Rummel estimated that Mao killed wrongfully killed seventy seven million, and the Black Book of Communism estimates sixty five million – but, of course, it is notoriously difficult to say what a totalitarian terror state based on slavery and mass murder is up to.  They called it an iron curtain because you could not see what was behind it. So how should we judge the accuracy of estimates? One good way is to see what happens to those estimates when …
Author: Jim
The cause of the crisis
Roissy wonders why the elites are so stuck on the obviously false idea of literal equality. Understood as a species of Christian belief, it makes sense, because the Christians believe that the most important part of the self is immaterial. If it’s immaterial, then material differences have nothing to do with it. So Christians are free to believe pretty much anything they want about this most important part of the self, unconstrained by material evidence of any sort.
The explosive expansion of the state
Government regulatory intervention in the economy is exploding, creating a multitude of invisible taxes, off budget expenditures, and opportunities for corrupt profits by semi private businesses, such Al Gore becoming a billionaire from carbon credits.
Rigging the vote
Why bother rigging the vote; even the tea party supports unsustainable welfare, affirmative action, social security, and healthcare programs. I fear the vote rigging is merely over who gets the gravy, since the major function of government has become handing out the gravy to true believers.
The number of the beast
And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. Greece Bans Cash Transactions Over 1,500 Euros The Italian government will ban the use of cash in transactions over 5,000 euros, lowering the ceiling from 12,500 euros In …
After mass democracy
A couple of hundred years ago, the conventional wisdom was that democracy with broad voter participation was unstable, violent, ruinous, and short lived. A hundred years or so ago the world moved to mass democracy, universal franchise. Many people predicted that this would result in the masses trying to vote themselves rich, resulting in social and economic collapse Well guess what. The masses have been trying to vote themselves rich, social collapse is under way, and economic collapse looms. The …
The end is in sight
For the last hundred years or so, people have been predicting that the welfare and affirmative action state would collapse eventually. Well, it seems that “eventually†is getting close. Arnold Kling has a list of links showing that all the welfare state social democracies are going to hell in a handbasket, with everyone else in even worse trouble than the US. Arnold Kling predicts a US debt crisis between 2015 and 2035. Public sector pensions are unpayable. The welfare state …
Atlas did not shrug
The cathedral has pursued a policy of compromising with and absorbing competing elites – thus it both allowed the big banks to capture the regulators (resulting in financial crisis, but consolidating the elite’s power over ordinary Americans) and allowed the Soviet Union to infiltrate the US government (thus causing wars and communist victories, but consolidating the elite’s power over ordinary Americans). As Dusk tells us: look at how much regulation the banking industry came under during the 1990s and 2000s …
Treasury committed to supporting too big to fail
Government lacks the will to allow to big to fail firms to fail, and the will and competence to regulate them. If a firm is too big to fail, it will take advantage of that fact, leading to crisis and massive tax payer losses.
Seventy percent taxes coming eventually.
In Greece, payroll tax, value added tax, and income tax adds up to around seventy percent. It is perfectly clear that this is far above the Laffer limit – the private sector in Greece is largely underground and not quite cash, like a third world country. If someone is employed by the state he pays taxes on his income because employed by the state, but does not actually do any work, because employed by the state. If someone is not …