For the past month a store at the retail center where we’ve shopped for years has displayed prominent signs stating “Going Out Business—Everything For Sale”. So yesterday I went in to say good-bye to Don, one of the employees who has frequently helped me select the...
Economics
Bond Servants
In The President, which I wrote eighteen years ago, there is an African-American pastor who laments how the federal government has become the world’s largest plantation, keeping Black Americans down. Now, sadly, all Americans of every color are being driven to lives...
How Will the President Grow the Economy from the Bottom Up?
President Obama has recently said that he wants to grow our economy from the “Bottom Up”. But exactly what does he mean, and how does that work? I suppose that he could be promoting the Keynesian saw of giving free money to people who don’t pay income taxes at the...
How To Stop Our Runaway Spending
Conservatives from key states recently voted for subsidies to sugar farmers. Realtors demand mortgage subsidies despite the disaster of the housing finance bubble. Food Stamps are advertised on TV as a “benefit” that you don’t want to miss, and now an astounding one...
The Greecehopper and the Ants
For those of a certain age, this Disney video will be familiar. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wM1DgihKHVI. Please give it a watch. For an individual, household, city, or sovereign nation, it really is not much more complicated than this. With so much practical good...
Economic Democracy
Any method of allocating resources other than the free market price system ultimately leads to tyranny. Yet the Occupy Wall Street Non-Leaders, presumably opposed to tyranny, have said many times that they want a “democratic economy”. There simply is no such thing....
Size Matters
I believe that many of our worst and very real problems are caused by the size of government, some businesses and some unions—they are all too big. Economies of Scale make sense, to a point. But Too Big to Fail, or close to it, makes no sense. Because then the...
Tinkering With Business
When I was a graduate student in London right after the earth cooled, 1968-1970, Harold Wilson was the Prime Minister, and Keynesian Economics ruled his Labor Party from Cambridge. At London School of Economics the teaching was more ChicagoSchool, so our professors...
I’ve Read Good Essays, but This May Be the Bastiat
Thanks to a personal introduction from Gene Tullio (https://facebook.com/gtullio1), I’ve discovered the French economic philosopher Frederic Bastiat and his great work, The Law, originally published in 1850. As with my late-in-life reading of F. A. Hayek, I am...
Perfection or Freedom?
It’s amazing how important worldview can be. Take the secular vs. the Judeo-Christian view of bad behavior and unfairly advancing self, family or friends. The secular worldview, if it were honest, would not criticize such selfish behavior, because if we are just...
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