Last Thursday, US President Donald Trump, signed an executive order to impose tariffs on aluminum and steel imports — of 10 percent and 25 percent respectively — exempting Canada and Mexico. In large part, the that protectionist measure is in response against the phenomena of “dumping,” in which it is believed that some regimes — specifically the Chinese — are subsidizing steel exports.

News that the Chinese government was preparing to remove constitutional term limits on President Xi Jinping shocked most Chinese. Many worry that an unlimited term of office will lead to unlimited power and increased restrictions on individual liberty.

In a recent article, David Brooks (New York Times “conservative” columnist who — surprise — writes as a “progressive”) suggests that “the culture war” is over or close to over: progressives have already won. Their opponents, “the … less educated ... tribalists” have “self-marginalized over the past two years.”

What Is Social Justice?

“Progressives” tend to think of themselves as warriors for racial, gender, and economic equality. The latter they equate with “social justice.”

But is economic equality synonymous with social justice? For one thing, equality is an oxymoron. If everyone is equal, who will have the power to enforce equality? And if some have the power to enforce it, how can they still be regarded as equal to everyone else?

Thanks to Luis Areizaga for his recent comments on the Mises Institute: 

Prior to 1933, the name “dollar” was used to refer to a unit of gold that had a weight of 23.22 grains. Since there are 480 grains in one ounce, this means that the name dollar also stood for 0.048 ounce of gold. This in turn, means that one ounce of gold referred to $20.67.

Observe that $20.67 is not the price of one ounce of gold in terms of dollars as popular thinking has it, for there is no such entity as a dollar. Dollar is just a name for 0.048 ounce of gold. On this Rothbard wrote,

If a currency can’t be converted on demand into the underlying commodity, it’s not “backed” by that commodity. 

The broke and broken country of Venezuela appears to be the first nation-state to issue a cryptocurrency token (the petro) as a means of escaping the financial black hole that’s consuming its economy: Maduro Launches Oil-Backed Crypto “For The Welfare Of Venezuela”.

When President Barack Obama wanted to curtail carbon dioxide emissions, he instructed his economic advisors to construct a way to calculate the emissions’ effect on society. The metric thus adopted by the EPA is called the “social cost of carbon” (SCC).

Nearly 40 years ago, Lawrence Reed published “Seven Fallacies of Economics” in The Freeman in which he noted that much of what the public believes about economics is fallacious because most people fail to understand simple opportunity cost. Given the current trends in political economy, it is a sad certainty that most if not all of the fallacies Reed listed are still taken as economic truths in much of the academic world.

Can political arrangements be dissolved peacefully? Legally? At the ballot box? By referendum? Or by any other mechanism short of outright violence and civil war?

According to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the answer to these questions is no. Speaking in California yesterday on the subject of immigration and sanctuary cities, he issued this remarkable statement that manages to upend the entire concept of federalism in just a few short sentences: