Many people claim the U.S. should be more like Sweden and give more benefits. Should we? In this short video clip, Free To Choose Media Executive Editor and Cato Institute Senior Fellow Johan Norberg explains how Sweden became successful first, and how expanded government actually pulled them down.
We all know bootleggers and Baptists rarely see eye to eye. Ask one group and its members will probably tell you they despise the other group. Yet, when it comes to government regulation, both bootleggers and Baptists work together. Prof. Bruce Yandle explains that this happens because both groups actually desire the same outcome. The Baptists benefit, for example, from laws that make the sale of alcoholic beverages illegal on Sundays. Bootleggers benefit because now they can sell alcohol on Sundays. Groups who would never meet together but both desire the same outcome can often be found upon closer examination of many government regulations. Prof. Yandle demonstrates how environmental regulations fit into the bootlegger-Baptist theory.
As technological developments increased farm yields over the last two centuries, the share of the US population employed in agriculture fell from around 90 percent to around 2 percent. The lay American public supposes that when workers lose their jobs, we become worse off — they suffer from what economist Bryan Caplan calls the 'make-work' bias. But would anyone prefer to live in a society in which many went hungry and no one enjoyed the wealth, financial security, job growth, and innovation created as all those workers lost their farm jobs? Follow Caplan, author of The Myth of the Rational Voter, as he explains the gap between the public's opinion and the economist's facts. In this video, Caplan talks about the merits and demerits of 'making work' - instead of letting individuals find work.► Learn More:-Frederic Bastiat contends that to aim to increase the proportion of effort to output is to imitate Sisyphus in his hopeless attempt to move a stone up a hill: http://mises.org/daily/6157/Industry-...-Daniel J. Mitchell explains the fallacy that government creates jobs: http://www.cato.org/publications/comm...
Well, feature the chart that Professor Piketty publishes showing inequality in America. This appears in the book at figure 9.8; a similar version, shown alongside here, is offered on his Web site. It’s an illuminating chart. It shows the share of national income of the top decile of the population. It started the century at a bit above 40% and edged above 45% in the Roaring Twenties. It plunged during the Great Depression and edged down in World War II, and then steadied out, until we get to the 1970s. Something happened then that caused income inequality to start soaring. The top decile's share of income went from something like 33% in 1971 to above 47% by 2010.
Hmmm. What could account for that? Could it be the last broadcast of the “Lawrence Welk Show?” Or the blast off of the Apollo 14 mission to the Moon? Or could it have something to do with the mysterious D.B. Cooper, who bailed out of the plane he hijacked, never to be seen again? A timeline of 1971 offers so many possibilities. But, say, what about the possibility that it was in the middle of 1971, in August, that America closed the gold window at which it was supposed to redeem in specie dollars presented by foreign central banks. That was the default that ended the era of the Bretton Woods monetary system.
That’s the default that opened the age of fiat money. Or the era that President Nixon supposedly summed up in with Milton Friedman’s immortal words, “We’re all Keynesians now.” This is an age that has seen a sharp change in unemployment patterns. Before this date, unemployment was, by today’s standards, low. This was a pattern that held in Europe (these columns wrote about it in “George Soros’ Two Cents”) and in America (“Yellen’s Missing Jobs”). From 1947 to 1971, unemployment in America ran at the average rate of 4.7%; since 1971 the average unemployment rate has averaged 6.4%. Could this have been a factor in the soaring income inequality that also emerged in the age of fiat money?
This is the question the liberals don’t want to discuss, even acknowledge…
There is an irony here for Monsieur Piketty. It was France who gave us Jacques Rueff, the economist who had the clearest comprehension of the importance of sound money based on gold specie. He was, among other things, an adviser of Charles De Gaulle. It was De Gaulle who in 1965, called a thousand newspapermen together and spoke of the importance of gold as the central element of an international monetary system that would put large and small, rich and poor nations on the same plane. We ran the complete text of Professor Piketty’s book “Capital” through the Sun’s own “Electrically-operated Savvy Sifter” and were unable to find, even once, the name of Rueff.
Hayek understood that the need for political opportunism and intellectual laziness of the term social justice was a pernicious philosophical claim—meaning freedom must be sacrificed in order redistribute income. Ultimately social justice is about the state amassing ever increasing power in order to do “good things” What are good things? Whatever the champions of ‘social justice’ decide this week.
The borders of Europe have been static since the breakups of the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, and the reunification of Germany, but look set to shift shortly, if the Duma in Moscow ratifies the stated desire of a Crimean majority to quit Ukraine for Russia. But a broader perspective, taking into account the past 1,000 years of European history, shows that change on the continent has been a near-constant.Watch on Loiter.co as Centennia Historical Atlas software condenses Europe’s history into a 3 ½-minute video representing the shifting borders from A.D. 1,000 through 2003:
Sit back and enjoy this rousing Boiling Frogs Post Roundtable discussion where James Corbett, Guillermo Jimenez and Sibel Edmonds ask (and attempt to answer) the vexing question of “why people believe stupid things?” Is it willful ignorance? Moral cowardice? Deference to authority figures’ palatable lies and tasty untruths? Intellectual sloth or cognitive laziness? Or is it a self-imposed mental imprisonment of not wanting to face the inconvenient and unpleasant reality outside their comfort zone matrix? So put on your critical thinking cap and join in the reflective conversation.
Literature and legend often reflect their culture. Some themes, like that of rulers imposing coercive power, or of individuals rising up against tyrants, are as relevant today as they were in antiquity. Suzanne Collins drew on Greek mythology's story of the Minotaur and on the legend of Spartacus in ancient Rome as she created the Hunger Games series. Her hero, like the heroes in these stories, does not seek her own power or profit but is standing up against a violent and tyrannical government. "People everywhere yearn for the freedom to pursue their own goals and dreams," says Prof. Amy Sturgis. Even though the themes are ancient, stories like the Hunger Games resonate with readers because the anxieties and fears they portray are real and relevant. "These stories aren't just entertainment," Sturgis says. "They are reflections of who and what we are." Do the themes in these stories resonate with you? Why?
The essence of the this-time-is-different syndrome is simple. It is rooted in the firmly held belief that financial crises are things that happen to other people in other countries at other times; crises do not happen to us, here and now. We are doing things better, we are smarter, we have learned from past mistakes. The old rules of valuation no longer apply. The current boom, unlike the many booms that preceded catastrophic collapses in the past (even in our country), is built on sound fundamentals, structural reforms, technological innovation, and good policy. Or so the story goes
