“The market makes the rich richer, the poor poorer.” 

Most critiques of the market is pure assertion. Even claims based on empirical data (like Piketty) aren’t actual findings. 

The reason is as obvious as it is overlooked: the real economy is heavily regulated, politically manipulated, and therefore distorted, and therefore not the actual “market.” Yet the market skeptics ASSUME it is. That’s why  they find that “market” causes lasting inequality, environmental issues, etc. 

One of the more puerile demands made by knee-jerk nationalists is “love it or leave it.” In their minds, one is not allowed to be unhappy with life under the local state monopoly, and all complainers are required to immediately emigrate if unhappy.

This is often the refrain of American right wingers who insist the entire world outside the United States is a wasteland, although the slogan is not limited to Americans. A similar slogan (in Portuguese) was also employed by the military dictatorship in Brazil.

On Tuesday, Senator Bernie Sanders took to Twitter to criticize bank ATM fees.

While many on social media mercilessly attacked the Presidential candidate, the Senator raises an interesting point. After all, in October the Huffington Post reported that ATM fees have never been higher.

Many police departments are over-funded and overstaffed. What other conclusion can we reach when we read about operations like this one in a Kansas City suburb where sheriff’s deputies had the time and resources to keep track of everyone shopping at a gardening center in order to find someone to bust for growing marijuana?

. . . as presented in four entertaining slides. I will use these to introduce my Principles of Macroeconomics course which starts next week.

Homicide rates in the United States have been declining for 20 years as the number of privately-held guns in the US has increased substantially.

In some states, such as New Hampshire and Oregon, which have very weak gun laws, homicide rates are remarkably low, and these states are among the safest places on earth.

Historians have long recognized the importance of “memorialization” and other forms of remembering World War I. The current edition of this memorialization began, of course, in 2014, and Europeans in particular have shown the reach of their historical memory in highlighting a variety of aspects of the Great War. Americans have done some of this, but the US didn’t intervene until 1917, and in any case, Americans are famous for the shortness of their historical memories. Owing in part to the profoundly anti-historical tenor of American public education since Dewey, no doubt.

When you own 28 percent of all the land — 640 million acres — in the United States, you’re likely to end up with some neighbors who don’t care for how you do business.

Senator Rand Paul published an op-ed on Business Insider this past Sunday attacking the easy money policy of the Bernanke-Yellen Federal Reserve and continuing his call for a full audit of the central bank.

The Obama Administration is planning new gun restrictions to be implemented by executive order. 

Politico reports: