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 …
Category: economics
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 …
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 …
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 …
The cost of government
Fleischer explains why he is not hiring. He must spend $74,000 to provide Sally with an $59,000 salary, of which after tax she gets $44,000 plus $12,000 in benefits. Plus he faces large uncertainty that these costs may be arbitrarily and unpredictably increased. The recent substantial increases in the cost of employing people have not been reflected in substantial reductions in people’s wages, thus wages are substantially above market clearing …
Rush Limbaugh – smarter than ten thousand ecology PhDs
Back when BP’s oil was spouting into the gulf of Mexico, Rush told us: “The beach will fix itself†“More oil spilled every year in Africa, in Nigeria, than so far in the Gulf, so it’s not unique. It’s not exceptional. It’s not the largest. Mexico had a spill that larger than this, nobody talks about except apparently me†And behold: The beach has fixed itself. The reason that BP …
Palin Power
According to polls, Palin’s Support for a Candidate Doesn’t Matter or Is Mostly Negative, yet we observe that in practice that when Palin endorses a candidate that is way behind, that candidate shoots up in the polls, and quite often wins. There are several possible explanations of this People tend to give politically correct replies to polls, rather than what they genuinely believe. Republican party activists do what Palin tells …
If you are not at the government’s table, you are on the government’s menu
Vox Populi: While the economic value of anything depends on sellers and buyers agreeing on that value as civil equals in the absence of force, modern government is about nothing if not tampering with civil equality. By endowing some in society with power to force others to sell cheaper than they would, and forcing others yet to buy at higher prices — even to buy in the first place — …
The ruling class
Today’s ruling class, from Boston to San Diego, was formed by an educational system that exposed them to the same ideas and gave them remarkably uniform guidance, as well as tastes and habits. These amount to a social canon of judgments about good and evil, complete with secular sacred history, sins (against minorities and the environment), and saints. Using the right words and avoiding the wrong ones when referring to such matters – speaking the “in” language– serves as a badge of identity. Regardless of what business or profession they are in, their road up included government channels and government money because, as government has grown, its boundary with the rest of American life has become indistinct. Many began their careers in government and leveraged their way into the private sector. Some, e.g., Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner, never held a non-government job. Hence whether formally in government, out of it, or halfway, America’s ruling class speaks the language and has the tastes, habits, and tools of bureaucrats.