Posterity!
You will never know how much it cost the present generation to preserve your freedom!
I hope you will make good use of it!
John Adams
Tweet of the Day
Krugman is just frustrated that Amazon sells discounted used book copies of certain Nobel laureate economists. http://t.co/c9JDizNDp8
— Ronald Guillemette (@raguillem) October 28, 2014
Hillary's arithmetic adds to the national debt, subtracts from economic growth, multiplies our long-term liabilities, divides the classes.
— Ronald Guillemette (@raguillem) October 28, 2014
Image of the Day |
| Via the Libertarian Catholic |
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| Pope Francis on "Gay Marriage" and the Secular Assault on the Family: Thumbs UP! Via ChurchMilitant.TV |
I was so annoyed about what I call Hillary Clinton's "You Didn't Hire Them" speech I sent a quick, unacknowledged email to the Cafe Hayek blogger over the weekend, one of my favorite free market economists, Don Boudreaux, who frequently takes on clueless politicians. In a recent post, he found the relevant quote self-evidently absurd:
Don’t let anybody tell you that it’s corporations and businesses that create jobs. You know that old theory, trickle-down economics. That has been tried, that has failed. It has failed rather spectacularly. One of the things my husband says when people ask him what he brought to Washington, he says I brought arithmetic.Speaking as someone with two math degrees, the Clintons don't know anything about arithmetic or economics: Hillary's policies add to the national debt, subtract from economic growth, multiply our long-term liabilities, and divide the classes. But Boudreaux thinks (and I concur) an earlier soundbite on the minimum wage (which I didn't hear until now) is even more galling:
Don’t let anybody tell you that raising the minimum wage will kill jobs. They always say that. I’ve been through that. My husband gave working families a raise in the 1990s [by signing a bill that raised the national minimum wage].Only Keynesian hubris can equate ordering businesses at the point of a gun to give unreimbursed money to a certain class of workers with a "raise". Bottom line, businesses only hire people to the point they are productive, expected to provide a net benefit. Three cooks, for example, won't make an egg boil any faster. Increasing the cost of a worker does not help the company earn more revenue; the company may not have the ability to raise prices in a competitive market. Market prices for labor under equilibrium of demand and supply do a far better job of valuing similar labor than some economically illiterate populist political whore picking some number out of his ass and taking credit for extorting companies and prospective workers; the reality is that he has arbitrarily prohibited a worker, whose skills don't provide net benefit to a company at that ill-conceived line in the sand, from gaining mutually satisfactory gainful employment.
Civil Asset Forfeiture Abuse: IRS Targets Small Business Owner's Cash Deposits
While my Dad was assigned to a South Texas air base during my high school years, we went on a rare family meal out to a Tex-Mex restaurant in Mirando City, Lala's Cafe. It was seemingly out in the middle of nowhere. Yet when we entered the restaurant, it was clear that we were in for a tasty meal: it was crowded, and delicious smells filled the air. I recall there was a wall of photos of famous patrons with the cafe's owner, including an assassinated President. The food was spectacular, well worth the wait. To this day, I prefer diners and cafes to high-class restaurants, although I now have to watch the carbs in comfort foods. As I recall, the original owner personally saw to each plate prepared in her place, and I have the greatest respect for hard-working small businessmen. (Rumors were that she had turned down the opportunity to open up restaurants is major metropolitan areas like Houston.)
Carole Hinders, an Iowa Mexican food restaurant owner, has a cash-only operation, but the IRS bureaucracy decided she was making too many cash deposits, which in their paranoia meant that she was trying to bypass regulations requiring reporting deposits of $10K or higher, so last year they seized her $33K bank account. Typically under civil forfeiture, the tables are turned: the burden of proof is on the victim of the State, and quite often the victims, who don't have the legal resources to take on a system that can print its own money and get foreign investors to pay its bills, give in to legalized extortion. One of my favorite organizations, the Institute for Justice, is representing the grandmother's case.
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California's Unconstitutional Prison System
Independent Institute Rates the Presidents
Facebook Corner
(LSF). Falling prices are the ultimate evil in Keynesianism, and companies who lower their prices are the scourge of humanity.
"Amazon is not, at least so far, acting like a monopolist, a dominant seller with the power to raise prices. Instead, it is acting as a monopsonist, a dominant buyer with the power to push prices down."
Krugman is just frustrated that Amazon sells discounted used book copies of certain Nobel laureate economists.
(The Libertarian Catholic). See Image of the Day.
Marriage is also a social and legal status, not only a sacrament. If it's not legally recognized, there are legal rights you are not entitled to.
The point is, as I've said in this group before, the State did not invent marriage; it was a preexisting social construct. To the extent the legal system supports the social context is one thing. However, when the law attempt to impose socially experimental policies in the private sector, it can have adverse effects on the social order.
Personally, I don't give a damn what activist gays, the political correctness police, or the fascist Statists call their mix-or-match mutated construct of "marriage". But the true libertarian, contrary to above commenters, does NOT use the State to impose its failed policies on the local community, and he supports the right of free association, including those communities who support the traditional concepts of marriage and family. For fascist judges to impose mutated constructs on the local community is unconscionable. This is not an issue of outlawing voluntary relationships, it's about the fascist State overwriting community values. If gays want to migrate to States that accommodate mutated concepts of marriage, fine; that's part of the free market system. If they want to persuade fellow citizens to change social norms, go ahead. But there's no contradiction in saying as a libertarian, I want to live in a state supporting traditional values.
(separate)
Comment to the troll OP: no self-respecting libertarian would ever agree to the idea that the State "confers" rights; this concept is a variation of "positive rights"--things a State must do for me vs. things a State can't take away from us. You already have the right to contract; for example, you can always agree to leave your estate to your purple Martian lover and vice-versa. If someone I love is prohibited from visiting me in the hospital, it's a violation of my right of association. Ir's one thing if the State prohibits my right to contract or association with others, but it's nonsense to argue the State provides those rights; it merely recognizes them.
Proposals
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| Courtesy of Glenn McCoy and Townhall |
Linda Ronstadt, "Tumbling Dice"
