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Could Brussels have been taken over by saboteurs, a secret army of eurosceptic infiltrators and spies masquerading as officials? I only ask because it now almost seems as if Spain’s bailout was deliberately designed not merely to fail but to inflict maximum damage on the Spanish economy and the entire Eurozone. Rarely have I seen such incompetence. June 14th, 2012 | 4 comments - (Comments are closed)
 I like this comment:
It’s from “Larry3435”, and is attached to a piece by Jennifer Rubin entitled Obama’s economic approach a dud with voters. It is important for libertarians like me not to confuse a bunch of people who think we probably shouldn’t have very much more government than we can pay for with people who think we definitely should have a lot less government than we can pay for, which is what we libertarians reckon, among other things. Still, it’s a start. June 13th, 2012 | 12 comments - (Comments are closed)
Free-market Western democratic capitalism is sustainable, both environmentally and economically, and alone gives us the affluence and freedom to allow a sizable minority to divorce itself from the gritty daily tasks of production to critique and revile the very system that nourishes them. June 11th, 2012 | 6 comments - (Comments are closed)
“The late economist Mancur Olson has argued that economies tend to grow more slowly as rent-seeking coalitions become pervasive and ubiquitous, since they divert resources from wealth-creating to wealth-consuming uses. This is one reason, he argues, why the United States grew so rapidly in the nineteenth century, and why West Germany and Japan grew so rapidly in the two or three decades after World War II. At such times, these economies were open to investment and entrepreneurship, and, as a consequence, they enjoyed historically high rates of growth. With the passage of time, all of these systems were gradually encumbered by coalitions seeking benefits through the state. Political paralysis and slow growth, Olson argues, are by-products of political systems captured by rent-seeking coalitions. These groups, operating collectively, can block any overall effort to cut spending or to address the problems of deficits and debt.” June 8th, 2012 | 17 comments - (Comments are closed)
In the United States, as elsewhere, groups plotted to better themselves without consideration for others or the nation as a whole. They were encouraged by an aggregation of incongruous theories called the New Deal, which put the nation $40,000,000into debt and in some departments degenerated into a money-oiled machine for keeping politicians in power. Chiselling public funds, once the prerogative of politicians, became the aim of millions. The formula that citizens must not starve in a land of plenty became for many a means of living off the government rather than by the sweat of the brow. – Upton Close (Josef Washington Hall): “1930-40: Decade of Deceit” June 4th, 2012 | 10 comments - (Comments are closed)
All you have to do, is to see whether the law takes from some what belongs to them in order to give it to others to whom it does not belong. We must see whether the law performs, for the profit of one citizen and to the detriment of others, an act which that citizen could not perform himself without being guilty of a crime. Repeal such a law without delay… If you do not take care, what begins by being an exception tends to become general, to multiply itself, and to develop into a veritable system. – Frederic Bastiat June 3rd, 2012 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
Britain’s energy reforms are billed as a key part of the Cameron government’s growth strategy. To understand why the U.K. economy is flat-lining, look to a government that believes a policy to raise energy prices and squeeze living standards is good for growth. Unless Mr. Cameron wants to share Jimmy Carter’s electoral fate, he’d better push the reset button on his energy policy – fast May 31st, 2012 | 10 comments - (Comments are closed)
“Capitalism is based on capital, and capital is generated through saving and not money-printing, contrary to what many economists and central bankers want us to believe. Prosperous societies have always been built on hard money, which encourages saving and the expansion of the capital stock, and in turn increases the productivity of human labour. Greek savers are no different from American savers or German savers, and the role of money, saving and capital is no different in Greece from that in any other country. The laws of economics change as little from one place to another as the laws of physics. And sacrificing the interests of your savers for some short-term boost to growth will have the same adverse long-run effects in Greece as it has anywhere else.” May 28th, 2012 | 36 comments - (Comments are closed)
I understand there’s a new sheriff in town. Who wants to kill him? – said by the boss cowboy with the mustache (Slim Pickens?) in Blazing Saddles, to an enthusiastic response. Blazing Saddles, what with Sheriff Obama and all, is now downright prophetic, in the sense that there must be Democrats who think they are living in this movie right now. It’s showing on Brit TV right now. Earlier I set my TV hard disc to record this, and I just switched on my telly to catch that line. May 26th, 2012 | 22 comments - (Comments are closed)
Instead of the Government directing energy policy from the centre, let the people choose. This would involve the scrapping of ALL subsidies for power generation, direct or indirect. So all ROCs, FiTs, payments for nuclear decommissioning, tax breaks for gas extraction, and so on, would go. The real whole-life cost of each technology would be apparent. Each consumer could then choose the source, or mix of sources, for their electricity, in much the same was as at present one can choose energy supplier, or even a ‘green’ tariff, and pay accordingly. – Murdo Fraser, deputy leader of the Conservative Party in Scotland, “breaks ranks”, as Bishop Hill puts it. Fat chance, but good to hear such a highly ranked Conservative saying such a thing. May 25th, 2012 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
“All the available Keynesian levers for achieving economic growth have been pulled, yet the recovery is one of the weakest since World War II. The problem lies with the way the “stimulus” was carried out, the uncertainty of looming higher taxes, and the antibusiness rhetoric and regulatory strong-arming of this administration.” – Harvey Golub, Wall Street Journal. May 23rd, 2012 | 12 comments - (Comments are closed)
The problem is not that the BBC is on the wrong wavelength, it is that it is on any wavelength at all. That in this day and age a supposedly first world country has a tax funded state broadcast institution is simply absurd. May 14th, 2012 | 11 comments - (Comments are closed)
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