Category Archives: Free Markets

Government Motors (GM) Is Reckless? You Don’t Say!

Business, Free Markets, Government, Law, Welfare

The greater the incursion of government into markets, the less quality control consumers are able to exert over the products they purchase.

GM (Government Motors) has been propped up by “government-backed guarantees,” on the backs of taxpayers. That’s government’s SOP (Standard Operating Procedure).

Government Motors was further inoculated against legal liability by filing for Chapter 11 protection, or bankruptcy.

“Immunity is pure cowardice,” complained a plaintiff. “They are hiding behind bankruptcy.”

You got it. That’s what government-supported bankruptcy did for Government Motors. It conferred “legal immunity from liability for deaths or injuries in accidents that happened before the current company was created out of the government-supported bankruptcy in July 2009. It was left free of old claims and lawsuits and those remained with ‘old GM,’ which holds assets and liabilities that did not go with the ‘new GM.'”

People have to make up their minds, for once and for all. Do they wish to rely on the benevolence of market forces or the malevolence of government force.

More Busybody, Know-Nothing, Know-It-All Brownian Motion From Barack

Barack Obama, Business, Free Markets, Labor

He knows very little about his professed field of expertise, the US Constitution. And he knows absolutely nothing about the workings of the free market. These credentials are more than enough to allow the busybody, know-nothing, know-it-all president, Barack Obama, to advise Walmart, Apple, and 300 other amazingly successful enterprises on how to establish what he calls “best practices.”

Barack’s latest Brownian Motion, of course, is code for his real goal: to “prohibit discrimination based on unemployment in companies with more than 15 workers.”

If he can’t get Congress to go along, well, then, with his pen and phone (read executive action), the president will free thee from want. (Here, loud, maniacal laughter is in order: “NHAHAHAHAHAHA!”)

And here is more about the moron’s hiring ideas (which include importing millions of new, low- or no-skill Democratic voters).

Can Freedom Lovers Chill In Chile?

America, Britain, Free Markets, GUNS, Private Property, Regulation, Taxation

After watching a property search on House Hunters International, I fell in love with Chile.

Life in certain parts of the country offers quite a few of the prerequisites on my list:

* A cold climate: I detest the heat; the brain functions optimally at 65 degrees.
* Beautiful landscapes.
* Very little crime (because of the country’s demographic make-up).
* Wonderful value (in this episode, home hunter “Michelle” purchased upwards of 20 acres of lake view in Panguipulli, for under US $200,000).
* Gun ownership. While it is not “a constitutional right, personal firearm ownership is permitted in Chile.”

Can Chilean property taxes be higher than in the Evergreen State, where, in order to keep up with the price of the miseducation of the effing kids by their unionized educrats, rates increase irrespective of property value? I doubt it. Considering how cheap property is in Chile, taxes on it are likely lower.

I have twice written positively about Chile: “A Vote For Chile’s President” (a column) and “Chile Is No Haiti” (a blog post).

As if to confirm my positive impression of the country, released today by the Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal is “the 2014 Index of Economic Freedom.” Chile is said to “excel in Latin America.”

Overall, the country ranks number 7 with the US falling behind to number 12.

… The U.S. and the U.K, historically champions of free enterprise, have suffered the most pronounced declines. Both countries now fall in the “mostly free” category. … But as the U.S. economy languishes, many countries are leaping ahead, thanks to policies that enhance economic freedom—the same ones that made the U.S. economy the most powerful in the world. …
… Hong Kong continues to dominate the list, followed by Singapore, Australia, Switzerland, New Zealand and Canada. These are the only countries to earn the index’s “economically free” designation. Mauritius earned top honors among African countries and Chile excelled in Latin America. Despite the turmoil in the Middle East, several Gulf states, led by Bahrain, earned designation as “mostly free.”
… A realignment is under way in Europe, according to the index’s findings. Eighteen European nations, including Germany, Sweden, Georgia and Poland, have reached new highs in economic freedom. …

MORE.

Minimum Wage ‘Pulverizes The Poor’

Economy, Free Markets, Labor, Law

Minimum-wage legislation fixes the price of labor above its productivity, making it less likely that the young and the unskilled will be hired. Those who claim to represent the interests of unemployed youngsters—whose labor-participation rate has been in decline—and other unskilled laborers don’t much care that such legislation circumvents voluntary exchanges in the marketplace. Because government has fixed the price of labor, economic actors are prevented from engaging in mutually beneficial, voluntary exchange.

Still less is the hike justified because it impoverishes. Government can set wages above market value (productivity), but it cannot compel business to hire (and lose money), the outcome of which is unemployment among the young and the poor.

USA Today reports that “13 states are raising pay for minimum-wage workers at the start of 2014.” Another site more savvy than the Seattle Times—almost any website on the WWW qualifies—pegs the additional labor costs to the City of Seattle of “a $15 minimum wage” at “nearly $700,000.

Get rid of the minimum wage altogether says Prof. Walter Block, and jail those who pass it for the crime of “pulverizing the poor.”