Free kibbles

ECONOMY:

Australia is experiencing a housing bubble.

TAX AND SPEND:

US to have one of the highest dividend tax rates in the world if Bush tax cuts expire. That's another reason we have such paltry savings.

US debt projected to reach $19.6 trillion by 2015. That's a government estimate, so you know it's way low.

Obama wants to steal another $50 billion from us for yet another stimulus boondoggle since none of his previous boondoggles have worked. Are we up to six, seven or more stimulus boondoggles so far?

REGULATION:

Obama's ban on drilling puts people out of work. All government regulations put people out of work.

Now a liberal wants to use the government's gun to outlaw the beauty bias. I'm surprised it took so long. Stupidity knows no bounds.

How government codes hold back innovation.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

Mark this date - Ben Bernanke predicts the US will continue economic growth:

"Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke told Congress recently, “The economy … appears to be on track to continue to expand through this year and next.”"

The first question is: what economic growth? GDP numbers artificially inflated by government spending and the Fed inflating are not economic growth. Second, when we fall into the second dip of the recession, we'll want to go back and remember that Bernanke was wrong again. He's always wrong. Dictionary.com defines expert as: "a person who has special skill or knowledge in some particularfield; specialist". A person who is always wrong is not an expert.

Bernanke doesn't understand why gold is so high. That's the guy who's running our economy. Don't you feel better now?

EDUCATION:

Liberals fail econ 101 in a big way.

"Consider one of the economic propositions in the December 2008 poll: "Restrictions on housing development make housing less affordable." People were asked if they: 1) strongly agree; 2) somewhat agree; 3) somewhat disagree; 4) strongly disagree; 5) are not sure.

Basic economics acknowledges that whatever redeeming features a restriction may have, it increases the cost of production and exchange, making goods and services less affordable. There may be exceptions to the general case, but they would be atypical.

Therefore, we counted as incorrect responses of "somewhat disagree" and "strongly disagree." This treatment gives leeway for those who think the question is ambiguous or half right and half wrong. They would likely answer "not sure," which we do not count as incorrect.

In this case, percentage of conservatives answering incorrectly was 22.3%, very conservatives 17.6% and libertarians 15.7%. But the percentage of progressive/very liberals answering incorrectly was 67.6% and liberals 60.1%. The pattern was not an anomaly."

That's an astounding difference.

"How did the six ideological groups do overall? Here they are, best to worst, with an average number of incorrect responses from 0 to 8: Very conservative, 1.30; Libertarian, 1.38; Conservative, 1.67; Moderate, 3.67; Liberal, 4.69; Progressive/very liberal, 5.26.

Americans in the first three categories do reasonably well. But the left has trouble squaring economic thinking with their political psychology, morals and aesthetics."

...

"The survey also asked about party affiliation. Those responding Democratic averaged 4.59 incorrect answers. Republicans averaged 1.61 incorrect, and Libertarians 1.26 incorrect."

Those are astounding differences. On my message board, I had serious trouble with liberals presenting opinions as facts. I kept making the point that everybody is welcome to their own opinions, but the facts are the same for everybody. I figured it was just some individuals on my board who were ideologically motivated to disagree with the facts of economics. It looks like a much worse problem - liberals really are blind to fundamental economic principles. The board finally disintegrated, and this is why. This is provides more evidence that conservatives are the natural allies of libertarians. They can be persuaded by reason. This is a failure of government schools and parents who were most educated in government schools too.

The sorry state of financial economic teaching.

The more economics people study, the more likely they are to be Republican. Not because Republicans are good on the economy, but because Democrats are so much worse.

HEALTH CARE:

Before Obamacare became law, many reported that Obama was lying about people keeping their insurance plans. This fall, Obamacare will make the plans of over a million Americans illegal. Nobody can claim this is a surprise.

FOREIGN POLICY:

The US has a base in Kyrgyzstan, suffering ethnic violence right now, for resupplying troops in Afghanistan.

POLITICS:

Pat Buchanan looks at Sarah Palin's endorsements and concludes she's not a conservative ideologue but a savvy politician preparing for 2012 presidential run.

LOCAL:

Here's a way better solution than seizing money from taxpayers to destroy "blighted" houses - volunteers from Habitat from Humanity want to fix them up. See how the private sector comes up with solutions that work for everybody?

MISC:

Minorities are about to become the majority in the US. In a sane world, this wouldn't matter, but it our world, where minorities have special privileges to loot the majority, it's a serious problem.

Using grocery cards to track food-borne illnesses. I have no problem with this as long as the government doesn't get involved, but of course it is getting involved.

There's always some gems in Thomas Sowell's random thoughts:

"After North Korea torpedoed a South Korean ship, killing 46 sailors, was there even one-tenth the outrage that is ringing out loudly around the world because of nine deaths that resulted from Israeli commandos intercepting a ship headed for the Gaza strip?"

The South Korean ship was a military ship. The Gaza ship was an aid ship. While that shouldn't matter, all lives are precious, it unfortunately does to the accomplice press.

"Just as the American Left has adopted blacks as mascots, so the international Left has adopted Palestinians as mascots. In both cases, the actual well-being of the mascots is not the point."

God bless Thomas Sowell.

Mises scholar is optimistic. This shows that every individual, regardless of ideology, is tempted to miss the forest for the trees. Politicians and the accomplice press surround themselves with sycophants, so they're disconnected from America. Mises scholars are surrounded by freedom-lovers, so they think the freedom movement is stronger than it is. We're in for tremendous pain. I think that freedom will win out as a way to end the pain - Americans with traditional American values are going to overwhelm Obama's Marxist revolutionaries - but I don't think it's going to happen before the tremendous pain. I can't feel optimistic about that.