Comments on: UPDATED: Economic Indices Ignore ‘Century of the State’ https://barelyablog.com/economic-indices-ignore-century-of-the-state/ by ilana mercer Wed, 02 Apr 2025 19:29:09 +0000 hourly 1 By: Myron Pauli https://barelyablog.com/economic-indices-ignore-century-of-the-state/comment-page-1/#comment-13096 Mon, 18 Oct 2010 13:23:49 +0000 http://barelyablog.com/?p=30316#comment-13096 I have no big arguments with you or Stoessel; nevertheless modern economic rankings are like comparing the blind (Cuba) with those with one eye (America). The US is vastly more prosperous in 2010 than in 1910 or 1810 – even the “poor” have air conditioners, DVD players, and cars. People do not routinely die of yellow fever, giving birth, diphtheria, or smallpox. These advances arise from things such as penicillin, vaccination, lasers, transistors, and efficiencies of free-market capitalism. We are not prosperous because of the Income Tax, New Deal, Medicaid, and the hundreds of thousands of troops fighting perpetual wars overseas. Rather, our prosperity has enabled the Leviathan Welfare-Warfare state. We have erected a Gilded Cage.

How does 2010 America compare with 1910 America on “economic freedom”??

But “man does not live by bread alone” – that our pseudo-authoritarian American Empire is a bit more economically free than authoritarian China
(however the trend lines may soon cross) is hardly an occasion for celebration. That both nations rank in some purgatory above complete barbarian hells like Eritrea or North Korea is obvious.

Why CAN’T the US be a wealthy “TAX HAVEN” like Liechtenstein or
Monaco? Wouldn’t that also make us more free??

]]> By: Myron Pauli https://barelyablog.com/economic-indices-ignore-century-of-the-state/comment-page-1/#comment-13090 Mon, 18 Oct 2010 04:20:18 +0000 http://barelyablog.com/?p=30316#comment-13090 Almost surprised that some oil haven with low/no “taxes” like Kuwait or UAE isn’t up there on the economic utopia list as well.

Old comic boffo Mussolini was, in his own perverted way, a visionary. TOTALITARIANISM such as Naziism or Stalinism strangled off too much of the productive sector but AUTHORITARIANISM such as Singapore’s state or modern China or what the US is fast becoming – leaves enough flexibility where the general (sheep) population is allowed some freedoms but overall controls are held by the state on all important issues.

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