So here is a story about the “infrequent inspections, deficient safety requirements, and low hiring standards” of day care operations around the country. We need federal regulations! Or so says the National Association of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies.
Two questions.
According to traditional economics textbooks, the current monetary system amplifies initial monetary injections of money. The popular story goes as follows: if the central bank injects $1 billion into the economy, and banks have to hold 10% in reserve against their deposits, this will cause the first bank to lend 90% of this $1 billion. The $900 million in turn will end up with the second bank, which will lend 90% of the $900 million. The $810 million will end up with a third bank, which in turn will lend out 90% of $810 million, and so on.
Perhaps the most benign and certainly one of the most intense, forms of collectivism in the past century, the Israeli kibbutz, seems to be breathing its last. I say benign because kibbutzniks have always been free to leave their kibbutz, a course that may not have been actionable until the 1948 war establishing Israel pushed back the sea of hostility that surrounded most kibbutzim up until that time.
Ah, nothing focuses the mind that a good ol’ fashioned stock market sell-off. Nothing is more likely to cause people to decide that Bush is a really bad president, or inspire pessimism about the future. One might think that a war in Iraq and US equity valuations have politically nothing to do with each other, but when portfolios show declining cash value, blame flies in unexpected ways. Depending on how long this lasts, we might find that brutal criticism of all this president’s policies will become even more ubiquitous.
Taxes of all kinds discourage production, writes Frank Chodorov. Man works to satisfy his desires, not to support the state. When the results of his labors are taken from him, whether by brigands or organized society, his inclination is to limit his production to the amount he can keep and enjoy. The indirect tax is a backhanded recognition of the right of the individual to his earnings; the direct tax, however, boldly and unashamedly proclaims the prior right of the state to all property. Private ownership becomes a temporary and revocable stewardship.
This article from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution quotes me on the subject of war and the economy.
I got the impression during our conversation that the author understood the traditional what-is-seen and what-is-not-seen argument I made, yet anyone walking away from this article would probably conclude that war really is a nice if unfortunate source of stimulus.
At commencement on June 8, 1957 Grove City College awarded an honorary doctorate degree to Ludwig von Mises. The 50th anniversary of this event afforded us an opportunity to consider his legacy at a conference on campus last weekend. Hans Sennholz, the man largely responsible for arranging the award, kicked off the conference on Friday with his reminiscence of Mises. And the incomparable Lew Rockwell gave a stirring assessment of Mises’s legacy Saturday evening.
