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The UK’s Express reports this week the South African government has begun seizing farms in the country following a failure to negotiate sales with the owners.
While she may claim to protect consumers in one moment, US Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) unapologetically endorses destructive, socialist measures in the next.
At least some of them.
Last week, US Attorney General announced he plans to step up prosecutions of people who make “undetectable” firearms, such as the 3D-printed guns that have recently received attention. According to the AG’s web site:
Statement of Attorney General Jeff Sessions on State of Washington v. U.S. Department of State:
Pope Francis and Ludwig von Mises do not see eye-to-eye on the value of consumer choice. The Pope condemns what Mises defends, and their disagreement goes beyond the obvious.
On August 21st, 2018, a jury found Paul Manafort guilty of eight counts of tax and bank fraud. To summarize the convictions, Manafort managed to pay less in taxes by declining to disclose the existence of various bank accounts that he holds to the federal government. Manafort could die in a jail cell for tax evasion. No one should be cheering for this, for tax evasion is nothing more than resisting theft and keeping what is yours.
In the 1959 Broadway play, A Raisin in the Sun, an impoverished black family uses a substantial insurance payment to purchase a home in an affluent and white neighborhood. Perturbed by the fact that black people would move into their community, a white representative from the area offers to buy the home to prevent them from planting roots. In the end, the family resists the offer and moves in anyway.
The abject practical failure of the Marxist revolutionaries in the post-WWI period had done much harm to their image as the vanguard of social progress.
The explanation for this failure in the writings of Mises, Max Weber, and Boris Brutzkus had led many economists to revise their views about the suitable scope of government within society. But others remained unrepentant advocates of the total state. They merely rejected the specifically egalitarian agenda of the socialists.
I find it amusing to read some analysts stating that the Chinese government’s stealth yuan devaluation has offset the impact of tariffs.
A 10% tariff hurts a small part of the economy. However, a 10% devaluation hurts all Chinese citizens equally and massively.
The yuan devaluation is not a tool for exports. Devaluations are a form of price control and a disguised reduction of salaries. As such, they hurt more than what they aim to protect.
