“That’s not cool. That’s not cool. They’re just being greedy pigs.” The Chiefs-Dolphins wild card playoff game is only being shown on Peacock, NBCUniversal Media Corp’s streaming service, and that was the reaction of the former Round Mound of Rebound and current professional pontificator Charles Barkley when he called in to @Balltalksource. “They” being the NFL.
Proponents of modern monetary theory (MMT) are back in action after a quiet spell during the embarrassing (for them) record price inflation of 2021–23. They are here to tell us that the mountain of government spending and debt is nothing to worry about; the government’s red ink is the private sector’s black ink, they say. Private sector growth emanates from public sector deficits, and since the US government has a gigantic money printer, there’s no reason to ever fear a default or debt crisis.
In his important book The Failure of American Conservatism (2023), the political theorist and philosopher Claes G. Ryn offers some criticisms of libertarianism and free-market capitalism, and in this week’s column, I’d like to examine these.
As the 2024 general election gets closer, Democrats and proestablishment pundits are growing frustrated with the American public for not feeling as good about the economy as the so-called experts say they should. The elitism of this view aside, it is true that traditional economic indicators are pretty good and that, at the same time, people aren’t feeling good about the economy.
Over the past two years, the Biden administration has repeatedly insisted that job growth is amazing, and that the administration has “created” millions of jobs. In reality, of course, much of the job growth that did exist was the predictable job growth that came with the end of forced business closures and lockdowns. Job growth was also fueled by rising aggregate demand fueled by runaway growth in government spending.
Net saving as a percentage of gross national income has been negative since the first quarter of 2023. The current period of negative net savings is only the third time that net saving has gone negative in more than 75 years. Looking back to the late 1940s, we find that the overall trend in net saving increased during the post-war period of economic retrenchment in the 1950s and early 60s.
Bankruptcy is a developing twenty-first century theme in America. We see bankruptcy in federal government policy and spending, many corporate boardroom decisions, nonprofit and religious groups’ overspending and arrogance, individuals, some United States cities and counties, and the territory of Puerto Rico. The federal bankruptcy law consisting of Chapters 7, 9, 11, and 13 allow bankruptcy filings for local governments, individuals, nonprofit groups, and for-profit businesses, but it does not allow bankruptcy filings for states and the federal government.
The physical sciences have greatly advanced knowledge by elucidating the workings of simple phenomena. In a simple phenomenon, we have a limited number of important variables, all of which are identifiable and measurable. This allows us to run a scientific experiment. In such an experiment, we hold all other variables constant and examine the influence of one variable on the phenomenon. We can therefore measure this variable’s direction and how important it is to this phenomenon.
What Is Money? Who Controls It?
Gold is money! Silver is money! Everything else is credit!
J. P. Morgan famously said this in his testimony before Congress in 1912: “Gold is money. Everything else is credit.”
