With bin Laden's Death, America Must Recalibrate Its Policies | Malou Innocent | Cato Institute: Commentary

With bin Laden's Death, America Must Recalibrate Its Policies | Malou Innocent | Cato Institute: Commentary: "even in the unlikely event that America and its allies did forge a stable Afghanistan, the fewer than 100 al Qaeda fighters currently believed to be in that country could simply relocate to other regions of the world. Moreover, as far as we know, the al Qaeda movement has cells not only in Pakistan, but also in Yemen, Somalia, and North Africa, and, at one point, Germany, Spain, and even Florida."

"Socially Conscious" Literature - Ludwig von Mises - Mises Daily

"Socially Conscious" Literature - Ludwig von Mises - Mises Daily: "They fail to realize that the shocking circumstances they describe are the outcome of the absence of capitalism, the remnants of the precapitalistic past, or the effects of policies sabotaging the operation of capitalism. They do not comprehend that capitalism, in engendering big-scale production for mass consumption, is essentially a system of wiping out penury as much as possible. They describe the wage earner only in his capacity as a factory hand and never give a thought to the fact that he is also the main consumer either of the manufactured goods themselves or of the foodstuffs and raw materials exchanged against them."

The Wisconsin Congressional Delegation’s Unwritten Rule: Protect the Fiefdom | RedState

The Wisconsin Congressional Delegation’s Unwritten Rule: Protect the Fiefdom | RedState: "protecting yourself and letting good candidates founder so that you can avoid taking any heat in your own district?� So that you can reinforce the safety of your own sorry seat? …That’s cowardly, self-interested, unprincipled sleaze."

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?"

Budget-cutting Like It's 1995 | Tad DeHaven | Cato Institute: Commentary

Budget-cutting Like It's 1995 | Tad DeHaven | Cato Institute: Commentary: "The agencies and programs that the Boehner Republicans were able to trim bear a striking resemblance to the trims that the Gingrich Republicans achieved in 1995. Here are 10 of the dozens of programs that got cut in both 1995 and 2011: Corporation for Public Broadcasting, National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities, Youthbuild, Community Service Employment for Older Americans, Appalachian Regional Commission, Fund for African Development, Housing Counseling Assistance, Foreign Agricultural Service, Fossil Energy Research & Development."

FCC chief to Congress: Leave Net neutrality alone | Privacy Inc. - CNET News

FCC chief to Congress: Leave Net neutrality alone | Privacy Inc. - CNET News: "Undoing the agency's Net neutrality rules will 'increase uncertainty, decrease investment, and hurt job creation,' FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski will say, according to a draft of his prepared remarks."

It might hurt job creation for the FCC. They would need more regulators to monitor the rules. Other than that, I can't see how any of his claims are correct.