Bobs Rants

Professor Boudreaux quotes from a book by Randy Barnett about the progressives, and how they subverted the Constitution:

" By harnessing the powers of the majority, the progressives were able to overcome the barriers of the Republican Constitution.
Having breached those barriers, however, progressives then moved on to eliminate any “democratic” or majoritarian obstacles to their agenda."

Boudreaux adds:


"Those seeking power over others – regardless of the power-seekers’ deeper motives – are always clever in fashioning excuses into the authority they use to scratch their itch to order others about."

 Read the whole thing:

http://cafehayek.com/2017/12/quotation-of-the-day-2301.html

Professor Perry digests an excellent article on this subject, and comments on it.

In brief, the US government has been using the same measure of "productivity" for nearly 100 years. The world has changed, and so has the economy. In many cases, what the government is measuring is seriously affected by the acts of government regulation itself. No wonder their measure is low!

Quote:

"... people think productivity is weak.... government data sources say it’s weak. But anyone who goes outside instead of living in the data knows nearly everything is getting better, faster, and cheaper.

New technologies are boosting productivity everywhere."

Read the whole thing and the article Perry points to:

https://www.aei.org/publication/quotation-of-the-day-on-the-fallacy-of-weak-productivity/

http://www.ftportfolios.com/Commentary/EconomicResearch/2017/12/11/the-fallacy-of-weak-productivity
 

Wonderful review of movies over at Breitbart. The narrative along with each movie selection is excellent, and very different from what you might expect.

See:



http://www.breitbart.com/big-hollywood/2017/12/24/the-165-greatest-american-movies-ever-made-150-165/

Money quote:

"Only prosperous people – people who are well-fed, well-housed, well-vaccinated, and well-provisioned in the countless other ways that nearly everyone in modernity is well-provisioned – have the luxury to appreciate the beauty of the wilderness or to ponder philosophically upon bear scat."

We are enormously more prosperous than our parents, our grandparents, and so on.




Read the whole thing:

http://cafehayek.com/2017/12/quotation-of-the-day-2300.html

And ESPECIALLY this one:

http://cafehayek.com/2016/02/40405.html

Money quote:

"Far too much social science – including economics – proceeds as if the analyst is more intelligent and better informed about relevant details than are the real...individuals"

Quite often the "real individuals" know their business very well indeed; better than academics. Frankly, everyone knows how to make reasonable economic decisions, but we are told by the "experts" that we aren't ideal, so we don't "do it right".

Read the whole thing:

http://cafehayek.com/2017/12/bonus-quotation-day-101.html

Money quote:

“If you’re so smart about investment, why don’t you just go out and make yourself a profit by investing?” 


But the REAL issue is that so-called "experts" tell us what to do throughout our lives, but never, never apply their expensive "advice" to themselves.

Professor Boudreaux challenges them to actually DO the things they tell everyone else to do, put their own "money, where there mouths are". His typical example is the minimum wage: if so-called experts say that raising minimum wage will improve the economy, then they should start companies that pay such salaries. Instead, they tell everyone else what to pay their employees.

No takers so far.

Read the whole thing:

http://cafehayek.com/2017/12/quotation-of-the-day-2299.html