In my most recent Mises Wire column, I described how it is problematic that federal employees—and others who rely on federal tax dollars for their paychecks—are allowed to vote. After all, these are people whose personal financial interests align with the interests of the federal government. Giving a vote to a federal employee is similar to allowing a politician to vote on his own salary or to vote on whether the federal government will hire the politician’s family members. 

In the absence of the “official” BLS data, we turn to private jobs reports like the ADP report. This week, Revelio Labs released its monthly report on job creation, reporting “Non-farm employment measures the total employment in the US (public and private) leveraging individual level data collected from online professional profiles. The monthly change in this total employment is a proxy for number of jobs added in the economy during the month.

Disentangling the essence of a Hollywood film from its artistic appeal can illuminate the subtle intentions of motion picture producers and the enduring cultural paradigms they perpetuate. A striking example is Elysium, which blends stunning visuals and captivating effects with Hollywood’s recurring focus on class disparity, depicting a stark divide between the rich and the poor pushed to its most dramatic extreme.

This note serves as a rejoinder to Philipp Bagus’ recent response to my comment. I will not comment on all the issues raised in his response, but focus on the most important points.

To the Democratic Socialists of America and their fellow travelers, “The Moment” has arrived. With the victory of Zohran Mamdani in New York City’s mayoral election Tuesday night, the DSA has another attractive face to add to its advocates nationwide, someone to complement Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Bernie Sanders as socialism marches to its inevitable triumph over the entire United States.

Pseudo entrepreneur Sam Altman now wants “a federal guarantee to make it easier to finance massive investments in AI chips for data centers.”

Back in the Dotcom bubble days, Alan Greenspan worried about “irrational exuberance,” but chose to let markets adjust on their own, without hiking interest rates to pop the stock market bubble. Today’s bubble economy stretches well beyond stocks, wrote Greg Ip for the Wall Street Journal. There’s artificial intelligence (AI), of course, and,

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York this week released its Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit for the third quarter of this year.