The position that a tax exemption is a subsidy has always been wrong. In no way is a person being subsidized when the state simply refrains from seizing a portion of that person’s private property. The idea that it is a subsidy relies on the assumption that all wealth is the government’s wealth first, and that any wealth held in private hands is somehow being withheld from the proper owners (i.e., the government).
There are three groups of people who believe that the Supreme Court does not make decisions based on personal whims, personal ideology, pressure from interest groups, and and eye toward building the court’s power. These three groups are: 1) small children in civics classes. 2) people in power who benefit from the perpetuation of the myth of the non-political court, and 3) the very naive.
Government now routinely embraces massive amounts of mud- and blame-slinging as standard operating procedure. The “other guys” are always extremists who exhibit unprincipled intransigence, which prevents agreement on self-defined white hats’ solutions. It illustrates that the government we suffer from is not a means to expanding harmony, but the greatest cause of our disharmony.
Global markets appear to be unsure that the Greek debt crisis will be resolved in an orderly way. The Fed meanwhile is taking a more blasé approach. Paul-Martin Foss writes:
You’d think with all the “stimulus” from Washington over the fifteen years since the dotcom bust, American capitalism would be booming. It’s not. On the measures which count when it comes to sustainable growth and real wealth creation, the trends are slipping backwards — not leaping higher.
Those of us leaning in the Austrian direction see bubbles and malinvestments around every corner and assume, wrongly as it turns out, the market will right these wrongs lickety-split. But, for the moment a rational market is no match for cheap money. “Any college that is thinking about capital expansion, now is a very good time,” Robert Murray, an economist at Dodge Data told the Wall Street Journal. “Several years down the road, the climate might not be as good.”
3. Some Alternative Explanations of Depression: A Critique
Some economists are prepared to admit that the Austrian theory could “sometimes” account for cyclical booms and depressions, but add that other instances might be explained by different theories. Yet, as we have stated above, we believe this to be an error: we hold that the Austrian analysis is the only one that accounts for business cycles and their familiar phenomena. Specific crises can, indeed, be precipitated by other government action or intervention in the market.
Mark Thornton has already noted that Ben Bernanke’s professed admiration for Alexander Hamilton is overblown, especially in light of Hamilton’s ties to the crony capitalists of his day. But there is more to be said about this, and, surprisingly, not all of it to Hamilton’s discredit.
