Back in 2013, Salon took a quick break from criticizing a caricature of libertarianism to let David Sirota write an embarrassing article praising socialism in what turns out to be a fantastic case study in both the dangers of socialist economics and of course, speaking too soon.
Well, they voted in federal elections this week for a more free market in cannabis, and for less intervention in foreign wars. They also voted for higher taxes and more environmental regulation.
With Beavis and Butt-head and King of the Hill, Mike Judge earned his place in pop culture history. His new HBO comedy Silicon Valley seems an unlikely follow-up to his earlier successes. The man who made a film called Idiocracy has been specializing in portraying really dumb people, or, at least in the case of propane salesman Hank Hill, really ordinary people. “It’s not exactly rocket science” pretty much sums up the lives of all Judge’s earlier characters.
Believe it or not, but there is a tax that I could support as libertarian. In fact, it’s a tax I even would want to see. Because it fixes the problem of underfinanced government budgets and it also aligns the voting populace with the risk of “investing” in government. The incentive problems with government are basically resolved by replacing the current tax code mess with this one tax.
I was on the road yesterday for a visit to the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. The Atlanta Economic Club had invited me to speak to them at their weekly luncheon meeting which is held inside the Fed. The topic of my talk was “How I Got the Skyscraper Curse Wrong.”
The first thing I was aware of after turning into the parking lot is the high level of security which included tank proof barriers and a thorough search of my car.
Here are the Top Ten most-read articles from September (based on web-traffic stats):
1.The Economics of Bernie Sanders by William Anderson (Mises Daily)
2. The Failed Moral Argument for a “Living Wage” by Ryan McMaken (Mises Daily)
What is necessary to take away a man’s freedom? For many progressives, nothing more then a bad workplace. Amazon takes ongoing heat for its work environment, with opponents like Business Insider calling it a “slave camp.”
But this comparison mistakes the fundamental nature of coercion.
Except when they do.
Self-help business writer Oliver Burkeman noted last week that customers and employers may not care how much you work.
With the recent successes and announcements of sci-fi movies and TV shows like The Martian, Interstellar, and new incarnations of Star Trek and Star Wars, no one can deny that we crave futurism and stretching our imagination on what advanced technology can accomplish. Many look to the example of these fictional worlds as an indication of what life might be like when technology can provide for all of our basic needs, a condition some call “post-scarcity.”
In this article, I noted that median incomes — even when adjusted for cost of living, taxes, and social benfits — are higher in the United States than in Europe. What’s more, Americans at poverty level (i.e., 60% of national median income) have more purchasing power than median-level households in many European countries.
