Interest Rates Mess With Time Preference Rates

Debt, Economy, Federal Reserve Bank

While crediting the “Fed’s interest-rate policies, together with other measures,” for having “helped avert a much deeper economic slump,” the War Street Journal is prepared to admit (here) that artificially keeping interest rates so low doesn’t “just hurt retirees. [It] also penalizes people of any age hoping to build up funds for the future, and discourage rainy-day savings that could make U.S. consumers more resilient to job losses and other financial jolts.”

Dah. Austrian economists have warned all along that the Fed’s policies will see the dollar drop like a stone, assets continue to devalue, and saving and retirement become near impossible. Prices will soar, and the currency will eventually collapse (hyperinflation).

“Americans who have done everything right, have worked hard, saved their money and stayed out of debt are the ones being punished by low interest rates.”

Time preference rates are the degree to which different people discount the future in favor of immediate gratification. In a credit-fueled, consumption-based economic culture, those who want it all now come out on top. The saver, investor or producer is not the type of economic actor that such a fiscal culture cultivates and rewards.

Migrant Remittances Dwarf Foreign Aid

Economy, Foreign Aid, Taxation, Welfare

Governments are good at talking-up the “charitable” nature of their wealth transfers, especially when budget cuts loom (the kind that threaten bloated bureaucracies). U.S. government aid, however, doesn’t come close to private American charitable donations in any given year (link). Private foreign aid greatly exceeds U.S. government aid. And the former, unlike the latter, can be channeled to recipients the donor – not government – favors. The depth and the consistency of America’s voluntary giving obviate the need for political pelf, i.e. foreign aid.

No devotee of Sir Peter Bauer, author of “Dissent on Development” and the foremost authority on foreign aid, takes seriously the warning (here) that the GOP’s meager proposed budget cuts “would cause the deaths of at least 70,000 children around the world who rely on American funding, according to the government agency in charge of foreign aid.”

Here is another interesting figure that further puts in perspective the $15 billion or so of foreign aid stolen from American taxpayers:

According to the “Atlas of Human Migration,” published in 2011, thanks to the opportunities created (indubitably, by and large, in developed nations), the remittances “sent back home by migrants in 2007 was an impressive $250 billion, putting the $103 billion sent in development aid, in the same year, to shame.” (TLS March 4, 2011)

UPDATED: “Black Racism”: A Conversation With Erik Rush (Part 2)

Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Multiculturalism, Political Correctness, Propaganda, Race, Racism

This week, on WND.COM (HERE), I talk “Black Racism” with Erik Rush. “Black Racism” is the title of a chapter in the book under discussion, and is the second of a two-part conversation with Erik, a WND columnist, and the author of “Negrophilia: From Slave Block to Pedestal – America’s Racial Obsession.” Read part 1 of this interview is HERE.

Rush claims that “… American blacks have become more racist since the late sixties. … In many ways, blacks are more distrustful of whites now than when they had a legitimate reason to be.” More with Erik in “Black Racism’: A Conversation With Erik Rush (Part 2),” now on WND.COM.

UPDATE (April 1): I posted the following on David Yeagley’s Facebook page, in response to a Bad Eagle post titled, “Ilana Mercer: Echoes of St. Paul”:

David, this is deep. You are deep. But I think my political position is that individuals ought to be free to self-identify or affiliate in any way they wish—without being libeled, labeled and banished from polite company. To be a KKK is worse than horrid. But why, when we have proud black racialism, must we banish from polite company and from the job market WASPs who, peacefully, say and do the same? Freedom means more than speech: it means leaving people be. In that sense, America is unfree. Btw, I consider you one of my pepes because of your valor and values, not your heritage (which accounts for your handsomeness ). So, I don’t quite fit your analysis. which is, nevertheless, deep.

‘Former Springbok Accused Of Deadly Axe Rampage’

Crime, Race, Racism, South-Africa

Before you read about yet another grisly, garden-variety crime in South Africa (detailed below), here is what you should know: A hardcore criminal in my former homeland has at least a ninety percent chance of getting away with murder; conviction rates in South Africa hover at a dismal eight percent. In South Africa, crime pays.

In my forthcoming book, “Into the cannibal’s Pot; Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa” (more), due out on May 10, I compare murder rates in the New South Africa with those in the developed world. For example “Between April 2004 and March 2005, 18,793 people were murdered in South Africa (population 43 million). In comparison, the ‘high-crime’ United States (population 299,398,000) suffered 16,740 murders. South Africa has sixty homicides per 100,000 people; the US approximately six.”

These crime and conviction rates should be the backdrop to the following story, reported by the “Independent ie.” That, and the fact that HIV positive rapists and home-invaders are called “burglars”:

A former South African international rugby player has been accused of going on an axe-murdering rampage, killing “at least” three people.
The player is alleged to have killed the men in revenge for the gang rape of his daughter, who contracted HIV as a result of her assault.
South African police said the black player hacked his victims to death with an axe. One was decapitated. Others were assaulted, but managed to escape. The player’s identity is being withheld from publication to prevent his daughter from being identified.
However, it is understood that the girl was attacked after a break-in at the family’s home in Durban.
A gang of four burglars abducted the teenager, then raped her in a nearby wooded area. She subsequently was diagnosed as having HIV.
Enraged by his daughter’s fate, her 34-year-old father is said to have brazenly stalked one of the impoverished townships near his home.

Read the complete story. Nowhere does the reporter say if the murdered had been implicated in the crime avenged. He does tell you that, “Many South Africans had wrongly assumed [the killer] is white and that therefore there may have been a racial element to the attacks, but a police spokesman yesterday confirmed that he is black.”

In other words, had the butcher been one of the many white fathers whose daughters had been raped, killed, or sentenced to a slow death via HIV—the killing would have a racial aspect, rather than be motivated by revenge.

Speaking of “black racism,” don’t forget part 2 of my conversation with my colleague Erik Rush. It’ll be up on WND tonight. Here’s part 1.