Alexis de Tocqueville
Introduction
In the year 1835, most of Europe was still in the grip of the conservative reaction that followed the French Revolution and fall of Napoleon. While liberal ideas were a force in public life in England and France, even there political power was in the hands of a small minority. Elsewhere, the spirit that prevailed was that of Prince Metternich, the minister of the Austrian Empire and sworn enemy of liberalism, nationalism, and democracy. When uprisings against this rigid order did occur, as in some of the Italian states or in Spain, they were quickly and easily crushed.
Tocqueville’s Background
Alexis de Tocqueville was born in Paris, in 1805. He was descended from Norman nobility, one of the oldest aristocratic families in France. One of his ancestors fought with William the Conqueror, at the Battle of Hastings in the year 1066, and the family’s history for centuries was closely intertwined with the history not only of Normandy, where where their lands and their ancestral castle were located, but of France as well.
Yesterday, the Census Bureau released its measure of homeownership for 2016, and the annual average for 2016 was 63.4 percent. That’s the lowest rate measured since 1965 when the homeownership rate was 63 percent.
2016 was also the twelfth year in a row in which the homeownership rate was lower than the year prior. In other words, the homeownership rate in the US has been falling since 2004.
January’s top ten most-read articles by page views. These do not include hits for mises.org articles reprinted on other high-traffic sites like ZeroHedge and Business Insider:
How do we compare wealth over time? I came across one fun fact recently about the highest-paid athlete of all time. The first names that come to your mind might be Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan, or Cam Newton. However, according to this source, the title belongs to Gaius Appuleius Diocles, a chariot racer of ancient Rome.
Now that the Fed has slightly upped its Fed Funds rate target twice, there is talk of a much more ominous issue: shrinking the balance sheet. Late last year, St. Louis Fed president James Bullard affirmed that 2017 “possibly might be a good time to play that card.”
In what may be a constant theme throughout his presidency, protests broke out around the country in response to Donald Trump’s recent executive orders banning travel from certain Middle Eastern countries. While it’s fair to question why similar protests didn’t spring up when the previous administration was bombing the very same people, the order itself is clearly more “security theater” than anything resembling a real solution.
CBS reports that “California may prohibit local law enforcement from cooperating with federal immigration authorities, creating a border-to-border sanctuary in the nation’s largest state as legislative Democrats ramp up their efforts to battle President Donald Trump’s migration policies.”
In this context, of course, California — should the proposed legislation pass — would decline to participate in helping federal agents enforce federal immigration law.
Now that the Fed has slightly upped its Fed Funds rate target twice, there is talk of a much more ominous issue: shrinking the balance sheet. Late last year, St. Louis Fed president James Bullard affirmed that 2017 “possibly might be a good time to play that card.”
