their opponents with the intent of stopping any intelligent debate about the merits. In the 80’s, the policy of lowering tax rates for the purpose of economic growth, was called “trickle down economics” by the left in an attempt to convince shallow thinking people that this idea couldn’t possibly work. The term “trickle down” has been used by the left since the 80’s to torpedo any economic policy, especially tax cuts.
HILLARY: ECONOMIST EXTRAORDINAIRE
Here is Hillary Clinton using this tactic in a speech yesterday (10/24/14) at a campaign rally for Martha Coakly. At the start of this short video she says, “…don’t let anybody tell you that, you know, it’s corporations and businesses that create jobs.”, which is similar to the President saying, “..if you got a business, you didn’t build that“, in a campaign speech from the 2012. Mrs. Clinton’s statement reveals either her total ignorance about economics, or her great insight into the economic ignorance of the audience. We could write a post answering this statement, but it’s the next line; “You know that old theory, trickle down economics. That has been tried. That has failed. That has failed rather spectacularly.”, that this post will be about.
THOMAS SOWELL AND WALTER E. WILLIAMS SPEAK ABOUT “TRICKLE DOWN”
Economist Thomas Sowell has challenged anyone to name an economist from any economic school of thought who had actually advocated a “trickle down theory”. In this article from 2001, Capital Gains And Trickle Down, he states that there is no such thing as “trickle down theory”. The left uses the term to attack tax cuts by saying, their opponents want tax cuts that will help the rich first and the money will supposedly trickle down to the masses. So just to be clear they are saying that letting everybody keep more of what they produce by reducing tax rates is a “trickle down theory”. This theory they created is simply a straw man.
Economist Walter E. Williams talks about the fake war that has been fought against the “Trickle Down” straw man in this article, Trickle Down And Tax Cuts. This is a tactic used by all politicians in which they misrepresent (lie about) an opponents idea or policy, setting up a straw man, in order to argue against this false premise instead of debating their opponent head on. In this case the left sets up the “Trickle Down” straw man to try to win the tax cut argument.
These two articles are really great especially the examples they give. Here are some excerpts from Thomas Sowell’s article.
“But free-market economics is not about “distributing” anything to anybody. It is about letting people earn whatever they can from voluntary transactions with other people.”
“Those who imagine that profits first benefit business owners — and that benefits only belatedly trickle down to workers — have the sequence completely backward. When an investment is made, whether to build a railroad or to open a new restaurant, the first money is spent hiring people to do the work. Without that, nothing happens.”
“Money goes out first to pay expenses and then comes back as profits later — if at all. The high rate of failure of new businesses makes painfully clear that there is nothing inevitable about the money coming back.”
” No one who begins publishing a newspaper expects to break even — much less make a profit — during the first year or two. But reporters and other members of the newspaper staff expect to be paid every payday, even while the paper shows only red ink on the bottom line.”
“In short, the sequence of payments is directly the opposite of what is assumed by those who talk about a “trickle-down” theory.”
Here are some excerpts from Walter E. Williams article.
“Trickle down is a nonexistent theory. Those who use it simply argue against a caricature rather than confront an argument actually made.”
“You can bet that the White House has people reading every bit of the news, including this column and Dr. Sowell’s article. You can bet some people in the news media will read it, as well. Despite the facts that Sowell has marshaled, they will continue to use trickle down theory and “tax cuts for the rich” demagoguery, even though they now have hard evidence to the contrary, because they can count on widespread gullibility and inability to do critical thinking.”
THE FEDS MONETARY POLICY, IS THE TRICKLE DOWN STRAW MAN
Getting money in the hands of the rich with the idea that it will trickle down through the rest of the economy is the straw man the left says won’t work. They are correct. The Feds loose money policy since 2000 is proof that it doesn’t work. Instead of letting individuals keep what they produce by lowering taxes, the Fed electronically prints counterfeit money and gives it to the top 1%. The Fed has printed a total of $7 trillion since 2000 (click here) with $4 trillion of that being printed since 2008. Click here to see what has happened to the real median household income since this counterfeiting started before 2000. It has gone down.
The Fed injects electronically printed counterfeited money into the economy by purchasing mortgage-backed securities, from banks, and treasury bonds, from the Federal Government. The banks and the Federal Government have first access to the counterfeit money. Everyone in the immediate orbit of the banks and the Federal Government benefit secondarily from this printed money, you and I don’t benefit. Look at the charts in this article, Abolish The Engine Of Inequality: The Federal Reserve, by Charles Hugh Smith. They show that the income and wealth of the people with access to the Feds counterfeit money has grown. And the wealth of the rest of us is stagnant or shrinking. The more the Fed prints the bigger the gap.
CONCLUSION
The Feds experiment of giving their counterfeit money to the people at the top and hoping it will trickle down has been going on since before the tech bubble popped in 2000. The tech bubble lead to the housing bubble that popped in 2008, which lead to the current financial bubble that will eventually liquidate itself at some point. The counterfeiting by the Fed created these bubbles in the first place. In the words of economist extraordinaire Hillary Clinton, “It has failed rather spectacularly“. She is correct. Trickle down economic theory defined by the left, as giving money to the wealthy in the hopes that it will trickle down, doesn’t work. Unless the goal was to make the first receivers of the money wealthier at the expense of the rest of us. But who could possibly be cynical enough to think that?
The pen is mightier than the sword… (Photo credit: mbshane)
11 Ways You Know You Live In A Country Run By Idiots, at theburningplatform.com. Only eleven! I’m sure we can come up with a few more. How about this: If the incentives created by The Affordable Care Act raise the price of health care, you live in a country run by idiots.
New York Schools Drop Michelle O’s Lunch Program, by Victor Skinner, at eagnews.org. More schools are dropping FLOTUS’s school lunch program because sales are down. But in true totalitarian fashion FLOTUS and POTUS are in lock step in their attempt to force kids to eat healthier (healthier as defined by whom). Here is the money quote from the article, “Meanwhile, lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives are considering legislation to provide exemptions from the lunch regulations for schools that are losing substantial revenue, though Michelle Obama has vowed to fight for her pet project “until the bitter end. President Obama has also promised to veto the legislation if it makes it to his desk, the Associated Press reports.”
The Myth Of Obamacare’s Affordability, by Casey Mulligan, at economicpolicyjournal.com. As I said when the Affordable Care Act was passed, “If you think health care is expensive now, just wait until it becomes affordable”.
What Ever Happened To Global Warming, at economicpolicyjournal.com. When I was in high school in the early 70’s, scientists would have been considered “global warming deniers”, because they thought the earth was cooling.
Competition Heats Up In The NYC Taxi Market As Gett Introduces $10 Rides In Manhattan, by Mark J. Perry, at aei-ideas.org. Competition in free markets means lower prices for consumers. Unfortunately many consumers unwittingly vote against their own self-interest when they vote for politicians who are for central planning and against free markets.
Issa Accuses Holder Spokesman Of Attempting To Conspire With Democrats On IRS Documents, by Colby Itkowitz, at washingtonpost.com. Eric Holders communication director called GOP staffers by mistake. Thinking he was talking to Democrats, he asked how he could get materials, about the IRS targeting of conservative groups, to interested reporters, before they were sent to the Republican majority, so the agency could spin the story first. This is why I hate politics. The good of the party overrides what is good for individuals.
"THE COORDINATION OF MENS 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."
"THERE IS NO SUBTLER, NO SURER MEANS OF OVERTURNING THE EXISTING BASIS OF SOCIETY THAN TO DEBAUCH THE CURRENCY. THE PROCESS ENGAGES ALL THE HIDDEN FORCES OF ECONOMIC LAW ON THE SIDE OF DESTRUCTION, AND DOES IT IN A MANNER WHICH NOT ONE MAN IN A MILLION IS ABLE TO DIAGNOSE."
Most Recent Quote
F.A. Hayek - "Since the value of freedom rests on the opportunity it provides for unforseen and unpredictable actions, we will rarely know what we lose through a particular restriction of freedom."
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Matthew McCaffrey - "Building a freer society means winning the battle of ideas, not the empty contests put on by the central Government every four years. Freedom is never obtained by endorsing the least offensive applicant for the position of chief villain."
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Ludwig von Mises - "The middle system of property that is hampered, guided, and regulated by government is in itself contradictory and illogical. Any attempt to introduce it in earnest must lead to a crisis from which either Socialism or Capitalism alone can emerge."
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F. A. Hayek - "While it may not be difficult to destroy the spontaneous formations which are the indispensable bases of a free civilization. It may be beyond our power deliberately to reconstruct such a civilization once these foundations are destroyed."
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Murray Rothbard - "The market promotes and rewards the skills of production and voluntary cooperation. The Government enterprise promotes the skills of mass coercion and bureaucratic submission...and those who get to the top will be those with the most skill in that particular task."
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John Adams - "Government is instituted for the common good: for the protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness of the people. And not for profit, honor, or private interest of any one man, family, or class of men..."
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Milton Friedman - "Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself."
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Chris Rossini - "The state is a monster that destroys. Those who gain control of the levers, choose the targets."
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Murray Rothbard -"It is no crime to be ignorant of economics...but it is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on economic subjects while remaining in this state of ignorance."
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Murray Rothbard -"Democracy can be only a possible route toward a free society rather than an attribute of it. In a purely free society there would be nothing for democratic electors to vote about."
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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."
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Benito Mussolini - "Fascism should more appropriately be called corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power."
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Ludwig von Mises - "Men must choose between the market economy and socialism....some agency must determine what should be produced. If it is not the consumer by means of demand and supply on the market, it must be the Government by compulsion."
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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."
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Detlev Schlichter - "Any intervention in the market (by the state) must direct resources away from how private owners would have employed them and toward how state officials and their economic advisers would like to see them employed."
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Henry Hazlitt - "The question is not whether we wish to see everybody as well off as possible....the real question concerns the proper means of achieving it. And in trying to answer this we must never lose sight of a few elementary truisms. We cannot distribute more wealth than is created. We cannot in the long run pay labor as a whole more than it produces."
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Murray Rothbard - "Whether or not man lives at the level of poverty or abundance depends upon the success that he and his ancestors have had in grappling with nature and in transforming naturally given resources into capital goods and consumers goods.... Free markets tend to lead to abundance for all of its participants.... violent intervention in the market and a hegemonic society tend to lead to general poverty."
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Ludwig von Mises - "Inflation and credit expansion are the means to obfuscate the fact that there prevails a nature-given scarcity of the material things on which the satisfaction of human wants depends. The main concern of capitalists private enterprise it to remove this scarcity as much as possible and to provide a continuously improving standard of living for an increasing population.....but however remarkable these improvements may be, there will always be a strict limit to the amount that can be consumed without reducing the capital available for the continuation and, even more, the expansion of production."
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Ludwig von Mises - " It is impossible to grasp the meaning of the idea of sound money if one does not realize that it was devised as an instrument for the protection of civil liberties against despotic inroads on the part of Governments. Ideologically, it belongs in the same class with political constitutions and bills of rights."
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Murray Rothbard - "To reduce the working population while the consuming population remains undiminished is to lower the standard of living."
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Murray Rothbard - "Increasing the money supply confers no social benefit. It relieves no economic scarcity. It simply benefits some at the expense of others."
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Ludwig von Mises - "Political ideas that have dominated the public mind for decades cannot be refuted through rational arguments, they must run their course in life and cannot collapse otherwise than in great catastrophe."
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Milton Friedman - "A society that puts equality- in the sense of equality of outcome- ahead of freedom will end up with neither equality nor freedom. The use of force to achieve equality will destroy freedom, and the force introduced for good purposes, will end up in the hands of people who use it to promote their own interests."
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F. A. Hayek - "It has already been suggested that it is not necessary, for the working of this free market capitalist system, that anybody should understand it. But people are not likely to let it work if they do not understand it."
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C. S. Lewis - "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber barons cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; But those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
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Ludwig von Mises - "For the naive mind there is something miraculous in the issuance of fiat money. A magic word spoken by the Government creates out of nothing a thing which can be exchanged against any merchandize a man would like to get."
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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."
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George Gilder - "Under capitalism, economic power flows not to the intellectual, who manipulates ideas and basks in their light, but to men who gives himself to his ideas and tests them with his own wealth and work."
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Thomas Sowell - "Perhaps the greatest achievement of market economies is in economizing on the amount of knowledge needed to produce a given economic result. That is also their greatest political vulnerability."
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Ludwig von Mises - "Anti capitalistic policies sabotage the operation of the capitalist system of the market economy. The failure of interventionism does not demonstrate the necessity of adopting socialism. It merely exposes the futility of interventionism. All those evils which the self-styled "progressives" interpret as evidence of the failure off capitalism are the outcome of their allegedly beneficial interference with the market."
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F.A. Hayek - "The battle for freedom must be won over and over again, the socialists of all parties must be persuaded or defeated if they and we are to remain free men."
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F. A. Hayek - "Planning, or central direction of economic activity, presupposes the existence of common ideals and common values; and the degree to which planning can be carried is limited to the extent to which agreement on such a common scale of values can be obtained or enforced."
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Thomas Sowell - "In political competition accurate knowledge has no decisive competitive advantage, because what is being sold is not an end result but a plausible belief about a complex process"
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Thomas Sowell - " Taxing away what other people have earned, in order to finance one's own moral adventures via social programs, is often depicted as a humanitarian endeavor, while allowing others the same freedom and dignity as oneself, so that they can make their own choices with their own earnings is considered pandering to greed. Greed for power is no less dangerous than greed for money, and has historically shed far more blood in the process."
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Peter Earle - "In a world of infinate desires and limited means, choices must be made; a study of history and economics reveals that, while markets make no promises, they never lie. The only choice is whether distribution, or redistribution as the case may be, is to be accomplished by the organic, apportioning hand of the price system, or by the corrupt, spoilative claw of states."
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Thomas Jefferson - "....To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with public debt....we must make our choice between economy and liberty or confusion and servitude....if we run into such debts, we must be taxed in our meat and drink, in our necessities and comforts, in our labor and in our amusements.... if we can prevent the Government from wasting the labor of the people under the pretense of caring for them, they will be happy."
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F. A. Hayek - "The democratic statesman who sets out to plan economic life will soon be confronted with the alternative of either assuming dictatorial powers or abandoning his plans."
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Jean Baptiste Say - "...The encouragement of mere consumption is no benefit to commerce, for the difficulty lies in supplying the means, not in stimulating the desire of consumption; and we have seen that production alone, furnishes those means. Thus, it is the aim of Good Government to stimulate production, of bad Government to encourage consumption."
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Ludwig von Mises - "The middle-of-the-road policy is not an economic system that can last. It is a method for the realization of socialism by installments."
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Thomas Sowell - "What is politically defined as economic planning is the forcible superseding of other people's plans by Government officials."
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Thomas Sowell - "The market is simply the freedom to choose among many existing or still to be created possibilities. The Government establishes an army or a post office as the answer to a given problem.... The diversity of personal tastes insures that no given institution will become the answer to a human problem in the market."
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Thomas Sowell - "Just as a poetic discussion of the weather is not meteorology, so an issuance of moral pronouncements or political creeds about the economy is not economics."
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Paul Craig Roberts - "We should all be thankful to the Soviets, because they have proved conclusively that socialism doesn't work. No one can say they didn't have enough power or enough bureaucracy or enough planners or they didn't go far enough."
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Alexis de Tocqueville - "Democracy extends the sphere of individual freedom, socialism restricts it. Democracy attaches all possible value to each man, socialism makes each man a mere agent, a mere number. Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word: equality, but notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude."
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George Gilder - "The Real Issue is between the rule of law and the rule of leveler egalitarianism, between creative excellence and covetous "fairness", between admiration of achievement versus envy and resentment of it'.
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Thomas Jefferson - "The issue today is the same as it has been throughout all history, whether man shall be allowed to govern himself or be ruled by a small elite."
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Judge Leonard Hand - "Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; if it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it."
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Ludwig von Mises - "Modern civilization is a product of the philosophy of laissez faire, it cannot be preserved under the ideology of Government omnipotence."
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Ludwig von Mises - "The issue is always the same: the government or the market. There is no third solution."
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H.L. Menken - "Government is a broker in pillage, and every election is an advance auction on the sale of stolen goods"
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F.A. Hayek - "Perhaps the fact that we have seen millions voting themselves into complete dependence on a tyrant has made our generation understand that to choose one's Government is not necessarily to secure freedom."
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Detlev Schlichter - "Economics is the science of how we use social institutions such as private property and voluntary exchange on free markets to make the best use of scarce resources. The printing press tries to do away with scarcity."
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Thomas Sowell - "The God like approach to social policy ignores the diversity of values and the cost of agreement among human beings."
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Henry Hazlitt - "Whenever men are allowed liberty, and freedom of choice, they will make mistakes. Liberty is not a guarantee of omniscience. But neither are the mistakes of free men a valid excuse to take away their liberty, and impose Government controls in its stead, on the ground that all wisdom and disinterestedness resides in the people who are going to do the controlling."
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Thomas Sowell - "Nothing is easier than to confuse broader powers with deeper insight. But almost by definition, those with the broadest powers are the most remote from the specific knowledge needed for either deciding, or for knowing, the actual consequences of their decisions."
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Ludwig von Mises - "Credit expansion is the Government's foremost tool in their struggle against the market economy. In their hands it is the magic wand designed to conjure away the scarcity of capital goods, to lower the rate of interest or to abolish it altogether to finance lavish Government spending."
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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."
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Chaderov - "Since the State thrives on what it expropriates, the general decline in production that it induces by it's avarice foretells its own doom. Its source of income dries up. Thus in pulling society down it pulls itself down."
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Thomas Sowell - "If an informed citizenry is the foundation of democratic Government, than an uninformed citizenry is a danger."
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Thomas Sowell - "The free market works best when there is a level playing field but politicians win more votes by tilting the playing field to favor particular groups."
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Thomas Sowell - "However dramatic or attractive a particular vision may be, ultimately everyone must live in the world of reality. To the extent that reality has been filtered to fit a vision, this filtered information is a misleading guide to making decisions in an unforgiving reality, to which we must all adjust because it is not going to adjust to us."
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Thomas Sowell - "Envy was once considered to be one of the seven deadly sins before it became one of the most admired virtues under its new name "Social Justice"."
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Murray Rothbard - "Bureaucracy incompetent enough to plan a stationary system, is vastly more incompetent at planning a progressing one."
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Ludwig von Mises - "Freedom is incompatible with equality of wealth and income. Men are born unequal and it is precisely their inequality that generates social cooperation and civilization."
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Murray Rothbard - "Government subsidy systems promote inefficiency in production and efficiency in coercion and subservience, while penalizing efficiency in production and inefficiency in predation (plundering)."
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Francisco Capella - "The right of property is a negative right of noninterference. Humans do not have natural positive rights that imply that others must do something for them, and there is no natural duties towards others (present and future). Positive rights and duties arise by means of contracts."
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Victor Davis Hanson - "Social justice sees the Government's proper moral obligation not as ensuring equality out of the starting gate, but as guaranteeing that we will all reach the finish line at the same exact moment."
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F.A. Hayek - "A claim for equality of material position can be met only by a Government with totalitarian powers."
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Thomas Sowell - "People who are very aware that they have more knowledge than the average person are often very unaware that they do not have one tenth of the knowledge of all of the average persons put together. In this situation, for the intelligentsia to impose their notions on ordinary people is essentially to impose ignorance on knowledge."
"Credentialed ignorance is still ignorance."
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Thomas Sowell - "People have to be aware of the dangers in letting economic decisions be made through political processes."
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Winston Churchill - "Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery."
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George Gilder - "Socialist and totalitarian Governments are doomed to support the past, because creativity is unpredictable, it is also uncontrollable. If the politicians want to have central planning and command, they can not have dynamism and life. A managed economy is almost by definition a barren one.
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George Gilder - "The ambitious agenda of contemporary liberalism simply ensures that Government will do nothing well, except to expand itself as an obstacle of growth and innovation. Government best supports the future by refraining as much as possible from trying unduly to shape it."
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Francisco Capella - "Markets are never perfect because human beings are limited in their abilities; proposing state fixes to alleged problems that individuals cannot solve freely seems to forget that the state is also made up of humans; and perhaps not the best ones. ( Bureaucrats are not disinterested angels, and the worst might get to the top.)"
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George Washington - "Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force, like fire it is a dangerous servant, and a fearful master."
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Thomas Jefferson -- "I think we have more machinery of Government than is necessary, to many parasites living on the labor of the industrious."
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Thomas Jefferson -- "I sincerely believe with you that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, it's but swindling futurity on a large scale."
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Thomas Jefferson -- "The two enemies of the people are criminals and Government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first."
AUSTRIAN ECONOMICS ADDICT 