Update (2100ET): Wednesday is shaping up as quite a global day of rage as the following series of clips from major cities around the world demonstrates.
…So even before arriving in Israel, the Tuesday massacre – which Israel is actually blaming on Palestinian militants (specifically PIJ) – has effectively served to box-in Biden. France’s Macron has just issued a condemnation to boot, saying “nothing can justify targeting civilians” in a statement which appears to place blame squarely on the Israelis. Biden will now also face the pressure to join the chorus of international condemnation. “International humanitarian law is binding on all and must enable the protection of civilian populations. Humanitarian access to the Gaza Strip must be opened up without delay,” the French foreign ministry said in the statement…
Having caused a problem, they present themselves as a solution to the problem. Their solutions are typically counterproductive—stupid, actually. Taxing grocery stores adds to their costs. If they’re to stay in business, those taxes must be passed on to the consumer.
Trudeau is a criminal personality who should be punished for the evil he’s doing. On the other hand, he was popularly elected, largely because he has name recognition from his nominal father and good looks from Fidel Castro, who’s probably his actual sire. In any event, he’s apparently what the majority of Canadians must prefer…
International Man: Thanks to rampant currency debasement, the price of everything has gone up recently.
As the pain from inflation becomes a normal part of life in places like the US and Canada, there are growing calls for politicians to “do something.”
Recently, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau threatened to tax grocery stores if they don’t lower their prices, accusing them of causing inflation and profiting from higher prices.
What’s your take on this?
Doug Casey: Trudeau epitomizes, in many ways, all that’s wrong with the kind of people who go into politics. Things are as expensive as they are partly because taxes take 20% or 30% of everybody’s income when they earn it. Then, when they spend it, they pay another 10%, 20%, or even 30% in sales taxes and VATs. Add on the burden of regulations, which add to costs while decreasing the amount of production.
Taxes and regulations are disastrous. But the big thing is currency debasement. Governments are printing up money by the bushel because they believe in Modern Monetary Theory—paying for what they want by simply printing money.
People like Trudeau are the reason why food prices, and all kinds of prices, are as high as they are.
Having caused a problem, they present themselves as a solution to the problem. Their solutions are typically counterproductive—stupid, actually. Taxing grocery stores adds to their costs. If they’re to stay in business, those taxes must be passed on to the consumer.
Trudeau is a criminal personality who should be punished for the evil he’s doing. On the other hand, he was popularly elected, largely because he has name recognition from his nominal father and good looks from Fidel Castro, who’s probably his actual sire. In any event, he’s apparently what the majority of Canadians must prefer…
International Man: Many Third World countries have scapegoated business owners for rising prices.
The next step is for them to pass laws regulating how businesses can price their products and services.
Where does this all lead?
Doug Casey: As we’ve just discussed regarding Trudeau, government sticks its nose absolutely everywhere. That’s because the type of people who go into government love power, as well as making themselves famous and wealthy.
Almost all economic problems originate with government intervention. The solution isn’t more laws regulating how businesses can act and price their products but less laws. And by less, I mean none at all.
The experience is free for guests, including travel expenses, activities, and food. The organization also provides grants to wounded veterans facing financial struggles, helping with house and car payments, medical supplies, and emergency assistance.
“I said ‘well, that’s impossible because we did a title search, and there was no money owed on the property, and we’re paid up on our taxes.’ And they said ‘No, the property came out of Clean and Green when you purchased it.’ And I had no idea what that meant.”
“The Pennsylvania Farmland and Forest Land Assessment Act is a state law that allows qualifying land devoted to agricultural or forest use to be assessed at lower than fair market value through the Clean and Green land preservation program. It’s intended to encourage property owners to keep most of their land in agricultural, open space, or forest, and not develop it. The program provides real estate tax relief and is favored by owners of large tracts of land.
Dark thunderstorm clouds parted and a double rainbow appeared just as a family pulled up at Heroes Ridge at Raven Rock, home of Operation Second Chance, a nonprofit retreat that benefits wounded veterans and their families.
“We thought we were entering heaven,” a family member said upon arrival, according to Cindy McGrew, the founder and CEO of Operation Second Chance.
Resident Cowboy Greg Maddox demonstrates the roping technique taught at Operation Second Chance in Sabillasville, Md., on Oct. 5, 2023. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)
The picturesque mountaintop on the border of Maryland and Pennsylvania in the Blue Ridge Mountains really is a slice of heaven, Ms. McGrew told The Epoch Times; it’s meant to help heal spirits broken by trauma experienced during military service.
Operation Second Chance hosts battle buddies, caregivers, families, groups, and individuals from around the United States in cabins accessible for amputees and wheelchair users.
The experience is free for guests, including travel expenses, activities, and food. The organization also provides grants to wounded veterans facing financial struggles, helping with house and car payments, medical supplies, and emergency assistance.
The Mason-Dixon line runs through the property, a former church camp, and nearby Camp David, the presidential retreat, can be seen in one direction. From a wooded peak in another direction, veterans can sit by a bonfire overlooking the iconic Gettysburg battlegrounds, watch the sun go down, and talk with others who understand what they have seen, what they face, and how they feel.
But, since Operation Second Chance bought the property in 2020, more dark clouds have loomed over Heroes Ridge. Two years after the organization bought the property, an unexpected tax bill arrived from Adams County, Pennsylvania.
The bill, for more than $92,000, is the sum of a seven-year claw-back of a property tax discount through Pennsylvania’s Clean and Green Environmental tax break program.
A semantic note: Discrimination is liberalise for free association liberals disapprove of, just as civil rights means forced association. The more “civil rights” the state enacts, the less freedom of association we have.
Joseph Sobran – Subtracting Christianity/The Few and The Many
But this year’s prize turned out to be unusual in many ways: it’s been awarded to a single person rather than being shared (as is now the norm), to a woman rather than a man, and for work that isn’t terrible. The former two are rather uninteresting from an economics perspective, but the latter warrants explanation and a comment.
[On Monday, October 9, the Royal Swedish Academy awarded the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel to Claudia Goldin of Harvard University. Two Swedish expatriates reflect on the meaning of the Prize and this year’s recipient.]
Per Bylund
As an Austrian economist, the announcement of the economics prize—often misleadingly referred to as the economics Nobel Prize—is a matter of not knowing whether to laugh or cry (or both). Rather than awarding the prize to an economist doing work in line with the long and sound tradition of economic reasoning, the Royal Swedish Academy typically awards the prize to lifelong academics who have made nothing but inconsequential or discoveries from inductive data mining or contributions to mathematical games. Or, much worse and not rare enough, the prize is awarded to work that appears to facilitate or prop up interventionist policy.
Needless to say, the economics “Nobel” generally does more harm than good.
But this year’s prize turned out to be unusual in many ways: it’s been awarded to a single person rather than being shared (as is now the norm), to a woman rather than a man, and for work that isn’t terrible. The former two are rather uninteresting from an economics perspective, but the latter warrants explanation and a comment.
The economics prize is rarely awarded for work that Austrians in the Misesian tradition would consider economics (i.e., deductive economic theorizing). This approach to figuring out the true causalities of economic phenomena is hopelessly out of fashion and has since given way to the modern cult of pseudo-Popperian scientism, in which science means searching through datasets for surprising patterns and making them out to be statistically significant. Nobody, including Austrians, expects the prize to be awarded to what used to be economics proper.
However, Austrian economics is not only theory or theorizing. Praxeology sets a higher bar than mainstream “theorizing”: it is true, not merely justifiable or nonfalsified—and is therefore also more limiting. Much more is left to nontheory: economic history, the applying of economic theory to observable phenomena to make sense of them, has a larger scope in Austrian economics than in mainstream economics. Of course, to be worth its salt, economic history cannot be done untheoretically but must instead apply theory to the data to uncover what actually happened. Murray N. Rothbard, for example, has done great work in this area, uncovering the nature and causes of several economic crises.
This year’s prize, as University of Gothenburg professor Randi Hjalmarsson described it during the announcement, is much closer to the Austrian approach to economic history than one would expect from mainstream economists. Officially awarded to Harvard’s Claudia Goldin for “for having advanced our understanding of women’s labour market outcomes,” Professor Hjalmarsson noted that Goldin was awarded the prize for “digging through the archives” to find new (previously not existing) data on women’s labor market participation and wages and then showing that an economics framework can be used to explain those data. That latter point should be no surprise to any serious economist (but most economists nowadays arguably aren’t), but it is promising that the Royal Swedish Academy thought this worthy not only of mention but of emphasis during the announcement.
I’m hardly an expert on Goldin’s work, but it sounds like the economics “Nobel” this year was actually awarded to someone doing economics, although it was of course economic history and not economic theory. This is not only a relief, but rather promising. Perhaps it is an indication that mainstream economics has finally run out of cute games and is slowly finding its way back to doing proper economics?
I’m not holding my breath.
Joakim Book
I’m usually not happy or relieved when the Economic Sciences Prize Committee announces the winner of the economics prize; it’s all too often some hyped-up, garbage economist whose research fits with the committee’s turncoat values.
This time, their woke and less-than-professional due diligence might have failed, and I found myself breathing a sigh of relief. Goldin is a decent choice for a discipline that’s become almost entirely economic history.
I believe Israel would benefit if the US ends all foreign aid, since much of it goes to Israel’s enemies. Foreign aid also gives the US an excuse to engage in other forms of meddling.
Those who called Hamas’s attack on Israel “Israel’s 9/11” were more accurate than they realized. Just as the US reacted to 9/11 by fulfilling Osama bin Laden’s wish that the US would get bogged down in no-win wars, Israel’s reaction to the Hamas attack fulfills Hamas’s likely goal of radicalizing more Palestinians. The result of Hamas’s attack will be to strengthen the most extreme elements on both sides of the conflict.
Given the strong support for Israel among both major political parties it is not surprising that, following the attacks, many politicians rushed to microphones to proclaim their support for US assistance for Israel. President Biden announced the US would send military aid to Israel, while Congress is drafting legislation providing about two billion dollars in “emergency” military assistance to Israel. Even most of the growing number of representatives who oppose military aid to Ukraine will support spending “whatever it takes” to defend Israel. This is why the Biden administration and some in Congress want to combine aid for Israel and Ukraine into one legislative package.
Spending billions more to support military action in the Middle East and Ukraine will benefit the military-industrial complex. However, it will harm most Americans by accelerating the growth of the government’s over 33 trillion dollars debt. As the debt increases, the Federal Reserve will push interest rates lower and monetize the debt. This will lead to increased price inflation, combined with economic stagnation and high unemployment — in other words, stagflation.
MCViewPoint 