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Evidence and Denial | Richard W. Rahn | Cato Institute: Commentary: "Keynesian economics, practiced during the late 1960s and 1970s, became thoroughly discredited with the stagflation of the 1970s — which, in theory, was impossible under the old model — and the subsequent Reagan supply-side boom."
"The economy performed better under Reagan's supply-side policies than President Carter's economic team had forecast it would if their man had been re-elected and continued his high-tax, Keynesian policies. The economy is now performing worse than Mr. Obama's economic team forecast with its Keynesian policies."
Thursday, September 02, 2010
Congress Ignores Middle-Class Service Sector | Daniel Griswold | Cato Institute: Commentary
Congress Ignores Middle-Class Service Sector | Daniel Griswold | Cato Institute: Commentary: "American factories can churn out all that stuff with fewer workers because the typical worker is so much more productive than in decades past. Workers today are better educated and armed with cutting-edge equipment, computing power and production methods that enable them to produce far more in an hour of work than their predecessors. Rising productivity is the essence of progress and the foundation of rising living standards.
Manufacturing does represent a smaller share of total employment and output than in decades past, but this is inevitable in an advanced economy. Every rich nation in the world has followed the same path. Manufacturing tends to peak as a share of the economy when per capita income reaches about $15,000. Beyond that, every nation can be said to be deindustrializing."
"Since the early 1990s, two-thirds of the net new jobs created have been in service sectors where the average pay is higher than in manufacturing."
"In 1900, 40 percent of American families earned their living on the farm. Today, fewer than 2 percent of Americans are employed in the agricultural sector. Yet we remain a global leader in agricultural production.
Despite the loss of millions of agricultural jobs in the past century, our fantastically more productive farms continue to produce record output. American farmers today produce twice as much milk as they did in 1900, more than three times as much pork, more than three times as many eggs, nearly four times as much wheat, more than four times as much beef, five times as much corn and eight times as much chicken as a century ago.
Soaring productivity in agriculture and manufacturing has made the goods produced in those sectors more affordable for all Americans. The relative decline of those sectors has freed workers and capital"
Manufacturing does represent a smaller share of total employment and output than in decades past, but this is inevitable in an advanced economy. Every rich nation in the world has followed the same path. Manufacturing tends to peak as a share of the economy when per capita income reaches about $15,000. Beyond that, every nation can be said to be deindustrializing."
"Since the early 1990s, two-thirds of the net new jobs created have been in service sectors where the average pay is higher than in manufacturing."
"In 1900, 40 percent of American families earned their living on the farm. Today, fewer than 2 percent of Americans are employed in the agricultural sector. Yet we remain a global leader in agricultural production.
Despite the loss of millions of agricultural jobs in the past century, our fantastically more productive farms continue to produce record output. American farmers today produce twice as much milk as they did in 1900, more than three times as much pork, more than three times as many eggs, nearly four times as much wheat, more than four times as much beef, five times as much corn and eight times as much chicken as a century ago.
Soaring productivity in agriculture and manufacturing has made the goods produced in those sectors more affordable for all Americans. The relative decline of those sectors has freed workers and capital"
Russ Feingold: In the News - Press Releases
Russ Feingold: In the News - Press Releases: "Included in the CSNA are such cost-saving efforts as ending automatic pay raises for members of Congress, cancelling the remaining Wall Street bailout funds, ending unjustified agri-business subsidies, cancelling the purchase of C-17 aircraft the Pentagon doesn’t even want and many others."
Wednesday, September 01, 2010
The Antiregulation Case - Eric Perkerson - Mises Daily
The Antiregulation Case - Eric Perkerson - Mises Daily: "In addition to the government's major contributions to the risk of this type of disaster, including an incredibly generous liability cap and heavy incentives to drill in deeper, riskier waters, there is virtually nothing in the economy outside the sphere of state intervention.[3] As columnist Sheldon Richmond succinctly puts it, the free market 'has an airtight alibi. It didn't exist.'"
"Regulation, as a proposed solution to this issue, limits the scope of actions that can legally be taken by entrepreneurs and businesses. It either gives them regulations that tell them what they must do, or it gives them regulations that tell them what they must not do. The calculating decision-making of entrepreneurs is replaced by the arbitrary direction of bureaucratic regulators. Profit and loss are no longer tools of decision-making. They are circumvented and ignored.
Litigation, through tort law and strict liability, can provide monetary evaluations of the costs of environmental damage. The costs then imposed on environmental offenders are monetary costs, determined by legal standards in a court of law and by the damages to third parties. Governments can also make businesses pay directly for perceived damages.
The crucial difference between regulation and methods that put monetary costs on environmental damages is that monetary costs can fit into the framework of the market. They enable economic calculation in environmental policy. The public's value of the environment is weighed against the public's value of resources in the calculating and information-gathering market process. Simply assuming that the benefits of environmental policy will outweigh the costs is hardly satisfactory."
"Indeed, most externality problems occur where different actors on the market have conflicting goals with respect to a particular resource, such as ocean water. This arises when property rights are ambiguous or simply nonexistent.[6] In cases where property rights are clearly defined, then damage to any one's property by any other can be dealt with through tort law, and the externality problem is dealt with."
"No voting member of society is in a position to compare the full costs and benefits of an economic decision as complex as those involving resources and the environment.
Oil, as a factor of production, is not valued directly by consumers. It is valued based on the value given to the products it can be used to produce. Many people looking at the effects of the Deepwater Horizon crisis see the oil-soaked pelicans and the fishermen out of business, but these same people cannot possibly see all of the benefits of the use of oil accruing to everyone in the entire economy!
The information about the value placed on oil is communicated and known only through the market in the form of prices. It does not exist in the minds of voters, of individuals, but only in the market. If it is profitable to drill for oil even when all of the environmental damage is charged to the drillers, then the market signal is clear — people value the products more than they dislike the effects on the environment."
"Regulation, as a proposed solution to this issue, limits the scope of actions that can legally be taken by entrepreneurs and businesses. It either gives them regulations that tell them what they must do, or it gives them regulations that tell them what they must not do. The calculating decision-making of entrepreneurs is replaced by the arbitrary direction of bureaucratic regulators. Profit and loss are no longer tools of decision-making. They are circumvented and ignored.
Litigation, through tort law and strict liability, can provide monetary evaluations of the costs of environmental damage. The costs then imposed on environmental offenders are monetary costs, determined by legal standards in a court of law and by the damages to third parties. Governments can also make businesses pay directly for perceived damages.
The crucial difference between regulation and methods that put monetary costs on environmental damages is that monetary costs can fit into the framework of the market. They enable economic calculation in environmental policy. The public's value of the environment is weighed against the public's value of resources in the calculating and information-gathering market process. Simply assuming that the benefits of environmental policy will outweigh the costs is hardly satisfactory."
"Indeed, most externality problems occur where different actors on the market have conflicting goals with respect to a particular resource, such as ocean water. This arises when property rights are ambiguous or simply nonexistent.[6] In cases where property rights are clearly defined, then damage to any one's property by any other can be dealt with through tort law, and the externality problem is dealt with."
"No voting member of society is in a position to compare the full costs and benefits of an economic decision as complex as those involving resources and the environment.
Oil, as a factor of production, is not valued directly by consumers. It is valued based on the value given to the products it can be used to produce. Many people looking at the effects of the Deepwater Horizon crisis see the oil-soaked pelicans and the fishermen out of business, but these same people cannot possibly see all of the benefits of the use of oil accruing to everyone in the entire economy!
The information about the value placed on oil is communicated and known only through the market in the form of prices. It does not exist in the minds of voters, of individuals, but only in the market. If it is profitable to drill for oil even when all of the environmental damage is charged to the drillers, then the market signal is clear — people value the products more than they dislike the effects on the environment."
Bailouts for Journalists? | Jim Powell | Cato Institute: Commentary
Bailouts for Journalists? | Jim Powell | Cato Institute: Commentary: "An estimated 20 million citizens of the Soviet Union were killed by their own government, and Stalin was responsible for more those deaths than any other Soviet ruler. English author H.G. Wells reported that he 'never met a man more candid, fair and honest ... no one is afraid of him and everybody trusts him.' The English playwright George Bernard Shaw hailed Soviet prisons where victims 'could stay as long as they liked.' President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's ambassador to Moscow Joseph E. Davies purred that Stalin's 'eye is exceedingly wise and gentle.'"
ACTA: The War on Progress, Freedom, and Human Civilization - Gennady Stolyarov II - Mises Daily
ACTA: The War on Progress, Freedom, and Human Civilization - Gennady Stolyarov II - Mises Daily: "ACTA tramples on essential rights that have achieved even mainstream recognition: innocence until one is proven guilty, due process, personal privacy, and fair use of published content."
"Under ACTA, governments would be able to crack down on the fans of these creators, against those creators' own wishes!" "who would be the rights holder here — individual creators, or governments"
"Under ACTA, the very suspicion or allegation of having downloaded or even accessed copyrighted material online would render one's computer open to search without a warrant. Fines and other penalties would apply to refusing permission for a search" "Under ACTA, even viewing a website containing material that infringes a copyright — without the viewer being aware of said infringement's existence — would be considered aiding and abetting the infringement."
" On July 16, 2010, federal authorities shut down Blogetery.com, a site that hosted 73,000 blogs, under the allegation that some of these blogs reproduced copyrighted material. Any reasonable person will recognize, of course, that most of the blog owners probably committed no violation whatsoever, but millions of hours of human effort were nonetheless wiped out by this new kind of random, arbitrary censorship."
"Under ACTA, governments would be able to crack down on the fans of these creators, against those creators' own wishes!" "who would be the rights holder here — individual creators, or governments"
"Under ACTA, the very suspicion or allegation of having downloaded or even accessed copyrighted material online would render one's computer open to search without a warrant. Fines and other penalties would apply to refusing permission for a search" "Under ACTA, even viewing a website containing material that infringes a copyright — without the viewer being aware of said infringement's existence — would be considered aiding and abetting the infringement."
" On July 16, 2010, federal authorities shut down Blogetery.com, a site that hosted 73,000 blogs, under the allegation that some of these blogs reproduced copyrighted material. Any reasonable person will recognize, of course, that most of the blog owners probably committed no violation whatsoever, but millions of hours of human effort were nonetheless wiped out by this new kind of random, arbitrary censorship."
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
How Nigeria's plan to privatize its electricity company could light up Africa - CSMonitor.com
How Nigeria's plan to privatize its electricity company could light up Africa - CSMonitor.com: "Electricity is the critical technology for African countries to master. The difficulty is more political-economic than technological. State-ownership, while sometimes warranted, has been an utter failure in the electricity sector in Nigeria and in many other African countries."
Campaign For Liberty — Trading for Security ��| by Sheldon Richman
Campaign For Liberty — Trading for Security ��| by Sheldon Richman: "Neither the United States nor any other nation has ever been deprived of essential goods and brought down by economic warfare. Smuggling, bribery, and middlemen eager to make money invariably evade the tightest embargoes."
Friday, August 27, 2010
FOXNews.com - State Dept. warns Americans not to visit NKorea, says few ex-presidents available for rescues
FOXNews.com - State Dept. warns Americans not to visit NKorea, says few ex-presidents available for rescues: "Americans should heed our travel warning and avoid North Korea. We only have a handful of former presidents."
LOL!
LOL!
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Kim Jong-il snubs Jimmy Carter to seek China ties, son's accession - CSMonitor.com
Kim Jong-il snubs Jimmy Carter to seek China ties, son's accession - CSMonitor.com: "“I expect that China will guarantee its support for the power handoff in return for the North agreeing to return to denuclearization talks, on genuine terms, and refrain from provocative behavior,' Yoo Ho-yeol, a North Korea expert at Seoul’s Korea University, told The Korea Times."
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