One of the great myths about the capitalist system is the presumption that businessmen make profits at the expense of the consumers and workers in society. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Even though national gas prices have only been under $3 per gallon for less than five months, governments across the country have already started to propose major energy tax increases in an effort to find an easy way to alleviate budget shortfalls.
Citizens concerned about high-cost electricity, skyrocketing government debt, and massive giveaways of hard-earned tax dollars to crony corporations should call or email their senators and their congressman – and explain why these subsidies should end now.
A couple of months ago, effective in November, National Grid, one of Massachusetts’ two dominant utilities, announced rate increases of a “whopping” 37 percent over last year. Other utilities in the region are expected to follow suit.
Policy analysts and pundits alike seem to enjoy downplaying the U.S. economy’s recovery since the recession of 2008/9. It is time for them to wake up and smell the roses: The U.S. economy clearly is the dominant economy of the world. The European Union’s death rattle continues, while China is encountering a litany of unforeseen problems.
What is far and away the most important global trade commodity? Food. People have to eat. Before the world’s peoples can afford to purchase from us an iPhone, or a Ford pickup truck – they have to buy (hopefully our) food.
In the Hunger Games franchise of movies and young-adult novels, political power is concentrated within the Capitol; citizens there revel in pageantry and pomp while their fellow Americans suffer from the dire, impoverishing consequences of the government’s policies. That same sort of sedimentation of power and money into the nation’s capital is happening in the current-day United States.
Forty years ago, on October 9, 1974, the Nobel Prize committee announced that the co-recipient of that year’s award for economics was the Austrian economist, Friedrich A. Hayek. Never was there a more deserving recognition for one of the truly great free market thinkers of modern times.
Thanks mainly to the shale revolution, oil production in the U.S. hit a 28-year high last month while imports were at their lowest levels since 1995. Consequently, prices have fallen 15% since June, and Saudi Arabia has cut production by 400,000 barrels a day — providing further evidence that OPEC no longer has the power to set prices.
For almost eight years, I have been urging, along with other Free State Foundation scholars, an end to the costly so-called “integration ban.”This outdated, costly FCC regulation bans cable operators from integrating the security and programming navigation functions in set-top boxes.
Economics · Featured · Government
One of the great fallacies arrogantly believed in by those in political power is the notion that they can know enough to manage and command the lives of everyone in society with better results than if people are left to live their own lives as they freely choose.
This Molly Ball piece on the metric which best determines the outcome of elections makes for a fascinating read: essentially, it demonstrates that when Republicans don’t lose the working class by a wide margin, they do well, and when they lose it by 20 points, they don’t. Throw out all the other measures of race and religion – and Republicans even spot the Democrats the ten points! – and the share of the working class vote determines the outcome:
In the past two decades the Internet has come to be a dominant part of people’s lives. For work, pleasure, communication, and countless other uses, the Internet is an indispensable tool to many individuals. Without it, much of the information-based civilization that has been built up would stop working the way we are accustomed to.
A new book by French economist Thomas Piketty on “Capital in the Twenty-First Century” has recently caused a major stir on the opinion pages of newspapers and magazines. Piketty has resurrected from the ash heap of history Karl Marx’s claim that capitalism inescapably leads to a worsening unequal distribution of wealth with dangerous consequences for human society.
Today, more than any time, arguably, since the Great Depression, the prospects for improved housing outcomes are dimming for both the American middle and working classes. Not only is ownership dropping to twenty-year lows, there is a growing gap between the amount of new housing being built and the growth of demand.
Budgets/Taxes · Economics · Featured · Liberty · Regulation
In light of the recent “national” strike conducted by 0.09% of fast food workers in the US, many op-eds and commentaries have been penned by economists trying to justify the[…]
Budgets/Taxes · Economics · Featured · Liberty · Regulation
There is a serious problem in America today; the epidemic of poverty prices. Across the country, American business owners are being forced by market conditions to sell goods at prices[…]
Environment/Energy · Featured · Politics
The impact of [gas shale basin] development … has the potential to greatly reduce the world’s dependence on oil and natural gas from rogue nations.
NEWS: The Heartlander
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