Irrationally held truths may be more harmful than reasoned errors.
Thomas H. Huxley
Guest Blog Excerpt of the Day
Keynesian economics has a long track record of failure. It didn’t work for Hoover and Roosevelt in the 1930s. It didn’t work for Nixon, Ford, and Carter in the 1970s. It didn’t work for Japan in the 1990s. And it hasn’t worked this century for either Bush or Obama.
But politicians love Keynesian theory because it tells them that their vice is a virtue. They’re not buying votes with other people’s money, they’re “stimulating” the economy!- Dan Mitchell, Cato InstituteThe Unused Taxpayer-Paid Marina to Nowhere
$12M marina built in the aftermath of Katrina, located on an island without land routes, costing over $2M/year to operate, with no contractor bids to date: A new marina project was initially rejected by FEMA, but... “Port Eads is in a floodplain area, and you can't use federal assets in a floodplain area -- well, it is, and we did,” Turner said. Only the profligate federal government could build a marina on an isolated island thinking if you build it, business will come.... Field of politician's earmark dreams. HT Citizens Against Government Waste
Facebook Corner
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Laissez Faire Capitalism You mean wall street who gets government privilege in their favor, thus intervention?
He's confusing the market with the mutant rent-seeking creature bred by dysfunctional government regulation.
(from Economic Freedom). Happy National Book Lover's Day! What's your favorite book that has been censored? "There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all."- Oscar Wilde
Animal Farm
Libertarian.org promoted a recent post, The State Is Not a Family
Michelle wanted us to sign a Father's Day card for Barack? What a piece of work... No doubt since her husband has created so many government dependents, they might think he's their daddy. I know the Founding Fathers; they believed in freedom and opportunity, limited government, not morally hazardous policies. Barack is no father of this country.
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You are missing the point: the politician creates his own disease and then argues that he can cure it...
(LFC). When I was young, my parents told me that life isn't a popularity contest, I shouldn't jump off a bridge just because everyone else is doing it, and I should stand up to bullies, even if they're popular. But they also told me democracy is the way society should be run and that I should do what the police tell me. When I got older, I realized that popular kids can be tough bullies, but popular adults can be tougher bullies. (Teal)
One of the major problems we face is the well-known problem of concentrated benefits and diffuse costs, which one could see in a political context. Take, for instance, sugar policy. The domestic sugar producers are few in number; they oppose free market policies, which mean American consumers pay above world prices. They don't have to win over most Americans that high sugar prices are a good thing; they lobby politicians, rationalizing say that it's saving jobs in the domestic sugar industry. The average consumer may not buy that much sugar and may not be super-motivated to quibble over say a few cents a pound. But it hurts American food companies, bakeries, etc., whom find themselves with noncompetitive high costs--and may be motivated to move production where they have access to lower-cost sugar; these companies have domestic jobs, too. Listen as lawmakers try to nickel or dime you by stealth, "no-cost" tax increases--Warren Buffett won't even feel a modestly higher income tax rate, investors won't notice a tiny transaction tax, etc. We all won't feel a 2% inflation rate as the interest price-fixing Federal Reserve assures us. You win elections by telling people what they want to hear, by avoiding tough, unpopular stands, by kicking the can down the road. Bullying is more subtle when it comes to politics--but we have a textbook example where Democrats demonize Tea Partiers as anti-government extremists. I recently saw a clip of a stock market analyst having a meltdown over Rand Paul's opposition to the nomination of Yellen to replace Bernanke as Fed Reserve chief. It is interesting watching one-party rule in Illinois try to deal with the state's chronically underfunded pension system as the chickens come home to roost over kicking the can down the road.
I know we're told a lot of lies in school, but the greatest of them all it probably that democracy is the best way to ensure liberty and freedom. But what is democracy other than majority rule? And how can we not acknowledge that that's what led us into slavery, the trail of tears, Japanese internment, Jim Crow, etc? It's easy to see when you look at things on ethnic lines because we know that for so much of or history white people have been the majority(or at least had the majority of power) and have been able to use democracy to vote to suppress the rights of ethnic minorities if it was their whim. Democracy is a horrible system of government. If we must have government (and I'm growing less enamored with the idea by the day) then yes, we should have democratically elected representatives. But they should be bound to respect the rights of individuals, who are in actuality the ultimate minority.
Well, just a little pushback here. I do think it's tougher to sustain in foreign intervention policy under a more liberalized (vs. authoritarian) form of government, especially under conscription. The demagogue rails against an invented a straw man; he exploits domestic discontent, say, with economic uncertainty; he campaigns on vacuous appeals to "change" against the status quo and links his opponent to the status quo. As I've suggested in other comments, the primary issue is a breakdown in judicial protections of individual liberty. I have particularly noted that Footnote 4 all but abandoned economic liberty protection against majoritarian assault. We now see the realization of anti-federalists' fears in the enumeration of specific liberties, now seen as mere narrowly-defined exceptions to Statist hegemony. We are left to checks and balances between the Congress and White House--and end up with things like the 111th Congress. How do we address these issues? I recommend Constitutional reforms--limitations to government service (including nonrenewable contracts), budget reforms (including debt paydown mandate, super-majority votes for government deficit spending, and transparency in budgets, particularly unfunded liabilities), and repeal initiatives against laws (like ObamaCare).
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False--typical "progressive troll" nonsense. Free trade works, period. Free markets, of course, would benefit without artificial protectionist restrictions on labor and other resources. Most countries have imposed protectionist restrictions on labor, e.g.., work visas or immigration caps, which are unacceptable in principle. The point is artificial markets created by the hubris of central planners are inferior to the invisible hand, spontaneous order.
Ronald, I am neither progressive, nor a troll. I am simply accounting for the fact that free trade requires free movement of capital AND labor. You are leaving that out. And thats fine, if you don't care about countries. But I see a stark difference between this country (even as bad as it is now) and say Nigeria, or South Africa or Egypt. There are differences there, and they are worth preserving. But with the free movement of labor, those differences will not be preserved and we, as a nation, will certainly be brought low because of it.
Utter nonsense, [discussant]. I'm not leaving anything out--it depends on the nature of supply and demand and the the specific market. This is the same sort of mercantilistic nonsense offered by paleoconservative hacks, like Pat Buchanan. Companies could create foreign subsidiaries in Mexico and elsewhere before free trade pacts. Production becomes more efficient over time, period. You are implying labor is the only salient cost; there are also certain logistic advantages to domestic production, etc. Yes, [discussant], he is implicitly arguing protectionist immigration policies. He has a simplistic zero-sum static view of the economy like many "progressives". If you read his other comments, he's basically suggesting nonsense like your grandkids will need to migrate to China to find jobs as household help for Chinese millionaires, mainly because he doesn't trust the growth under dynamic conditions of free markets and free trade.
(Milton Friedman group): "Industrial progress, mechanical improvement, all of the great wonders of the modern era have meant little to the wealthy.
The rich in ancient Greece would have benefited hardly at all from modern plumbing — running servants replaced running water.
Television and radio — the patricians of Rome could enjoy the leading musicians and actors in their home, could have the leading artists as domestic retainers.
Ready-to-wear clothing, supermarkets — all these and many other modern developments would have added little to their life.
They would have welcomed the improvements in transportation and in medicine, but for the rest, the great achievements of western capitalism have rebounded primarily to the benefit of the ordinary person.
These achievements have made available to the masses conveniences and amenities that were previously the exclusive prerogative of the rich and powerful." --Milton Friedman
It reminds me of how I paid $1000 or so to buy one of the first VCR's. With a year or two, economies of scale drove prices down to a fraction of that, within the budgets of most households. Obviously I would have preferred a lower cost, but I had compensatory benefits in the interim and the unit lasted for years.
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| Via Bastiat Institute I believe the image figures are Bastiat, Spooner, Rothbard, and Jeff Tucker |
Most of the classical liberals like Bastiat, Mises, and Hayek were decidedly not anarchists. Minarchists do not accept ruling over the economy (beyond, say, ensuring free markets among the U.S. states vs. state protectionist measures). Obviously unalienable rights need to be secured, but there are diminishing returns to the scope of government, even in core functionality. We don't favor activist intervention in economic or foreign policy.
"But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain - that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it." - Lysander Spooner
Enjoy your piece of paper. At any minute, it's going to spring up and save you.
Obviously we've had checks and balances that have had breakdowns over the years; FDR had huge Congressional majorities and tried to intimidate SCOTUS when it got in the way of his central planning initiatives. Sooner or later the government bubble will burst, making Constitutional reform politically feasible--notice recent victories by more conservative parties in Australia and Europe. But if minarchism has failed to hold over time, anarchism is sheer fantasy
(re: Cato article cited above)
Yes! Yes! So well said. And Politicians also hate Austrian theory because it tells them that their vice IS a vice. And that the best way to get markets to grow is to LEAVE THEM ALONE!
Sorry, its been tried before without success
Not just Austrian theory, but any variant of classical liberalism. I see you have a progressive troll reply, implying free market theory "has been tried before"--obviously no background in US economic history, because we have never been laissez-faire. However, we did experience our highest growth during the lesser-restricted Gilded Age.
Comment on Sen. Lee'a Working Family Flexibility proposal:
I don't like the part of giving employers rules over how to compensate their employees; that should be decided by the market. Why not repeal double standards in federal labor law, period?
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Wait--the choice is between groups needing brains?
Political Cartoon
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Musical Interlude: My Ipod Shuffle Series
Climax, "Precious and Few"
