At the age of eighty four, you have a heart attack. The ambulance comes around, it stabilizes you, it takes you, free of charge to the free government hospital, and the free doctors at the free government hospital conclude you need open heart surgery, a stent and a coronary bypass. Now the government can provide the free ambulance, and the free stabilization to everyone. But there is no way it can provide the free stent and the free bypass to …
Category: economics
Yes, ten percent of Netherlands deaths are murder by government.
Yes, ten percent of hospital deaths in the Netherlands are state sponsored murder, involuntary euthanasia. Rick Santorum is attracting a great deal of outrage for his statement that to control medical costs in the Netherlands, ten percent of patients are involuntarily euthanized – murdered to save on medical costs. The mainstream media is producing a pile of articles claiming that he is lying. “There is not a shred of evidence†Anyone who dies in hospital under deep prolonged barbiturate sedation …
Warren Buffet doubts gold
Warren Buffet points out that land produces wealth, and gold does not. His argument leads to the conclusion that had a Roman in the time of Caesar invested a talent in land, or deposited some money with the money lenders to earn interest, his descendents would now be worth 1067 talents, or about one trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion dollars, whereas had that Roman buried a talent of gold in the ground, that Roman’s descendents would now be worth …
Laffer Maximum
Britain decided to increase income tax on the top one percent of taxpayers to fifty percent. Predictably, revenues from the top one percent of tax payers collapsed. This demonstrates the entirely unsurprising fact that a income tax of 50% plus VAT tax of 20% for an effective tax of 60%, is well above the Laffer limit. I doubt that this came as any surprise to those imposing the tax. More likely the tax was imposed for political reasons, so that …
The virtuous upper class?
According to Charles Murray in the top 20 percent of citizens in income and education exemplify the core founding of industriousness, honesty, marriage, and religious observance. They raise their children in stable homes. This is not my observation. My observation is that the the higher the socioeconomic status of the male, the better his behavior, but the higher the socioeconomic status of the female, the worse her behavior.
Inflation
Total sales are rising ten percent a year in nominal terms.   Surprise surprise, shadowstats estimates ten percent inflation per year if we use the measure of inflation that was used in the the 1980s.   Hawaiian Libertarian reports that that is pretty much what he is seeing when he puts his money down. So what is the true rate of inflation? There is no one true rate of inflation, since to estimate inflation, one has to compare apples and oranges, and …
Steyn nails it:
Our Sick State: I don’t quite know what you’d call these rituals, but the term “private health-care system” doesn’t seem the most obvious fit. Indeed, as in so many other areas of American life — the Fannie-Freddied mortgage market, the six-figure college education — the main purpose of these dysfunctional labyrinths ever more disconnected from any genuinely free market seems to be to discredit the very concept of a “private” system and thus soften up the electorate for statist fixes. …
Manufactured spectacle at Oakland
The police toss smoke grenades, not tear gas grenades, a short distance upwind, between themselves and the protestors. This is not riot control, it is a manufactured photo opportunity Observe the hand motion. He is tossing a smoke grenade just in front, not at the protestors. If you are wondering how heavily outnumbered protestors accomplished their goal of occupying the city hall, despite announcing it at least a day in advance, the above photo explains the inexplicable.
Why Bernanke is not panicking
The stimulus is finally taking effect. As Zimbabwe and the Wiemar Republic demonstrate, one thing that governments armed with the ability to print fiat money really can do is stimulate. From 2009 May to 2011 November total business sales in dollars rose twenty six percent, ten percent a year, which to me, though not to Bernanke, looks like good reason to scream panic and hit the brakes, to raise real interest rates to at least normal levels, and arguably higher.
Ben Bernanke pledges to throw gasoline on the fire
Bernanke pledges to keep interest rates low for at least the next two years – meaning real interest are several percent negative. Large negative interest rates rapidly lead to economic crisis. “The low level of inflation is a validation,†Bernanke said. “There are some who were very concerned that our balance-sheet policies and the like would lead to high inflation. There’s certainly no sign of that yet.†Really? Sales have gone up ten percent in nominal value, which only makes sense …