The heart of economic growth is an expanding subsistence fund, or the pool of real savings. This pool, which is composed of final consumer goods, sustains individuals in the various stages of the production process. The increase in the pool of real savings permits the expansion and the enhancement of the infrastructure, and this strengthens economic growth. An increase in economic growth for a given stock of money implies more goods per unit of money. This means that economic growth, all other things being equal increases the purchasing power of money.

This will be brief, appropriate to the topic at hand. It consists of a quote from Milton Friedman found in Joseph Salerno’s outstanding book, Money: Sound and Unsound:

If a domestic money consists of a commodity, [such as] a pure gold standard or cowrie bead standard, the principles of monetary policy are very simple. There aren’t any. The commodity money takes care of itself. (emphasis added)

Can you imagine giving people who are already suffering from mental illness a drug that you know will make them worse? Sounds like something out of a sadistic horror movie. Long-term mental illness sufferers experience such torturous states of mind that they might try just about anything to escape them—from the extreme of suicide to taking just about any drug their doctor says holds the hope of helping them. It takes a particular brand of evil to exploit that condition. But that’s exactly what Pfizer did with Neurontin (also prescribed as gabapentin.)

If anyone believes that it is reactionary hysteria to claim the radical Left wishes to destroy the traditional family, then let Sophie Lewis’s 2022 book, Abolish the Family, allay such concerns. This “Manifesto for Care and Liberation” sets forth the why and the how of the erasure of traditional households.

Once again, after two decades of silence, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is cracking down on Microsoft. For what? Microsoft is accused of monopolistic tendencies in their recent bid to acquire the company Activision Blizzard.

The late Douglas North was correct to assert that institutions are a determinant of long-term economic growth. However, despite his genius in perceiving connections between economics and other fields, North wrote little on culture.

By the beginning of the fourth century, the Roman Empire had become a completely different economic reality from what it had been at the beginning of the first century. The denarius argenteus, the empire’s monetary unit during the first two centuries, had virtually disappeared since the middle of the third century, having been replaced by the argenteus antoninianus and the argenteus aurelianianus, numerals of greater theoretical value, but of less and less real value.