Pay taxes or we kill your dog

Freedom Swiss style: Pay a per head tax on your pet or the state will kill it.

So much for private property—one’s pet—being one’s own. If pet owners don’t pay the state money, most of which goes into someone else’s pocket, it will come after them. A local Swiss politician described it for what it is:

“It’s meant to put pressure on people who don’t cooperate.”

That’s what’s called “liberty” by socialists.

Job-Killing Labor Costs and the Manufacturing Sector

If there is one issue that pops up again and again in my conversations about economics with interested noneconomists, it is manufacturing.

There’s a genuine concern about the state of manufacturing in the United States, and I am not sure of the reason why. It could be that there is an inchoate sense that manufacturing is dying here, given that so many of our popular-consumption goods seem to be made overseas. Then there is the issue of the trade deficit, which is generally reported on in the mainstream media in a manner that is irresponsible, uninformed, or both.

Intellectual Poverty

Opponents of the state monopoly privilege grants that the state and supporters propagandistically call “intellectual property” use a variety of alternative terms, in attempt to better describe these “rights” without implying they are valid, as the word “property” seeks to do.