Throughout the history of the world, the average person on earth has been extremely poor: subsisting on the modern equivalent of $3 per day. This was true until 1800, at which point average wages—and standards of living—began to rise dramatically. Prof. Deirdre McCloskey explains how this tremendous increase in wealth came about. In the past 30 years alone, the number of people in the world living on less than $3 per day has been halved. The cause of the economic growth we have witnessed in the past 200 years may surprise you. It’s not exploitation, or investment. Innovation—new ideas, new inventions, materials, machinery, organizational structures—has fueled this economic boom. Prof. McCloskey explains how changes in Holland and England in the 1600s and 1700s opened the door for innovation to take off—starting the growth that continues to benefit us today.
As technological developments increased farm yields over the last two centuries, the share of the US population employed in agriculture fell from around 90 percent to around 2 percent.
The lay American public supposes that when workers lose their jobs, we become worse off — they suffer from what economist Bryan Caplan calls the ‘make-work’ bias. But would anyone prefer to live in a society in which many went hungry and no one enjoyed the wealth, financial security, job growth, and innovation created as all those workers lost their farm jobs?
Follow Caplan, author of The Myth of the Rational Voter, as he explains the gap between the public’s opinion and the economist’s facts. In this video, Caplan talks about the merits and demerits of ‘making work’ – instead of letting individuals find work.
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Frederic Bastiat contends that to aim to increase the proportion of effort to output is to imitate Sisyphus in his hopeless attempt to move a stone up a hill:
The environmental agenda has been infected by extremism—it’s become an economic suicide pact. And we’re here to challenge it. On Earth Day, visit http://www.freemarketamerica.org.
We all know why the Watermelons (Green outside, red inside) want America to fail. A failed state is ripe for totalitarian takeover. Just ask the Germans, the Russians, the Chinese, the Cubans, the Venezuelans, the Vietnamese, the Rhodesians (if you can find any), soon the Argentinians. and on and on and on.
And to remind you of how long the Watermelon totalitarians and their media accomplices have been working on this:
From Newsweak (sic) April, 28, 1975
The least known provision is that every household receives a monthly prebate (prepayment) that covers all the taxes that will be collected on the poverty level of the household.
The worst part is that it doesn’t demand that the sales receipt display how much of your money the porcine pols have plundered from your purse to pay their pals and pander to the polls.
Have you ever wondered about the purposes behind the degradation of the American education system? Here is one.
Every New Year brings a bevy of stupid new nanny state bans.
In Los Angeles supermarket chains can no longer give out free plastic grocery bags made of plastic. From now on, either bring your own or shell out 10 cents per sack.
Illinois — a state so well-run that is faces billions of dollars in unfunded pension obligations – now bans anyone under the age of 18 from going to a tanning salon. Residents also face a $50 fine for flicking a cigarette butt in the street or on the sidewalk too.
Delaware has banned the sale, possession, or eating of shark fins. New York City has banned horse-drawn carriage rides, and Major Leauge Baseball has banned home plate collisions.
The list is long and grim and seemingly endless but the worst nanny state ban going into effect in 2014 is almost surely the federal prohibition on the production of new incandescent light bulbs.
This ban was seven years in the making. The 2007 Energy Bill — enthusiastically signed by then President George W Bush — effectively killed incandescents light bulbs via energy efficiency mandates. 100 and 75 watt bulbs were phased out in previous years and now cheap 60 and 40 light bulbs — once the very symbol of a good idea — verboten in the Land of the Free.
Before the incandescent bulbs go out for good, it\’s worth shining a light on its cause: The ban was pushed by light bulb makers eager to up-sell customers on longer-lasting and much more expensive halogen, compact fluourescent, and LED lighting. When customers balked at paying more for home lighting, General Electric, Sylvania, and Philips did what corporate behemoths always do: They turned to the government for regulation that rigs the market in their favor.
So when you throw out that last 40 cent 40 Watt light bulb, remember that you\’re not just tossing out a piece of history, but a piece of what used to be a freer market.
The key phase is “…don’t allow for artificial manipulation of the supply”. That and “Audit the Fed” are the two phrases that are most likely to cause stuttering, stammering, apoplexy and strokes among the politicrat rodents that have stolen our country (and soon our freedom) to sacrifice at the alter of their god Marx.
Peter G. Klein answers a viewer\’s question, and discusses a critical battle between technology and ideology. Klein is the Mises Institute\’s Executive Director and Carl Menger Research Fellow. For more information, visit the Mises Institute online at mises.org. Submit a question via twitter @MisesView
A Satirical Fairy Tale: “Obama” and “Obamacare” channeled through “The Emperor’s New Clothes”.
Hans Christian Andersen’s classic children’s tale “The Emperor’s New Clothes”, is retold. The cast:
Emperor = President Obama
The Emperor’s new clothes = Obamacare (aka Affordable Care Act)
The Minister = Vice President Biden
Chancellor = Eric Holder
The Swindlers = Nancy Pelosi (aka Rosa Luxembourg) and Harry Reid (aka Wesley Mouch)
Little Boy = The TEA Party and the non-druggie Libertarians
I had thought they were extinct!!! I guess just on the endangered species list.
Rep. Louie Gohmert calls ’em like he sees ’em and has a clear view of those traitorous go along to get along scum that have infected the Republican party since before George Wallace said (and echoed by Ross Perot, as well as Ralph Nader), “There’s not a dime’s worth of difference between the Republicans and Democrats.” Nearly all professional politicians are so enamoured by their status of faux nobility the assume “the divine right of kings” and think more as rulers than servants, thus the poll that shows 60% of their “subjects want to throw ever last one of them out! There wasn’t that much popular support for neither the French nor the Russian revolutions.
I love the reference to RomneyCare but wished he the other “it’s my turn” media darling, aisle-crossing, self centered demopublican that preceded Romney in the “I can be a Dhimmicreten, too!” presidential election sweepstakes.
The Social Security Administration has begun warning the public it cannot guarantee full benefit payments if the debt ceiling isn’t increased.
When asked by the public, the agency is notifying beneficiaries that “Unlike a federal shutdown which has no impact on the payment of Social Security benefits, failure to raise the debt ceiling puts Social Security benefits at risk,” according to a person familiar with the agency directive.
The warning was assembled after the agency consulted with the Treasury Department, which would play a lead role in determining how the government handles payments if the borrowing limit isn’t raised soon.
“Our employees started receiving questions from the public, so the agency worked with Treasury to provide an answer they could use when asked about the debt ceiling by the public,” a Social Security Administration spokesman said.
In 1937 the Roosevelt administration had to defend the Social Security Act and did so by stating before the Supreme Court that the inanely named FICA was simply a tax with no contract of benefits accruing to the payers and thus legal under government’s taxing authority. Sounds ;ike Justice Roberts” reasoning in the Obamacare fiasco, doesn’t it? The 1937 case was .
Obama is trying to fulfill the Cloward-Piven Stategy which is actually a blueprint for despotic communism. The idea of a equal living income for everone has a major flaw, who pays?
Politician, Tar, Feathers 