Marxist States Never “Wither Away” as Marx Predicted

2023-08-31

It’s the deposits. Bankers never used to worry about the money customers left in their banks. When deposited, the money was lent out while depositors could come and get their money anytime if it was a demand deposit. Thus, the depositor and the borrower had the use of the same money at the same time. Murray Rothbard called it fraud.
Now it’s 2023 and Scott Hildenbrand, the chief balance sheet strategist at Piper Sandler, tells Joe Weisenthal and Tracy Alloway on Bloomberg’s Odd Lots podcast,
And so if you had told me, Joe, or Tracy five years ago, you had me on here and you said, “There’s a bank and all they’re going to do is buy treasuries and all of their deposits are in checking accounts. And by the way, they’re going to fail,” I would’ve laughed at both of you. I wouldn’t have come

2023-08-28

America’s federally sanctioned entitlement programs, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, each face bankruptcy in the next few years. Medicare and Medicaid were created in 1965 as part of President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society legislation. Social Security was created in 1935 to provide retirement income for Americans who reached the age of sixty-five. These three entitlement programs consume about fifty cents of every federal budget dollar, or $2.7 trillion in fiscal year 2023.
Medicare is a federal health-insurance and healthcare program available for enrollment when a person reaches the age of sixty-five. An American who has worked for a minimum of ten years is eligible for enrollment. Employees and employers each pay a minimum Medicare tax of 1.45 percent based on the employees’

2023-08-26

Christian conservatives, for the most part, are relatively receptive to free markets, or at least a generalized concept of what used to be called free enterprise. (This is as opposed to a lot of evangelical economists teaching at Christian colleges that embrace socialism in one form or another as THE Christian version of economics.)
World Magazine has been on the relatively conservative side of political affairs, or at least enough so to be scorned by faculty members of more progressives Christian colleges, but it also has the tendency to give into the conservative notion that free market economies need to be regulated for both legal and cultural reasons. In a recent edition, Brad Littlejohn warned Christians to beware of the “tyranny” of free markets, claiming that markets are as

2023-05-31

Recently, I had the pleasure of attending a debate about the morality of capitalism between James Otteson and Michael Anton, a defender of economic nationalism. Otteson made a good case for capitalism; however, Anton derailed the debate by choosing to focus on specific policies rather than ethical concerns. Ironically, Anton admits that he has hardly ever picked up an economics textbook.
Throughout the debate, Anton made claims that were either misleading or false. I will address the most egregious here.
Tariffs and Free Trade
Anton’s foremost claim is that tariffs are, in fact, beneficial for economic development. Without giving much evidence, he merely appeals to the authority of Alexander Hamilton and the infant industry argument. Perhaps his ignorance of economics stunts his

2023-05-26

Once again, the economic system is trying to adjust to political and monetary interventions. The year 2023 marks the end of a historical period characterized by zero-cost credit.
The monetary expansion that began in the early 2000s led to the great financial crisis of 2008 and the emerging markets boom. Exaggerated demand expectations and easy access to capital caused an overexpansion of production capacity and the subsequent industrial restructuring between 2015 and 2018.
Later came covid, with a further reduction in production capacity while demand was sustained with new money. The result was the highest inflation since the 1980s and a drastic rise in interest rates in response, which precipitated the current recession.
The possible duration and intensity of this difficult period is