There is perhaps no better advertisement for an Ivy League education that this comment from a student of two such fine institutions;
“Steve, the math is the math. You can’t lower rates and raise revenue, unless you’re getting revenue from someplace else,”
The year 2525 is probably the year when we “officially” find out from historians that conservatives were right and that Barney Frank and Democrat policies started the global financial meltdown and Obama’s policies like the Stimulus, Obamacare, and Dodd-Frank prolonged the agony. That is because history is mostly written by liberal academics (I know that is redundant) and they have a slightly biased view of the world.
I am exagerating about the date 514 years from now, but consider that until recently most historical accounts of the Great Depression give FDR credit for ending it. There have been books like The Forgotten Man which set the record straight, but few probably read this. However nearly seventy years after the depression ended two UCLA economists place the blame where it belongs…on FDR.
I am not sure whether “Demonomics” is Demon Economics or Democrat Economics. It is probably a distinction without a difference as some of the recent comments by leading Democrats defy logic. I have to wonder how these people not only got as far as they did, but stay in positions of power. Perhaps the biggest example has been how the Democrats have been hawking another extension of Unemployment Compensation payments. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi postulated that,
“It injects demand into the economy. It creates jobs faster than almost any other initiative you can name.”
It often amazes me when I find a book written many years ago that still has so much relevance to today. Free to Choose
The Chinese, it seems, are at it again stealing American jobs. This time their “cheating” come in the form of providing subsidies to their “green” industries as reported in Pittsburgh’s Tribune Review. The charge was lobbied by the United Steel Workers union and they estimate that the Chinese government has provided more than $216 billion as subsidies to their “green technology” industries:
You may have heard of Adam Smith and most certainly Karl Marx, but what about John Stuart Mill or Jean-Baptiste Say or John Manard Keynes? These men and many others are the forefathers of classical economic thought and On Classical Economics
On Classical Economics is not a book for light reading and probably is more for folks who really want to probe the depths of classic economic theory.
Most of this book review will consist of excerpts from this inspirational and thought-provoking book by Eric Johnston. My hope is that many of you will pick up and read this timely book as we wade through our current problems. I wish that I could reasonable reprint all of the passages that I have highlighted as I read America Unlimited
As you read the passages think about succinct Mr. Johnston’s comments are. I should mention that he was a businessman and the president of the United States Chamber of Commerce. He also had the opportunity to travel at the behest of the President of the United States. At the risk of sounding like an chain e-mail, please read to the end (or skip ahead if you are that impatient) for a rather surprising fact.
Even though this post is about, perhaps our next president, I am going to start it with quotes from two prominent politicians;
“Republican leaders haven’t come up with “a single, solitary new idea” to help the American people recover from the economic recession.”
“You lie”
Maybe Barack Obama was being Clintonesque parsing “single,” “solitary,” “new” in his mind to justify the lie. I’ll admit that many Republicans have no new ideas and many of them are progressive and probably agree with Obama’s direction, just not his speed. I would argue that the same could be said of Obama’s vision for America. His plan for “spreading the wealth” is not a new idea. His plan has been tried numerous times always with the same result…either failure (see Greece) or totalitarianism (Cuba, Venezuela, etc.).
So why does the average American accept economic policies that are bound to bankrupt this country? Logic tells us in our personal lives tells us that if we spend way more than we make we incur debt. Anyone who has ever had a loan or a credit card balance knows that there are interest charges on that debt which must be paid on a monthly basis. When we still keep spending beyond our means our debt increases and so does our monthly payments which a greater percentage of goes to pay the interest on the debt.
News briefs are a collection of interesting news stories…
Brief 1: The Democrats and Obama have been making some noise about providing subsidies for the dead tree media. Maybe this is a quid pro quo since most newspapers have been propping them up for decades and Obama for the past few years. Before you get all freaky on this concept, remember that it has been used quite successfully in other countries. The United States would join the ranks of Venezuela, China, Russia (they’ve gone a step further and have actually “cancelled” some journalists to decrease supply), North Korea and Nazi Germany.
