Sunday, 08 May, 2005

and on the seventh day we rest Themes in today's editorials - knowledge vs. ignorance. If you haven't detected our political bias - we are capitalists, more free-market anarchists than anything else. We usually vote libertarian and view republicans and democrats as two wings of the same political party - the party of government. You don't think that is true, try this. The current arguements between the parties remind us of the middle ages when the heated debate within the church concerned how many angels could dance on the head of a pin. The reason for the acrimony in today's Washington is there is nothing of substance to argue over and therefore personal attack is the agenda. Have a great week! FYI - our economic and news search is based upon GEM's Economic Rankings of Economies, we monitor and report news sources from the top two countires on each continent. BTW the United States has slipped from 4th to 11th in the last year - inspiring news. Sunday morning commentary - a new feature - reviews the same publications' editorial sections as well as my short list of thought leaders. For specific business news and commentary visit our sites: hyper-growth center for inspired performance growth project Have a great business day - success, wealth & health - Ciao 5:48:59 PM    comment []

Col. David. H. Hackworth, 1930-2005 It is always a sad day when a giant leaves this existence. Wednesday a true warrior served his last day of duty - Col. David Hackworth (ret) and his life is best described by Lord Byron - "he stomped on the terra". I didn't know 'Hack' but he represented the men in my family and the sea daddy non-com's that raised me in the Coast Guard. Always a straight shooter, especially when talking up the chain of command, he understood what is true in every organization - first line supervision is the organization - it gets done because they get it done. The toughest job in the military is the senior noncom (Sargents and Chiefs), they are smarter and more experienced than the officers they serve and the buck stops at their sleeve. People in their charge live or die on their courage, judgment, tenacity, and honor. As a former Chief Petty Officer, Warrant Officer and Mustang LT, I will mourn Hack's passing as if he was one of my sea daddy's. Colonel - see you on the other side. 5:41:37 PM    comment []

Market Economy and Ethics Interesting opinion from the new pope - any wonder why catholicism and capitalism are in conflict or why the development of market economies is protestantism's major contribution to the secular world. Allow me to give a cordial welcome — also in the name of the two other protectors, Cardinal Höffner and Cardinal Etchegaray — to all the participants here present for the Symposium on Church and Economy. I am very glad that the cooperation between the Pontifical Council for the Laity, the International Federation of Catholic Universities, the Institute of the German Economy and the Konrad-Adenauer-Foundation, has made possible these world-wide conversations on a question of deep concern for all of us. 5:18:54 PM    comment []

GLOBAL TAX ALMOST A REALITY Add these comments to the Bush Administrations push to pass LOST (Law of the Sea Treaty), we are about to see global taxation by the UN. At the spring meeting of the IMF/World Bank in Washington, D. C. it was announced that a number of countries will be used to test a $1 tax on airline tickets. This global tax idea has been around for the last twenty years and is now back as a tax that would be relatively easy to put in place. Furthermore, an “International Financing Facility” for immunization will also be set up on a test basis. How could we be this far? 5:09:54 PM    comment []

No Empire Market anarchists are always an interesting lot - try out these 3 Rules for the 21st Century Humans have the capacity to create and to destroy. It seems to me that if we do not rein in our destructive capacity, bugs will one day inherit an otherwise empty and barren planet. It's no use assigning blame. The urge to destroy resides in every human heart. Violence is all too often the problem-solving method of choice. The 20th century differed from the preceding ones only in the scale of the violence unleashed. Between wars and dictators, well over 200 million people died before their natural time. 5:05:49 PM    comment []

Stagflation nonsense Our favorite free-market economist and his thoughts on pundit opininons vs. reality Three months ago the first government estimate of gross domestic product for the fourth quarter of 2004 came in at a 3.1 percent annual rate. The market consensus was 3.5 percent growth. Immediately, the mainstream media started talking about an economic slowdown. Turns out, that 3.1 percent was revised up to 3.8 percent. This past week, the Commerce Department reported its initial estimate for first quarter GDP at 3.1 percent. The consensus forecast was 3.5 percent. Immediately, newspaper headlines screamed about an economic soft-patch and the likelihood of further decline. Sound familiar? 4:58:00 PM    comment []

Turning away from government We post George Will just to read a legitimate successor to HL Mencken. WASHINGTON -- Pat Moynihan was puzzled. He was speaking in March 1994, on an almost deserted Senate floor, about Social Security but some unlikely people were listening.      They were clerks in the front of the chamber -- mostly young law school graduates. ``They never listen to speeches,'' Moynihan later wrote, ``having other things to do and having heard it all before.'' He summoned them to his desk, where they confirmed his suspicion that they were listening because they had never before been told there would actually be Social Security for them. This was, Moynihan wrote in 1997, symptomatic that ``as a people, we are simply turning away from government.'' 4:52:00 PM    comment []

Slaves to the Tax State Unlike the week when we report the news and feel compelled to comment of the stupidity of the written word, Sundays we pick the stories and only the really bizarre get through! Once again the Von Mises comes throught with intelligent economic discourse. In 2004 individuals with a taxable income over $319,000 pay 35% of their marginal taxable income to the federal government whereas individual making $10,000 pay only 15% to the federal government. As offensive as I find this system, it is not the basis for taxation in the United States today. The real U.S. system is far worse. The real basis for the U.S. tax code is the federal government taxes absolutely everything that it can, but responds to the abilities of powerful individuals and corporations to leave the system. This results in a maximum tax rate, not for the rich, but for the upper middle class, and a maximum tax rate, not for the nation's largest corporations, but for the medium sized ones. 4:47:32 PM    comment []

What Are You Calling Failure? Great commentary on the free-market. Giving the truth as revealed by history, the love affair with command economics (fascism-socialism - communism) must be based upon government school education. A common rejoinder to the program of laissez-faire is that market failures require government intervention. Just what does market failure mean, and how can such claims for or against it be evaluated? A well-accepted definition of market failure is “a case in which a market fails to efficiently provide or allocate goods and services” in comparison to some ideal standard, such as the perfect competition model. This definition is applied and “market failure” has been demonstrated by many economists in the particular cases of external economies, network effects, asymmetrical information, principal-agent relations, etc. What is objected to here is not that the free market has flaws, but that the term “market failure” is a persuasive definition (see How to Think Straight, para 5.47), seeming to say more than it really does by improperly applying the emotive word failure. 4:42:52 PM    comment []

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