I always knew that if the Republicans were ever to become the majority party, they would do it by mimicking the Democrats. To support this point, this morning’s Washington Post includes a graphic showing the big winners (in terms of wealth transfers) from the recently-passed transportation bill. These include:
Here is a long article in Polish on the work of Hans Hoppe, but the best part is the cover, which features Pope Benedict and Hoppe together (ok in separate photos).
Following Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, in his testimony to the Congress on July 20,2005, Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan said that it is quite likely that we are currently experiencing a global savings glut. Agreeing with Bernanke, the Fed chairman views this glut as one of the factors behind the so-called interest rate conundrum, i.e., long-term rates have been falling despite the tight interest rate stance of the Fed.
Sweden has in recent decades like all highly welfare statist countries in Europe had problems with a weak economy--something which is particularly apparent in the labor market. Employment--both measured as the number of people employed or total hours worked--is now lower than it was 30 years ago even though population has increased some 10%. As a result the real unemployment rate (including everyone in the ages 20-64 that the state pays not to work) is nearly 25% (The official unemployment rate is 5-6% but that number is as bogus as Iraqi WMDs).
Over the years, there has been much discussion of Frank Baum’s Wizard of Oz as being a “parable of populism.” Reading Quentin P. Taylor’s Money and Politics in the Land of Oz, in the Independent Institute’s fine publication, The Independent Review, sparked me to dig into some of the more interesting theories on this.
If we are to have a serious debate about eminent domain, we need to get beyond this ridiculous distinction between public and private use. Government is a racket that rewards itself through plunder and always in the name of public purpose. The truth is that there is no coherent way to separate public and private purpose when it comes to government. Its roads benefit private contractors and serve private interests. It’s true they are “free,” but so are the streets in shopping malls, which are private.
