In December 2021, the US unemployment rate fell to 3.9 percent from 4.2 percent in the month before. The number of unemployed individuals fell by 500,000 to 6.3 million. Many commentators have expressed satisfaction with the decline in unemployment. According to commentators, the fall in unemployment is indicative of a strong economy.
Why do individuals assign a greater value to gold than to bread, when bread seems to be more “useful” than gold? To provide an answer to this question economists refer to the law of diminishing marginal utility. The concept of diminishing marginal utility is the essential building block of economics. There is, however, a difference in the way this law is discussed by mainstream economics and the Austrian school of economics.
François-Marie Arouet (1694-1778), who took on the name Voltaire after one of his imprisonments for running afoul of French authorities, was a poet, writer, philosopher and historian of the French enlightenment.
In my day-to-day interactions with others, I generally find myself, as a libertarian, far closer to those who would call themselves conservatives than those on the left. It is probably because those I know are far less likely to openly and baldly advocate for invading others’ “life, liberty and estates,” as John Locke phrased it, than the left.
Labor shortage “fun” fact:Inflation-adjusted weekly median earnings JUMPED in the 2nd quarter of 2020 (probably because so many low-wage workers got laid off), but have been steadily falling since then, and are now at the same level they were in the 4th quarter of 2019.
Meanwhile if we don’t adjust for inflation, we see the same jump in the 2nd quarter of 2020, followed by a gradual decline up to the end of 2020 – then a gradual increase.
We all remember where we were when the Berlin Wall came down. While it may have seemed that communist rule would go on forever, when the people decided that they had enough suddenly the wall fell. Just like that.
You would think that the problems facing the United States would be enough for brain-dead Biden. With massive inflation, the economy is teetering on the brink of ruin. We face tyrannical control because of harmful vaccine mandates. Bogus propaganda about “climate change” threatens to cripple American industry. The government seeks to monitor all our financial transactions. We threaten China with a new Cold War. But it isn’t enough. Now Biden wants to ignite a war with Russia that could easily turn nuclear and destroy us.
