As the financial crisis of 2008 took shape, the policy recommendations were not slow in coming: why, economic stability and American prosperity demand fiscal and monetary stimulus to jump-start the sick economy back to life. And so we got fiscal stimulus, as well as a program of monetary expansion without precedent in US history.
Uber, Lyft, and similar rideshare companies represent a direct threat to state-controlled taxi cartels and their (increasingly unsellable) medallions. Now a class action lawsuit against Uber has been cleared for a federal court jury in California, alleging that its drivers should be classified as employees rather than independent contractors.
Judge Napolitano points out that if government is spying on everyone, it’s not spending it’s time on spying on those who are most likely to actually use violence against others. Napolitano explains:
This morning, the UK Office for National Statistics released the news that UK CPI has fallen into negative territory (-0.1%) for the first time in almost six decades. Both the Bank of England and the British media steered clear of mentioning the word “deflation”, preferring to use the rather newfangled term “negative inflation.” The little (and believed, temporary) dip in the price of a basket of consumer goods was acknowledged as a slight relief for British households.
Almost 30 years ago, in grade school, I remember being made to watch a documentary in school called “The Plight of the Honeybee.” Since then, articles and documentaries about how bees are disappearing have become routine.
The New York Times yesterday featured an interesting article that notes how the specifics of the internment experience, at least in some places, are fading. The Amache Camp, located in southeast Colorado, for example, is now largely forgotten:
The Foundation for Economic Education The Freeman 1980
One of the more interesting economic debates in the past couple of decades is why the economy is slowing down.
Since 2000, per capita GDP growth in the US has been 0.9 percent per year, compared to 2.3 percent per year in the previous fifty years. This is a big difference: at 2.3 percent growth we double in wealth every generation. At 0.9 percent it takes us close to a century to double. So why the slowdown?
Mario Rizzo, a well-known Austrian economist who teaches at NYU, made an important point about Austrian economics in a recent post on Facebook. He said, “If you are an economist and want to be remembered by future generations, then you really should be a Austrian. We pay full homage to our ancestors and do not pretend that we discovered something new if we have not. On the other hand, most top-level conventional graduate students today barely know the names Ricardo, Mill, Marshall, Hicks, Samuelson, Coase, Friedman and they certainly have little idea of what they said.
