The purpose of this essay is not to convince the reader of the necessity for change. It is to present some commonsense policy changes to attempt to mitigate the economic harm that has been done to Western economies, especially to the United States and the United Kingdom, since the end of World War II. Please watch Godfrey Bloom and Alasdair Macleod’s recent interview with Sonia Poulton.
The Need to Be Whole: Patriotism and the History of Prejudice
by Wendell Berry
Shoemaker and Company, 2022; x + 513 pp.
Wendell Berry, a poet, novelist, and philosopher well known for his protests against mechanized agriculture and for his defense of the “land ethic,” is not a thinker one would immediately associate with Ludwig von Mises, and indeed, in economic theory the two are far apart. But there is nevertheless a passage in Mises’s Socialism that is central to Berry’s concerns.
Ludwig von Mises’s book The Theory of Money and Credit is a masterwork of monetary theory. Despite being written in the early twentieth century, its arguments and conclusions are still valid and interesting today.
It took 15 votes and a host of concessions to the Freedom Caucus and its allies, but Kevin McCarthy (finally) became Speaker of the House. Of course, the real length of the delay (in McCarthy’s eyes anyway) was much longer than the three days last week. Afterall, when John Boehner abruptly stepped down in 2015, McCarthy had been the heir apparent. A similar lack of support among the more hardline fiscally conservative members, however, resulted in the elevation of Paul Ryan to the top job in the House.
The federal government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released new price inflation data today, and according to the report, price inflation during the month decelerated slightly, coming in at the lowest year-over-year increase in fifteen months. According to the BLS, Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation rose 6.5 percent year over year during December, before seasonal adjustment.
