Look around and behold the blessings of freedom all around you. Begin first with the lavish presents and food that are holiday traditions in your home. No people at any time in human history has had access to what we have around us. And look at the generations gathered: people living to their 80 and 90s and longer. This would have been unthinkable in the past, when 40 was consider a ripe old age.
Arnold Kling asks, “Is trying to teach economics without math a misguided project?” He even constructed an online text book on this basis.
According to the New York Times, the Fed is preparing a report finding that quasi-public quasi-private “Government Sponsored Agencies” Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac actually pass on most of their subsidy to their share holders rather than to home buyers as they claim.
The Christian Science Monitor reports on a case that illustrates everything wrong with dictatorship by judges. “This week, on the eve of Yellowstone National Park opening its gates to winter visitors, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., issued a controversial order that has left many in the park gateway community stunned.”
Congresses passes a very bad law, that includes a bounty for anyone reporting suspected spammers, and, meanwhile, users report great success with Norton Antispam, among many available commercial products. Norton and its purchasers do it all without bounties, fines, or prisons.
The Minsk-based Mises Center is fighting against Russia’s mandatory car-insurance law, which is imposing a tax on driving. Yaroslav Romanchuk, president of the Center, is quoted in this Radio Free Europe story.
A new Congressional Budget Office study, linked by Argmax, argues that “Unless taxation reaches levels that are unprecedented in the United States, current spending policies will probably be financially unsustainable over the next 50 years. An ever-growing burden of federal debt held by the public would have a corrosive and potentially contractionary effect on the economy.”
Not that it will make any difference in the final choice, nor should it, but the Cato Institute is accepting public nominations for the highly remunerative Friedman Prize. On the other hand, there is Rothbard’s Unraveling Milton Friedman, which argues:
