Category Archives: Economy

Bernie Sanders Economics: The Reason Venezuela Is Starving

Communism, Economy, Individual Rights, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Intellectualism, Private Property, Socialism

If you plant a Bernie Sanders sign in your yard—a man who has promises variations on price controls and nationalization of industries—you should suffer the worst of fates. The problem: Everybody will be affected by your emotions-driven economic and ethical ignorance—ignorance of the natural laws of economics and oblivion to the rights of free individuals to freely exchange titles to private property. In Bernie style, shortages will be blamed on “evil producers.” Further incursions will follow as “evil producers” are roped into bondage by the state. As such interventions beget more of the same, we will end up with the “Venezuela Playbook: The Communist Manifesto.”

… This choice between “fair” prices and arrest is now the norm for business owners in Venezuela. The most outrageous instance of this took place in early November, when government security forces occupied local electronics stores and began handing out TVs and other wares at “fair” (read: rock-bottom) prices. Hebert Garcia, head of the High Commission for the People’s Defense of the Economy, put it bluntly: “We have to guarantee that everybody has a plasma television and the latest-generation fridge.”
Not surprisingly, the masses lined up around the block for their piece of the government’s action. Too bad the government has failed to provide enough electricity to power the plunder. In most countries, this would be called government theft. But, under Maduro’s reign of Marxism, this redistribution has become business as usual. …

Discussion on Facebook.

Michael Walls: The fact that communism appeals so heavily to “intellectuals” is disturbing. Socialism is just “communism lite”, and the communism that socialism derived from is so absurd in it’s details it’s hard not to laugh out loud reading it. Maybe we need to re-examine the term “intellectual”.

Ilana Mercer No, Michael Walls, the fact that some communists are deemed or called “heavily intellectual” is what’s disturbing—disturbing for what it says on how we judge intellect. Your conclusion is 100%.

Educate yourself by reading.

TSA , VA, ObamaCare, SandersCare; Gov.Com: Economically They’re The Same

Economy, Government, Healthcare, Homeland Security, Political Economy, Private Property, The State

To the economically literate: It’s your obligation to know by now—especially if you read this space—that nothing the head of the Transportation Security Administration and Homeland Security can say or do will change the fact of “long waits at the nation’s airports” this summer and any other peak travel time.

Lines—overload, undersupply, malfunction—are a function of a government system, whose incentives were explained in “Why Government ‘Care’ Will Never, Ever Work,” and elsewhere:

Since it “manages” money not its own, government has no real incentive to conserve resources, ensure a job is properly done, or deliver on its promises. Entrusted with the administration of assets you don’t own, have no stake in; on behalf of people you don’t know and who have no real recourse against your mismanagement—how long before your on-the-job performance mirrors that of the government? …

… A monopolist, moreover, doesn’t have to please consumers, because he has them cornered. Therefore, in a politburo, political decisions trounce considerations that would win out in the market place. Consider: HealthCare.gov was coded with the goal of harvesting sensitive information from applicants while concealing rip-off prices from them. Why would the Central Planning Board (aka the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in charge of Obamcare) care that such coding has created a hacker’s dream, when their wet dream is to share data culled through HealthCare.gov with the IRS, the DHS, the TSA, on and on?

Like the communist elite, the Congress elite seldom subjects itself to the same health care or the same laws as the people. Unsurprisingly—and by legislative sleight of hand—lawmakers have used their privileged positions to pass laws exempting themselves and their lackeys from liability. “Governmental immunity” is designed to “stop people from suing the government and government employees and officials in many cases.”

With taxpayers ponying up for any … slip … and responsibility collectivized—fear of being fired or penalized is non-existent among the ruling class. Government failure will never see the closing of a government agency, or the firing of nasty, inefficient, over-paid, affirmatively appointed official.

I hope you are able to generalize from healthcare.gov to TSA.gov, to VA.gov and beyond.

Economically, the incentive structure is the same in the TSA , ObamaCare, SandersCare, Gov.Com.

The nationalization of airports by BUSH II was first explored in “WHOSE PROPERTY IS IT ANYWAY?” (June 5, 2002). Read it. Teach it.

TRUMP’S ‘Bad Week’ Tweets: Silent Majority Rising, Says No To NATO, RNC, Neocons, Kasich, Cruz & Debt

Debt, Donald Trump, Economy, Foreign Policy, Republicans

RepubliKeynesian Ben Stein Froths At The Mouth About Trump

Debt, Donald Trump, Economy, Federal Reserve Bank, libertarianism

“Frightening, idiotic, nonsensical, insane, breathtakingly horrible, flabbergasting, makes me want to cry”: Does this spleen, vented by Ben Stein, resemble an “argument”? It was the sum total of Stein’s “case” against Donald Trump’s recent pronouncements about a foreseeable recession.

As an “expert” who despises Mr. Trump, Stein—an actor, comedian, lawyer and self-styled economist—holds sway with the liberal, malfunctioning media. Our establishment “RepubliKeynesian” appeared on the anti-Trump channel, CNN, to huff and puff about Mr. Trump’s alleged far-fetched doom-and-gloom about a troubled economy. If I recall, this expert was clueless about the previous bubble, not that errors prevent the pundit class from returning for encores.

“We’re not in a bubble, unemployment is not high, Trump needs to consult a real economist [take me, me, screams Stein silently] were some of Stein’s assertions to the smirking, vacuous looker, Pamela Brown. Naturally, Brown provided no counter perspective.

Suffice it to say that Trump’s warnings about the effects of the enormous national debt, the still bigger burden of unfunded liabilities owed, as well as his assessment of the real unemployment numbers would certainly comport with more distortions in the economy and more bubbles.

Oh, and Trump supporters are all idiots for not sympathizing with Stein’s outrage.

Anyhow, not one argument was advanced by Stein for his case against Mr. Trump, only ad hominem. Had the smirker in the anchor’s chair called in an economist, say, of the Austrian persuasion—or even Paul Craig Roberts, United States assistant secretary of the treasury for economic policy under President Reagan, in 1981—she would have heard a perspective more in agreement with Trump than with RepubliKeynesian Ben Stein.