Critics of capitalism from Marx to Bernie Sanders claim that the free market exploits the working class for the benefit of the rich; and even some “classical liberals” of recent vintage argue that capitalism needs to be supplemented by a guaranteed basic income or the like.
James Fenimore Cooper, America’s first national novelist, lived during our first great groundswell of political populism during the Jacksonian era. Egalitarian language and imagery fanned enthusiasm for democracy. Cooper saw serious dangers from this impulse toward majority rule as a panacea for every complaint, and that without strict limits on what majorities were allowed to decide, it was inconsistent with the equality of unalienable rights our founders proclaimed.
Today in Philadelphia, in a speech focused on military policy, Donald Trump criticized Hillary Clinton as “trigger-happy” and as a politician focused on “destruction” over diplomacy.
It has been almost eight years since former U.S. President George W. Bush warned the world that “without immediate action by Congress, America could slip into a financial panic and a distressing scenario would unfold.” The government’s response to the crisis was a $700 billion rescue package that would prevent U.S. banks from collapsing and encourage them to resume lending, which was soon to be followed by a series of Quantitative Easing (QE) packages injecting money into the economy.
The authors who think that they have substituted, in the analysis of the market economy, a holistic or social or universalistic or institutional or macroeconomic approach for what they disdain as the spurious individualistic approach delude themselves and their public. For all reasoning concerning action must deal with valuation and with the striving after definite ends, as there is no action not oriented by final causes.
To gain an insight into future economic conditions, many economists follow a variety of consumer and business surveys.
The rationale for conducting surveys is that the knowledge regarding future economic conditions is dispersed, so the chances of any one particular individual obtaining an accurate picture of the economy are very low.
A large group of people selected randomly is therefore likely to yield the most accurate picture possible. Or so it is believed.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s recent speech on immigration really missed the point. I understand Trump’s frustration over the US government’s inability to control the US borders and keep out those who would come to this country illegally. Trump was right that the media ignore legitimate questions we have on our immigration policy and he is right that special interests have a great interest in maintaining the status quo.
The Federal Reserve and in particular fiat money ruins the incentive to save for a better future. Half of all Americans have zero dollars in a savings account and another 20% have less than $1,000.
Paul Krugman again went after Germany on August 26 in his New York Times column, “Germany’s Drag.” After the German government posted a 1.2 percent of GDP fiscal surplus for the first half of 2016 — way above the IMF forecast of 0.3 percent — it seems as if Krugman couldn’t contain himself anymore.
