Despite Democrats claiming to be against Republican corporate shills and to be for the working people, fighting monopoly power, and not being beholden to the special interests, Nancy Pelosi has said that she wants every American to have access to broadband internet by 2010. With the police power making sure this happens, of course.

How ironic. Just days after Ohio citizens voted to restrain trade and reduce property rights by passing state issues 2 and 5 (an increase in the minimum wage and a statewide ban on smoking), Jeff Eschmeyer of the Ohio Farmers Union contends in a letter to the Columbus Dispatch that farmers and consumers have a right to sell and buy raw milk. Mr.

A couple of years ago I posted an article concerning a traffic (anti)planner who thought road signs were a sign of poor design. A former student (Paul Poenicke) alerted me to this similar piece. Even though the guy explicitly says he’s not an anarchist, I think he’s doing it because in his mind anarchist=nut. Maybe someone should send him a copy of For a New Liberty.

11/9/06

Ted Roberts

2101 Aftonbrae Dr.

Huntsville, AL 35803

Recently, I had a stimulating discussion with the IRS about some bonds which matured in 2004. The discussion had to do with the fact that X dollars worth of bond repayment was NOT, as my IRS friends insisted, a profit demanding capital gain taxes. It was simply a return of my loan of ten years ago. Of course, taxes were paid on the bond interest.

As hard as it has been to find films about entrepreurship, it has been easy to find films about war. The film page is well stocked with anti-war films since war seems to be of perennial interest whether in the triumphalist films that followed World War II or in the darker modern war films like Apocalypse Now, Platoon, and A Midnight Clear.

Last night Rutgers University, where the first college football game was played in 1869, won the biggest game in its history and the biggest college game in the NY metropolitan area since the Army-Notre Dame showdowns at Yankee stadium in the late 1940’s. Since the stadium is 10 minutes from my home and I received my Ph.D. from Rutgers, I have been a season ticket holder for the last 10 mostly dreary seasons--one of the few regular occupants of Section 116 in Rutgers Stadium.

Although an increase of the minimum wage cannot be directly passed on to consumers, it certainly will have indirect effects that reduce consumer welfare.

First, since fewer laborers are now employed, aggregate production will be reduced and overall prices rise, driving down real wages and incomes of consumers.

Second, and perhaps more importantly, the allocation of resources will be distorted and production diverted from most efficient service to consumer demands by what Walter calls “the costs of rearranging things.”

Statist economist Greg Mankiw launches a fresh offensive on freedom with the Pigou Club (to view which, you must register at facebook.com, but Mankiw describes it on his blog). There he and a familiar list of famous (Al Gore) statists and their fellow travellers advocate increased taxes on gasoline to bolster government revenues (now there’s a lofty goal) and alleviate global warming at the same time - a one, two punch as it were.

One of the oldest myths about capitalism is the notion that factories that offer the poor higher wages to lure them off the streets (and away from lives of begging, stealing, prostitution, or worse) or away fom back-breaking farm labor somehow impoverishes and exploits them. They are said to work in “sweatshops” for “subsistence wages.”