In his state of the union address, President Biden expressed his desire for a $400 a month tax credit over two years for first time home buyers. I have argued for years that tax credits are a good thing, and still maintain that they are a good thing. Yet, I am leery of Biden’s tax-credit proposal.
Biden’s proposal was one of several relating to housing:
I know the cost of housing is so important to you.
When we talk about monetary policy, people do not understand the importance of interest rates reflecting the reality of inflation and risk. Interest rates are the price of risk and manipulating them down leads to bubbles that end in financial crises, while imposing too high rates can penalize the economy. Ideally, interest rates would flow freely and there would be no central bank to fix them.
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by Ralph Raico
edited by Edward Fuller
Time preference refers to the preference of satisfaction in the present as compared to a future time. A person who heavily prefers current consumption to future consumption has a high time preference as he places a heavy premium upon satisfaction as soon as possible. By contrast, a person who does not place a heavy premium upon instant satisfaction has a low time preference.
America Last: The Right’s Century-Long Romance with Foreign Dictators
by Jacob Heilbrunn
Liveright, 2024; 249 pp.
Mainstream economists believe our knowledge of the world of economics is elusive, so the criteria for choosing a theory should be its predictive power. If the theory “predicts,” it is regarded as a valid framework to assess the economy. Once a theory fails in that role, the search for a new theory begins.
The western media are, above all, phraseologists. Managing massive vertically integrated “states” requires the controlled and targeted use of repetitive government approved language, propaganda, jingoism, repeated phrases to channel thought and energy.
We’ve seen a lot of “performative” progressivism in recent years – Black Lives Matter and reparations from the Civil War, incessant genderology above the fold, Trump Derangement Syndrome, tomato soup weilding environmental activism, and DEI departments in every company, corporate board, and investment portfolio.
