How terribly amusing from the European Commission

There's a great deal of shouting from the European Union about the taxation of digital business. An insistence that really, such companies must be paying more tax where value is added. Which is, of course, how the system currently works. Most of he value is created in the US, given that's where all the programmers are, and that's where it gets taxed, under US rules. Really - profits cannot be paid out to shareholders until US profit taxes are...

A Blast Heard 1,200 Miles Away

It has been over 200 years since Mount Tambora in Indonesia erupted violently, resulting in death and disorder on a global scale. According to The Guinness Book of World Records it is the deadliest volcano in history. Here MailOnline Travel reveals the horrifying – but fascinating – history of the blast and how tourists today can take a peek at its incredible crater. Mount Tambora is an active stratovolcano – meaning it is made up of layers of...

More School Competition, Better Citizens

One of the original arguments for establishing a system of common schools was that children from different backgrounds would learn to get along with one another and become proper citizens. However, when students throw rocks at a seven-year-old boy with a rare genetic condition, call him a monster on a daily basis, and push him towards contemplating suicide, we must wonder if our public schools are actually creating good citizens. Over 90...

Build Your Economic Storm Shelter Now

If you’re idly conversing with someone you don’t know well, the weather is usually a safe topic. It affects everyone in some way, so it’s a shared experience – but there’s something else, too. The weather is no one’s fault. It is what it is, so you need not worry that the other person will blame you for it. None of us can control the weather. And lately, the weather has been interesting, unless you had to live through its more extreme...

[KR1127] Keiser Report: China Effect on Oil & Bitcoin Markets

In this episode of the Keiser Report, Max and Stacy discuss the China Effect on oil and bitcoin markets. In the second half, Max interviews Chris Blasi of the PMC Ounce. They debate whether or not bitcoin is the new gold. Chris argues only gold is gold but that bitcoin is an interesting new financial asset. [embedded content]...

Reply to Bryan on utilitarianism

Bryan Caplan has responded to my recent post on liberalism and utilitarianism. I agree with his first criticism: First, if "Liberalism is what happens when you are optimizing for a safe environment, and illiberalism is what happens when you optimize for thriving in an unsafe environment," are we talking about selfish optimization or social optimization? If the former, then how does being rich make caring about outsiders...

The State of the World Today

Solid, vast, and clear evidence of racism is dismissed as mistaken and unreliable if the persons charged, using this evidence, with being racists are “Progressive.”  Non-existent evidence of racism is elevated into incontrovertible truth if the persons charged, using this non-existent evidence, with being racists are classical-liberal advocates of a society grounded in private property and free markets. Jonathan Haidt could write a long volume...

“Libertarian Law and Military Defense”

You just thought I’d sit back and phone in episodes of Contra Krugman from now on? Nope, I’m still pushing forward the boundaries of an-cap theory, baby. For real, there is some new stuff in here that isn’t in my earlier work.

Black Liberty Matters

Uncategorized My new essay at Niskanen continues a lot of my longstanding themes from BHL posts.

Elvis’s Own Personal Drug War

When Elvis Presley died in 1977 from drug abuse, he was an official, badge-carrying federal agent for the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, an honorary appointment granted by President Richard Nixon.To say that Elvis Presley had a respect for law enforcement is to drastically understate his enthusiasm. In another life, he would have liked to have been a police officer, and he was obsessed with collecting police badges and uniforms. When...

The Lesson Revisited

Reprinted from Mises.org Economics, as we have now seen again and again, is a science of recognizing secondary consequences. It is also a science of seeing general consequences. It is the science of tracing the effects of some proposed or existing policy not only on some special interest in the short run, but on the general interest in the long run. This is the lesson that has been the special concern of this book. We stated it first in...

September 22: Daily Contrarian Reads

Yellen in a Box and a Retail Bloodbath: SchiffGold Friday Gold Wrap Podcast Sept. 22, 2017

The SchiffGold Friday Gold Wrap podcast combines a succinct summary of the week’s precious metals news coupled with thoughtful analysis. You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes.[embedded content] In this episode, we talk about this week’s hawkish Federal Reserve Open Market Committee meeting. Yellen indicated we can expect another rate cut this year, and announced the Fed will move forward with shrinking the balance sheet. We think Yellen...

Putting America’s Record-Breaking $20 Trillion Debt In Global Context

The U.S. federal government just passed a record $20 trillion in publicly held debt. That’s bigger than the entire economy of every country in the European Union, combined. As HowMuch.net notes, the debt will only grow higher unless President Trump and the U.S. Congress can agree to unprecedented spending cuts combined with tax increases.  Don’t count on that happening anytime soon. Most people think that an eye-popping $20+ trillion debt is...

Harvey and Irma Unlikely to End Carmageddon

GM cuts entire shift at factory for crossovers due to “moderating” sales, layoffs not temporary. For the first eight months of the year, car sales by GM and Ford plunged 19%. Industry car sales fell 11%, despite record incentives. Sales of trucks – pickups, SUVs, crossovers, and vans – have been the big hope. Total truck sales are up 3% for the year, reducing the overall sales decline to 3%. Particularly crossovers have been red-hot. Every...

BONUS Ep. 1008 The Battle Over the Old Latin Mass

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More evidence that it’s very hard to ‘beat the market’ over time, even the financial professionals can’t do it – Publications – AEI

AEI More evidence that it’s very hard to ‘beat the market’ over time, even the financial professionals can’t do it Just out from the SPIVA® U.S. Scorecard Mid-Year 2017 report, based on returns through June 30, 2017: Over the five-year period, 82.38% of large-cap managers, 87.21% of mid-cap managers, and 93.83% of small-cap managers lagged their respective benchmarks. Similarly, over the 15-year investment horizon, 93.18% of...

Necessity is the Mother of Invention – Retirees Desperate Reach for Yield

Ben Bernanke’s creativity inspired a generation of economists and central bankers. QE, ZIRP and NIRP established a new class of economics that is mathematically sound but practically disastrous. Billions of dollars were transferred from savers to investors to boost the economy, but the wizards of quant forgot that something has to give. In this case, it was the formation of a pension crisis that threatens the golden years of millions of...

The Big Myth

Don Watkins of the Ayn Rand Institute wrote an article, The Myth of Banking Deregulation, to debunk a lie. The lie is that bank regulation is good. That it helped stabilize the economy in the 1930’s. And that deregulation at the end of the century destabilized the economy and caused the crisis of 2008. If deregulation is the problem, then reregulation is the solution. So, in the wake of the crisis, Congress enacted a 2,300-page monstrosity of...

Happy Birthday Professor McCloskey

Today is the birthday of one of the clearest and most humane voices for sound economics, liberal political economy and a champion of civil and respectful discourse on the most vexing issues social cooperation among beautifully diverse and dispersed individuals.  Her vision is of a society of free and responsible individuals who live in caring communities and can prosper in a vibrant and dynamic market economy.  It is an inspiring vision, not...

Is There a Retirement Crisis?

There is a widespread perception that Americans aren’t saving enough for retirement. Some policymakers propose to increase the government’s role in retirement saving and income provision through measures such as expanding Social Security benefits and establishing state and local supplementary retirement saving plans. American Enterprise Institute Resident Scholar Andrew G. Biggs reviews studies of household retirement saving and also of...