Killing the Internet: A Blizzard of New Taxes in the WingsFor years revenue-hungry states and local municipalities have salivated over the prospect of taxing the life out of the internet. Now a move by a small but dedicated minority in Congress may result in the scraping of the Internet Tax Freedom Act and usher in a new era of exorbitant taxation, according to The Wall Street Journal.
In a few months, the newspaper reports, "customers may begin receiving notices from their Internet providers that new taxes are on the way. Even thoug... (more)
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How Consumers Rule In a Free EconomyOne of my favorite economists in the history of economic thought is the great Austrian, Carl Menger (1840-1921). While the mainstream of the economics profession acknowledges Menger's place due to his contribution to the Marginalist Revolution in the 1870s, it otherwise ignores him because his theoretical framework does not lend itself to policy prescriptions. In an era in which the economics profession largely views itself as a shadow branch of government which is itself charged with managing t... (more)
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Faber: The Most Underappreciated Asset is CashDr. Marc Faber is an international investor known for his uncanny predictions and memory of the stock and futures markets around the world. Dr. Doom also trades currencies and commodity futures like Gold and Oil. He is the publisher of the Gloom, Boom and Doom Report. He is also fond of schooling the Wall Street media talking heads on economics and financial systems.
In the following video he discusses why cash is the most underappreciated asset -- certainly for the next 6 months.... (more)
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Making the World Safe from Democracy or: How to Defend Oneself Against the United StatesRead part I
After this excursion into the theory of democratic peace I am back to the proposition that there is no greater threat to lasting peace than the democratic state, and in particular the United States. Thus, the question: how to make the world safe from democracy or how to defend oneself against the U.S..
This is not only a problem for foreigners but for Americans as well. Af... (more)
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The "Economic Recovery" Continues: Businesses Are Being Destroyed Faster Than They Are Being CreatedWhat would you say about an economy where businesses are shutting down faster than they are opening? Well, a shocking new study released by the Brookings Institution indicates that this is exactly what is happening in the United States. We are absolutely killing small businesses and the entrepreneurial spirit in this country, and as you will see below, the number of self-employed Americans has been on a downward trend for a decade even though our population has been steadily growing. Traditio... (more)
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And the Band Played OnAfter three months of consistently disappointing jobs numbers, the markets were as keyed up for a good jobs report as a long suffering sailor awaiting shore leave in a tropical port. The just released April jobs report, which claimed that 288,000 jobs were created in the U.S. during the month, provided the apparent good news. However, you don't have to go too far beneath the surface to find some troubling trends within the data. But even this minor excavation was too much for the media cheerlead... (more)
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New Frontiers in Regulatory OverreachIn most cases, excessive regulation doesn’t surprise me all that much. It usually focuses on familiar industries, such as automobiles. So, for example, when the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration came up with a rule mandating that all cars and light trucks sold in the United States have rearview cameras, it wasn’t a great shock.
But every now and then, regulators do something that catches me o... (more)
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The Debate DebateWhile there is wide agreement that the cost of college education has risen far faster than the incomes of most Americans, there is some debate as to whether the quality of the product has kept pace with the price. Not surprisingly, almost all who argue that it has (college administrators, professors, and populist politicians) are deeply invested either ideologically or financially in the system itself. More objective observers see a bureaucratic, inefficient, and hopelessly out of touch ivory to... (more)
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Thomas Piketty on Inequality and CapitalThomas Piketty's Sensational New Book
By Hunter Lewis
Thomas Piketty, a 42-year-old economist from French academe has written a hot new book: Capital in the Twenty-First Century. The U.S. edition has been published by Harvard University Press and, remarkably, is leading the best seller list; the first time that a Harvard book has done so. A recent review describes Piketty as the man "who exposed capitalism's fatal flaw."
So what is this flaw? Supposed... (more)
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Obama's Push to Recruit Young Adults into Obamacare Falls ShortThe White House and its media allies have been cheerleading Obamacare's apparent success at exceeding the president’s stated target for enrollments in the Obamacare health-insurance exchanges. Even more importantly, they have asserted that a significant proportion enrolled in the exchanges are young people. President Obama declared that 35 percent of enrollees are under the age of 35.
Enrolling enough young people into Obamacare was important because insurers are forbidden to char... (more)
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The Food Police Turn to the BottleContinuing my "meddling bureaucrats trying to tell us what to eat" series, I recently discovered that the FDA is planning to start requiring nutrition labels on alcoholic beverages. Apparently they are worried that sorority girls pounding cosmos might be getting a little more sugar than they ought to, and that the presence of a small label on the side of a bottle of Cointreau is go... (more)
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