Economics

What the Pilgrims Can Teach Us about Economic Freedom

Thanksgiving Freedom Economic Freedom Economic Freedom –
The Pilgrims struggling to survive at Plymouth Plantation learned the importance of private property first-hand in 1623 when Governor Bradford adopted a free-enterprise system after just two years of communal sharing. Their experiment with socialism revealed valuable lessons that inspired the colony to shift to a free-market economic system that would serve as the foundation upon which America would grow into a great and prosperous nation.

As the Pilgrims learned, societies that respect property and the rule of law capture the benefits of free-market enterprise and enjoy high levels of prosperity. The benefit that we see from free markets is contingent on individuals having the right to own and protect property and to benefit from their labor. [Read more…]

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Who Will Save New York? Herman Cain?

Radical Liberals Leftists by Richard F. Miniter –
I’ve just had my fourth grown son move his employment or business from New York State to Virginia. A fifth had already moved to Colorado. A daughter and three grandchildren are still here both working and living. For how long I don’t know because my son-in-law’s situation is fluid and the school taxes they pay on a home he rebuilt from the ground up with his own hands is more money each year than the purchase price of my first house forty odd years ago, not two minutes walk away. More money than a lot of people make today. More money than many senior citizens have to live on.

“I’m single and tired of paying more than half my income in taxes” my last son to move south grinned, “so I decided to let you and Mom shoulder the New York state public school teacher’s retirement fund all by yourselves.” [Read more…]

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Jobs and Deficits: The Moral Equation

Rev. Robert A. Sirico
Rev. Robert A. Sirico
by Rev. Robert A. Sirico –

The Genesis account of creation tells us that from the beginning, humanity was created to work. God puts Adam in the garden to “work and watch over it.” The Scripture provides an insight into our nature: We are all, man and woman, called into this life to find our vocation, the work that is uniquely ours and contributes to the flourishing of the wider community.

This explains why we are naturally so troubled about what appear to be merely economic problems: intractable unemployment and the various schemes put forth by policy makers to spur job creation. But behind the question is the reality that we naturally prefer people to be productive contributors to our economic life.

How we accomplish that is the subject of the debate over our unsustainable budget and debt trajectory. Do we choose those policies that make room for more freedom in the market, unleashing the creative potential of the American worker, business owner and entrepreneur? Or do we default, once more, to political and bureaucratic measures that require heavier burdens of taxation and regulation? [Read more…]

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The Austerity Myth: Federal Spending Up 5% This Year

Government Spending 2000-2011by John Merline –
When Republicans took control of the House in January, they pledged to make deep cuts in federal spending, and in April they succeeded in passing a bill advertised as cutting $38 billion from fiscal 2011’s budget. Then in August, they pushed for a deal to cut an additional $2.4 trillion over the next decade.

Some analysts have blamed these spending cuts for this year’s economic slowdown.

But data released by the Treasury Department on Friday show that, so far, there haven’t been any spending cuts at all.

Higher Spending, Deficits
In fact, in the first nine months of this year, federal spending was $120 billion higher than in the same period in 2010, the data show. That’s an increase of almost 5%. And deficits during this time were $23.5 billion higher. [Read more…]

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Steve Jobs and American Exceptionalism

Apple America capitalism freedom by Ed Feulner –
Steve Jobs, who died yesterday at the too-young age of 56, was a living refutation of all that liberals constantly tell us about our country — that we’re falling behind others and live now in a “post-American world,” as one of Barack Obama’s favorite books puts it in its title.

As anyone who’s ever handled an Apple product or had his life improved by the technological innovations our system has produced in just a decade (that means all of us) will tell you, Jobs and innovators like him epitomize that immeasurable quality the left somehow finds most abject — American exceptionalism.

The meme of the left is that drudgery and mediocrity is not just our future but probably also our just deserts–for being too imperialistic, consumerist, wasteful, patriarchal, or what have you. (For an inexhaustible list of all our ills and sins, please check with the mob gathered at the “Occupy Wall Street” protest.) One should compare this deadened vision with the wonders Jobs wrought. [Read more…]

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Taxi Cab Conservatism

Taxi Conservatismby Michael Bayewitch –
I was just recently in Washington D.C. and had an amazing conversation with a taxi driver on the way to the airport. After pointing out some of the many historical sites on the way out of town, the conversation took a surprising turn. She started to complain about people that do not work and live off of welfare and other government assistance programs; virtually all their lives.

To paraphrase, she made the following assertion: “It is a shame. I know many people, even my own family members, that have never held a job. I have one relative that is 31 years old and only held a job temporarily once. They do not feel a need to work because the government takes care of them.”

“Even worse” she explained, “it is becoming a generational thing. [Read more…]

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Can Warren Buffett Do Simple Arithmetic?

Buffet and Obama Love fest Notice the striking similarities in misrepresenting the facts and seeming to lack basic math skills when making pronouncements on taxes and embracing a liberal/progressive agenda?

by Verum Serum –
As you probably heard, Warren Buffett wrote an op-ed last week begging to be taxed at a higher rate. Rather than give you an excerpt of the article, here’s a little video clip in which he makes most of the same points:

Two points to make about this. First, can Warren Buffett do math? The Tax Foundation looked at his proposal [ht: Matt Cover at CNSNews] and found that his plan is a bust:

Suppose Mr. Buffett got his wish and loopholes and deductions were eliminated, making it possible to tax the “super-rich” (those earning $1M – $10M per year) at an effective rate of 50%.

This would theoretically (in reality people would find ways to protect their money) bring in enough to reduce next year’s deficit by 8%. This amounts to 1% of our current debt. But Buffett also envisioned a super-tax on those making over $10 million a year. It’s an easy sell since few of us are so fortunate, but what would it accomplish? Again, the Tax Foundation crunched the numbers and found that a 100% tax rate on these individuals would reduce the deficit by 12%. [Read more…]

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Couretas: Protect the Poor, Not Poverty Programs

John Couretas
John Couretas
by John Couretas

One of the disturbing aspects of the liberal/progressive faith campaign known as the Circle of Protection is that its organizers have such little regard – indeed are blind to — the innate freedom of the human person.

Their campaign, which has published “A Statement on Why We Need to Protect Programs for the Poor,” equates the welfare of the “least of these” in American society to the amount of assistance they receive from the government — a bizarre view from a community that trades in spiritual verities. Circle of Protection supporters see people locked into their circumstances, stratified into masses permanently in a one-down position, thrown into a class struggle where the life saving protection of “powerful lobbies” is nowhere to be found. And while they argue that budgets are moral documents, their metrics for this fiscal morality are all in dollars and cents. [Read more…]

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Obama Downgraded, Tea Party Vindicated

Obama Fail Downgradedby Peter Ferrara

President Obama achieved the historic downgrading of America’s credit rating the old-fashioned way. He earned it.

He came into office with federal spending already near an historic peak, with a percent of GDP at 20.7 percent and having increased by one-seventh during the Bush years. One year earlier Bush had joined with then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to enact a pointless Keynesian stimulus package of $168 billion, which the record will show created exactly 0.00 jobs, and stimulated nothing but national debt.

Send In the Clowns
Barack Obama​ surveyed the continuing wreckage of the financial crisis, and decided to follow the advice of the reknowned economist Otter, “who famously said in ‘Animal House​,’ this situation ‘absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody’s part,'” as quoted by Andy Kessler in Monday’s Wall Street Journal. [Read more…]

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