For many, income inequality is a disease ravaging the fabric of capitalist societies. Therefore, curing this ailment, according to progressives, necessitates an injection of welfare benefits and higher taxes on the wealthy. Guided by a zero-sum outlook, critics believe that the success of the affluent is gained at the expense of the poor. To remind voters that he takes income inequality seriously, during his presidential campaign, Joe Biden expressed concern that the intensity of income inequality in the US would foment discord.

In Canada, inflation hit 4.7 percent in October, and is expected to go even higher. According to a recent survey, 46 percent of Canadians are struggling to feed their families because of the rising cost of living.

It’s called the troika. It sounds like communism. It looks like communism. But is it true communism?

Wall Street Journal explains:

The Fed’s vice chair, along with the New York Fed president, is part of the inner circle of advisers—known as the troika—that shape the agenda for monetary-policy deliberations by the Fed’s rate-setting committee.

Major representatives of the European Central Bank—including ECB president Christine Lagarde—continue to warn against bitcoin.

According to the popular narrative, the role of the central bank is to navigate the economy along the so-called path of economic stability. By this way of thinking if various shocks cause the economy to deviate from this path, then it is the role of central bank policy makers to offset these shocks. This is done by means of suitable monetary policies. In line with this way of thinking to counter the shocks from covid-19, the US central bank, the Federal Reserve System, pumped a massive amount of money into the economy.

Cronyism: Liberty versus Power in Early America, 1607–1849
by Patrick Newman
Mises Institute, 2021, 362 pp.

Patrick Newman dedicates Cronyism to Murray Rothbard, and it is a fitting choice, as this outstanding book continues and extends Rothbard’s brilliant interpretation of American history. Newman is eminently qualified to do so, having edited both the fifth volume of Rothbard’s Conceived in Liberty and his The Progressive Era.

Those who forget police debacles could be the victims of the next law enforcement fiasco. Former Montgomery County, Maryland, police chief Charles Moose passed away on Thanksgiving Day. He became famous as the most prominent law enforcement official during a three-week sniper rampage in the Washington area in 2002.

Competition is probably considered by everyone as an indispensable requirement for the proper economic functioning of a society. This is indeed justified because competition encourages producers of goods to look for the best ways of satisfying customers, for example by trying to offer them goods of better quality than others, or cheaper goods. But we still need to know exactly what competition is all about. There is essentially the same conception of competition in terms of public opinion and traditional economic theory.