It was maybe third grade when the schoolyard was abuzz with a terrible thing. It was called the "permanent record." If you did something bad enough, it would go on the permanent record. And then a one-day slip up would turn into a deep scar, a mortal sin that would last forever and permanently reduce your chances to make it in life.
We imagined some suited committee reaching deep into the file and discovering that we had loosened someone's fingers as they tried to climb the monkey... (more)
Then you must read this story about a New York coffee shop, and how it is an impossible proposition to try to run something like this. The story doesn’t even go into taxes and employment mandates. It’s a wonder that any business exists at all. And so what do we do toward the entrepreneurial class? We hate them, blame them for all the world’s problems, attack them as parasites and vultures, and try to dr... (more)
Wynn Resorts CEO Steve Wynn slams President Obama and congressional Democrats on health care and the economy.
"The policies of this administration have destroyed the living standard of the working class in America. What is ostensibly the base of the Democratic Party is taking the worst hit in history because of these unbelievably uninformed policies of t... (more)
ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) — Donald Trump sees money — lots of it — flowing away from him. That, he said, needs to change.
The real estate mogul and founder of an Atlantic City casino company says the United States should legalize Internet gambling. The company that bears his name, Trump Entertainment Resorts, is moving forward with plans to establish an online betting venture as soon as it's legal.
The company says it wants to get in on the ground floor of the Intern... (more)
Lecture presented by Hans-Hermann Hoppe at the Mises Institute Brasil's 2nd Austrian School of Economics seminar on April 10, 2011.
Hans-Hermann Hoppe is an Austrian school economist of the anarcho-capitalist tradition, a senior fellow of the Ludwig von Mises Institute and a former economics professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He is the aut... (more)
Excellent talk with a 30 minute Q&A session. A must watch.
If you were asked to guess, what area of the United States would you say has the highest average income? New York City? Los Angeles? Silicon Valley? Well, would you believe that it is actually the Washington D.C. area? Median household income in the region is $84,523, which is the highest in the nation. One of the biggest reasons for this are the huge salaries being pull... (more)
There has been a lot of speculation recently on whether or not gold is in a bubble. With Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke announcing "Operation Twist" last month, gold and other commodity prices have fluctuated erratically. Immediately following the "Twist" announcement, prices of both plummeted. Gold then stabiliz... (more)
On the matter of great disparities of income and wealth in a society, the manner in which people become wealthy is of great importance.
In a society based largely on socialism and crony capitalism, which is the system under which the United States operates today, lots of people get wealthy by using the government to plunder and loot their fellow citizens.
In a system based on libertarian principles, people get wealthy by producing goods and services that other p... (more)
To hear the latest batch of political salesmen tell it, China is a drug pusher in a schoolyard full of American schoolkids. The cheap goods the Chinese export market provides the American consumers may feel good, initially, but they are surely destroying America…causing manufacturers to shut down in the U.S. or relocate to China. Americans are, supposedly, trading jobs and long-term economic health to get their consumer goods at a great price.
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York claimed in a published report Wednesday that student loan debt in the U.S. has now surpassed $1 trillion, for the first time ever exceeding the total amount of credit card debt held by Americans.
Due to the rising cost of education across the board, students are being forced to borrow almost twice as much as they were just 10 years ago, the College Board told USA Today.
That’s what led to a spike in student loan amounts and d... (more)
Think life is not as good as it used to be, at least in terms of your wallet? You'd be right about that. The standard of living for Americans has fallen longer and more steeply over the past three years than at any time since the US government began recording it five decades ago.
Bottom line: The average individual now has $1,315 less in disposable income than he or she did three years ago at the onset of the Great Recession – even though the recession ended, technically speaking,... (more)
Federal employees whose compensation averages more than $126,000 and the nation’s greatest concentration of lawyers helped Washington edge out San Jose as the wealthiest U.S. metropolitan area, government data show.
The U.S. capital has swapped top spots with Silicon Valley, according to recent Census Bureau figures, with the typical household in the Washington metro area earning $84,523 last year. The national median income for 2010 was $50,046.
While this is hugely objectionable and certain economic suicide, it should be noted the problem in this situation is the government guaranteeing bank deposits. It creates a situation where the economic incentive is for the banks to engage in all sorts of risky behavior in order to maximize profits because if they lose money they know the government will just bail them (and their depositors) out. See this clip from Peter Schiff. - Chris
Alec Baldwin showed up Tuesday night at Occupy Wall Street and talked to Luke Rudkowski, Rob, and Matt of We Are Change about Ending the Federal Reserve Banking System.
Interesting video, he's clearly pro-capitalism but wrongly thinks the Fed is needed to provide money to markets. All that does is distort markets and exasperate the business cycle. See Austrian Business Cycle Theory.
President Obama says Americans want to go to work. Unemployed Americans don't want a handout he says, each time he proposes extending unemployment benefits. Republican Senate leaders, he said, “are advancing a misguided notion that emergency relief somehow discourages people from looking for a job should talk to these folks.”
“That attitude, I think, reflects a lack of faith in the American people,” says Mr. Obama. “Because the Americans I hear from, in letters and town hall mee... (more)
Herman Cain has been gaining much traction with his 9-9-9 Plan, a bold proposal to replace our dysfunctional tax code with what could be a simpler, less invasive, and more economically stimulative alternative. While I don't agree with the full spectrum of Mr. Cain's policy choices, I applaud his courage on the tax front. Judging by his rising poll numbers, this appreciation is widely shared. However, the plan has deep flaws, the most glaring of which is its creation of a hidden payroll tax which... (more)
When Republicans took control of the House in January, they pledged to make deep cuts in federal spending, and in April they succeeded in passing a bill advertised as cutting $38 billion from fiscal 2011's budget. Then in August, they pushed for a deal to cut an additional $2.4 trillion over the next decade.
Some analysts have blamed these spending cuts for this year's economic slowdown.
But data released by the Treasury Department on Friday show that, so far, there... (more)
Vast cities are being built across China at a rate of ten a year, but they remain almost uninhabited ghost towns. It's estimated there are 64 million empty apartments.
Support for redistribution, surprisingly enough, has plummeted during the recession. For years, the General Social Survey has asked individuals whether "government should reduce income differences between the rich and the poor." Agreement with this statement dropped dramatically between 2008 and 2010, the two most recent years of data available. Other sur
(NaturalNews) If you buy or sell secondhand goods and live in the state of Louisiana, you can no longer use legal tender to complete such transactions. Ackel & Associates LLC (A&A), a professional law firm, explains that House Bill 195 of the 2011 Regular Session (Act 389), which was recently passed by the state legislature and signed into law by Gov. Bobby Jindal, prohibits anyone who "buys, sells, trades or otherwise acquires or disposes of junk or used or secondhand property [from entering] i... (more)
