Recession

GDP was up 0.6% for the second straight quarter. If you consider population growth we are in a recession. If you consider the phony baloney inflation statistics, then we are in a recession. If you look at consumer confidence and public opinion polling we are in a recession. If you go to your local mall and talk to the store managers you will find that we are in a recession. The only place that we are not in a recession apparently is in the “official world” of Washington DC.

But What About the Children?

State campaigns for the welfare of children have long been a major justification for the expansion of Leviathan. This is the primary basis for the war on drugs, which has robbed us of so many civil liberties. It is the basis for the nationalization of education that is taking place, administration by administration, in the name of preventing any child from being left behind. If the Internet is ever regulated in the United States the way it is in China and parts of Europe, it will be in the name of protecting the children. Indeed, it is possible to erect a totalitarian state in the name of helping the children.

Libertarian Paternalism

Editor’s note: The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced today that Richard Thaler has been awarded the 2017 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. For a sense of Thaler’s views on government interventions in the marketplace, we have posted below David Gordon’s 2008 review of one of Thaler’s more well-known books. 

American Democracy versus The American Democrat

 

Years ago, H.L. Mencken noted that ‘every election is a sort of advance auction of stolen goods.’ Since then, the tendency for electoral politics to undermine property rights has grown exponentially. For example, current presidential candidates treat it as a bragging point to claim that the shower of benefits they promise is ‘paid for,’ even though that payment steals other people’s property, backed by government’s coercive power.

The CRA Scam and its Defenders

The myth that the CRA would not be harmful to bank-industry profits was hidden for years by the Fed-created housing bubble, which allowed for easy refinancing of all the bad debt. But now that the bubble has burst, all those unqualified borrowers — whom the government calls “subprime” — are defaulting. The bursting of the Fed-generated housing bubble is the reason why the CRA scam was not exposed until now.

Does Money Taint Everything?

Let’s pull this sentence out of the civic pieties of our time and see what’s wrong with it: “We should all volunteer our time in charitable causes and give back to the community in a labor of love.” We can’t argue with the instruction here, or the sentiment behind it. My argument is with the choice of language. It contains a word and three phrases the common usage of which can be highly misleading.
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