Love works in miracles every day:
such as weakening the strong, and stretching the weak;
making fools of the wise, and wise men of fools;
favouring the passions,
destroying reason, and in a word,
turning everything topsy-turvy.
Marguerite De Valois
Pro-Liberty Thought of the Day
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| Via LFC |
Food Politics
First, there was the good news that the special interest GMO labeling mandate scheme that organic farmers and their allies tried to impose in Washington state went down to crushing defeat. The intent, of course, was to suggest that GMO foods are defective or unhealthy; GMO technology enables higher yields, fewer chemicals and/or improved nutrition in food production; in fact, the preponderance of scientific studies show that GMO foods are as safe and at least as nutritious as conventional/organic alternatives.
Facebook Corner
(LFC). They call us self centered like its supposed to be some kind of insult.
Yup. By arguing for the individual rights for all people, we are "selfish", but imposing one's elitist, paternalistic, morally corrupt ideology of legal plunder is "more equal"...
(Milton Friedman group)."The United States had free immigration throughout the 19th century, and up until World War I really. But that was possibly because the United States was not a welfare state. When my parents came to the Untied States at the end of the 19th century, they didn't get any welfare when they got here. They were able to exist by the charity of relatives who had come here earlier. They were able to make their way in a free market, and therefore people only came here, people came to the United States to use their resources and their capacities, and were productive and help themselves and help the rest of the people who were here. But, if you have a welfare state, in which immigrants, as now, are eligible to receive relief, to receive benefits and so on, you have people immigrating, not in order to use their resources in a productive way, but as it were to be parasites on the rest of the society. And unfortunately, there are an infinite supply of people who want to live on someone else's expense. And so, the result of that is unfortunately completely free immigration, in my opinion, in a welfare state." --Milton Friedman
I disagree with Friedman on this point. The free market works. Why do we assume today's immigrants are motivated by less worthy reasons? The proper response to Friedman's concerns is to reform the welfare state, not to rationalize anti-growth caps on immigrants. Friedman no doubt elsewhere recognizes the contributions of immigrants in a more open economy. But knowing the funding of the welfare state is problematic at best, I'm not sure I would migrate for that; I would rather move to a more robust, free economy. Let me add on the distribution question, I think we have to honor the principle of equal protection and not discriminate among residents. The answer is to address morally hazardous policy, not rationalize protectionist, xenophobic policy.
(Jeffrey Tucker) The charge on Senator Rand's plagiarism is really absurd. That it is a controversy at all shows how badly the elites want to skewer him..
The hypocritical left: "You didn't write that..."
(LFC). "state law requires that college credit be given to interns in exchange for unpaid work." The minimum wage is $8, but many workers just starting out are only worth $7 or $6. Due to minimum wage laws, employers can't pay them ANYTHING, they must volunteer if they want work experience. And now this law makes it even worse: They must pay thousands of dollars to a college in order to work. (Teal)
All of these intrusive rules and regulations serve to discourage internships, They are just as economically counterproductive as wage price fixing; it serves to protect the existing labor force. Job experience is fungible, but all these regulators achieve is a surplus of inexperienced young people. Life is hell in the People's Republic of California.
(LFC). 'Suppose the money supply in a economy is fixed at 1000 units of currency. And the only goods available are 1 kg of apples. Now suppose the supply of apples goes up to 2 kg with no increase in total money in the system. Then with the same amount of money chasing the goods, there would be deflation. On a large enough scale like national economies, there would be recessions. In fact, this was the reason the gold standard had to be abandoned. If done responsibly, introducing fiat currency into a system by means of a central bank keeps the economy going. The central bank system fails only insofar as that sometimes money printed is more than the corresponding increase in the production.'
So many things wrong with this problem statement, it's difficult to know where to start. First, there is the unstated assumption that deflation is a bad thing. In fact, as in the IT industry, costs and prices go down over time. Don't forget the law of supply and demand: lower prices result in higher demand. There are a number of good posts at mises.org which look at the bugaboo of the deflationary spiral. Most depressions have actually seen inflation, and during the Gilded Age we experienced mild deflation but among the highest growth rates in US history--before the creation of the Fed in 1913. The crises involving the gold standard had more to do with wartime super-spending at the expense of the domestic economy. But inflating the monetary base has the effect of lowering the real costs of, say, labor, which is not different in concept from a lower market-clearing rate under a more stable currency. Printing irredeemable green paper doesn't add a widget to the economy. Bottom line; manipulation of the monetary system is no better than dysfunctional fiscal manipulation by the State.
Political Cartoon
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| Courtesy of Eric Allie via LFC |
Musical Interlude: My Ipod Shuffle Series
Rick Astley, "Cry for Help"
