Imagine that you earn $40,000 a year and your boss doubles you at $80,000 a year. Business was good to you both in 2013, and you received a 25 percent raise for your efforts. Not bad, and your boss gets to share in this good fortune too with an extra $25,000 (about 30 percent). You’re going to make $50,000 in 2014 and your boss will pull in $105,000.

Are you happy with this deal? Probably. But wait, income inequality just increased! Your boss originally outpaced you by 100 percent, but now his salary is 110 percent higher than yours.

There’s at least one good reason to support Donald Trump’s ongoing lawsuits challenging the election results in several states: the US foreign policy establishment doesn’t want you to.

YouTube, the dominant video platform owned by Google, decided yesterday to remove a Mises Institute video. This decision apparently lasts for all eternity, cannot be appealed to an actual human, and comes with this friendly admonition: “Because it’s the first time, this is just a warning. If it happens again, your channel will get a strike and you won’t be able to do things like upload, post, or live stream for 1 week.” 

“Russia, Russia, Russia,” the current president used to sarcastically chastise opponents for wondering about 2016 election tinkering from Putin’s principality. Recent MAGA rallies featured “Covid, covid, covid,” with President Trump complaining that the press could think of nothing else.

Listen to the Audio Mises Wire version of this article.

In terms of their widespread application and rapid implementation, covid-19 policies have been the most egregious violations of Canada’s constitution, ever. But my opinion doesn’t matter, because judges are the only people allowed to interpret the constitution—a convenient arrangement for the government.

Listen to the Audio Mises Wire version of this article.

These days, MMT—modern monetary theory—is all the rage.

Listen to the Audio Mises Wire version of this article.

With all the attention commanded by the presidential campaign, election, and aftermath, plus the ongoing covid-19 story, many other issues have faded into the background. Though escaping the headlines, some of these other issues will be with us for a long time, and contributions to the public discussion of such issues often have a long-term impact.

Even though huge issues are still in doubt, Americans have largely survived an election full of serious ill will, hypocrisy, and ominous implications. However, in the process, we have accumulated a deficit of self-reflection and humor.

Over the past hundred years, evolutionary socialism has slowly but steadily taken root in the fabric of American society. This is especially noticeable in the economic sphere, because evolutionary socialism uses the mandatory redistribution of wealth as one of the methods to achieve its ultimate goal. The bloated state machine interferes with the economy, distorts market signals and economic relations between market agents, and chooses winners and losers in order to achieve an illusory and propagandistic goal of equality and justice.

Central bank digital currencies (CBDC) are being sold with the narrative of protecting consumers who are increasingly moving to cashless payments. Some say that these cashless payments will rob us of the privacy advantages of cash while exposing us to bank runs, payment network blackouts, and foreign financial adversaries.

Yet while these risks are real, they would be negligible had it not been for the central banking and financial regulators’ interventions into the market. CBDCs make these interventions worse and introduce some new, much bigger ones.