Trump’s Budget: Radical Change or More of the Same?

President Donald Trump’s proposed budget has generated hysteria among the American left. Prominent progressives have accused the president and his allies of wanting to kill children, senior citizens, and other vulnerable Americans. The reaction of the president’s allies — including some conservatives who should know better — is equally detached from reality as they hail Trump for launching a major assault on the welfare state and making the hard choices necessary to balance the budget.

Individuals, Reason, and Action

Reason is man’s particular and characteristic feature. There is no need for praxeology to raise the question whether reason is a suitable tool for the cognition of ultimate and absolute truth. It deals with reason only as far as it enables man to act.

All those objects which are the substratum of human sensation, perception, and observation also pass before the senses of animals. But man alone has the faculty of transforming sensuous stimuli into observation and experience. And man alone can arrange his various observations and experiences into a coherent system.

Trump Fed Nominees

There are currently three open Federal Reserve Board of Governors positions and the New York Times reports that Trump is ready to nominate the following two:

The expected nominees include Randal K. Quarles, a Treasury Department official in the George W. Bush administration, and Marvin Goodfriend, a former Fed official who is now a professor of economics at Carnegie Mellon University.

Las Vegas: An Austrian View of Land Prices

In Chapter 9 of Man, Economy and State, Murray Rothbard takes on the valuation of land. Robert Murphy discussed Rothbard’s analysis in a 2011 piece for mises.org, writing that he had covered this chapter in a Mises Academy class, and that the discussion of land prices “is an illuminating topic because it involves capitalization and entrepreneurship, two areas where Austrians have made seminal contributions to economic theory.”

Studying the Climate Doesn’t Make You an Expert on Economics and Politics

In response to the Trump administration’s announcement that it was pulling out of the Paris Climate Accord, some of his critics declared that anyone who likes “science” would have supported the accord. 

Not surprisingly, Neil deGrasse Tyson rushed to declare that Trump supported the withdrawal because his administration “never learned what Science is or how and why it works.”