Monthly Archives: July 2016

Archive of posts published in the specified Month

It’s the Growth, Stupid

Scott Grannis at Calafia Beach Pundit is one of my favorite economics bloggers. He does not post often, but when he does he produces some real gems.  His work includes illuminating graphs that supports his clear analysis. While I have

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The Hypertrophy of Finance

George Gilder explains how the management of our money system has increased inequality. While the trade in goods and services has remained stagnant the volume of trade, and the ensuing profits, in currency trading and financial instruments has grown substantially,

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The Re-Introduction

from The National Review editors Hillary Forgets Herself: But if you need a reintroduction to Mrs. Clinton, we will oblige: She is an opportunist without anything resembling a conviction with the exception of her unwavering commitment to abortion, a “public

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Political Party Hangovers

from The Republican and Democratic brands endure, even if their core beliefs don’t- from Jeff Jacoby at Boston Globe Yet in the end, political parties — or at any rate, big national parties — are about winning elections. And as society changes, so

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Overcoming Pessimism

Over the last 200 years the world population has increased 7x while the wealth per capita increased 10x- for a 70x increase in wealth consumed. This  is dwarfed by the better performers like Britain, Japan, Sweden and of course the

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Progressivism is Regressive

from Cafe Hayek Quote of the Day Don Boudreaux comments on his excerpt from the excellent book Illiberal Reformers by Thomas Leonard (Don’s comments) Isn’t it, therefore, strange that those politicians, pundits, professors, and preachers who today wish to turn

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Reactionary Voters

One of the mistakes made in hiring is to over emphasize the failings or weakness of the person who previously filled the position.  You may be successful in obtaining characteristics that were weak before, but you may also lose strengths

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Capitalism Updated

Progressivism can be viewed as socialism lite, paying homage to the great progress of capitalism while acknowledging some of the limitations of a free market. Social and economic theories develop, mature and evolve as they face the hard tests of

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The Primary Cause of Economic Stagnation

State control of money has become a force for government economic centralization, wreaking havoc on economies around the globe, whether capitalist or socialist. By controlling money supplies, central banks and their political sponsors determine who gets money and thus who

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Make Americans Great Again

from Bret Stephens at The Wall Street Journal, The Better Angels of Our Nature When did the decline of American character begin? Maybe it was between July 1969, when two Americans walked on the moon, and a Saturday that August,

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Is The Debate Really Over?

My biggest disappointment at the Freedom Fest was the great Global Warming Debate moderated by Michael Medved. While they brought up credentialed scientists to debate both sides, the format lacked seriousness and clarity. How much that AGW is used for

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Risk vs Certainty

from The Case for Trump from William McGurn at the Wall Street Journal At a time when so much of American “law”—from the Health and Human Service’s contraceptive mandate, to the Education Department’s “Dear Colleague” letters on transgender policy, to the

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Velocity is Freedom

The big prize at Freedom Fest was George Gilder, most famously noted for his Wealth and Poverty. His new book is The Scandal of Money. Gilder wrote of travelling to China with Milton Friedman and respectfully challenges many of Friedman’s

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Reading 2016 07 20

The Secret History of the Minimum Wage by Diedre McKloskey at Reason Friedman’s Sampler from the WSJ in 2006 What most people really object to when they object to a free market is that it is so hard for them

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The True Costs of Compliance

from Daniel Yergin at the WSJ, Markets Run Into Skepticism—and Regulators There had been a shift in the balance of confidence—the respective weighting in people’s minds between the role of markets and government, between the invisible hand and the visible one.

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Gary Johnson

The Freedom Fest in Las Vegas is a gathering of investment libertarian interests assembled by investment adviser and PhD Economist Mark Skousen. The participants and speakers range from typical conservatives to a group I refer to as the liberty geeks

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Judging by Intentions

“Too often, we judge other groups by their worst examples – while judging ourselves by our best intentions. And this has strained our bonds of understanding and common purpose. But Americans, I think, have a great advantage. To renew our

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Does Honesty Matter?

Returning from Freedom Fest in Las Vegas.  One of several good presentations was from Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse, who is one of the most grounded and brightest stars on the Conservative horizon. The  Wall Street Journal quoted Ben Sasse on the

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The Racist Minimum Wage

The excellent and telling graph above is from Mark Perry’s Carpe Diem.  The incredible jump correlates very strongly  with higher minimum wages that took place in several large urban areas.

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Clinton’s Security Risk

Gordon Crovitz at the Wall Street Journal writes Clinton’s Information Lockdown The private email server was only semiprivate: Putin likely has  everything. No public official since LBJ has gone as far as Hillary Clinton to evade public-disclosure laws. In 2010 her adviser Huma

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