(Sing along to the theme song from the Flintstones.)
Spendthrifts, meet the Spendthrifts,
They’re the modern wasteful family.
From the town of DC,
The most reckless house in history.
Their massive outlays are so darn carefree,
They have no concept of reality.
When you’re with the Spendthrifts,
Common sense, restraint and honesty are all a joke.
Soon we will all be broke.
TOM WOODS: This is the Tom Woods Show, and today I welcome Jeff Deist.
The end of alcohol prohibition in 1933 and the subsequent War on Drugs might just be what spreads a widespread revival of libertarianism and Austrian Economics.
On January 17, 1920, America embarked on an official policy of prohibiting alcohol nationwide backed by the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution and the Volstead Act. The idea had been tried before at the state and local levels and failed. Progressivism, the ideology of the age, however, provided optimism that government could produce a pure white Protestant society free of all social evils.
On January 10, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Secretary of the Treasury Steve Mnuchin announced new economic sanctions imposed on Iran in response to its missile strikes against US forces in Iraq. The sanctions target enterprises operating in the manufacturing, textile, construction, and mining sectors. President Trump said that “These punishing sanctions will remain until the Iranian regime changes its behavior.”
When the US places financial sanctions on one country, it de facto sanctions many other countries as well — including many of its allies.
This is because not all countries and firms are interested in participating in the US sanctions-based foreign policy. Sanctions, after all, have become a favorite go-to strategy for American policymakers who seek to isolate or punish foreign states that don’t cooperate with US international policy goals.
[This article is part of the Understanding Money Mechanics series, by Robert P. Murphy. The series will be published as a book in late 2020.]
“Luck egalitarianism” is a philosophical fad, and in the past I have had some characteristically unkind things to say about it. I’d like today to discuss a new argument that concerns luck and government.
The economist Robert H. Frank says in Under the Influence,
President Trump’s decision earlier this month to assassinate Iran’s top military general on Iraqi soil — over the objection of the Iraqi government — has damaged the US relationship with its “ally” Iraq and set the region on the brink of war. Iran’s measured response — a few missiles fired on an Iraqi base after advance warning was given — is the only reason the US is not mired in another Middle East war.
