Keynes and the Pyramids - Paul A. Cantor - Mises Daily

Keynes and the Pyramids - Paul A. Cantor - Mises Daily: "[Keynes] prefers to turn matters over to the government and let it produce things that nobody wants — and at as extravagant a cost as possible. Keynes's preference for pyramids over railways is emblematic of statist thinking in general — he values the static over the dynamic; he champions monuments to state power over enterprises that might actually get ordinary people where they want to go."

V-OBL Day | David Rittgers | Cato Institute: Commentary

V-OBL Day | David Rittgers | Cato Institute: Commentary: "Bin Laden's death underscores the failure of al Qaeda to achieve its impossible goal: establishing a global caliphate living under his nihilistic worldview. As soon as al Qaeda establishes a return address for American special operations personnel to raid or bomb, they will be pummeled into irrelevance. Al Qaeda itself does not present an existential threat — but they can provoke us into sacrificing our blood, treasure and liberties to the point that we no longer recognize the society we set out to defend."

Six Fundamental Errors of the Current Orthodoxy - Robert Higgs - Mises Daily

Six Fundamental Errors of the Current Orthodoxy - Robert Higgs - Mises Daily: "In his view, one cannot have, say, too many houses and apartments. Increasing the spending for houses and apartments is, he thinks, always good whenever the economy has unemployed resources, regardless of how many houses and apartments now stand vacant and regardless of what specific kinds of resources are unemployed and where they are located in this vast land. Although the unemployed laborers may be skilled silver miners in Idaho, it is supposedly still a good thing if somehow the demand for condos is increased in Palm Beach, because for the vulgar Keynesian there are no individual classes of laborers or separate labor markets: labor is labor is labor. If someone — whatever his skills, preferences, or location — is unemployed, then in this framework of thought we may expect to put him back to work by increasing aggregate demand sufficiently, regardless of what we happen to spend the money for, whether it be cosmetics or computers."

"The workers seemingly produce without the aid of capital! If pressed, the vulgar Keynesian admits that the workers use capital, but he insists that the capital stock may be taken as 'given' and fixed in the short run."

"He fails to comprehend that it is a crucial relative price — namely, the price of goods available now relative to goods available in the future. Remember, he does not think in terms of relative prices at all, so it is entirely natural that he fails to recognize how the rate of interest affects the choice between current consumption and saving — that is, acting so as to make possible more future consumption by not consuming current income. In a free market, a reduction in the rate of interest reflects a desire to shift more consumption from the present to the future."

Global Warming Flatliners | Patrick J. Michaels | Cato Institute: Commentary

Global Warming Flatliners | Patrick J. Michaels | Cato Institute: Commentary: "We don't shell out multimillion-dollar grants to people who say something isn't a problem. Recipients of this largess peer-review each other's papers. There's a lot of incentive to give a bad review to a manuscript downplaying the issue and to give a great one to the paper describing an upcoming apocalypse."

WSJ-NBC Poll: Making the False Case for Tax Increases | William Poole | Cato Institute: Commentary

WSJ-NBC Poll: Making the False Case for Tax Increases | William Poole | Cato Institute: Commentary: "The problem is that respondents were not forced to select some way to solve the problem."

"Perhaps the question might be, 'Should tax rates on upper-income families be increased even though doing so might lead small businesses to hire fewer workers?' We can ask economists to study the effects on employment of upper-bracket increases, but without the second part of the question, most respondents who are not in the upper brackets will, of course, favor taxing someone else if there is no cost to them."

"here is another poll question: 'Should retirees accept modest reductions in their current benefits or should the entire burden of these benefits be borne by their children and grandchildren in the form of higher taxes?'"

"Polls like the Wall Street Journal-NBC poll are meant to illuminate public attitudes toward many topics. When it comes to budgetary issues, questions should always include options that address the budget problem. There is no free lunch.

Is it too much to ask that poll designers understand that 'both' is not an admissible answer?"