Tweet [1]
My GMU Econ colleague Pete Boettke wonders why we Americans are so accepting of what has become a permanent state of war [2]. A slice:
For the first time in US history it has been reported in military news as well as on Buzzfeed, there are soldiers fighting a war that started before they were born. WHY is this not front page news everyday? WHY are there not protest marches in DC to demand an end to violence and destruction and death? WHY have ‘we’ become so accustomed to war at a distance that it just fades into the background of our collective conscience?
George Will is unsurprisingly unimpressed with Bernie Sanders’s “socialism. [3]”
Deirdre McCloskey explains that today’s Swedish economy is not a socialist one [4].
John Tamny wisely celebrates the rise of inequality [5].
George Leef writes wisely about the recent events at Oberlin [6].
Todd Zywicki reveals some fundamental flaws in some politicians’ scheme to cap interest rates on credit-card debt [7]. A slice:
Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez’s proposal would effectively outlaw these lenders of last resort too. History warns, however, that abolishing the supply of credit does not eliminate the demand. In states where usury ceilings eliminated alternative lenders, generations of desperate working-class families turned to illegal loan sharks [8] that preyed on the urban working class for most of the Twentieth Century. So severe and chronic was the multi-billion dollar loan-sharking racket that eventually even consumer advocates and liberal politicians such as Robert Kennedy pleaded with state legislatures to raise or eliminate their interest rate ceilings so hard up families had legal choices.
My intrepid Mercatus Center colleague Veronique de Rugy laments the folly of “tax extenders [9].” A slice:
Members of Congress love pretending there is some incredible crisis coming our way (never a budgetary one though!) as an excuse to shovel more money into the pockets and purses of those who whisper in congressional ears that they “need” the handouts. If national legislators were responsible we Americans would not be $22 trillion in debt, and Uncle Sam’s budget deficits would not be expanding when the economy is growing.