Vilfredo Pareto, Pessimistic Follower of Molinari
2024-02-09
One prominent person rarely associated by scholars with the Bastiat-Ferrara laissez-faire school was the eminent sociologist and economic theorist, Vilfredo Federico Damaso Pareto (1848-1923). Pareto was born in Paris into a noble Genoan family. His father, the Marchese Raffaelle Pareto, a hydraulic engineer, had fled Italy as a republican and supporter of Mazzini. The senior Pareto returned to Italy in the mid-1850s and gained a high rank in the Italian civil service. The young Pareto studied at the Turin Polytechnic where he earned a graduate engineering degree in 1869; his graduate thesis was on the fundamental principle of equilibrium in solid bodies. As we shall see in a later volume, Pareto’s thesis led him to the idea that equilibrium in mechanics is the proper paradigm for
One of these Things Is Not Like the Others
2024-02-05
The government, federal or otherwise, has no business model because it is not a business. We know this at the outset because government does not compete in the market for people’s money, as every other business must do. With a monopoly of violence, it seizes the money it wants through taxes and monetary inflation. As long as the government doesn’t get carried away by taxing and inflating too much, most people—many of whom call themselves libertarians—regard this setup as necessary.
In “America Loves Paying Taxes,” Vanessa Williamson writes for The Atlantic:
In national surveys, over 95 percent of Americans agree with the statement, “It is every Americans’ civic duty to pay their fair share of taxes,” and more than half see taxpaying as “very patriotic.” One man from Ohio called it a
The Fed Has No Plan, and Is Just Hoping for the Best
2023-11-10
The Federal Reserve’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) last week left the target policy interest rate (the federal funds rate) unchanged at 5.5 percent. This "pause" in the target rate suggests the FOMC believes it has raised the target rate high enough to rein in price inflation which has run well above the Fed’s arbitrary two-percent inflation target since mid-2021. I say "believe," but perhaps the more appropriate word here is "hope."
That is: the Fed hopes it has raised the target interest rate high enough. Moreover, the Fed hopes this will both reign in price inflation and also avoid raising unemployment too high. (See below for what is meant by "enough" and "too high.")
After all, the Fed has no idea what the "correct" federal funds rate is to achieve the goals that the Fed has