Interventionism

The crash was said to prove how destructive “unregulated capitalism” could be and how dangerous its supporters were.

What sanction, in morals, does the State adduce for the taking of property?

In effect, the government’s not taking is alleged to be giving. Its not taxing is alleged to be spending.

A subset of the end-the-Fed crowd opposes the Fed for peripheral or entirely wrongheaded reasons.

Part of the Authors Forum, presented at the Austrian Economics Research Conference.

Senator Elizabeth Warren (D, Organized Labor) has put paid to the possibility of our use of the reductio ad absurdum. With her $22 per  hour minimum wage (or is it $33?) she has seen us, raised us, doubled down, and in every other way possible demonstrated that she is impervious to logic and basic economics.

The people of Colorado and Washington have effectively nullified US drug laws in their states, with respect to marijuana. Moreover, the people of Colorado and Washington are also effectively nullifying an international treaty on drug prohibition.

Needless to say, those who benefit from bubble activities are not going to like this, since the diversion of real wealth to them from wealth generators will slow down or cease all together. A fall in economic activity in this case would in fact be the demise of various bubble activities.

This week’s quote(s) highlights why an explanation of a general boom-bust pattern of economic must be a monetary theory of the trade cycle.

Calvin Coolidge, on spending and taxation, was quite Rothbardian well before Rothbard. According to Amity Shlaes, “Coolidge didn’t favor tax cuts as a means to increase revenue or to buy off Democrats. He favored them because they took government, the people’s servant, out of the way of the people.”