The Biden administration, the Fed, and Wall Street all cheered the July employment report on Friday, which stated that total nonfarm payrolls rose by 943,000—8.4 percent better than expectations of 870,000—and the unemployment rate fell 0.5 percent to 5.4 percent in July. They also upwardly revised the prior two months by 119,000 jobs.
“Brewed according to the German Purity Law,” a Hobräu München hefeweizen bottle proudly declares. This brewery is not alone. Other German and even American brewers brag about how their beer adheres to the 1516 Bavarian Reinheitsgebot, which originally limited beer’s ingredients to water, barley, and hops.
Every quarter this past year I’ve provided updates on the stock holdings of the Swiss National Bank (SNB). Comment sections, internet chat boards, social media, and various articles about the bank reveal many people don’t understand the significance of its anticapitalist actions nor the problems this creates.
The philosopher Michael Huemer is usually favorable to the free market, and he is also a strong defender of anarchism. Although I disagree with some of the arguments in his defense of anarchism, The Problem of Political Authority, it is an excellent book.
In a recent blog post, he surprisingly suggests that taxation may in some cases be justified. He offers two examples, Pigouvian taxes on negative externalities and Georgist land taxes. In what follows, I’ll concentrate on the first of these.
If one were to go only on what one reads or sees in the media, one would think it’s the spring of 2020 all over again. The headlines are filled with stories of overcrowded hospitals, overwhelmed medical personnel, and predictions of people dying in parking lots waiting for medical care. The news articles generally quote a staffer of some kind at various hospitals and then leave it at that.
