Your mind will answer most questions
if you learn to relax
and wait for the answer.
William S. Burroughs
Congratulations, NCAA College Football Champion Alabama!
Alabama convincingly completed a hat trick of national championships over the past 4 years routing previously unbeaten Notre Dame. Like many Catholic boys growing up, I was a die-hard Notre Dame fan. But Notre Dame, despite its impressive season record, was nearly a 10-point underdog going into the contest, and Alabama dominated from the get-go. Oh,well. It gives me an excuse to embed the greatest rock song about a state:
Economist John Taylor Brings in a Guest Lecturer
Notice how speechless Professor Taylor's 5-month granddaughter is on seeing how high the current national debt is. Scary, isn't it, sweetie? I think we need a change. No, not you, sweetheart: the country!
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| The Ghost of Our Future Under Obama Courtesy of John Taylor |
A Second JOTY Nomination: Stephen Sweeney
The New Jersey Senate President suggests that GOP Gov. Christie must have prayed for a Hurricane Sandy and the subsequent "recovery stimulus' dollars to compensate for Christie's allegedly failed state economic policies. Sweeney can't help it; the economically illiterate political hack still takes credit for boosting his hometown economy by hitting a baseball through a neighbor's window. (I'm sure economists get the joke; I've frequently referenced Bastiat's broken window fallacy in this blog.) It's not that Obama in a tight reelection race got a late boost from photo opps. (Chris Matthews had a notorious gaffe on this point.)
The "Secret Ingredients" in the Odious "Fiscal Cliff" Sausage
Remember the Hypocrite-in-Chief promised greater transparency? Keith Fitz-gerald writes: "According to Utah Senator Mike Lee, they only received the [152-page] bill six minutes before voting on it. "Not one single senator who voted for this bill had read it," he observed." And my dissertation chair thought I was long-winded...
What were some of the noxious ingredients in that slimy, fatty government sausage. Yet more corrupt Obama special-interest giveaways to Big Green Energy to start:
- A 10% tax break for everybody who buys an electric scooter or car up to $2,500
- $59 million in tax breaks for algae growers
- (and just in case you thought Obama's bank-bashing was sincere) a $9 billion tax break for big banks and manufacturers related to "active financing." You might have thought as long as Obama let the payroll tax holiday and Bush upper end tax cuts expire, Obama would let this 1997 tax break expire, but you would be wrong.
- $46 million for motor speedways
- $15 million in tax breaks for movies filmed in America and $20 million if they're filmed in low- income regions (I wonder if the half of workers whom pay income taxes will get a discount on tickets....)
- $199 million worth of tax breaks for rum makers and rum production ("Yo, ho, ho, and a bottle of...")
- tax-free financing for the redevelopment of lower Manhattan (after all, no one would ever, based on intrinsic merit, build in lower Manhattan, don't you know?)
More on Whether WWII Ended the Depression
Steve Horwitz and Michael McPhillips have written a review that complements Higgs' well-known work on this topic. There's a good discussion here of apples and oranges national statistics, the deviations from free markets: wage and price controls, the draft, rationing, crony relationships with Big Defense, etc. Other explanations suggest the importance of monetary versus fiscal policy. The authors concur with Higgs that the recovery had more to do with ceasing government intervention efforts.
Musical Interlude: My Favorite Groups
The Carpenters, "(Want You) Back in My Life Again"
