Harvard Students Brand Betsy DeVos a 'White Supremacist' — in the Middle of Her Speech!
Yawn. I won't wait for a serious white paper from this group. God Knows (but Government Doesn't) - Cafe Hayek "This note is to a first-year economics graduate student who writes that he “appreciates the role of markets and prices” but not as “blindly” as I do. Mr. Will Keith Mr. Keith: Thanks for your e-mail. Arguing that government “must have flexibility to raise the minimum wage when necessary,” you challenge my “extreme position” against any and all minimum wages. “Isn’t it true,” you ask, “that employers sometimes have enough power to keep pay too low for workers?” My answer is yes. Of course reality is riddled with individual situations, spread out across locales and time, when wages for some workers could be forced up by an all-knowing god without inflicting harm on any of those workers – that is, with all of the costs of the higher wages paid for by their currently too-powerful employers. Reality is also, no doubt, riddled with individual situations in which wages are, by the same standard of perfection, too high: in such situations god could force down the wages of those currently too-powerful workers and thereby improve the economic welfare of employers and consumers. Indeed, reality is riddled with all manner of imperfections that god could correct in order to increase human welfare. But government isn’t god. Government possesses neither god’s omniscience nor god’s benevolence. If government is not to be a tool of special interests and tyrants, it must be constituted to operate, not as we would want a benevolent superior being to govern us, but as a rule-bound agent. And one rule that has repeatedly proven its worth is that prices and wages set on markets – especially on markets in which there are no government-erected barriers to the entry of either sellers or buyers – work over time far better than government-set or constrained prices and wages to improve the lives of market participants, including workers. If minimum wages are justified as tools to be used to deal with particular instances of labor markets not working ideally, then why stop there? If government is to be trusted to obstruct the pricing mechanism for low-skilled workers, why not trust government also to obstruct the pricing mechanism for all goods and services? And if government is to be trusted with these powers to intervene into our commercial affairs, why not trust it to intervene also into our non-commercial affairs? Why not, for example, trust government to dictate what adults may and may not do consensually to each other in the privacy of their own beds? After all, I’m sure that reality is riddled with particular cases of men and women who, because of their imperfect information or weak wills, consent to sexual activities that god knows are best avoided in those particular situations. Do you trust government to be in your bedroom? Until and unless you offer a compelling reason to believe that government officials are consistently better than are private entrepreneurs and workers at assessing all the details and trade-offs prevailing at each moment in labor markets, intoning “labor markets are imperfect” doesn’t come close to justifying minimum wages. Sincerely, Donald J. Boudreaux Professor of Economics and Martha and Nelson Getchell Chair for the Study of Free Market Capitalism at the Mercatus Center George Mason University Fairfax, VA 22030" Instant replay in the video below: Plane forced to make emergency landing as engine disintegrates mid-air
Engines disintegrating would be right below wings falling off. More than a million people join ranks of very wealthy after stock markets boom
But this does not change the Pareto distribution curve of who possesses that wealth because only a vanishingly small number of people are highly productive. We need to ensure individuals have the ownership mechanisms to maximize their future wealth and reduce the current barriers to wealth for less wealthy persons. The cure for wealth inequality is a two-part solution: First, help the people not in the high end of the Pareto distribution curve to save earned income in personal accounts and invest those savings in assets. Those accounts should be protected against creditors, protected against taxation, transferable upon death, owned by the individual investing the money but protected from access until the person needs the money. So, they should resemble Social Security accounts in protection; and Roth IRA accounts in ownership and taxation. We may also need to have some of these assets annuitized once the individual begins to access the funds. Which might mean the retirement portion of these assets are annuitized while the personally saved/invested are not. Second, eliminate the restrictive land use planning/zoning rules which are causing the wealth inequality. Housing and Wealth Inequality As the article infers, we need to both strictly limit land use planning and other restrictive land use rules, and we need to make less wealthy Americans "capitalists," to ensure they become rich. It will only be through fewer restrictions on land use, and asset ownership that all Americans can participate in the amazing wealth increase, we are experiencing. The Spanish government produces a primer on how to create support for Catalonian secession9/30/2017 Catalans take to the streets in protest ahead of ‘illegal’ referendum
Take one smoldering secession issue threaten a mass police presence, demand no vote be taken, rattle sabers that anyone supporting will be imprisoned, confiscate ballot boxes and, viola, everyone, and their cousin turns out to vote for secession. Way to go Rajoy! Woohoo! Elon Musk’s idea for commercial rocket travel on Earth would be a logistical nightmare
Musk's plan has to do with Musk accessing billion of dollars in government subsidies in a bait and slowly switch maneuver. Musk is brilliant at rent seeking. His entire business model is based on it and will continue to be. Whether the company is Tesla, or Hyperloop, or rocket transit, Musk only cares about getting his hands on as much government money as he can. The results of these companies always underwhelm, but the man is a genius at hyping the underwhelming output. Hooray for Catalonia! Despite Police Action, Vote Will Take Place, Tractors Roll In | MishTalk
I am all in on Catalonian independence. Good luck, God bless, and America should stand up for its Declaration of Independence and support the Catalonians. Suspected SS guard, 95, confronted over WW2 claims The real takeaway is not that these men might have done great evil, but that all humans can do precisely the evil alleged here. That must be fundamentally understood, accepted, and each of us must work daily to make sure we never allow that evil to flourish and ultimately to control us. That is the failure which led to the horrors of Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, the USSR, Maoist China, and many other atrocities. We like to believe we would be the hero but that is unlikely for the average man today as it was for the average man during any of these atrocities. The consequence for such a stand are too severe. 20th Century Democide |
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