The resurgent claim that the modern economy was built on slavery is yet another attempt to attack capitalism while also claiming "we are all to blame" for slavery. The slave owners of old tried a very similar tactic.
Population growth and specialization are not enough to make economies grow. The key ingredient is entrepreneurship.
Even Marx was forced to admit that workers were not being paid at subsistence levels, and that capitalism led to a rising standard of living for workers. So in order to save his theory, he redefined the concept of subsistence.
Would it be possible for the boom-bust cycle to emerge in the free market economy where the central bank does not exist and where gold is money?
C Jay Engel Reviews The Socialist Manifesto, from the Editor of Jacobin.
Whiskey production depends on investment in highly specific capital, and it requires a long time horizon. It's a textbook case of the sort of industry that's likely to suffer most in case of an economic bust.
Sanders’s and other progressives’ blustering about “morality” is really a smokescreen designed to distract from their vision of a society organized around the threat of government aggression against innocents who simply want to mind their own business.
The Fifth Amendment in the Bill of Rights prohibits trying a person twice for the same crime. But the federal government now routinely ignores this.
Loose monetary policy can appear to work so long as real wealth is expanding. But money expansion weakens wealth creation over time, eventually leading to slower growth, lost wealth, and economic busts.
Only gradually, the damage becomes visible. Economic growth is dwindling; political conflicts over income distribution are increasing; the state becomes more and more powerful.
