In May, the US unemployment rate stood at 5.5 percent against the rate of 5.3 percent for the “natural unemployment,” also known as the Non-Accelerating Inflation Rate of Unemployment (NAIRU).

A decade ago, no one had ever been told to “check your privilege.” Now it commands an appreciable “market share” in academia and social justice rhetoric. But it does so despite sharply opposed interpretations of its meaning. In fact, its expanded footprint is partly because of its ambiguity.

It Could Be an Invitation to Debate

In a sense, “check your privilege” largely amounts to “check your premises” behind your views, and many are willing to recognize that such a reminder can be useful in advancing conversations about social issues.

Writes Xiong Yue:

So the Chinese translation of In Defense of Deflation by Prof. Philipp Bagus translated by Dr. Yang Nong and me is finished. The editor promised me it would be published in August. We still have some arguments on the name of this book, because normally we don’t use “In Defense of” something in Chinese as a title.

Bloomberg catches up with Mises.org and Patrick Barron. Ashoka Mody writes today that the real solution to Europe’s ills is to have Germany leave the EU, possibly to form a separate economic bloc in the north. Moreover, the dispution, according to Mody, woudl be relatively minor:

Daniel Hausman is an influential philosopher of economics, and in a recent interview in the New York Times, he has much to say that will be of interest to Austrians. He agrees with Austrians that economists cannot predict particular events: “Scientists (and I include economists) are not fortunetellers.” His reason for holding this view. though, differ from that of Mises and Rothbard.

The International Monetary Fund (dominated by the US which has the largest voting bloc, by far) has demanded Europe be more socialistic. The New York Times reports: 

In a recent interview, Jeb Bush said that in order for the United States to reach a higher level of economic growth, “people need to work longer hours.”

Leftists immediately jumped on this comment as proof that Bush is horribly out of touch with ordinary working Americans.

Paul-Martin Foss writes: 

Obtaining nuclear weapons is a way of getting reliable defensive capability on the cheap. This is why small, relatively powerless countries want them. North Korea can shell Seoul from the DMZ with conventional weapons fairly easily, but having a few nukes certainly hasn’t hurt North Korea’s ability to keep much larger powers at bay. Pakistan’s status as a nuclear power means it faces no true threat of invasion from foreign powers, even large ones.