Nothing increases the number of jobs so rapidly as labor-saving machinery, because it releases wants theretofore unknown, by permitting leisure.
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Isabel Paterson
Most of the harm in the world is done by good people, and not by accident, lapse, or omission. It is the result of their deliberate actions, long persevered in, which they hold to be motivated by high ideals toward virtuous ends… when millions are slaughtered, when torture is practiced, starvation enforced, oppression made a policy, as at present over a large part of the world, and as it has often been in the past, it must be at the behest of very many good people, and even by their direct action, for what they consider a worthy object.
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Food Freedom
In most areas of this country, selling raw milk is against the law, which puts folks like Alvin Schlangen into the black market. Schlangen, an organic egg producer when he isn’t being arrested for crimes against homogenization, recently stood trial in Hennepin County District Court, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on three misdemeanor counts: “distributing unpasteurized milk, operating without a food handler’s license and handling adulterated food.”
Why the prosecution? Why the milk police?
According to the federal Centers for Disease Control, consumption of raw milk products caused a couple hundred hospitalizations and two deaths in the eleven years following 1998.
That shows a risk, but it’s a risk a lot of people are willing to take. Those who drink raw milk claim “pasteurization destroys important nutrients, enzymes and beneficial bacterial.” By drinking raw milk they are trying to improve the health and well-being of their families.
For millennia, people have thirstily consumed cow’s milk . . . like, right from the bovine udder. Pasteurization, wherein certain bacteria is killed, didn’t come along till the 19th century. Perhaps the fact that we’re alive today is evidence that raw milk can’t be all that bad for you.
Terry Flower traveled all the way from New Hampshire to see Schlangen’s trial. “I am very passionate about the fact that we need to be able to choose our own food,” Ms. Flower said. “In New Hampshire we can do that.”
Fortunately for Schlangen, a jury of three men and three women found him not guilty on all three counts. He now hopes to prevail against similar charges in another Minnesota county, where he’ll go to trial later this month.
Agree or disagree, but why not let free citizens educate themselves and make their own decisions?
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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William Graham Sumner
As soon as A observes something which seems to him wrong, from which X is suffering, A talks it over with B, and A and B then propose to get a law passed to remedy the evil and help X. Their law always proposes to determine what C shall do for X, or, in better case, what A, B, and C shall do for X… What I want to do is to look up C… I call him the forgotten man… He is the man who never is thought of. He is the victim of the reformer, the social speculator, and philanthropist, and I hope to show you before I get through that he deserves your notice both for his character and for the many burdens which are laid upon him.
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Townhall — Sanity: Politically Possible?
Given the special interest politics at play in the U.S. and elsewhere, which policy — fiscal conservatism or Keynesianism — is more likely to be achieved in something like its pure form?
My Townhall column this weekend asks a question about political feasibility . . . of the most popular doctrine in 100 years. Take a look,
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Video: Who is Watching the Watchers?
The media is supposed to be our watchdog keeping the politicians honest. Are they? Stop laughing (or crying) and watch this video.
Thanks to Accuracy in Media for sponsoring this terrific talk.
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F. A. Hayek
A claim for equality of material position can be met only by a government with totalitarian powers.
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Ludwig von Mises
If one rejects laissez faire on account of man’s fallibility and moral weakness, one must for the same reason also reject every kind of government action.
More people view Mitt Romney unfavorably (49 percent) than view Barack Obama unfavorably (45 percent), according to the most recent Reason-Rupe Poll. This, despite Romney being the challenger, while President Obama must live down his sorry record.
By this measure, and others in the poll, Obama’s re-election seems ever more likely. And if you think that’s depressing, wait till you read about the general views of taxing the rich more. The “soak the rich” mentality remains quite strong. But some of this “the rich don’t pay their fair share” notion is based on misinformation. Get a load of this:
Last year, the government collected about $1.8 trillion dollars in income tax revenue. If you were to estimate, about what PERCENTAGE of this total tax revenue do you think the top 5 percent of households probably contributed? Would you say…
<1% . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3%
1% to less than 20% . . . . . . . 29%
20% to less than 40% . . . . . . 19%
40% to less than 60% . . . . . . 15%
60% to less than 80% . . . . . . 11%
80% or more . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8%
Don’t Know/Refused . . . . . . . 16%
The truth is that America’s Top 5 percenters pay more than 60 percent of income taxes collected. The vast majority of those polled (66 percent) thought the Top 5 should pay less than they currently do.
I’m not going out on a limb, here, to infer a lesson: Were Americans to learn a few more truths about their government, about taxes, and (hey, why not?) real life, they might change their minds on a few crucial political notions.
Education — and by this I don’t mean schooling — is obviously important to political betterment.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
“We cannot be complacent,” Federal Reserve Bank President Charles Evans said yesterday. He was most distressed by any lingering notion that the economy would remain undamaged were “no action” taken.
He wants more money flushed into the system. “If we continue to take only modest, cautious, safe policy actions,” he argued, “we risk suffering a lost decade similar to that which Japan experienced in the 1990s.”
Ah, and I was going to use the long Japanese recession as an example of what can happen when too much monetary and bailout hanky-panky is allowed.
Evans apparently thinks that mid-September’s unleashing of quantitative easing — or QE, the currently fashionable banker’s version of crony capitalism — with the Fed promising monthly $40 billion purchases of mortgage-backed securities, is tantamount to “no action” and “doing nothing.”
Or else he’s worried that Bernanke’s critics might have some sway.
Relying on the old (by-the-textbook but long-discredited) Phillips Curve story of inflationary money leading inexorably to increased employment, cheap money maven Evans told reporters that “the economy” would “need 200,000 to 250,000 job gains per month” before the Fed could dare rethink its current policy.
He’s apparently forgotten that stagflation is possible. I don’t know why: He’s just a few years older than me, and I remember when the Phillips Curve’s simple trade-off between inflationary monetary policy and unemployment rates hit the trash bin of history, as both inflation and unemployment soared in the 1970s.
When our leaders forget history, are we doomed to repeat it?
Stagflation may be the best we can hope for from current QE.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.