The famous French socialist economist Thomas Piketty thinks we aren’t moving toward equality fast enough. In his Long Live Socialism!, he says this to illustrate how much work remains to be done: ”The poorest 50% of the world’s population is still the poorest 50% of the world’s population” (p.13 of the Amazon Kindle edition).
Justin Trudeau was widely criticized for calling an election during a pandemic, but he thought that his oppressive covid policies would play well with the voting public, which would then reward his minority Liberal government with enough additional seats to give them majority status. He was wrong. The Liberals won the election, but they did not achieve majority status. So much for reading the minds of the voters.
One thing struck me as especially odd about Google’s ban of LewRockwell.com from its advertising program. This was the claim that articles on this site could “undermine participation or trust in electoral or democratic process.” I suppose what is meant is that the site has published articles that suggest there was substance to President Trump’s claim that the election was stolen from him. If people believe this, they are less likely than they would otherwise be to support the electoral process. Why support a process you regard as rigged?
All over the world, populations have been locked up, have become fearful, and none of it can be justified. Looking at the UK, the overall death rate for 2020 is not unprecedented, and some of the increase in the death rate is likely the result of an incomprehensibly bad covid policy.
Resources that are utilized to promote economic prosperity in normal times become underutilized during recessions. Some experts are of the view that what is required are policies which will increase the availability of credit to make greater use of underutilized resources. On this Ludwig von Mises wrote,
By popular thinking, the key driver of economic growth is increases in the total demand for goods and services. It is also held that the overall economy’s output increases by a multiple of the change in expenditure by government, consumers and businesses. The popularizer of this way of thinking John Maynard Keynes, wrote,
After closing at 0.53 percent in July 2020 the yield on the ten-year US T-bond moved relentlessly higher, closing on Tuesday, September 28, 2021, at 1.55 percent. There is a growing likelihood that the July 2020 figure of 0.53 percent might have been the lowest point.
Can America’s self-styled foreign policy experts be expected to learn from the failures of the latest misadventure in Afghanistan? If history is an indicator, there’s little reason to believe the foreign policy blob will learn the error of their ways.
As someone who has written about public policies for three and a half decades, I have often struggled with the slipperiness of how words are used, because many people become confused by using words without thought. That gives power to those who can manipulate word meanings to mislead others. In turn, it incentivizes equivocation (when the meaning of a key term or phrase is changed in the course of an argument) in public policy discussions, because that logical fallacy can be used to create a cornucopia of ways to rob Peter to benefit Paul using the coercive power of government.
