Civilized countries generally adopt gold or silver or both as money.
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An Actor’s Act
Think you can raise taxes without negative consequences? Consult Gerard Depardieu.
The great French actor (known for his prominent schnozz) moved across the border to Belgium, and is giving up his French passport. While other well-off folks who have moved out of their native land, such as billionaire Bernard Arnault, pretend that their moves are for non-tax reasons, Depardieu has no problem admitting that he’s leaving his country to avoid next year’s whopping new wealth tax.
For this, he has been criticized by France’s prime minister, Jean-Marc Ayrault, who publicly censured Depardieu for a lack of patriotism “at a time of cutbacks” and judged the actor’s decision “shabby.”
“Paying a tax is an act of solidarity,” Ayrault intoned on TV, “a patriotic act.”
Depardieu rightly objects, accusing the socialist government of President Francois Hollande of “driving France’s most talented figures out of the country”:
“I am leaving because you consider that success, creation, talent, anything different, must be punished,” he said.
Depardieu said that during his long career he had paid 145m euros (£118m) to the French taxman.
“At no time have I failed in my duties. The historic films in which I took part bear witness to my love of France and its history,” he said.
But it’s hard to maintain “solidarity” with a beloved country going socialist. Depardieu will find a lot of sympathy with his plight from even not-so-rich Americans. You know, we who put freedom and achievement and principle above kleptocracy.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
References to this weekend’s Townhall.com column:
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Léon Walras
The market is like a lake agitated by the wind, where the water is incessantly seeking its level without ever reaching it.
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Alfred Marshall
A government could print a good edition of Shakespeare’s works, but it could not get them written.
The hallmark of Progressivism was and remains a disrespect for constitutional limits on government power, starting and ending with Executive power.
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William Lloyd Garrison
With reasonable men, I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter, nor waste arguments where they will certainly be lost.
On December 14, 1819, Alabama became the 22nd state of these United States. On the same December date in 1918, Friedrich Karl von Hessen, a German prince elected by the Parliament of Finland to become King Väinö I, renounced the Finnish throne. In 1939, the Soviet Union was expelled from the League of Nations for invading Finland and starting the Winter War.
As I write this, the United States of America is $16,275,179,205,442 in debt. By the time you read this, we’ll have piled up millions more.
Much debt is of recent vintage. When George W. Bush became president in 2000, the national red ink totaled $5.7 trillion. In eight years, Dubya nearly doubled it to $10.6 trillion. Since his 2008 election, President Obama has far outpaced Bush, sinking us another $5.3 trillion in debt in just half Bush’s time.
And, by continuing to run yearly deficits of over $1 trillion, we’re digging the hole deeper at top speed.
For all the hysteria over draconian cuts, forced at the so-called fiscal cliff, those somewhat slippery savings would at best amount to about 10 percent of our yearly deficit, leaving us spending 9/10ths of a trillion dollars we don’t have.
In the “other cuts” department, the Obama Administration had been supporting paltry reductions to federal Medicaid spending of $17.6 billion over ten years (that’s less than $2 billion a year), but just flipped its position. Why? State governors are deciding if they can afford to take part in Obamacare’s massive Medicaid expansion to cover those earning up to 133 percent of the poverty line.
Not content to spend recklessly alone, the Feds picks up the entire tab of new Medicare recipients’ first three years. After that, Washington pays 90 percent and the states pay 10.
States are wondering how they’ll come up with that additional 10 percent — seven governors have already declined to join in the spending program. No one in Washington has given a second thought to paying the 90 percent.
They figure they can always raise taxes.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
How do you get a body of professionals to go along with your program?
Pay them.
It’s an old idea: He who pays the piper calls the tune.
The pipers are economists. The paymaster is not you, but the Federal Reserve. There’s a suprising amount of agreement amongst even disagreeing economists that the Federal Reserve is, on the whole, “a good thing,” a necessary thing, even an institution whose existence and rationale must not be questioned.
Shocking, but less so when you apply what is called “Public Choice” analysis to economists themselves. Assume that economists are self-interested. Assume that they like to get paid. Opinions turn out to be somewhat elastic, even given some very hard facts. The results?
Don’t bite the hand that feeds you.
Nicely, a few economists bring this up, every now and then. Garett Jones on EconTalk did, reviving a letter monetary economist Milton Friedman wrote to researcher David M. Levy in the early 1990s. Friedman summarized the situation concisely, saying that the Fed
hires directly roughly half of all economists specializing in the field of money, and indirectly provides funds for a large fraction of the remainder. I have no doubt that is a major reason why the Federal Reserve, despite such a poor record of performance, has such a high public standing.
This also helps explain why there was a major shift away from laissez faire amongst economists. In the 20th century, the “worldly philosophers” developed a new labor market; they found that they could make a great deal of money working for government. And they don’t get paid for telling the government not to do what it wants to do, or to fire most economists.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.