As part of the simmering war on the rich that is a central component of the progressive left’s campaign for 2020, Robert Reich recently wrote a blog post in which he argued that there were “basically only five ways to accumulate a billion dollars, and none of them has to do with being successful in free market capitalism.”
Part VI: The Nationalists Triumph: The Constitution’s Legacy
37. The Bill of Rights
The Constitution had been ratified and was going into effect, and the next great question before the country was the spate of amendments which the Federalists had reluctantly agreed to recommend at the state conventions. Would they, as Madison and the other Federalists wanted, be quietly forgotten? The Antifederalists, particularly in Virginia and New York, would not permit that to happen and the second convention movement, led by Patrick Henry and George Mason in Virginia and proposed by the New York convention circular letter, was the Antifederal goal.
38. Was the U.S. Constitution Radical?
It was a bloodless coup d’état against an unresisting Confederation Congress. The original structure of the new Constitution was now complete. The Federalists, by use of propaganda, chicanery, fraud, malapportionment of delegates, blackmail threats of secession, and even coercive laws, had managed to sustain enough delegates to defy the wishes of the majority of the American people and create a new Constitution. The drive was managed by a corps of brilliant members and representatives of the financial and landed oligarchy.
Bibliography
Note: Only the works cited in the manuscript are listed here.
Abernethy, Thomas P. Western Lands and the American Revolution. New York: Russell and Russell, 1959.
Bailyn, Bernard. Pamphleteers of the American Revolution, 1750–1776. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1965.
Beard, Charles A. An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States. New York: Macmillan, 1961.
Ever since the beginning of the American state’s so-called war on drugs, there has been a significant increase in drug potency, which resembles the trend that occurred during alcohol prohibition in the twentieth century. However, what causes such trends?
We gain some insight from the Alchian-Allen theorem, which tells us that increases in drug potency occur in response to changes in the cost and incentive structure. Often, this is a result of drug-enforcement legislation.
[Review of Against Democracy, by Jason Brennan. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016. 304 pages.]
Although we Latin Americans thought Chile was immune to populism, small protests have grown into the largest ones since the nation’s re-democratization in the 90s. Initially, the protestors were groups of students complaining about a raise in the Santiago subway fare — an increase of 3.75 percent or about five US cents (which could add up to $1.15 during peak hours). They demanded that prices be held lower, and some even called for free passes.
Part of the economic debate in Latin America, particularly in Argentina after the elections, focuses on what type of financial and trade relationship is most convenient for the region, and several discussions consider the merit of strengthening relations with China instead of the United States
The world over people are told that central banks pursue “price stability” by making sure that consumer goods prices do not rise by more than 2 percent per annum. This is, of course, a big sham. If the prices of goods rise over time, it does not take that much to understand that prices do not remain stable. And if the prices of goods increase over time, it necessarily means that the purchasing power of the money unit declines.
