Standard of Living – Madison, Wisconsin

Article here.

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Tags: lies, obama, propaganda, stage, town hall, white house

A company that should have gone through the normal bankruptcy process, has had its incompetent CEO, Rick Wagoner, fired by another incompetent CEO, Barack Obama.  Obama plans to run this company now.  Jeff Tucker at Mises.org says that Rick Wagoner leaving the firm is creepy though.  I agree.  Read his post to find out why!

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Tags: bailout, barack obama, ceo, fired, general motors, gm, jeffrey tucker, ludwig von mises institute, management, rick wagoner

• “Stimulus May Bolster Dairy Industry”, by Marc Heller, in Watertown Daily Times

This fetish for price-gouging the consumer is for the benefit of Rep. Collin C. Peterson (D-Minn.) and his special interest group—corporate-welfare farmers.  What’s next Collin, shall we pass legislation to burn down millions of old homes to prop up housing prices?  Wait, that’s not one of the special interest groups that pay your extortion fees election fees.  Skip that one.

Obviously, consumers aren’t one of Collin’s special interest groups either.  They don’t pay his extortion fees election fees.  Which is why they get the shaft.  Consumers will continue to pay higher prices if Collin and his corporate farming criminals get legislation like this passed.  Collin and the corporate-welfare gang benefit at the expense of the consumer.

• This scheme was exposed by Hazlitt long ago in Economics In One Lesson, and his writing on this is wonderful:  Chapter 13: “Parity” Prices
• And for some great laughs check out the definition of “Bureaucracy: American Style” under The Classic Cow Model of government. Try not to die laughing!
  

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Tags: consumer, corporate welfare, economics in one lesson, henry hazlitt, price controls, price fixing, rep. collin c. peterson, retire cows, special interest group, wisconsin cows

Did FDR’s New Deal prolong the Great Depression?  I think so.  If you’ve got a moment, check out these multimedia resources and see if you’ve been fully informed.  I placed the 10 reasons why I believe many of FDR’s New Deal programs prolonged the Great Depression near the bottom of the post.

P.S. The video and podcasts/audio are very excellent.

Material that is Readily-Accessible and Free:

Video:

• FDR’s New Deal: did it work? And will a new “new deal” work today? – A discussion between a handful of historians and economists including GMU’s Russ Roberts

Podcasts/Audio:

• Higgs on the Great Depression – Economist Russ Roberts interviews Economist Robert Higgs
• Burton W. Folsom, Jr. on New Deal or Raw Deal: How FDR’s Economic Legacy Has Damaged America

Articles:

• “Regime Uncertainty: Why the Great Depression Lasted So Long and Why Prosperity Resumed after the War” – Economist, Robert Higgs
• “The New Deal Debunked” – Economist, Thomas DiLorenzo
• “The New Deal in One Lesson” – Economist, Christopher Westley
• “Wartime Prosperity? A Reassessment of the U.S. Economy in the 1940s” – Economist, Robert Higgs
  

Books:

• Economics In One Lesson (Ch. 6, sec. 3) – New York Times editorialist, Henry Hazlitt explains how the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, the Home Owners Loan Corporation and other government agencies in 1932 and later robbed successful businesses.
• Economics In One Lesson (Ch. 13, sec. 1) – Hazlitt explains how FDR’s insistence on fixing prices lowered the standard of living for those that had to pay the higher prices.
• Economics In One Lesson (Ch. 18) – Hazlitt explains how minimum wage laws (such as created by New Deal) create unemployment.
• America’s Great Depression – Economist, Murray N. Rothbard (thanks to Mises.org)

Material that can be Purchased:

Books:

• Depression, War, and Cold War: Studies in Political Economy – Economist, Robert Higgs
• Economics In One Lesson – New York Times editorialist, Henry Hazlitt
• 33 Questions About American History You’re Not Supposed to Ask – Historian, Thomas E. Woods (see question #24 – Did Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal Lift The United States Out Of The Depression?)
• Roosevelt Myth – Journalist (liberal), John T. Flynn
• New Deal or Raw Deal?: How FDR’s Economic Legacy Has Damaged America – Economic historian, Burton W. Folsom, Jr.
• FDR’s Folly: How Roosevelt and His New Deal Prolonged the Great Depression – Historian, Jim Powell
• Out of Work: Unemployment and Government in Twentieth-Century America – Economists, Lowell E. Gallaway and Richard K. Vedder

My Opinion On Why FDR’s New Deal Prolonged the Great Depression Based On The Material Above:

1. FDR’s Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA) program had pigs slaughtered and had corn and oat fields burned to keep prices high (to benefit farmers); this was food that could have fed the poor who were starving.
2. FDR’s programs fixed prices and wages which lowered the standard of living for those that had to pay the higher prices for food and other goods.
3. FDR’s Fair Labor Standards Act created minimum wage laws which created unemployment.  See Hazlitt’s book which I linked to above on how minimum wage laws hurt the under-skilled.
4. FDR allowed unions and industries to become cartels and push wages and prices higher during a time of mass unemployment.
5. FDR’s Reconstruction Finance Corporation, the Home Owners Loan Corporation and other government agencies took money away from successful businesses which could have employed more people if they had been able to keep their earnings to employ.
6. FDR’s Banking Act of 1935 gave powers to the Federal Reserve to change reserve requirements for banks.  The use of these new powers caused uncertainty in money markets (such as we are experiencing now with the uncertainty government has created during this credit crisis).
7. FDR’s hostility to businesspeople through new laws and regulations decreased investment in long-term projects by private investors afraid of the business environment FDR created.
8. FDR raised taxes to the top marginal rate in 1935 to 79%.  This destroyed the means to create new employment.
9. FDR’s make-work programs lowered the standard of living as resources were diverted away from profitable use by companies and were used by government workers in unprofitable, wasteful work that did not raise the standard of living for workers or customers because not all of the services/goods created were actually wanted.
10. Even FDR’s World War II did not get us out of the Great Depression either.  Higgs’ research suggests it was the buildup of wealth and the transformed expectations of the business environment that paved the way out.

What Are Your Opinions?

Please post a comment with any of your thoughts and resources that you have that are insightful.

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Tags: agricultural adjustment administration, banking act, burton folsom, cartelization, cartels, economist, fdr, great depression, henry hazlitt, historian, home owners loan corporation, jim powell, john t. flynn, make-work programs, mises.org, murray rothbard, new deal, price fixing, prolong, prolonged, reconstruction finance corporation, robert higgs, russell roberts, thomas e. woods, thomas j. dilorenzo, unions, world war ii

Long wait times and short supply!

As Dr. Robert Berry said at the Palm Beach Atlantic University Forum on Ethics & Character in a speech he titled, “What is the right path for our healthcare crisis?“:

“The only thing universal about healthcare in these two countries [Canada and Britain] is that it is in short supply and requires waits that can only be described as inhumane or unethical.”

Universal health coverage (which fails miserably at attaining the goal of universal health care) in Britain, administered by a government-ran medical bureaucratic-monopoly called NHS, allowed a man to die yesterday because they didn’t have time for him.

Wisconsin’s Dane County government also has a government-ran bureaucratic-monopoly except in 911 emergency service and it allowed two individuals to die as the victims had to wait so long for help to arrive that they were brutally murdered as they waited.  You can read my previous post here about Wisconsin government workers allowing Brittany Zimmermann and Mark Gregory Johnson to be murdered.

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Tags: britain, brittany zimmermann, canada, dane county, dane county 911 center, dane county government, dr. robert berry, Healthcare, mark gregory johnson, NHS, palm beach atlantic university forum, universal health coverage

From the lips of Paul Ryan comes this hilarious take on how to ’solve’ the inflation problem in America:

Due to the serious threat that inflation poses to our economy, I have introduced H.R. 6053, the Price Stability Act. Currently, the Federal Reserve Bank has a dual mandate: to promote full employment as well as price stability. Unfortunately, these goals, while laudable, can lend themselves to contradictory policy responses. For example, we are currently seeing both rising unemployment and increasing inflation. Traditionally, the policy response to rising unemployment would be to lower interest rates to stimulate the economy; however, the response to increasing inflation is to raise interest rates. With these competing aims, the Federal Reserve finds itself in a difficult position.

The Price Stability Act would solve this problem by removing the dual mandate. It would instead give the Federal Reserve only one mandate – to maintain price stability. It is important to recognize that, by virtue of its control of monetary policy, the Fed is the only institution that can control inflation over the long-run. By providing stable and foreseeable prices, businesses and individuals are better able to plan for the future and provide continued growth for our economy. Additionally, stable prices would ensure the continued buying power of our wages.

(Full article here.)

Wow, what a complete waste of time and effort trying to solve the inflation problem, not to mention a very socialist attitude regarding the creation of money.  It appears that the only political party left to defend freedom in commerce is the Libertarian Party.  The Republican parasite Paul Ryan is holding fast to Keynesian junk science regarding the viability of price stability through government manipulation of interest rates and printing presses.  I guess this big government worshiper doesn’t understand that price stability can never happen.  Prices always fluctuate to reflect the new information regarding the supply of and demand for the Earth’s natural resources.  However, maybe Paul Ryan is more intelligent than I give him credit for.  It is possible that in wanting ‘price stability’ he is referring to getting rid of or reducing the continuing rise of prices of most products in the market (which uninformed pseudo-economists incorrectly call inflation).  Well, then again we find that Paul Ryan is still misinformed about proper economics.  If he is wanting to get rid of the continuous rise in the general price level, than his Price Stability Act surely will be a failure.  Paul Ryan wants the Federal reserve to have only one mandate—control inflation.  Now this is absolutely hilarious for it is the Federal Reserve itself which inflates the money supply and causes the subsequent rise in the general price level!  Mr. Paul Ryan, how in hell is the Federal Reserve going to control price increases when it is the Federal Reserve’s  very existence that causes the rise in the general price level!?!?!?  Well, politicians aren’t exactly the brightest bulbs in the world.  What is so disastrous about this entire comedy is that it is Republican idiots like Paul Ryan who preach about the glories of free markets but have no idea what in the hell that means!  What is needed is for more libertarians to run for office to obtain a platform to reach broader audiences to put people like Paul Ryan in his place.  Call him out.  Tell the public what he really is so that Republican shams like him stop calling socialist policies the ‘free market’.  We need true free market libertarians to shout from the rooftop that these big-government-loving Republicans hate the free market for money and love their twisted socialist/fascist monetary schemes.

This great book, What Has Government Done To Our Money?, by Murray Rothbard shows the futility of the Federal Reserve controlling the continuous rise in the general price level.  Here and below are some true monetary free market lovers shouting it loud and clear!

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Tags: big-government, Fascism, Federal Reserve, free market money, h.r. 6053 price statability act, inflation, interest rates, liberarian, libertarian party, murray rothbard, paul ryan, price stability, printing press, republican, socialism, what has government done to our money

Immense gratitude goes to one of the commenters in this forum for the idea for this post title.

As the federal government continues to borrow and print paper money (because it is bankrupt) and directs it into unprofitable worthless financial companies and now incompetent automakers, the federal government is destroying thousands of good profitable jobs and companies as profitable firms will not have access to this capital redirected by government.  As Peter Schiff mentions in these videos, government is directing capital away from profitable use and funneling it into unprofitable use.  Then, because the federal government has destroyed valuable profitable firms and products, customers decide to hold their cash as they don’t want to purchase the products offered by the firms that the government has bailed out.  Giving money to incompetent automakers does not change the fact that customers still will not buy the products of these failed institutions.  This creates a recessionary effect over short and long periods of time and so government will then feel it must try to correct the recession they have created.  How do they attempt to fix it?  By borrowing and printing more scraps of Federal Reserve Notes.  They do this directly through printing presses and indirectly by lowering interest rates.  Of course, printing more scraps of paper then what was already in circulation doesn’t create wealth or fix the problem of unwanted products, but it does create inflation.   Well, maybe with all those trillions of scraps of worthless paper (the US dollar) the federal government has been printing, the worthless soon-to-bailed-out firms of GM and Chrysler will be mandated by government to produce a hybrid that runs on these worthless notes.  That would be a fitting relationship—three failed institutions, the Federal Reserve, GM and Chrysler teaming up to produce a worthless product that runs on worthless scrap paper—neither of which there will be any shortage of in the future thanks to government intervention.  Imagine what a wonderful world would we live in if companies succeeded or failed based on how well they met the needs of individuals in society.

Peter Schiff on CNN Auto Bailout Intense Debate! 12/4/08 part 1/2

Peter Schiff on CNN Auto Bailout Intense Debate! 12/4/08 part 2/2

The Federal Reserve will end this economic crisis! Right?

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Tags: automakers, bailout, chrysler, detroit automakers, Federal Reserve, gm, inflation, peter schiff, scrap paper, us dollar

I recently commented that it appears that individuals in Dane County in Wisconsin have a more open system for looking over government records than do individuals in Maricopa County in Arizona.  It turns out I had spoken prematurely.  I did not realize the extent to which government workers, such as Kathleen Falk and Joe Norwick, in Dane County tried to cover up their own incompetency and failure and that amongst other government workers and in so doing consequently showed the corruption of Dane County government workers.  By corruption I mean secrecy.  The Isthmus’ recent article “Dane County 911 Center faces the future“, explains that in the Brittany Zimmermann case, where the government 911 center allowed this individual to be murdered after she called the center pleading for help, the government center “refused to acknowledge the call or mistakes until it was reported by Isthmus“.  So much for trusting so-called public servants.  However, I already exposed the myth of public servants here.  Kathleen Falk still continues to hide under a cloak of secrecy even now.  It appears that the blunders of this central planner are numerous.  The Isthmus asked this taxpayer-funded worker why she had not conducted the required yearly performance evaluation of then government 911 center director, Joe Norwick.  Apparently, Kathleen Falk lied or truly did not know but in any case said that Norwick had not been a director for a full year.  The Isthmus discovered that in fact Joe Norwick had been employed for over a year.  Why did Falk give the Isthmus false information?  Not satisfied, the Isthmus demanded to see all the performance evaluations of center directors that were given by Kathleen Falk.  Only upon noticing the relentless actions of the Isthmus, Falk’s spokesman, Josh Wescott, finally admitted that Kathleen Falk had in fact NOT conducted a single performance evaluation of a government 911 center director for over 5 years.  That’s 60 months.  That’s 1,825 days that had gone by.  Kathleen Falk thought that despite the fact that government 911 center directors are required to have an evaluation at least once every 365 days, 1,825 days should go by without any evaluation.  Kathleen Falk is the prime example of the failure of government central planners.  The government 911 center has no competitors because government planners have not allowed them to come into existence.  The result of government-imposed monopolies is always a relaxing of business standards.  The result of government-imposed monopolies like the 911 center is a decrease in productivity.  The result of government-imposed monopolies is always secrecy.  The result of government-imposed monopolies is always incompetence.  The result of the Dane County government monopoly on emergency dispatch services is that government workers allowed Brittany Zimmermann and Mark Gregory Johnson to be murdered.  Government workers were not there in that moment of brutality and aggression imposed upon these individuals by someone else.  An open market for emergency dispatch services would never have allowed this government monopoly to exist.  So long as politicians attack private individuals and not allow them to create competitive emergency dispatch service centers, we will continue to get more of the same incompetence, corruption and secrecy by government workers like Kathleen Falk but at higher and higher costs to taxpayers.  Why at higher and higher costs?  Because when government planning fails, government workers say it was the fact that they didn’t have enough money to carry out their duties.  The reality is that they had enough money but they didn’t have any competition which would have sharpened their talents and made them more productive and skilled at a decreasing cost to their customers.  If you’re planning on moving to Madison, WI you may want to think twice about the fact that the government here has a monopoly on emergency dispatch services and the lack of help you would receive in an emergency may mean severe consequences for your safety and life.

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Tags: 911 emergency dispatch, 911 performance evaluation, brittany zimmermann, central planners, cloak of secrecy, dane county, dane county 911 center, dane county government, government-imposed monopoly, isthmus, joe norwick, josh wescott, kathleen falk, madison, maricopa county, mark gregory johnson, murder, safety, wi, wisconsin

I thought these excellent words of wisdom from Ludwig von Mises in his book, Human Action: A Treatise on Economics, were never more appropriate as regards tax-paying individuals and feeble minded government workers at the federal level that continue to bailout, subsidize, and give welfare handouts to prop up some of the biggest business failures in American history.

The gullible masses who cannot see beyond the immediate range of their physical eyes are enraptured by the marvelous accomplishments of their rulers. They fail to see that they themselves foot the bill and must consequently renounce many satisfactions which they would have enjoyed if the government had spent less for unprofitable projects. They have not the imagination to think of the possibilities that the government has not allowed to come into existence.

These enthusiasts are still more bewildered if the government’s interference enables submarginal producers to continue producing [p. 660] and to stand the competition of more efficient plants, shops, or farms. Here, they say, it is obvious that total production is increased and something is added to the wealth that would not have been produced without the assistance of the authorities. What happens in fact is just the opposite; the magnitude of total production and of total wealth is curtailed. Outfits producing at higher costs are brought into existence or preserved while other outfits producing at lower costs are forced to curtail or to discontinue their production. The consumers are not getting more, but less.

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Tags: bailout, human action, ludwig von mises, subsidy

Thanks goes to the great people at Anarchy in your Head for the above cartoon.  This refers to the story I previously covered regarding District Court Judge Edward Burke in Keene, NH.  The great news is that Ian Freeman has been released from jail already.  Well, it was just a couch on a lawn anyways that started this whole fiasco but quickly turned into a subsequent arrest and jail sentence for Ian Freeman.  I was reading the Free Keene website and came across some more details.  Turns out that Ian was not just simply arrested and then thrown into jail.  According to 93days, District Court Judge Edward Burke sentenced Ian to “30 days for contempt of court, moved him to a back room, sentenced him for another 60 days and, finally, 3 days for refusing to pay the couch-related fine.”  Another detail was that a woman named Mikaela was the one who secretly turned Ian Freeman’s name in to the police.  But Mikaela was also a central planning bureaucrat that worked for the monopolistic apparatus know as the City of Keene government.  I am currently reading Anarchy and the Law: The Political Economy of Choice (published by The Independent Institute) and came across the following and thought it applies well to the mindset of bureaucrats and those citizens that love government and believe in the myth of an impersonal body of just laws otherwise known as the “rule of law”.  The book states:

But the myth of the rule of law does more than render the people submissive to state authority; it also turns them into the state’s accomplices in the exercise of its power.  For people who would ordinarily consider it a great evil to deprive individuals of their rights or oppress politically powerless minority groups will respond with patriotic fervor when these same actions are described as upholding the rule of law.

[...]The reason why the myth of the rule of law has survived for 100 years despite the knowledge of its falsity is that it is too valuable of a tool to relinquish.  The myth of impersonal government is simply the most effective means of social control available to the state.

Then their is another myth prevalent in society which the book touches on:

As long as the public identifies order with law, it will believe that an orderly society is impossible without the law the state provides.  And as long as the public believes this, it will continue to support the state almost without regard to how oppressive it may become.

[...]The identification of order with law eliminates from the public consciousness the very concept of the decentralized provision of order.  With regard to legal services, it renders the classical liberal idea of a market-generated, spontaneous order incomprehensible.

The author then sums up later in the chapter with these wonderful words of wisdom:

The time has come for those committed to individual liberty to realize that the establishment of a truly free society requires the abandonment of the myth of the rule of law.

A free marketplace for law allows for the discovery of better laws that create actual order.  Citizens like Mikaela become accomplices of the state when they believe that only government can create order.  They believe it is their patriotic duty to utilize the police-state to control others if they erroneously believe in the so-called “rule of law”.  However, with the progress of the Free State Project I believe that the times they are a changin’ and so are individuals’ misconceptions of what truly brings about an orderly society.

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Tags: 93days, anarchy and the law, anarchy in your head, couch, couch-related fine, district court judge edward burke, free keene, free society, free state project, ian freaman, keene nh, law and order, mikaela, orderly society, rule of law