Archive for the ‘Economics’ Category
Stupid census commercial
Thursday, February 18th, 2010Have you heard that radio commercial encouraging people to participate in and cooperate with the census because it allows local, state, and federal governments to allocate money for schools and determine how many teachers a town needs and so forth? The narrator says there are four science teachers in this ...
Economics link of the day
Thursday, February 11th, 2010I really liked this article that I found from Reddit: Economics In Four Dimensions. Here are two good passages to entice you: The most complex factor in the study of economics is time. Because liberal and statist economic theory does not properly account for the fourth dimension, it rarely predicts economic ...
Campaign finance reform is pretty simple
Monday, January 25th, 2010Many of my friends and millions of people in the blogosphere/social-mediasphere have expressed their outrage and indignation at the Supreme Court's ruling that corporations can spend as much as they want to promote or oppose whatever political candidates or causes that they want. One of my friends said she was ...
One year of Obama crimes and failures
Tuesday, January 19th, 2010Barack Obama is already a terrible president, a war criminal who belongs in prison beside Dick Cheney and George W. Bush. He is an economic ignoramus who despises private enterprise, exalts the State over the individual, and dreams of a world in which the inert, gray, bureaucratic mediocrity of corporate-State ...
Fish in a barrel 6
Thursday, December 17th, 2009For some combination of reasons, the main one probably being the coming of the Second Great Depression and the need of so many people to save money, the exorbitant price of a college degree is being criticized and questioned more loudly and frequently than I can remember. For instance, Peter ...
The auto bailout money will not be repaid
Tuesday, December 15th, 2009And there will be more of it. Probably multiple times. Until the automotive industry is a de facto arm of the Imperial Federal Government. If you think this is not an explicit goal of the Obama regime, leave your address in the comments so I can mail you a tall, ...
Fish in a barrel 5
Wednesday, October 21st, 2009A Texas jury decided to sentence a murderer to death after consulting their Bibles during deliberation. People who lack a solid grasp of important socio-political issues (Statists) will use this revelation to distract from the real issue. The issue they will harp on is whether this represents some violation of ...
Quote of the day
Sunday, October 18th, 2009"Government has never increased the standard of living of one single human being in civilization's history." —Steve Wynn, Fox News Sunday, October 11, 2009
Free-market medicine link of the week
Sunday, October 11th, 2009Health Care: A Future Free-Market Alternative by Ross Levatter, published in the October 2009 issue of The Freeman. It is a relatively detailed description of Dr. Levatter's vision of the way the purchase and provision of health care would work in a free society: the way all other aspects of ...
Fish in a barrel 3
Wednesday, September 30th, 2009Nate Anderson of Ars Technica wrote, Licensed spectrum came into being for a reason. In the early days of radio, unlicensed radio stations in urban areas regularly got into "power wars" with rival stations, leading to plenty of static. Compared to this free-for-all, the licensing of radio stations in the US, ...
Obama’s speech about socialized medicine
Thursday, September 10th, 2009I didn't watch the Savior of America's speech to Congress about further socializing our health care and insurance industry because I already knew everything he was going to say. Why would I waste my time with it? He probably said our health care system is broken, that it's too costly ...
Pirates: orderly anarchists
Saturday, July 11th, 2009Libertarian psychologist and Skepticblagger Michael Shermer has an interesting review of Peter Leeson's new book, The Invisible Hook: The Hidden Economics of Pirates, in the July 9, 2009 issue of Nature. While neither Shermer, nor Leeson, nor I would defend pirate societies as the pinnacle of liberty and cultural progress, ...
Conservatism is fatally flawed
Sunday, June 14th, 2009Is capitalism fatally flawed? asks Paul McDonnold in the Christian Science Monitor. Recessions, like hurricanes, leave wreckage behind—bankrupt businesses, high unemployment, and sometimes even tattered philosophies. No, they don't. Inflationary booms leave bankrupt businesses and unemployment, not to mention devalued currency, behind. Recessions correct those mistakes. The only "tattered philosophy" I've ...
Obama stimulus plan fomenting trade war
Sunday, May 24th, 2009The Obama regime's short-sighted but typical "buy American" stimulus policies are beginning to foment a trade war between the United States and other countries. Ordered by Congress to "buy American" when spending money from the $787 billion stimulus package, the town of Peru, Ind., stunned its Canadian supplier by rejecting ...
If another recession follows, then the economy never recovered
Saturday, May 23rd, 2009Robert Gordon of the Business Cycle Dating Committee says our recession has just ended. He bases his proclamation on some pretty strong precedent, as Donal Luskin explains in the linked article. Gordon looked at the statistics for claims for unemployment benefits during the last several recessions and noticed that, historically, ...
Star Trek can’t calculate
Monday, May 11th, 2009I like Star Trek a lot despite its absurdly unrealistic vision of the future of humanity. In what is probably the funniest drama ever made, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, Admiral Kirk goes out to lunch with a woman in 20th-century San Francisco, and when the waiter brings the ...
Obama stimulus plan provides bubble for green jobs
Thursday, May 7th, 2009MSNBC reports, "Stimulus plan provides boost to green jobs" and Obama's "green adviser" has said, "Everyone is predicting growth in this sector." See? It's happening! The green bubble is expanding! The Imperial Federal Government is diverting resources from one bubble and pushing them into another. The Obama regime thinks it can ...
Austrian business cycle theory in action
Sunday, May 3rd, 2009The comments in this thread were pretty funny. In response to the video of half-built homes being demolished so that the building company could cut its losses in post-inflationary-boom California, commenter RWW said: A commenter in the YouTube thread says: wouldn't destroying homes help the housing market? the banks can take the ...
Consumer and tourist spending
Wednesday, April 15th, 2009One of the many fallacies I hear people on TV and radio repeat is that anything that increases consumer spending should be lauded because it's good for the economy. Tourism spending, sports-event-related spending, and the like are presented as being healthy and a great boon to the host city or ...
The Krugman Depression
Monday, April 13th, 2009This economics blagger asks: What name would you give to this econo-geddon? The Great Recession? Global financial meltdown? The Bush–Obama Depression? My answer: the Krugman Depression. I want to start calling the depression of 1929-1945 the Keynes Depression and the current one the Krugman Depression. Oh, our professional criminal class bears ...
Obamaism is Statism
Friday, April 10th, 2009Out of some strange curiosity I decided to peruse The New Yorker, probably because it is supposed to be a source of good artistic criticism, cultural-political commentary, and humor. One of the first things that caught my eye was "Obamaism" by George Packer. It is supposed to be a commentary ...
Books
Wednesday, April 8th, 2009When I leave my career in science research to produce something useful for the world, I want writing to be at the center of my professional endeavors (and still a major hobby as well). Analyzing policy, or economics, or science, or something else for some think tank, media outlet, biotech ...
Blagnet.net’s quiz of the day
Tuesday, April 7th, 2009Who said the following? It must be understood that toil alone makes for accomplishment and advancement, and righteous possession is the reward of toil, and its incentive. There is no progress except in the stimulus of competition. When competition—natural, fair, impelling competition—is suppressed, whether by law, compact or conspiracy, we halt the ...
Blagnet.net’s link of the day
Sunday, April 5th, 2009Despite the fact that I hardly have time to read and write as much as I want about political economy and philosophy, I am trying to make an effort to frequent my less-frequented blags, find new blags worth frequenting, and read about something other than economics (in both web pages ...
The next two bubbles
Wednesday, April 1st, 2009Based on the Obama regime's policies, both implemented and proposed, I think there is good reason to expect the American economy to experience unsustainable bubbles in the automotive industry and the "green" technology fields. There is ample reason to believe neither one is justified in receiving as much investment or ...
Rothbard on inflationary booms
Monday, March 30th, 2009From Chapter 3 of What Has Government Done To Our Money?, originally published in 1964. (This is from the 1980 version, so I'm not 100% positive this passage appeared verbatim in the 1964 edition—either way, it provides yet another example of the ability of free-market economists to predict and explain ...
The eternal truth of market principles
Saturday, March 28th, 2009As I understand it, one of the great philosophical contributions that Ludwig von Mises made to the world was not simply to explain why governmental perturbation of market forces doesn't work, but to explain that it can't work—he explained how the things that the State can achieve are limited by ...
My bank gives bailout money back
Saturday, March 7th, 2009Well, it's trying to. The bank I put my non-shiny currency in, TCF Bank, has filed paperwork to give its $361 million of bailout money back to the Imperial Federal Government. It's hard to imagine a libertarian advocating giving money to the government, but the executives at TCF know it ...
Misconceptions about credit and borrowing
Wednesday, March 4th, 2009Democratic politicians and bureaucrats, supporters of Obama's stimulus spending and potential financial-sector interventions, and believers in Keynesian socialism in general are quite adamant about "getting credit flowing again" and easing the pain of businesses by getting people to buy more stuff. I'm starting to think a lot of their misconceptions ...
Water shortage does not equal water scarcity
Wednesday, February 25th, 2009I liked this column by Chris Brown for the Ludwig von Mises Institute because it echoed some points I made in two previous posts: Water shortages and water-trading between states and Scarcity is not shortage. Some excerpts (italics in original): The government has blamed the shortage of water on drought and ...
Quote of the day
Thursday, February 19th, 2009Writes Robert Higgs: These [public–private] partnerships, which epitomize economic fascism, promise to waste resources on a wide front. The idea that politicians and politically appointed “experts,” in league with rent-seeking businessmen, can allocate resources more effectively than the private capital markets is a characteristic form of the folly that is leading ...
Mark Skousen on gross output
Saturday, February 7th, 2009Frequent reader kerrjac commented on my recent post, Saving is good, not bad, for American economy with this tidbit about the opinions of economist Mark Skousen. Responding to my comment that many people claim consumption is 70% of our GDP, he said, Recently I’ve been reading economist Mark Skousen, who has ...
Saving is good, not bad, for American economy
Sunday, February 1st, 2009I was pretty angered by this Associated Press article, Americans save just when economy needs their money, by Martin Crutsinger. The very reason that Western economies, especially the U.S.'s, have experienced bubbles that have burst and left many people with dying businesses, foreclosed homes, no jobs, and insufficient savings ...
Troubled assets explained
Saturday, January 31st, 2009Uncharacteristically, I already understood this banking and finance term on my own through reading and hearing about them, but John Carney gives a good explanation of what "troubled asset" means. More important is why it is a terrible idea for the government to buy them or guarantee them; far from ...
Quote and links of the day
Saturday, January 31st, 2009On the off-chance that you haven't read them, I thoroughly enjoyed this critique of Noam Chomsky and other communist idiots and the ensuing discussion of it at Austro-Athenian Empire. Roderick Long's involvement makes just about everything into a stimulating discussion, if it wasn't already. The quote of the day was provided ...
How to create jobs in a heartbeat
Thursday, January 29th, 2009So said a headline on MSN.com this morning. It links to an article at Slate.com. Wait, before I click on the link, let me guess! Hmmm...take even more money, even faster, away from individuals, and borrow or print even more money than ever before, and throw it at government works ...
Quote of the day
Thursday, January 22nd, 2009From bumbling idiot and Obama-worshipper Brad DeLong (page 12 of the linked article): Friedrich Hayek and Joseph Schumpeter led those "Austrian" economists who tried to build theories in which government attempts to cure recession caused more harm than good. Behind Hoover and Hayek stands the figure of Karl Marx, who critiqued ...
Water shortages and water-trading between states
Saturday, December 27th, 2008My former state of residence, Georgia, is in a severe drought. It has been for years. It has gotten worse and worse over the last couple of years. Naturally, only government intervention in the water market can cause a true shortage. As far as I understand it, governments in the ...
Jim Rogers calls most large U.S. banks “bankrupt”
Friday, December 12th, 2008Jim Rogers spoke at the Reuters Investment Outlook 2009 Summit: Without giving specific names, most of the significant American banks, the larger banks, are bankrupt, totally bankrupt. [...] What is outrageous economically and is outrageous morally is that normally in times like this, people who are competent and who saw it coming ...
Scarcity is not shortage
Thursday, December 11th, 2008The first lesson of economics is scarcity: There is never enough of anything to satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics. —Thomas Sowell I might only be an amateur student of economics, and a lazy one at that (I have totally ...
Barack Obama: window breaker extraordinaire 2
Sunday, December 7th, 2008From an Associated Press article: President-elect Barack Obama said Saturday that he wants to revive the economy and create jobs by upgrading roads, schools and energy efficiency in a public-works program whose scale has been unseen since construction of the interstate highway system in the 1950s. He offered no price estimate for ...
Science needs an economics revolution
Saturday, December 6th, 2008Here in the scientific research world, there is considered to be a vast dichotomy between the atmospheres and work environments in academic (university) research labs and private (big pharma and biotech) research labs. Whether it's true or not, I don't know. The impression is that in academia, you are free ...
Quote of the day
Friday, December 5th, 2008Bailout-related quote of the day: "The worst crime against working people is a company which fails to operate at a profit." —Samuel Gompers
Stabenow and Gettelfinger plead for bailout
Friday, December 5th, 2008On the radio this morning I heard a clip of Michigan Senator Debbie Stabenow, presumably in Washington, talking about the desperate need for a bailout of the automotive industry. I can't find an article or video with her dialogue, but this is very close to an exact quote from Stabenow's ...
Question about Peter Schiff’s advice
Thursday, December 4th, 2008In one of Peter Schiff's recent commentaries, he repeats a recommendation he's made many times over the last few years: Like GM, our economy is in desperate need of a restructuring. Spending must be replaced with savings, and consumption with production. The service sector must shrink and manufacturing must expand to ...
Chrysler exec makes a visit from Bizarro World
Thursday, December 4th, 2008Chrysler Vice Chairman Jim Press said something that was unintentionally hilarious, in a dark way. "If we have a catastrophic failure of one of these car companies, in this tender environment for the economy, it's a huge blow. It could trigger a depression." He is exactly wrong. Malinvestment in automobiles ...
More thoughts on the auto bailout
Wednesday, December 3rd, 2008All I hear about in the news segments of morning radio here in Michigan is how "we" desperately need a government bailout of the Big Three automakers, and how letting them go bankrupt will be a disaster for many industries other than Detroit automakers, and how it isn't fair for ...
Free markets would have no “gold standard”
Tuesday, November 18th, 2008The Mises Institute recently published a speech by Mark Thornton called "Monetary Freedom and Its Opposite". It was about how monetary freedom could be established, how it would benefit everyone except the "power elite," and how the Federal Reserve, with its monetary monopoly and inflationary fiat currency, destroy an economy's ...
Arnold Kling on credit default swaps
Sunday, November 16th, 2008Arnold Kling at EconLog wrote the clearest explanation I've heard yet of what a credit default swap is and how it could have led to so many financial losses in our current recession. It sounds like a correct explanation. Maybe it's too simple to be true; it seems impossible to ...
Peter Schiff’s predictions about Obama’s economy
Thursday, November 13th, 2008Peter Schiff needs a blag. Well, he has one, sort of; he publishes weekly commentaries at his website. I can't link to any of them, though, because they don't have URLs of their own. In his most recent one, "The Reagan Counterrevolution," he compares the relatively government-reducing ideology that won ...