Tag: WND

WND column

Conservatives and Forced Consumption

It is said that hope springs eternal in the human breast. This is certainly true when it comes to Republicans, as no sooner had Chief Justice Roberts exploded all of the expectations that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act would be overturned due to the mandate that requires Americans to make certain purchases or face a financial penalty than various Republican commentators were attempting to manufacture a silver lining from the unadulterated equine ejectus of Roberts’ opinion.

WND column

The Religion of Free Trade

Let us suppose I told you of a certain doctrine in which millions of people believe without ever having read the book in which it is contained, which is predicated upon a situation that has never existed, and promises positive consequences that not only have never been delivered, but we are told cannot even be measured and cannot be realized without achieving something that has never been done before in the history of man. Furthermore, the doctrine was developed by a successful gambler and politician with absolutely no credentials or qualifications on the subject, which he had never even encountered before the age of 27, in tandem with a related theory that is so obviously insane that barely anyone has ever even heard of it.

So long as we are careful to set aside any reliance upon the genetic fallacy, does this sound like a doctrine that is not only infallible, but one that it would be crazy to even consider questioning? And yet, the fervor with which the advocates of the free-trade doctrine defend David Ricardo’s outdated, disproven theory of comparative advantage and decry those who question it is so ferocious as to indicate the nature of a belief that can only be described as religious.

WND column

Obama and the Debt Delta

When people who are fat and flabby begin to get in shape by lifting weights, they are often surprised to discover that, although they lose inches off their waistline, they don’t actually weigh any less. This is because muscle is much denser than fat, and an amount of muscle takes up about one-third the space as the same amount of fat. The change in a person’s shape is a qualitative one rather than a quantitative one, and such changes will often have a bigger result on how he looks and feels than simply losing weight while maintaining the same fat-to-muscle ratio.

Although Paul Krugman and a few other mainstream economists are finally beginning to admit that the U.S. economy is not only in a depression, but has been in a depression for some time now, their neo-Keynesian models, which are entirely quantitative, still do not permit them to understand how or why that is the case. With their singular focus on gross domestic product, or GDP, they completely fail to even try to understand how qualitative changes in outstanding credit market debt have a significant effect on the economy.

WND column

Sudden Vaccine Death Syndrome

Vaccine advocates – although propagandists would be a more accurate term – often correctly claim that there is no scientific evidence proving that vaccines have ever killed anyone or caused autism. Therefore, they claim vaccines can be considered the cause of nothing but a cure for cancer, an end to war and the elimination of all human disease except that caused by dirty, unvaccinated children who are homeschooled by religious bigots. To even consider the mere possibility of questioning the intrinsic and perfect goodness of vaccines, any vaccine given for any reason, is to be not only anti-science, but personally responsible for murdering anyone who died of a disease that would have been prevented by vaccination.

Lest you think I’m exaggerating, please note that there is a site called “The Jenny McCarthy Bodycount,” which claims that the blonde actress is responsible for 888 deaths since June 3, 2007, which makes her the second most lethal American after Chuck Norris.

WND column

The Naked Economy

Facebook represents the ultimate test of two ideas. The first is that traffic once attracted, can successfully be monetized. Facebook is presently earning only $4 per user per year. Its investors are gambling that it can increase annual revenue per user before its users get bored and begin to fade away. The second is that there is real value created in passing personal information back and forth between people. It is the second idea that is the more troubling one. While I personally doubt that Facebook, which in my opinion has a dreadful interface, poor performance and a reprehensible privacy policy, can increase its user revenue faster than it loses users, the ultimate fate of Facebook doesn’t really matter to anyone but its investors and those who were hoping its IPO would somehow magically reinvigorate the stock markets. The second issue is the much larger one, because it calls into serious question the direction in which the U.S. economy has been heading for the last 30 years.

WND column

Education is not an investment

Bill Gates dropped out of college. Steve Jobs dropped out of college. Mark Zuckerberg dropped out of college. These famous examples don’t mean that dropping out of college is a blueprint for great financial success, but it does serve as sufficient proof that a college degree is not a necessary item in having a successful career, much less living a successful life.

WND column

Immigration and Unemployment

Long before there was a Republican Party, the idea that free trade and immigration foster economic growth was a staple among many Americans. Even today, there are few on the right side of the political spectrum who have bothered to review this centuries-old logic or examine the considerable amount of empirical evidence that has been gathered from decades of quasi-free trade or 47 years of mass foreign immigration.

Last month’s unemployment report was not good. While the U3 unemployment rate was only 8.1 percent, which is bad but not disastrous, the number of Americans not working was actually much higher than it would appear due to the statistical games being played by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Since the unemployment rate is calculated by dividing the number of unemployed people by the total number of people in the labor force, the BLS keeps the rate down by reducing the size of the labor force. For example, in the April unemployment report, it was reported that the size of the civilian labor force shrank from 154.7 million to 154.5 million.

WND column

An Austrian in the Lion’s Den

It may be one of the greatest and most courageous speeches ever spoken. It is arguably one of the most important speeches ever given in the United States, considering the current fragility of the national economy and the central position that the financial system presently plays in American society. Earlier this month, Robert Wenzel of the Economics Policy Journal spoke to the New York branch of the Federal Reserve. In his speech, he called the central bankers to account for their complete failure to provide the economy with either of their two responsibilities set by the U.S. Congress, price stability and full employment.

WND column

Republicans nominate Romney

Insanity is repeating the same mistakes and expecting different results.
– Narcotics Anonymous

Four years ago, the Republican Party faced what appeared to be a reasonably winnable presidential election. The expected Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton, had blundered away what should have been a sure thing by her refusal to take a stand against the unpopular military occupations, as well as the failure of her campaign manager to understand the rules by which Democratic delegates were awarded, and so Republicans were facing a national neophyte who had never won a competitive election at any level.

WND column

Dissolution and Post-Democracy

It is always difficult for those who live through transitional periods in history to recognize that they are taking place.

While we distinguish between the Roman Republic and the Roman empire, and mark the birth of the Byzantine empire with the establishment of its capital at Constantinople, it is unlikely that the average person living under Roman rule understood, much less cared, that he was a citizen of the Roman Republic, the Eastern Roman Empire or the Western Roman Empire. Indeed, although we call them Greeks and Byzantines, the men of the Eastern Roman Empire still called themselves Romans and believed they, and not the barbarian-infested ruins of the city on the seven hills, were the true heirs to Romulus and Caesar Augustus, even though they no longer lived in Italy nor spoke Latin.