At the end of every year, as we make our way through the holidays, you’ll hear no shortage of complaints about the rampant hyper-consumerism at the heart of modern American society. And these complaints aren’t without merit. Flip on the TV or walk through any city’s commercial district before Christmas, and it’s easy to get the impression that the entire American concept of familial love rests on how much stuff we buy for each other.
This week saw a new twist in what has become a D.C. Christmas tradition. I am not referring to the lighting of the White House Christmas tree but to passage of a “continuing resolution” (CR) funding the government and thus avoiding a Christmastime government shutdown.
It took the production of three separate CRs before one passed in the Senate after midnight Friday night and was then signed by President Joe Biden.
“The secrets of economic success are now known around the world: private ownership, legally enforceable contracts, thrift, low taxation, the free flow of capital, and the avoidance of war. Men still trust in government-controlled monetary systems [unfortunately] . . . But on the whole, people now know what makes societies rich: the free market.” —Gary North, May 22, 2002, (emphasis added)
One of the most common justifications for increasing state police and military power is that it guarantees the security of citizens. Without basic security, it is impossible for people to devote themselves to the pursuit of their social and economic goals. In the US there are proposals to send in the military to help enforce a crackdown on illegal immigration.
Revolutionary totalitarian regimes have long attempted to make Christmas disappear, or to at least make Christmas into something more to the state’s liking.
December marks the eighth anniversary of the passing of Ralph Raico, one of Murray Rothbard’s closest friends and the greatest twentieth-century historian of classical liberalism and a great libertarian theorist as well. In this week’s article, I’m going to highlight some of his insights, but it would be easy to fill several articles with more of them.
When the National Park Service was threatened with budget cuts (in D.C. this means budget increases less than the pie-in-the-sky wish list of the bureaucracy in question) the head of the “service,” one George Hartzog, shut down the Washington Monument and Mount Rushmore. Members of congress from every state were bombarded with complaints by vacationing constituents about the shutdowns, so the talk of budget “cuts” ceased.
Could an increase in the demand for money counteract the effect of an increase in the money supply? For example, if there were an increase in the supply of apples by ten and, simultaneously, an increase in the demand for ten apples, this would be completely absorbed. In other words, after individuals have satisfied their demand for ten apples, zero apples would be left.
Since September, Jerome Powell’s Federal Reserve System has been cutting rates as if a financial crisis were looming. Just as in 2006, Powell raised the federal funds rate to 5.25 percent in the summer of 2023 and left it there until September of the following year. This past September, he cut rates by 50 percent in September and by 25 more basis points at the following Fed meeting just as Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke did starting in September 2007. We all know what happened next.
