Differences between competing visions for the future have never been greater, yet even as Americans process election results, the focus remains nearly entirely on ad hominem arguments. What does this mean? The book is entitled Means of Ascent. Linking the dollar to gold can also restrict liquidity when the economy needs it most—as happened during the Great Depression.”, She forgets: the Great Depression was inevitable given the boom the Fed created in the years before. It's pretty clear most don't. The volume of farm and urban mortgages expanded from $16.8 billion in 1921 to $27.1 billion in 1929. Additionally, the fact that the court ruled against the state in this case should give us hope for future cases. Where did the extra 200 votes come from? Once the math, voting strategy, and party lines become drawn, a new question arises: When did the Federal Reserve governor nomination become “partisan politics” in Washington? Its function is to obey orders, not originate them. Anyways this is just the tip of the iceberg, so this is my conclusion, Democrats don't understand economics. If you want it cheap but well done you best be prepared to … We have no option but to defend human settlements from forest fires, for instance. Or perhaps it’s just journalists who don;t understand economic numbers. The third law just says that reaching Absolute Zero temperature is impossible, but that’s not applicable to our discussion here. "Big Digital," as Professor Michael Rectenwald terms tech companies, have become "governmentalities": supposedly private enterprises turned into instruments of state power and state narratives. Well, journalists and politicians then. Because it originated with private actors rather than government, even though the intent was to dictate the government chosen, it was not a violation of the First Amendment. But this complicates things as: Sen.-elect Mark Kelly, a Democrat who won a GOP seat in the special election in Arizona, is expected to be sworn in, meaning there would likely be one more Democratic "no" vote…. Steve Bannon's 'Economic Nationalism' vs. Libertarian Globalism Is the Battleground of 21st Century Politics ... and you don’t seem to understand the … How this fits in with the concept of a strong republic by the people and for the people is anyone’s guess. They just can't conceive of the idea that tax CUTS tend to INCREASE the "tax take" because such cuts create an INCENTIVE for people who get to keep more of their money to INVEST that money in job and commerce-creating activities, thereby creating more taxable income. The Fed’s Power Grows. Thus, the state’s circumference continues to expand. These terms need to be understood before you can understand how the economy works or how it should work. He loved America’s attachment to property and commerce but emerged as the country’s most severe critic of the warfare state.” Further, his November 30 birthday provides an excuse. Furthermore, these platforms are governmentalities with a particular interest in the growth and extension of governmentality itself. Everything in economics is related, the … But as we're flooded with goods, their market price also plummets. I was thinking of Milton’s prose. No party holds the privilege of dictating to me how I shall vote. Liberty hath a sharp and double edge, fit only to be handled by just and virtuous men; to bad and dissolute, it becomes a mischief unwieldy in their own hands: neither is it completely given, but by them who have the happy skill to know what is grievance and unjust to a people, and how to remove it wisely; what good laws are wanting, and how to frame them substantially, that good men may enjoy the freedom which they merit, and the bad the curb which they need. "We should boycott big businesses." School systems across the US face many questions and difficulties while they struggle with reopening. Discern…in what things persuasion only is to work. However, in the process, we have accumulated a deficit of self-reflection and humor. Wind power, for example, looks good on paper, if you only compare it to the pollution from fossil fuels while ignoring its slaughter of birds and the replacement of the blades with short lifespans. Judy Shelton Could Still Be Confirmed. Big Digital—what writer Ilana Mercer calls "Deep Tech"— is not a collection of private companies in the sense we think of such. Presidents Come and Go. Mr. Taylor alleges that in September of 2013 he was placed in a cell covered in human feces and left there for six days before being moved into a cell that was “freezing” for another four days. Mitch switched his vote, utilizing a “procedural right,” something most citizens could never cite nor likely even knew existed. ….defense of the minimum wage is strong evidence that the world does indeed include people who really do believe that government-officials’ stated intentions determine the outcomes of government actions. As Ms. Rampell writes, today’s economists, trained in the modern Keynesian framework, believe corrections aren’t allowed and malinvestment should be enabled by cheap money forever, with the result being zombie companies wasting precious capital. Oscar Wilde once said, “An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.”. It's pretty clear most don't. No country can be well governed unless its citizens as a body keep religiously before their minds that they are the guardians of the law, and that the law officers are only the machinery for its execution, nothing more. Far from it. As Justice Samuel Alito points out in his concurring opinion, the United States Supreme Court typically avoids hearing cases where there is not an underlying question of how a doctrine or statute should be interpreted. While it didn’t have to be, he insisted it would be. Republican Senator Lamar Alexander displayed this on Monday when he came out against Mrs. Shelton, as CNBC quotes him saying: I don’t want to turn over management of the money supply to a Congress and a President who can’t balance the federal budget. In the same way, eradicating disease is an ethically necessary goal, but overuse of antibiotics will eventually give rise to drug-resistant ‘superbugs’ that could foist an existential test upon humanity. Carl Icahn: Republicans Don’t Understand Economics and It’s Killing USA. Janet ♦ 04/30/2016 ♦ Leave a comment. In the middle of a global pandemic, as David Wessel of the Brookings Institution said to the Washington Post: No president likes to replace generals in the middle of a war. Lacking the capacity to make economic sense is not a new affliction. For what do terms…which are at once corrupt and misapplied, denote but a people listless, supine, and ripe for servitude? And where is real reform of our criminal justice and prison systems? In my mind, policies still count. And while I’m well aware some of these positions can trigger outrage in many, are libertarian ideas really that improbable? What The World Looks To Someone Who Doesn’t Understand Economics, at cafehayek.com. And the defense of liberty in modern America, with a government that has ballooned far beyond anything he could have anticipated, would certainly benefit from a healthy new dose of the same patriotic irreverence that animated Twain. The petitioner in this case was Trent Taylor—an inmate in the Texas criminal justice system. Here are some excerpts from the article: “. Energy is the central pillar of economics, meaning that economies are constrained by the laws of thermodynamics, which govern energy in our universe. That provides an excellent excuse to turn to someone... That provides an excellent excuse to turn to someone many Americans have fond memories of—Mark Twain. Rectenwald explains this phenomenon in his own recent talk titled "The Google Election": In short, Google, Facebook and others are not strictly private sector entities; they are governmentalities in the sense that I have given to the term. Companies like Bitchute and LBRY (its video platform is Odysee) continue to host Mises Institute content, and promise to continue doing so. When you consider the fact that the court refused to rule on these cases, this interpretation of their actions in Taylor seems unlikely. The candidates re-arrange the facts to suit themselves and keep the lies and half-truths spinning in the air while the great gullible public cheers and shouts and stomps its approval. So that—what I mean by that is really, you know, the central bank is really funding fiscal activities of the government fairly directly. Big Digital is partial to the interests and growth of the state. Should we have a lame duck presidency, expect the Fed to do “whatever it takes” to get the wheels of commerce turning again. Yet, over time, depriving forests and grasslands from the natural burns they would otherwise incur makes them increasingly aged and dry. Perhaps an economic paradigm that is actually grounded in reality could even escape dismality. They who seek nothing but their own just liberty, have always right to win it and to keep it, whenever they have power, be the voices ever so numerous that oppose it. But It's Looking Very Unlikely. Entropy forbids free wealth: any benefit we gain from modifying the environment for our survival inevitably produces some sort of debt. This includes championing every kind of “subordinated” and newly created identity class that they can find or create, because such “endangered” categories require state acknowledgement and protection. It incites dangerous ambitions and can bring the republic down. That's not something we do. Or perhaps it’s just journalists who don;t understand economic numbers. (So drop your ideological biases right here — if you want to learn something, that is. The government is merely a servant—merely a temporary servant; it cannot be its prerogative to determine what is right and what is wrong, and decide who is a patriot and who isn’t. Truth…needs no policies or stratagems…to make her victorious. Knowledge forbidden? It is no crime to be ignorant of economics, which is, after all, a specialized discipline and one that most people consider to be a ‘dismal science.’ But it is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on economic subjects while remaining in this state of ignorance. This case contains a direct challenge to the qualified immunity doctrine and has a horrendous fact pattern. Americans have died in droves. I have only to look around at our sons and daughters who served our military to see the cost of our decades of arrogance and folly. Ultimately, I still don’t know for sure. They are partners of the federal government, committed to ideological service as part and parcel of their own bottom line. YouTube, the dominant video platform owned by Google, decided yesterday to remove a Mises Institute video. When all was said and done, Johnson had “won” the election by 87 votes. They are extensions and apparatuses of the state. But also on Friday, Jim Wells County, which was governed as a personal fiefdom by a powerful South Texas rancher named George Parr, filed “amended” returns for what has become famous as “Box 13” that gave Johnson another 200 votes. The true gig economy is that we can work only for an hour or two -, It Doesn't Take a Genius to Understand Economics, Comments for It Doesn't Take a Genius to Understand Economics, Print It Doesn't Take a Genius to Understand Economics, We Need Some of Mark Twain's Humor Right Now, Comments for We Need Some of Mark Twain's Humor Right Now, Print We Need Some of Mark Twain's Humor Right Now, YouTube Attempts to Silence the Mises Institute, Comments for YouTube Attempts to Silence the Mises Institute, Print YouTube Attempts to Silence the Mises Institute. To those... On July 2, 2019, President Donald Trump nominated Mrs. Judy Shelton to join the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. Thermoeconomics should serve as a lesson in realism for those who share in the US president’s ignorance and sanguinity. We’ll have to add that to the list of things gone wrong in 2020, then move on. The practice of fractional reserve banking uses credit to produce the money multiplier effect, which enables an economy to be much larger than the tangible assets underwriting it. Democrats have been failing freshman economics for decades. . What Leftists Don’t Understand About Economics. Britain only finished repaying its WWII debt in 2006. Ironically, we vote for a president who has limited power, but a hand on the nuke button; whereas, we don’t vote for the Fed chair, who has nearly unlimited power, and a hand on the economic equivalent to the nuke button; the ability to conjure money out of thin air. In fact, one could say that is best reflected in the Declaration of Independence’s assertion of unalienable rights to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” which, while more famously connected to the thought of John Locke, can also be collapsed into the word liberty, as Milton used it, as our right to life is part of our liberty and our ability to pursue happiness is the result of liberty. Although automation is divorcing the relationship between human labour and production, one implication of Say’s Law is that wages should rise as productivity improves. Bill Gates: “Economists don’t actually understand macroeconomics” Economics is predictably unpredictable, says Microsoft's co-founder in an interview. [God] created them free and free they must remain. In the same way that the first law of thermodynamics conserves energy, so too wealth is conserved. Anyone who tells you that you deserve more money is insulting you by insinuating that you don’t have enough money (and by extension, insinuating that you are a failure). This wouldn’t bode well, as the Wall Street Journal reports that Democrat Mark Kelly would be sworn in on Nov 30, if combined with the three Republicans Mitt Romney, Susan Collins and more recent “dissenter” Lamar Alexander, it would make an already slim “yes” confirmation all the more difficult. Recently, I told my wife that the 2020 election follies made me think of John Milton. Mr. Taylor alleges that in September of 2013 he was placed in a cell covered in human feces and left there for six days... On November 2, the United States Supreme Court ruled in the case Taylor v. Rojas.  Take a look, Waves of Fear: Trade War becomes a Currency War, U.K. Faces Longest Fall in Living Standards Since Records Began, Socialism vs. Capitalism: Employee-Owned Companies Offer a Third Way, A Post-Keynesian perspective of money, financial intermediation and systemic instability, Teacher Strikes Show That Workers Have Newfound Power, Why Invest and 7 Asset Classes You Can Invest In. Total deaths far exceed the deaths from covid-19, yet where is the focused plan of attack? Men think they think upon the great political questions…but they think with their party, not independently. As for Fed chair Jerome Powell, who kept rates on hold, his Q&A after the committee meeting revealed that regardless who is president, as long as the Fed can expand the balance sheet at will, they continue holding all the cards. She has a distinguished career as an economist and even co-authored a book called Roads to Sound Money, which supports ideas such as sound money and individual liberty. As a New York Times review of Caro’s account stated, the day after the run-off election it was “discovered” that the returns of a particular county had not yet been counted. Economic activity exploits our environment to meet our needs, using energy to make greater local order of the resources at our disposal. It's required that I took Calculus 1 and Calculus 2, but not Probability and Statistics – which I think is strange. No one’s life, liberty, or property is safe while the legislature is in session. Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties. While we wait to see who will head our government into the new year, and while we expect a new change in government could also bring changes to the Fed, we cannot reasonably expect these changes will amount to anything more than superficial. We're close to the all-time high deficits we took on for WWII. This week, all eyes are on the Trump-appointed General Services Administration administrator, Emily W. Murphy, to recognize Joe Biden as the winner of the election and president-elect. What I Don't Understand about Baseball Card Economics I admit I am no more than a novice when it comes to understanding the general economy and the stock market, but here is one thing I have learned: The stock market rises and falls by processing information. “Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution.”. Living things require energy to sustain themselves and grow, and an economy is no different. Just as the laws of physics dictate, most of the ‘wealth’ created from this magnification effect isn’t actually grounded in reality, but in business confidence and speculation. Sometimes understanding economics or not understanding economics leads you to the same call to arms. As I mentioned, the asset purchase program. She’d hardly be a threat to stopping the (unofficial goal of) US dollar debasement overnight, nor would she be able to implement a gold standard anytime soon. However, the court decided to rule on this case. Patriotism…always commemorates a robbery. Mr. Taylor then appealed to the United States Supreme Court. Bloc’s Services PMI stands at 28.7 in May vs. 25.0 expected. This, then, is real fascism. by Daniel Carter. All congress knows about money is how to rake it in, and steal from the people, and put it in their accounts. This is not alarmism or conspiracies, but documented examples of how Google, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and others actively participate—including financially—in a melding of corporate and state power. First, Judy Shelton’s long shot at joining the Fed has now become an even “longer shot.” Considering Trump couldn’t even persuade fellow Republicans like Mitt Romney or Susan Collins to vote for her, it’s unlikely Biden would have much more success. I don't understand (aggregate) economics. They have granted qualified immunity in many cases where it seems clear they should not have. There are laws to protect the freedom of the press’s speech, but none that are worth anything to protect the people from the press. In fact, most geniuses seem to simply not get economics. Well, journalists and politicians then. This decision apparently lasts for all eternity, cannot be appealed to an actual human, and comes with this friendly admonition: "Because it’s the first time, this is just a... YouTube, the dominant video platform owned by Google, decided yesterday to remove a Mises Institute video. And as the (only) role of capital is to increase the productivity of labor, it means we don't have to work much to support a very high standard of living. The two are closely intertwined because our economy is staked on the principle of private property, and depends on the flow of capital between producers, consumers, and intermediaries. For most people, if the word ‘economics’ doesn’t conjure an old college nightmare of bespectacled professors scribbling madly on chalkboards, it might evoke the image of some anxious day trader on the stock exchange floor, sanity waning. We're close to the all-time high deficits we took on for WWII. Human industry has had such a profound impact on the planet, in fact, that we have brought about an entirely new geological epoch, known as the Anthropocene. Suspicious, reasonless. Watching as Biden and Trump supporters went at it, I found myself bewildered by what was hardly being discussed, by the dearth of coverage of the serious issues facing us today. Understand Free Money Here's a random spin of subjective By signing cryptocurrencies you know there — why is a are a Users touted as alternatives to quite a bit -- worth zero. The run-off was held on a Saturday. Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect. After all, not only was he once the most famous living American, he garnered much of his fame through both his serious and humorous reflections about politics and government. 1. someone starts a business, they get employees, they market their product or service, reach a profit margin, increase productivity, continue to grow, keep pushing up the profit margins, eventually … They can meaningfully compete against corporations who now receive preferential treatment from the federal government. “The ensuing recession is a period of repair and readjustment. Money serves three basic functions: as a unit of account, a medium of exchange, and a store of value. An example is the recently departed physicist Stephen Hawking, who - like so many - made rather ridiculous statements of economic nature. Americans have been major beneficiaries of John Milton’s literary blows for liberty against tyranny through his political impact on our founders. Despite this process being highly bureaucratic and requiring many if’s, she actually still has a shot! . Speculation fuels volatility, which is why it’s often said that the stock market is not the economy: the former is much more capricious than the latter. Our current economic system simply borrows from the future in perpetuity, all the while lurching from crisis to crisis on a fairly predictable schedule. The mainstream pro-Biden media is poking fun at Donald Trump’s suggestion that there could be fraud involved in the post-election receipt of mail-in ballots. On its surface, the world today is that of finance capitalism, of mortgages and interest rates and dividends and bond yields and price-to-earnings ratios as reported by Business News Network and Bloomberg. For the rest of us, it provides a refreshing and comprehensive — if solemn — perspective that better positions us to be stewards of the world going forward. And he saw problems with that reality for a nation founded in liberty: The mania for giving the Government power to meddle with the private affairs of cities or citizens is likely to cause endless trouble…and there is great danger that our people will lose our independence of thought and action…and sink into the helplessness of [one] who expects his government to feed him when hungry, clothe him when naked, to prescribe when his child may be born and when he may die, and, in fine, to regulate every act of humanity from the cradle to the tomb. This is misleading because it completely misunderstands the notion of sound money, limited government, and the control of the money supply, all which underline the gold standard. The mainstream pro-Biden media is poking fun at Donald Trump’s suggestion that there could be fraud involved in the post-election receipt of mail-in ballots. The nominations expire when Congress is adjourned at the end of the year. One would never realize from the way that Donald Trump boasts about record stock market levels that the world’s mature economies actually look to be condemned to long term stagnation. Americans anxiously wait for the final outcome of this election, the Federal Reserve continues on its immovable course towards nationalization of the means of production. Watching as Biden and Trump supporters went at it, I found myself bewildered by what was hardly being discussed, by the dearth of coverage of the serious issues facing us today. If Judy Shelton does not get confirmed to the Federal Reserve, we lose an opportunity to expand the knowledge base at the Fed. How can I start printing money with stock and crypto? They are filled with possibility and hope. The court recently granted cert in the case Brownback v. King. Nothing changed on Wednesday and Thursday after the election. When confidence in a company fades, the value of its shares drops, erasing the money that value represented. In Principles of Microeconomics and Principles of Macroeconomics, I never really used any calculus, but then again, those are introductory classes. Bernie and his chubby little wife have three nice homes and haven't worked a day in their lives to have earned them. We can’t mandate masks for that. The real effect of robots "producing everything" is that the cost of production plummets, which offers producers profits. Democracy itself was once only the germ of an idea into which flesh and blood breathed life.