The supposedly 99% attempted to occupy the supposedly 1%, the CPAC conference. But it seems the 99% were a bit hard up for warm bodies.
Murray refuted
I found Murray’s major theses in Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010, hard to believe, in particular, that the elite is sexually well behaved.
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 …
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” …
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 …
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 …
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 …
Not the cognitive elite
According to Murray, in the bad old days of elitism, the university was full of good old boys, rather than the smartest, but now, our elite are a bunch of really smart guys. Leading climate scientist Michael Mann and Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman are really smart guys? The guys who write the New York Times are really smart?
Inflationary crisis?
According to the US census, estimated monthly sales have gone up ten percent in dollars between 2010 November and 2011 November. Have living standards gone up? Clearly living standards are falling. Total physical volume of goods shipped by rail has been falling over the past year, consistent with the general experience of falling living standards. Can anyone explain what is going on? This looks to me like slightly worse than …