Of all the factors that contribute to police brutality and misconduct, one that has been relatively neglected but has received a growing amount of attention is police unions. Their influence became harder to ignore after all of the anecdotes of police unions making it more difficult to investigate and discipline misconduct.
Ever since the important contributions of new classical economists Finn E. Kydland and Edward C. Prescott during the 1970s and 80s, modern macroeconomics seeks optimal rules for monetary policy. Indeed, Milton Friedman had previously emphasized the importance of a binding rule for monetary policy. He recommended a constant but moderate expansion of the money stock over time as well as the abolition of fractional reserve banking in order to improve the central bank’s control over the money stock. Neither of these two measures has ever been implemented over an extended period of time.
I’m not a fan of Marvin Goodfriend. His views are dangerous, and he has been blatantly dishonest in order to hide them. Ron Paul even personally introduced a bill back in 2000 targeted directly at his idea of taxing cash.
According to the mainstream narratives, a state of inflation alert was the catalyst to the US stock market mini-crash of February 2 and February 5, 2018. This explanation echoes the run-up to the October 1987 stock market crash. On other occasions in history, inflation alerts have not had such an immediate effect, with the pull-back of asset price inflation (which typically leads reported goods and services inflation) waiting for a substantial tightening of monetary policy.
In the 20th century, the advocates of free-market economics almost invariably pin the blame for government intervention solely on erroneous ideas — that is, on incorrect ideas about which policies will advance the public weal. To most of these writers, any such concept as “ruling class” sounds impossibly Marxist.
Should we care about inequality?
Donald Trump’s possible decision to end NASA’s funding of the International Space Station by 2025 brings up that age-old question of the proper role of government, although it is certainly not he who is bringing it up.
Plant-based diets, especially vegan diets, seem to be all the rage these days.
Based on the practice of eschewing animal products, veganism has attracted a broad coalition of interest groups — ranging from animal rights to environmental activists — who believe that veganism is the most ethical and sustainable way of promoting human health and animal welfare.
At first, these appear to be reasonable premises for an alternative lifestyle that challenges the dietary status quo.
Germany finally has a new government. After months of negotiating, a breakdown of talks between the Conservatives, Greens, and Liberals, and constant fighting between the Conservatives (CDU/CSU) and Social Democrats (SPD), the two major parties reached an agreement yesterday.
America’s most famous Keynesian, economist Paul Krugman, predictably used his New York Times column to excoriate President Trump’s State of the Union infrastructure proposal. Yet ironically, Krugman’s own positions on the economy and climate change should lead him to applaud Trump’s ideas. This is just another episode where Krugman displays his partisanship, rather than fidelity to his ostensible goals for the public.
