Category Archives: Political Economy

Updated: Those Invisible Jobs

Economy, Federal Reserve Bank, Labor, Political Economy, Propaganda

The excerpt is from my new WorlNetDaily.com column, “Those Invisible Jobs”:

“Let’s suppose a business employed ten workers in June. Along came Barack Obama and huffed and puffed and blew six jobs away. Four employees now run a pared-down operation. The next round of retrenchments will invariably entail fewer than six people. The president, or any other wolf in sheep’s clothing, may declare that our proprietor has shed fewer jobs in the month of July. But he may not frame a mathematical inevitability as a sign of economic recovery.

Fewer jobs lost probably means that there are fewer jobs to lose.

Nevertheless, this is exactly how the president spun the static employment market—and, to be fair, this is the way all presidents, aided by statisticians at the Bureau of Labor, finesse unemployment. …

The fig leaf of a “jobless recovery” is yet another unbeatable bit of political fraud.

A jobless economic recovery is the equivalent of a housewarming for the homeless. …

READ THE COMPLETE column, “Those Invisible Jobs,” on WND.COM. And on Taki’s Magazine, every weekend.

Update (August 28): Today, on Chuck Wilder’s nationally syndicated CRN show, “Talkback,” we briefly discussed “Those Invisible Jobs.” I immediately tackled, without being asked to, a possible argument against the case I make in the column’s first paragraph:

Let’s suppose a business employed 10 workers in June. Along came Barack Obama and huffed and puffed and blew six jobs away. Four employees now run a pared-down operation. The next round of retrenchments will invariably entail fewer than six people. The president, or any other wolf in sheep’s clothing, may declare that our proprietor has shed fewer jobs in the month of July. But he may not frame a mathematical inevitability as a sign of economic recovery.

Fewer jobs lost probably means that there are fewer jobs to lose.

The employment market is not static; it’s dynamic. Jobs are destroyed and created all the time. Efficiencies and productivity also reduce and improve the labor force. However, it’s safe to say that if ever the labor market was static, it’s now. And for a good reason. As a snapshot in time, the logical example I give above holds. Because—again, for good reasons—there are fewer jobs to be had, the number of jobs lost will also diminish. But this is because of 1) a relatively static job market. 2) A private economy, “penetrated and enervated by a tentacular bureaucracy.”

For ideologues out there slowly learning, on BAB, to meld reason, reality and ideology, don’t be rigid Postrelians (from Virginia Postrel’s dynamism folly).

Cooperation, Not Communism

Capitalism, Communism, Free Markets, Intellectual Property Rights, Liberty, Political Economy, Political Philosophy, Socialism, Technology

On my mind is another of Glenn Beck’s frequently made errors. Whenever Beck sends out a free copy of his newsletter, he declares “provocatively” that “Glenn has succumbed to socialism.” Avail yourself of the product of Glenn’s momentary insanity, he will exhort (referring to himself in the third person), and sign up for this free, socialistic service. This is a good opportunity to clarify what socialism really is, for unless you understand that there can be no socialism without state coercion, why, then, you comprehend very little about the dread socialism—as little as conservatives and Republicans do.

Indeed too many people conflate the voluntary provision of a free service with socialism. Voluntary cooperation, even absent remuneration, is never socialism. Glenn Beck seems to think that anything free is socialism. Not so. A Kibbutz—Israeli communal living—is a voluntary socialistic arrangement, which, if you prize freedom, is as good as any arrangement people want to enter that is coercion free. Kibbutzim are often economically viable arrangements. Perhaps this is because people are there by choice and by belief.

Thus, an open source software project, worked on voluntarily by scores of developers across the globe, is not socialism. Although volumes have been written on the pros and cons of open source versus proprietary software, the proof is in the pudding: Although free, open source is often as good as software that costs serious money.

I do not want to veer into the copyright debate. However, I still stand by my writing on the topic. “KAZAA,” for example, was engaged in voluntary exchange; “THE COPYRIGHT CARTEL” was the fascistic attempt to infringe on this voluntary exchange—and on tangible property not its own. But let’s leave this debate right now.

Updated: Cash-For-Clunkers Cry Babies (& The Tragedy Of The Commons)

Conservatism, Constitution, Economy, Political Economy, Private Property, Republicans, Socialism

I don’t feel sorry for the many car dealers who opted to take taxpayer funds, via the government, and lure equally greedy and gormless customers into junking perfectly good rides, purchasing new ones instead, and taking on more debt. I’m not in the least sorry for them, now that Uncle Sam has stiffed them, no Sirree.

Ridiculous too is the incredulity the auto dealers are feigning at being stiffed (if you can call it that) by their paymaster. “We just expect the same sort of courtesy and treatment from the federal government,” they whimper. Boohoo.

“Dealers across the state are owed more than $3.6 million, according to a dealers’ group which says that so far Uncle Sam has only written three checks totaling about $14,000.”

And:

“You simply can’t ask businesses to front $200,000, $300,000 for any period of time,’ Rep. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., told KRQE News 13. ‘These applications are simply not being processed fast enough.'”

You don’t say!

Equally stupid is the only deduction conservatives can muster: If the government can’t manage the CFC scam, how will it run the unconstitutional, confiscatory, immoral healthcare undertaking.

Of course, they omit the key phrases I just used—“scam, unconstitutional, confiscatory, immoral”—these are nowhere apparent in the debate; although Hitler is. A pretty—and pretty dumb—townhaller, taking her cues from Rush, paired health care and Hitler. Good job.)

There’s a lot conservatives can’t find words for: private property, for one. Principles is another. Nothing works in government because there is no private property. If you were given something to manage that you don’t own, have no stake in, on behalf of millions of people you don’t know, and who have no recourse against your mismanagement, except to whine like wimps—how well would you perform? Why are privately owned homes cared for and public housing trashed? Why don’t Republican and conservative bimbos and beaus of the media ever open a book and learn a few concepts.

Okay make it one crucial concept: the “Tragedy of the Commons.”

Update: To the comment below: The “calculation problem” means nothing to the lay reader. Private property means everything—or ought to. It should be understood to those who bandy about the “calculation problem” that the reason there cannot be rational allocation of resources in a state bureaucracy is because there is no private property. In a free market, the institute of private property ensures that we have prices. Prices are like a compass: pegged to supply and demand they ensure the correct allocation of resources. Conversely, in a nationalized system there are no prices because there is no private property. Absent such knowledge, misallocation of capital is inevitable.

Property precedes all else.