This may be the first time I’ve seen news reports on increasing joblessness in which the worsening of the job market was not declared to be a “surprise.” (See here and here.) The fact that this lousy jobs report wasn’t declared “surprising” may be a sign of people coming to terms with reality.

Many people are wondering why California didn’t vote for legalized pot, but consider that 46% is pretty darn great for a measure that flatly contradicted federal policy for decades, and a great blow against a policy that surely will not last.

The figure that everyone has been waiting for: $600 billion. “In addition, the Committee intends to purchase a further $600 billion of longer-term Treasury securities by the end of the second quarter of 2011, a pace of about $75 billion per month. ” 10-year and 3-year rates immediately shot up on the announcement, which is probably not what the Fed wanted but reflects expectations of price inflation down the road.

Once again, voters went to the polls to reject overweening government, responding to waves of rhetoric that decried the government takeover of health care, the bailouts and spending, and the arrogance of power. And again, domestic economic issues dominated. And so the “Obama regime,” as the Republicans have started calling it, got a much-deserved smack on the nose.

[Excerpted from An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought, vol. 1, Economic Thought Before Adam Smith (1995). An MP3 audio file of this article, read by Jeff Riggenbach, is available for download.]

[Excerpted from An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought, vol. 1, Economic Thought Before Adam Smith (1995). An MP3 audio file of this article, read by Jeff Riggenbach, is available for download.]

Not only were the physiocrats generally consistent advocates of laissez-faire, but they also supported the operation of a free market and the natural rights of person and property. John Locke and the Levellers in England had transformed the rather vague and holistic notions of natural law into the clear-cut, firmly individualistic concepts of the natural rights of every individual human being. But the physiocrats were the first to apply natural rights and property rights concepts fully to the free market economy.

This week’s episode of 60 Minutes featured a 13-minute segment on “taxing the rich” in order to cure the government’s debt problem. In addition to being an outrageously biased story, the coverage was filled with more economic fallacies than I can address in a single article.

To be sure, Matt Taibbi is wrong about a lot of things. He is dead on with respect to Quantitative Easing. Writes Taibbi in his RS blog post The Fed’s Magic Money-Printing Machine :