Monday, June 13, 2011

Re: Good Observation:

r to the
Marxist mindset of the radical left, only they, utilizing the vehicle
of a
massive central government, could control mankind's nature and create
a fair
society.
----
somebody forgot to tell them that life is not fair and that people
aren't equal

or, maybe they simply forgot

On Jun 13, 12:25 pm, Keith In Köln <keithinta...@gmail.com> wrote:
> "No nation or culture in history has done more to advance the well-being of
> mankind than the United States and Western civilization. However to the
> Marxist mindset of the radical left, only they, utilizing the vehicle of a
> massive central government, could control mankind's nature and create a fair
> society. It is the ideal philosophy for those who, so enamored with
> themselves, can wallow in their self-importance and rule with a heavy hand
> the same masses they claim to protect. Under no circumstances, therefore,
> can these revolutionaries defend or profess admiration for their country;
> instead they must not only transform the United States into a villain, but
> destroy any vestiges of its accomplishments in order to permanently retain
> control over the populace and exact revenge for the alleged transgressions
> of the West. Barack Obama has spent his entire life, from birth to the
> present, marinated in this mindset. He is thus incapable of change or being
> receptive to any other viewpoint, as that would be an admission of failure."
> --columnist Steve McCann
>
> http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/06/obama_and_the_end_of_western_c...

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Good Observation:

"No nation or culture in history has done more to advance the well-being of mankind than the United States and Western civilization. However to the Marxist mindset of the radical left, only they, utilizing the vehicle of a massive central government, could control mankind's nature and create a fair society. It is the ideal philosophy for those who, so enamored with themselves, can wallow in their self-importance and rule with a heavy hand the same masses they claim to protect. Under no circumstances, therefore, can these revolutionaries defend or profess admiration for their country; instead they must not only transform the United States into a villain, but destroy any vestiges of its accomplishments in order to permanently retain control over the populace and exact revenge for the alleged transgressions of the West. Barack Obama has spent his entire life, from birth to the present, marinated in this mindset. He is thus incapable of change or being receptive to any other viewpoint, as that would be an admission of failure." --columnist Steve McCann
 

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Debate Party tonight


2nd Debate Watching Party!


Monday, June 13 · 8:00pm - 11:00pm







Young Americans for Liberty



Join us once again at Bailey's for food, drinks, games,

and lots of TVs to watch the 2nd GOP Presidential

debate!


As always, feel free to invite your friends.


From the Ballston metro stop (orange line),

walk south on Stuart St. 2 blocks

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Toy Company to introduce Penis-Tweeting Anthony Weiner Doll




Toy Company to introduce Penis-Tweeting Anthony Weiner Doll

Scotty Starnes | June 13, 2011 at 7:36 AM | Tags: action figure, Anthony Weiner, Twitter | Categories: Political Issues | URL: http://wp.me/pvnFC-5rC

Kung-fu grip sold separately!

The Austrailian reports:

A TOY company known for producing action figures of US political figures has started advertising its latest addition, the Anthony Weiner doll.

Herobuilders.com is offering two versions of the doll modelled after the New York Democrat who shot to fame around the world last week after admitting to having sent a lewd photo of his crotch to a Seattle college student on Twitter.

The Weiner doll comes as a standard doll for $US39.95 ($37.85) and an adults-only "anatomically correct" version for $US49.95 ($47.35).

Why the added cost? There wasn't any extra plastic used to make it anatomically correct. Weiner's wiener isn't anything to be proud of.

Both figures are dressed in a T-shirt and gym shorts — with the words "tweet this" printed on the shorts.

For an extra $US18.00 ($17) customers can add a toy BlackBerry for the doll to hold.

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Obama’s Secret Afghan Exit Formula


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**JP** Labor Ministry outlines details of Nitaqat program

 

 

 

 


 

         cid:image001.gif@01CC293E.DF754EE0       

In the Name of Allah, Most Beneficent Most Merciful

       

 

Labor Ministry outlines details of Nitaqat program

By SIRAJ WAHAB | ARAB NEWS

Published: Jun 11, 2011 23:56 Updated: Jun 12, 2011 01:31

DAMMAM: The Labor Ministry announced on Saturday that private companies in the green and premium categories — the companies who are abiding by Saudization rules or who have exceptional track records in this regard — would enjoy a lot of benefits and incentives from Sept. 10 for their efforts in employing more Saudis.

It said companies would be able to know their position by visiting the ministry's website www.mol.gov.sa.

"We'll also provide regular information under the name 'Keys to Success' that would assist companies to keep themselves in safe positions and help them enjoy the program's benefits and incentives," the ministry said. It said companies in the yellow category would be given a grace period of nine months and those in the red category six months to improve their status by hiring more Saudis before facing punitive measures. Yellow companies will not be able to extend their foreign employees' work visas beyond six years, which takes effect retroactively. Red companies will not be able to renew their foreign workers' visas.

Meanwhile, the business community reacted with caution to the new regulations.

Those who found their companies in the red zone were apprehensive while those in the green and blue category were exultant.

Khalid A. Al-Abdulkarim, CEO of Alkhobar-based Al-Abdulkarim Holding Co., was delighted because his company was listed in the blue zone which is a VIP category.

"I am very happy but not surprised. We have on our rolls more than 1,500 employees, and we started implementing Saudization a long time ago," he told Arab News. "Today, we are being paid for those efforts."

The Nitaqat program, he said, is excellent. "So far so good. But there will definitely be glitches. There will be companies which may have not been listed correctly for want of complete paperwork. Nothing is going to happen immediately. This is just a report card," he said. "The companies will have enough time to correct their positions."

Sultan Al-Shamsi, a construction company manager, was upset. "I see that my company is in the red zone. I have been getting constant calls from my employees who have seen their status by punching in their iqama number in the Ministry of Labor's website. I refused to answer their calls and will see how we can employ more Saudis to get out of this difficult situation we now find ourselves in," he told Arab News.

According to Al-Abdulkarim, those in the VIP category or blue zone will be entitled to a number of benefits. "We have been told that since we are in the blue zone, we can hire anybody from any part of the world. We don't even have to wait to go to the Labor Office to apply for visas. We can just log onto the website and get the visas in a second. We have been exempted from what business community calls the monkey business to get visas. So there are incentives for those who met the Saudization targets."

He said there was no blanket percentage for determining the color zoning. "In companies that are labor intensive such as the construction companies the percentage of Saudis was fixed at mere 10 percent. So for example, if a construction company does not have 10 percent Saudis on its rolls then it will find itself in the red category. Similarly, in banks, the Saudi percentage was put at 70 percent. So the ministry has taken into consideration where Saudization is possible and where it is difficult. Earlier it was being thought that there would a universal scale for all companies. That is not the case."

Companies in the premium category will be able to recruit foreign workers unless they fall below the green level and do not apply for such visas more than once every two months.

This facility will be available in Riyadh from June 18 and in other offices after June 25.

They will also get new visas with open professions through the electronic system, based on the number of visas they used to get before. They can also change professions of their workers even to those that are restricted to Saudis, except jobs such as employment officials, receptionists, government liaison officials, treasury staff, and security officers.

 

Premier companies will also be allowed transfer of visas and change of profession of their foreign workers, but the service would be available only once every two months. They can get the transfer of visas of employees from other companies, without fulfilling the condition of completing two years with the first employee. They are also entitled to get a one-year respite if their municipal and professional licenses or commercial registrations were expired. Such companies can recruit employees in Red category and transfer their visas without the permission of their employers.

In a previous statement, the ministry had allayed fears of expatriate workers in the Kingdom and said the new Nitaqat program was not aimed at driving them out of the Kingdom.

 

"The Nitaqat is not designed nor intended to threaten the stability of guest workers in the Kingdom," the statement emphasized, adding that the robust demand for foreign labor is not going away in the foreseeable future. "The Ministry of Labor recognizes the role played — and continues to be played — by guest workers in the development of the country and appreciates their efforts in all fields and specialties," the statement added.

 

With regard to the benefits to be availed of by the companies in the green category, the ministry said they can apply for new visas once every two months and are entitled to one visa for every two expatriates gone on exit-only visas. They can change professions of their foreign workers except to those restricted to Saudis. They will also be given six-month grace period after the expiry of their zakat and revenue certificates. They will be allowed to renew the work permits of their workers but their iqamas should have a validity of at least three months at the time of renewal. They will be allowed to recruit employees in red and yellow categories and transfer their visas without the approval of their employers.

 

Companies in the yellow category cannot apply for new visas from Sept. 10 and will be allowed to get only one visa after the departure of two expatriates and will be prevented from transfer of visas and change of professions. However, they will be allowed to renew the work permits of their workers, on condition that their workers should not have completed more than six years in the Kingdom. They will not have any control on their workers as they would be allowed to move to companies in higher categories.

 

Companies in the red category will be banned from change of profession, transfer of visas, issuance of new visas and opening files for new branches. However, they will be allowed to renew the work permits of their workers until Muharram 1, 1433 when they will also lose control on their workers.

 

 

--
پاکستان کسی بھی پاکستانی کے لئے اللہ کی سب سے بڑی نعمتوں میں سے ایک ہے. آج ہم جو بھی ہے یہ سب اس وجہ پاکستان کی ہے ، دوسری صورت میں ، ہم کچھ بھی نہیں ہوتا. براہ مہربانی پاکستان کے لئے مخلص ہو.
 
 

Americans With No Abilities Act



---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Fellowship of the Minds <no-reply@wordpress.com>
Date: Mon, Jun 13, 2011 at 7:55 AM
Subject: [New post] Americans With No Abilities Act
To: baconlard@gmail.com


Americans With No Abilities Act

Breaking News!

Washington, DC - June 13, 2011

The Obama Administration is urging Congress and the Senate to
pass sweeping legislation that will provide new benefits for many
Americans: The Americans With No Abilities Act (AWNAA). President Obama said he will sign it as soon as he squeezes out some free time from playing golf.

The AWNAA is being hailed as a major legislative goal by advocates of the millions of Americans who lack any real skills or ambition.

"Roughly 50% of Americans do not possess the competence and drive necessary to carve out a meaningful role for themselves in society," said California Senator Barbara Boxer, a ready-made candidate for the AWNAA. "We can no longer stand by and allow People of Inability to be ridiculed and passed over. With this legislation, employers will no longer be able to grant special favors to a small group of workers, simply because they have some idea of what they are doing."

Another AWNAA candidate, Congressman Anthony Weiner (D-NY) also threw his support for the bill: "As a representative an exhibitionist with a big small weiner, too much time on my hands, but no abilities whatsoever, I believe the same privileges that elected officials enjoy ought to be extended to every American with no abilities. It is our duty as lawmakers to provide each and every American citizen, regardless of his or her inadequacy, with some sort of space to take up in this great nation and a good salary for doing so."

In a Capitol Hill press conference, two other AWNAA candidates -- House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) -- pointed to the success of Congress, which has a long-standing policy of providing opportunity without regard to performance. Approximately 74% of the members of Congress lack any job skills, making this institution the single largest U.S. employer of Persons of Inability.

Other institutions and industries with good records of non-discrimination against the Inept include teachers' unions (75%), Wisconsin public employee unions (95%), SEIU (99%), TSA (99.5%), U.S. Dept of Homeland Security (99.8%), ACORN (99.9%), and the Obama White House (100%).

At the state government level, the Department of Motor Vehicles also has an excellent record of hiring Persons of Inability (a whopping 83%).

Under The Americans With No Abilities Act, more than 25 million 'middle man' positions will be created, with important-sounding titles but little real responsibility, thus providing an illusory sense of purpose and performance.

Mandatory non-performance-based raises and promotions will be given so as to guarantee upward mobility for even the most inept employees. The legislation provides substantial tax breaks to corporations that promote a significant number of Persons of Inability into middle-management positions,and gives a tax credit to small and medium-sized businesses that agree to hire one clueless worker for every two talented hires.

Finally, the AWNAA contains tough new measures to make it more difficult to discriminate against the Non-abled, banning, for example, discriminatory interview questions such as, "Do you have any skills or experience that relate to this job?"

"As a Non-abled person, I can't be expected to keep up with people who have something going for them," said Ken Cox, who lost his position as a TSA screener at Kennedy International Airport due to his inability to remember Janet Napolitano's instruction, "Strip Search All Blond, Blue-Eyed Babies!"

"This new law should be real good for people like me," Cox added.

H/t beloved fellows May & Joseph.

~Eowyn

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UK MUSLIM INBREEDING - THE GOOD NEWS: A lot of babies born of first cousin marriages die soon after birth



---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Bare Naked Islam <no-reply@wordpress.com>
Date: Mon, Jun 13, 2011 at 2:40 AM
Subject: [New post] UK MUSLIM INBREEDING - THE GOOD NEWS: A lot of babies born of first cousin marriages die soon after birth
To: baconlard@gmail.com


UK MUSLIM INBREEDING - THE GOOD NEWS: A lot of babies born of first cousin marriages die soon after birth

barenakedislam | June 13, 2011 at 3:40 AM | Categories: Islamic Britain | URL: http://wp.me/peHnV-vdn

THE BAD NEWS: Of the inbred babies who do not die right away, a large number of them have so many phsycial and mental disabilities, that UK taxpayers are forced to bear the costs of caring for these genetic freaks for the rest of their lives. UK DAILY MAIL-(H/T LEE S) -Here are the facts: [...]

Read more of this post

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It’s Official: New York Will Tax Anything


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The Gold Standard: Myths and Lies


The Gold Standard: Myths and Lies
Monday, June 13, 2011
by Robert P. Murphy

With various states debating measures to elevate the monetary status of gold, the gold standard is more politically relevant now than it has been in decades. When the LA Times (to pick just one example) runs an article stating matter-of-factly that "economists" uniformly oppose gold, you know the defenders of the current system are getting nervous.

Precisely because a gold standard is such a hot topic lately, it's important for people to understand its rationale. In the present article I'll try to clear up a few misconceptions.


Do All Economists Oppose the Gold Standard?

I realize I am betraying my naïvete by admitting this, but I was very surprised at the depth of falsehood in the LA Times article mentioned above. Here is the blurb below the title, "Pushing for a Return to the Gold Standard":

The idea to make the precious metal legal tender has gained currency in more than a dozen state capitals, aided by Tea Party support and other efforts to rein in federal power. Economists say the plan would be disastrous.

I suppose the final sentence is technically true, but it's very misleading. It's a bit like saying, "Baskin-Robbins offers 31 flavors, but customers buy chocolate." Yes, some economists say a return to the gold standard would be disastrous, and I'd grant that perhaps even a large majority do. But the blurb above makes it sound as if virtually all economists oppose the move, which isn't true.

The writer, Nathaniel Popper, reinforces this misconception in two other places. He quite clearly tries to pit the rube businessmen and tea-party politicians against the professional economists. First he writes,

The ultimate goal is to return the nation to the gold standard, in which every dollar would be backed by a fixed amount of the precious metal. Economists of all stripes say the plan would be ruinous, but that view is of scant concern to Pitts [a South Carolina state representative].
"Quite frankly, I think that economists from universities are thinking within the confines of their own little world," Pitts said. "They don't deal with the real issues." (emphasis added)

Just to make sure the reader gets the point, Popper writes later in the article:

The United States and most of the rest of the world operated on a full gold standard until the Great Depression. Economists generally agree that the policy helped cause the depression and earlier severe downturns by limiting the amount of money the government could create, constraining its ability to stimulate the economy.
Scholars say moving to a gold standard now would be likely to slow the economy's already meager growth.
"At some point someone may be crazy enough to try it, but they won't stay with it anymore than they did in the past," said Allan Meltzer, a Carnegie Mellon University economics professor and a critic of the Fed's current monetary policy.
Given the lack of support from mainstream economists, activists have turned a few texts written by outsiders into their bibles, such as "Pieces of Eight," an out-of-print book by [constitutional lawyer] Vieira.

In the entire article, Popper doesn't quote a single economist who is in favor of the gold standard, or even paraphrase his or her views. This might be acceptable, except for the fact that Popper quotes or makes reference to businessmen, politicians, and the lawyer Vieira. (I am not familiar with Vieira's work, and it should go without saying that I'm not criticizing him.)

Now, it would be easy for me to accuse Popper of lying, but for all I know he was so sure of the stupidity of the gold standard that he didn't even try to find actual PhD economists currently teaching at colleges (some even at top-20 graduate schools) who would have nice things to say about the gold standard. I personally know at least 20 such people, so believe me, they're out there if Popper or other journalists actually want to give the case for gold a fighting chance.

As far as books touting the advantages of the gold standard, yes indeed there are volumes written by people with PhDs in economics. A classic text is Ludwig von Mises's The Theory of Money and Credit, while a newer, much more reader-friendly selection is Murray Rothbard's What Has Government Done to Our Money? My own book on the Great Depression exploded the myth that the gold standard had something to do with it.


Did Gold Cause the Great Depression?

Before moving on, let me quickly address that particular claim. I've written a longer response here, but for now we have to wonder: If the gold standard caused the Great Depression, what else was going on? After all, the gold standard wasn't implemented in the 1920s. Although there had been plenty of industrial crises or financial panics in the previous hundred years, there had been no prolonged global depression approaching the experience of the 1930s ­ even as more and more countries joined the growing worldwide market of gold-based economies. So clearly it's not enough to point to the "golden fetters" of the monetary system to explain what happened in the Great Depression.

Thus, to blame the Great Depression on the gold standard is just as nonsensical as blaming it on the "laissez-faire" policies of Herbert Hoover, who (even if we take the caricature of him seriously) was no different from all his predecessors. It would be like explaining a particular airplane crash by citing gravity.

As a final point, let's not forget that FDR abandoned the gold standard in 1933. The Great Depression thus lingered on -- after leaving the allegedly awful gold standard -- for at least another 8 years (and I would say 13 years, because I don't think World War II "fixed" the economy), in what was still the worst economic period in US history. It's odd that the gold standard could wreak so much havoc in the early 1930s ­ even though it had never done anything comparable earlier in US history ­ and then could continue to "cause" the Great Depression, from 8 to 13 years after abandoning it. It starts to make you wonder whether the "economists of all stripes" know what they're talking about.


"You Can't Eat Gold!"

One of the most absurd objections to returning to a gold standard is that "You can't eat gold." I am not making this up; Dave Leonhardt of the New York Times actually said that to Ron Paul when he defended the idea on the Colbert Report.

Dr. Paul didn't really get a chance to answer (Colbert instead made a funny joke about idolatry), but it would have been delicious had he quickly asked the cynic, "Oh, so you make sandwiches out of Federal Reserve notes?" (We also would have accepted, "Oh, so I take it you are proposing a hamburger standard for the dollar?")

The utter absurdity of the objection -- namely that you "can't eat gold" -- is that gold actually is a useful commodity even for nonmonetary purposes. It's true, you can't eat gold, but you can wear it, you can fill cavities with it, and you can treat arthritis with it. In contrast, all you can do with fiat paper currency is use it in exchange, and you'd better not keep a large fraction of your wealth in actual paper dollars, since their purchasing power constantly erodes with the passage of time.


Don't Austrians Favor Market Choice?

Ironically, in addition to ill-informed critiques such as those emanating from the LA Times, the gold standard has critics from the purist libertarian camp. Such critics often ask, "What's so special about gold? Why do Ron Paul and so many other alleged fans of the free market favor the federal government telling us what the money should be?"

Of course Murray Rothbard -- and as far as I know, every living Austrian economist -- would prefer that money and banking were returned to the private sector, receiving neither special regulations nor privileges distinguishing them from any other industry. That means banks would be free to issue their own paper notes (backed by gold reserves) if they wanted, but if they issued too many and got caught in a "run," the government wouldn't declare a "bank holiday" and relieve the irresponsible institution of its contractual obligations.

What Rothbard and his modern followers believe is that gold almost certainly would be the free choice of individuals all over the world, if they were allowed to settle on a money without government legal-tender laws and other interventions stacking the deck.

In the meantime, given that there is a Federal Reserve (and other central banks), many Austrians (though here the agreement is not universal) believe that restoring the convertibility of the dollar to a fixed weight of gold would be a move in the right direction, even though it would still not be perfect.

The purpose of repegging the dollar to gold would be to remove what is euphemistically called "monetary policy" (a more sinister description would be " legalized counterfeiting") from politics and special-interest corruption as much as possible. People laud the current Fed as being "independent," but of course that is absurd. The Fed as it currently operates is clearly a cartelization device that shoves new money into the pockets of rich bankers, and that allows the government to finance massive deficits much more cheaply than would otherwise be possible.


"So You Want the Government to Set Prices?"

Related to the above criticism, some purists also ask, "Why don't you favor a market-driven price for the dollar and for gold? Just let supply and demand determine prices, not some rigid number picked out of a hat by the politicians."

This objection sounds plausible at first, but it too misses the mark. If the Fed were to say, "We are now announcing a new policy objective of maintaining the price of gold at $2,000 per ounce, from now until the end of time, and we will begin accumulating stockpiles of gold to reassure investors that we will be able to maintain the target," this would not be analogous to the federal government saying, "We are establishing a minimum price of labor at $7.25 per hour."

Under a genuine gold standard, when the Fed "sets" the dollar price of gold it isn't threatening people with fines or jail time if they want to trade gold at a different price. Rather, the Fed (or the government in general, if there were no central bank) would adjust the quantity of dollars in existence to maintain the target. If the forces of supply and demand were such that the market price of gold had drifted upward to, say, $2,025 per ounce, then the Fed (assuming a $2,000 target) would need to sell off some of its gold holdings,[1] which would (1) flood the market with more gold and (2) shrink the amount of dollars in the financial system. This contractionary policy would push down the price of gold toward the peg of $2,000.

On the other hand, nobody would be so foolish as to sell his gold for less than $2,000 per ounce, if the Fed (or the Treasury) had a standing invitation for anyone to trade in an ounce of gold in exchange for $2,000 in Federal Reserve notes. Why sell your gold to another private citizen for (say) $1,950 an ounce, when the US government stands prepared to buy unlimited quantities of gold at a fixed price of $2,000 per ounce?

Finally, a critic could (and actually did, on my blog) ask how this arrangement differs from the current one? After all, right now Bernanke "sets" interest rates, but not through literal price controls. Instead, the Fed adjusts the quantity of reserves in the banking sector such that the "market-determined" federal funds rate is close enough to the Fed's target for this interest rate. So isn't this basically the same thing as the gold standard, with a different "good" serving as the monetary commodity?

There are two problems with this sophisticated objection. First, in the current system the Fed has a moving federal-funds target. At best, then, it would be analogous only if the Federal Open Market Committee said after each meeting, "We are now setting the target price of gold at such-and-such dollars. However, if unemployment begins rising and core CPI is under 2 percent, we will begin raising the target price of gold in $10 increments over the next few meetings." That system would be nothing like the classical gold standard.

Yet the deeper problem with the analogy is that on a classical gold standard, the government is (imperfectly) mimicking what would happen if the money were actually gold, with people walking around with gold coins in their pockets, and merchants quoting prices not in dollars but in grains or ounces of gold. The classical gold standard, by fixing the dollar as convertible into a definite and constant weight of gold, doesn't introduce another price: the dollar is supposed to be a claim-ticket to gold. This isn't really "price fixing," any more than defining a foot as 12 inches is "central planning."

In contrast, what would be the free-market analog of the Fed's current strategy of targeting short-term interest rates? The only thing I can think of is if the money commodity in a community weren't something tangible like gold, silver, or tobacco, but rather overnight bonds issued by banks. Yet what is a bond but a promise to deliver money? So how could the money itself be a short-term bond? At this point I am dropping the analogy, lest I become permanently cross-eyed.


Conclusion

As the Fed's debasement of the currency reaches literally unprecedented levels, more and more regular Americans are waking up to the merits of commodity money. Yet this isn't some populist fad; there is a whole tradition of excellent academic scholarship touting the virtues of the gold standard. If he returns to the subject, I hope critics like the LA Times's Popper will give gold a fairer hearing.



Robert Murphy is an adjunct scholar of the Mises Institute, where he teaches at the Mises Academy. He runs the blog Free Advice and is the author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Capitalism, the Study Guide to "Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market," the "Human Action" Study Guide, The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Great Depression and the New Deal, and his newest book, Lessons for the Young Economist.

http://mises.org/daily/5379/The-Gold-Standard-Myths-and-Lies

Obama Gets It Half Right

Obama Gets It Half Right
by Charles Goyette

Expecting insight about the economy from Barack Obama is like hoping to learn about Paul Revere from Sarah Palin.

However, inadvertently, the President seems to have gotten something right.

President Obama stumbled into the truth at an appearance with German Chancellor Angela Merkel when he said that he is not worried about a second recession.

Although the evidence is both mounting and credible that the economy is sinking deeper, it is foolish to think the downturn will mean a second recession. That's because the first recession, the one that officially started in December 2007, never really ended.

The pronouncements by the National Bureau of Economic Research are regarded as definitive statements about when economic downturns begin and end. By their calculation, the worst downturn since the Great Depression ended in June 2009 after eighteen months, and the recovery got underway.

Never mind that it took them more than a year after the fact to reach that conclusion.

Look, if the economy hasn't recovered, then a recovery couldn't have begun. It's like saying an airplane took off, even though it never left the ground.

Something was going on that created the illusion of a recovery, but now, two years after it was supposed to have started, there is no recovery in sight.

The price of oil had been on a tear back when the recession began; it's even higher today. The price of gold has almost doubled.

After three and a half years, GDP is virtually unchanged, while retail sales are actually lower.

Some recovery.

More Americans are on food stamps and the unemployment rate is almost twice what it was when the recession began.

In fact the signs of the economy slowing even more now are visible in the latest jobs numbers. For May the feeble addition of only 54,000 jobs means the unemployment rate ticks up.

Last time the bureau declared a recession over, in November 2001, unemployment didn't pick up for two years.

So where did the bureau get the idea this time that the economy was recovering in June 2009? It must have been influenced by Obama's $830 billion "stimulus" package. While Bush's billions for bankers were still fresh in the their hands, the new president came into office and began throwing more cash around. There was cash for clunkers, cash for automakers and unions, cash for home buyers, cash for transportation boondoggles, cash for politically-connected green projects, cash for government buildings, cash for the arts.

You get the idea. Everybody was high on Obama billions. It was like Saturday night at the Roxy. But given enough cocaine you can probably even get a corpse to show a pulse.

It must have been a fun party. The Keynesian economists and other statists thought that it would go on and on and the bill would somehow take care of itself.

The takeaway from all this is to beware of all such boards, bureaucrats, and bodies, especially those with designs on managing the economy. The economy lives in the experience of people and not in seasonally adjusted statistics and weighted aggregates. If you and sixteen million people like you don't have a job, you're still in a recession.

So when the president says he's not worried about a second recession, and that you shouldn't panic, he's half right.

The first recession never ended.

http://lewrockwell.com/goyette/goyette19.1.html

Presidential Jobs Council Calls for Economic Growth

Presidential Jobs Council Calls for Economic Growth
"Eager to show he is doing something about jobs, President Obama receives a 'progress report' today from his Jobs and Competitiveness Council ­ a group of industry leaders who are warning that the economy is a long way from full recovery. 'America needs more growth,' a pair of council members write today in The Wall Street Journal." ( USA Today)

How much did the taxpayers pony up for that?

Economic Freedom and Economic Growth
Political Freedom, without Economic Freedom, Does Not Bring Growth
Randall G. Holcombe
February 1998 • Volume: 48 • Issue: 2 •

Randall Holcombe is DeVoe Moore Professor of Economics at Florida State University.

One of the most enduring questions in economics is what causes economies to grow. The full title of Adam Smith's well-known treatise, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, published in 1776, clearly shows that the causes of prosperity were Smith's primary concern. He concluded that free markets, the protection of private property rights, and a minimal government presence in the economy lead to prosperity. In other words, economic freedom leads to economic growth.

Smith's conclusions were generally accepted among economists until the twentieth century, when developments in economic theory reversed the conventional wisdom and led economists to advocate central planning and government control as a better way to produce prosperity, especially among less-developed economies. At the end of the twentieth century, economists seem to be turning back to the ideas of Adam Smith. How could they not, especially after the collapse of most centrally planned economies around the world? Yet, driven by abstract economic theory, there still remains a challenge to the idea that laissez-faire policies best promote economic growth.

Adam Smith made the case that prosperity is produced through a competitive market economy. In such a setting, Smith noted in one of his more famous observations, individuals pursuing their own interests are led as if by an invisible hand to do what is best for the whole society. To promote resource allocation in competitive markets, Smith advocated low taxes and government expenditures, the protection of private property rights, and low tariffs to promote international trade. In other words, Smith argued that if a market environment were created and maintained, the economy would grow and prosper.

A few decades later, David Ricardo advocated the lowering of tariffs to promote free trade as a route to prosperity, supporting his arguments with his famous book, Principles of Political Economy, first published in 1817. Ricardo is perhaps best known for showing how everyone ends up better off when people specialize in the activities in which they have a comparative advantage and trade with others. The arguments of Smith, Ricardo, and others brought a reduction in government intervention in Britain and elsewhere, leading to a freer world economy and making the nineteenth century an era of unprecedented economic growth.


Another View on Growth

Although the idea that economic freedom leads to economic growth was not challenged directly, it nonetheless fell by the wayside earlier this century. That was due partly to developments in economic theory and partly to world events. Around the turn of the century, methods in economics began to more closely resemble the hard sciences, especially physics. Economic theory was developed through increasingly complex mathematical models. The economics profession supported those changes, believing that a more scientific understanding of the economy could produce better policies and even more prosperity. In mathematical terms, an economy's output could be depicted in a production function, where output is a function of inputs such as land, labor, and capital. More inputs produced more output, and the production function was able to show in clear mathematical terms the relationship between inputs and outputs.

When the world was beset by the Great Depression in the 1930s, the development of economics had already traveled far along this path. The National Bureau of Economic Research was established in the 1920s to produce better economic data to allow for more scientific management of the economy. The Keynesian revolution hit economics with the publication of John Maynard Keynes's The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money in 1936. Keynesian economics argued that modern economies need active government policies to manage them and to maintain prosperity. After World War II, those two developments in economics conspired to completely turn around the conventional wisdom on economic growth.

Worried about the possibility of another depression after the war, mainstream economists argued that the government needed to manage the economy in order to maintain prosperity. Economic growth, a significant part of economics since Adam Smith's day, declined in importance relative to the goal of promoting macroeconomic stability. Growth remained an important issue with regard to less-developed economies, however, and economists believed that they could engineer economic policy to produce growth in those economies in the same way they could do so in the developed world.

The most sophisticated economic models, both then and now, depicted a straightforward mathematical relationship between inputs­land, labor, and capital­and economic output. Thus, economies could grow more rapidly if they increased their inputs. In addition, increased efficiency might allow an economy to produce more output from the same quantity of inputs. Then and now, economists have envisioned increases in efficiency as products of technological advances. The most advanced economies would have to develop better technology through research and development, but less-developed economies may be able to grow simply by adopting the technology of developed economies.

The focus on inputs, coupled with an increasing acceptance of government management of the economy, led economists to recommend government planning as the best way to create growth in less-developed nations. Central planning, they said, could guarantee that economies invested a sufficient share of their incomes, could direct that investment to sectors that would add more value to the economy (for example, away from agriculture and natural resources, and toward manufacturing), and could ensure that the new investment embodied the most advanced technology.

Institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund encouraged central planning in less-developed economies and pushed capital investment and adoption of modern technology by offering financial support to less-developed economies headed in that direction. Even in relatively free-market economies like the United States, economic experts supported those types of policies to create economic growth in less-developed nations. Regrettably, the nations that followed such policies did not grow, despite following the advice of the most prominent economists of the time. They would have done better to look back to the advice of Adam Smith.


The Two Views on Growth

Consider in more detail the differences in the two views on growth described above. Both sound plausible, and neither one could really be called wrong, but one view leads to good economic policy and the other leads to bad policy. Why? The twentieth-century approach to growth theory focuses on the inputs of the growth process. If we combine these inputs, it reasons, we will get this output. The Smithian approach looks at the economic environment that is conducive to growth. Following Smith's line of reasoning, an environment of economic freedom is the key to growth. The problem with the production-function approach is that it ignores the market mechanism that gives people an incentive to combine resources in a way that creates value for others.

Inputs are necessary to produce output, but without the right incentives, it is too easy to combine inputs in a way that makes the final output less valuable than the original inputs. In a market economy we take for granted that production leads to an increase in wealth, because firms that produce output less valuable than their inputs take losses and go out of business. Thus, in a market economy most firms create output more valuable than their inputs. In a centrally planned economy, the government can continue to misdirect inputs into inefficient production arrangements, perhaps not even realizing that resources are being squandered. Policy-makers who designed development policy based on the production-function view of the economy failed to realize that it accurately represented the way that resources were allocated only within the framework of a market economy.

By focusing on the environment conducive to economic growth, the Smithian view pays less attention to inputs. However, Smith also recognized that the invisible hand of the market, if allowed to work within an environment of economic freedom, will do an effective job of allocating resources. Public policy need not be concerned with the production of capital, the incorporation of technology, or the development of a skilled labor force if that conducive environment is created. The economy will attract investment and provide the incentive both for workers to obtain marketable skills and for the adoption of more advanced technology. The right environment will attract the right inputs, but providing the right inputs will not create the right environment. If growth policy focuses on producing an environment of economic freedom, growth will follow. Without the right environment, growth will not occur, period.


Evidence Relating Freedom and Growth

Casual (but persuasive) evidence relating economic freedom and economic growth abounds. After World War II, Korea was divided: South Korea fostered a market-oriented economy, while North Korea maintained a centrally planned economy. As this is being written, many citizens of North Korea are starving because their economy is failing, while South Korea has one of the fastest-growing economies in the world. Similarly, after World War II, Germany was divided into East and West Germany, and again the one with the market economy prospered while the one with the centrally planned economy fell behind. Less than a decade ago, East and West Germany were central players in the cold war that threatened to erupt into World War III. East Germany eventually surrendered to West Germany without a shot being fired, because people in the East wanted to have the advantages offered by West Germany's economic system.

The former Soviet Union took the production-function model of growth very seriously, so the late empire provides an especially compelling example of the model's limitations. It invested heavily in physical and human capital, producing a highly trained and educated work force. It also invested heavily in research and development, placing great emphasis on science and engineering. By increasing the quality and quantity of its capital and labor inputs, and creating technological advances, the Soviet Union, according to the production-function approach, should have had one of the world's fastest-growing economies. Instead, it serves as an example that growth cannot be created by increasing inputs into the production process alone. More inputs lead to an increase in the value of output only when combined within an environment of economic freedom.

In light of their recent prosperity, it is easy to forget that nations like Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong, and Singapore were poor only a few decades ago. Nations that shunned the market system in favor of central economic planning, like the Soviet Union, China, and India, had economies that languished. Now that those formerly socialist countries are moving toward economic freedom, their economies have started to grow. The casual evidence is so clear that there is now a worldwide movement toward more economic freedom. Yet, as compelling as this casual evidence is, it still leaves open the question of what, exactly, the components of economic freedom are, and how much effect they have on economic growth.

A number of recent academic studies have helped shed light on this issue. The most in-depth examination of economic freedom is a study by James Gwartney, Robert Lawson, and Walter Block, Economic Freedom of the World: 1975-1995, published in 1996 by the Fraser Institute. They develop a good numerical measure of economic freedom and show that it is strongly correlated with economic growth. Other academic studies have produced similar results, providing evidence that an environment of economic freedom will attract the inputs necessary to produce economic growth. Those studies examine many other factors, but conclude that the key ingredient is economic freedom. After a century in which the theory of economic growth had moved steadily away from the ideas of Adam Smith, economists are now returning to them to show how economic freedom is vital to prosperity.


Economic Freedom and Political Freedom

After the collapse of the centrally planned economies of eastern Europe in 1989, followed by the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991, most of those nations enthusiastically embraced the principles of Western democracy, hoping political reforms would lead to Western-style prosperity. People in the West offered encouragement, but they supported democratic government more enthusiastically than laissez-faire economic institutions. Thus, it is especially important to understand what is meant by economic freedom as compared to political freedom, and what can be expected from both. While democracy is valuable in its own right, the evidence suggests that democracy by itself makes no contribution to prosperity. Economic freedom produces economic growth; political freedom does not.

This point is especially important in light of the expectations of those in emerging democracies. The citizens of those countries are being set up for a disappointment. If the nations that recently turned to democracy find that their economic conditions are not improving, they may turn their backs on democracy, opening up the opportunity for a return to dictatorship.

The evidence shows that economic freedom leads to economic growth even where countries have limited political freedom. The reverse is not true: political freedom, without economic freedom, does not bring growth. Therefore, it is vitally important that emerging democracies encourage free markets, protect property rights, provide a stable currency, and minimize the government's role in the economy. There is also evidence that nations with higher incomes tend to be more democratic and more protective of civil liberties and political freedoms. Thus, indirectly, economic freedom leads to political freedom.

The evidence clearly shows that without an environment of economic freedom, growth will not take place. Economic freedom contains a number of components, all of which must be in place for an economy to grow. An economy must have a stable monetary system, secure private property rights, an impartial legal system, low taxes, minimal government, and low barriers to international exchange. If any of these components are missing, an economy will not grow.

http://www.thefreemanonline.org/featured/economic-freedom-and-economic-growth/