McDonald’s Hits All-Time High as Wall Street Cheers Replacement of Cashiers with Kiosks
Posted: June 22, 2017 Filed under: Economics, Food & Drink, Mediasphere, U.S. News | Tags: Associated Press, Drive-through, Fast food, Intel Corporation, International Olympic Committee, McDonalds, Michigan, Olympic games, Snapchat, United States Leave a comment
Cowen believes McDonald’s digital ordering upgrades will drive the fast-food chain’s sales higher.
McDonald’s shares hit an all-time high on Tuesday as Wall Street expects sales to increase from new digital ordering kiosks that will replace cashiers in 2,500 restaurants.
Cowen raised its rating on McDonald’s shares to outperform from market perform because of the technology upgrades, which are slated for the fast-food chain’s restaurants this year.
McDonald’s shares rallied 26 percent this year through Monday compared to the S&P 500’s 10 percent return.
Andrew Charles from Cowen cited plans for the restaurant chain to roll out mobile ordering across 14,000 U.S. locations by the end of 2017. The technology upgrades, part of what McDonald’s calls “Experience of the Future,” includes digital ordering kiosks that will be offered in 2,500 restaurants by the end of the year and table delivery.
“MCD is cultivating a digital platform through mobile ordering and Experience of the Future (EOTF), an in-store technological overhaul most conspicuous through kiosk ordering and table delivery,” Charles wrote in a note to clients Tuesday. “Our analysis suggests efforts should bear fruit in 2018 with a combined 130 bps [basis points] contribution to U.S. comps [comparable sales].” Read the rest of this entry »
Tom Rogan: Why Socialism Would Be Disastrous for Millennials
Posted: June 19, 2017 Filed under: Economics, Health and Social Issues, Mediasphere, Politics, Think Tank | Tags: Bernie Sanders, Democratic Party (United States), Islington North (UK Parliament constituency), Jeremy Corbyn, Labour Party (UK), Leader of the Labour Party (UK), Left-wing politics, List of United Kingdom general elections, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, United Kingdom Leave a comment
Tom Rogan writes: In a Sunday article for the New York Times, Sarah Leonard argues for socialism. Socialist leaders such as Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn, Leonard says, are working with a coalition of young leftists to serve millennials.
An editor at The Nation, Leonard’s case fixes on three points. First, that millennials need stronger union power in order to attain better living standards. Second, that capitalism has failed. Third, that larger government is beneficial.
Leonard is wrong on each count.
She starts by lamenting that “…there is no left-wing party devoted to protecting the interests of the poor, the working class and the young.” Leonard blames declining union influence over political parties. Unions, she says, are the best way to empower the poor, the lower skilled, and the young.
I think not.
At a basic level, unions serve their members, not society. When, for example, a transport union shuts down commuter access to a city, it is not doing so to help commuters. It is doing so to extract wealth from those consumers, via the transport company, and redistribute that wealth to its members.
Moreover, when unions demand absolute protections for older workers, they make it near-impossible for companies to hire younger workers. As I’ve explained, there is a damning correlation between greater union power and increased youth unemployment. Read the rest of this entry »
[VIDEO] Rigged: The Injustice of Corporate Welfare
Posted: June 12, 2017 Filed under: Crime & Corruption, Economics, Law & Justice, Mediasphere, Politics, Think Tank | Tags: Corporate Welfare, Rigged: The Injustice of Corporate Welfare, Tennessee Leave a comment
Is the U.S. on the Verge of a Historic Innovation Boom?
Posted: May 12, 2017 Filed under: Economics, Mediasphere, Science & Technology, Think Tank, U.S. News | Tags: Economic Boom, Innovation, media, video Leave a comment
Study: Media Jobs, Salary, Soar 38% in DC, Crash 22% Nationally
Posted: May 11, 2017 Filed under: Economics, Mediasphere, Politics, U.S. News | Tags: Donald Trump, International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, Iraq War, journalism, media, news, Pulitzer Prize, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Twitter, Washington D.C. Leave a comment
Paul Bedard writes: In the latest sign that Washington operates in an alternate economy, journalism jobs around the country dove 22 percent in the last 10 years, but they spiked a whopping 38 percent in the nation’s capital, according to a new economic study. What’s more, salaries for Washington journalists rose 7 percent while diving nationally.
While 12,000 reporting jobs were eliminated in most markets in the last decade, the Washington journalism market expanded from 2,190 to 3,030. That is more than five journalists for every single House and Senate member.
In New York, by comparison, the drop was historic, from 5,330 jobs in 2005 to just 3,478 in 2015, said the study from Apartmentlist.com.
The study reviewed rents in major cities and showed how rents have spiked while the salaries of reporters hasn’t. That gap may be responsible for the shift by reporters, even award-winning journalists, to better paying public relations.
“Our analysis illustrated that reporter salaries are growing slower than rents in most metros. Nationwide, reporter salaries declined by 7 percent over the past decade while rents increased 9 percent. If this trend continues, publications will struggle to hire and retain talent,” said the report provided to Secrets. Read the rest of this entry »
[VIDEO] Reality Check: Health Care is Not a Fundamental Right
Posted: May 9, 2017 Filed under: Economics, Health and Social Issues, Mediasphere, Politics, U.S. News | Tags: Health Care, Health Care debate, Hillel Neuer, Human rights, Human rights group, Kevin D. Williamson, Obamacare, Rights, United States Department of State, video 1 Comment
The ‘Right’ to Health Care.
There isn’t one.
Kevin D. Williamson writes: With the American Health Care Act dominating the week’s news, one conversation has been unavoidable: Someone — someone who pays attention to public policy — will suggest that we pursue policy x, y, or z, and someone else — someone who pays a little less careful attention, who probably watches a lot of cable-television entertainment masquerading as news — responds: “The first thing we have to do is acknowledge that health care is a human right!” What follows is a moment during which the second speaker visibly luxuriates in his display of empathy and virtue, which is, of course, the point of the exercise.
It’s kind of gross, but that’s where we are, politically, as a country.
Here is a thought experiment: You have four children and three apples. You would like for everyone to have his own apple. You go to Congress, and you successfully persuade the House and the Senate to endorse a joint resolution declaring that everyone has a right to an apple of his own. A ticker-tape parade is held in your honor, and you share your story with Oprah, after which you are invited to address the United Nations, which passes the International Convention on the Rights of These Four Kids in Particular to an Individual Apple Each. You are visited by the souls of Mohandas Gandhi and Mother Teresa, who beam down approvingly from a joint Hindu-Catholic cloud in Heaven.
Question: How many apples do you have?
You have three apples, dummy. Three. You have four children. Each of those children has a congressionally endorsed, U.N.-approved, saint-ratified right to an apple of his own. But here’s the thing: You have three apples and four children. Nothing has changed.
[Read the full story here, at National Review]
Declaring a right in a scarce good is meaningless. It is a rhetorical gesture without any application to the events and conundrums of the real world. If the Dalai Lama were to lead 10,000 bodhisattvas in meditation, and the subject of that meditation was the human right to health care, it would do less good for the cause of actually providing people with health care than the lowliest temp at Merck does before his second cup of coffee on any given Tuesday morning. Read the rest of this entry »
Happy Birthday, F. A. Hayek
Posted: May 8, 2017 Filed under: Economics, Education, History, Think Tank | Tags: American exceptionalism, American Israel Public Affairs Committee, American nationalism, Applied economics, Basic income, Donald Trump, Middle East, Milton Friedman, The New York Times, United States Leave a comment
Today is the 116th anniversary of the birth of F. A. Hayek, one of the greatest scholars of the 20th century.
David Boaz writes: Back in 2010, as the tea party movement was on the verge of delivering an electoral rebuke to President Obama’s big-government policies, the New York Times derided the movement for reviving “long-dormant ideas [found in] once-obscure texts by dead writers.” They meant Hayek especially. But a more astute journalist might not have regarded Hayek as obscure.
Who was Hayek? He was an economist born and educated in Vienna. After the Nazi conquest of Austria, he became a British citizen and taught there and at the University of Chicago for most of his career. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1974. President Ronald Reagan called him one of the two or three people who had most influenced him, and so did some of the dissidents behind the Iron Curtain. President George H. W. Bush awarded him the Medal of Freedom. Margaret Thatcher banged his great book “The Constitution of Liberty” on the table at Conservative Party headquarters and declared “This is what we believe.” Milton Friedman described him as “the most important social thinker of the 20th century.”
But respect for Hayek extended far beyond libertarians and conservatives. Lawrence H. Summers, former president of Harvard and a top economic adviser to Presidents Clinton and Obama, called him the author of “the single most important thing to learn from an economics course today” — that markets mostly work without plans or direction. He is the hero of “The Commanding Heights,” the book and PBS series on the battle of economic ideas in the 20th century. His most popular book, “The Road to Serfdom,” has never gone out of print and saw its sales explode during the financial crisis and Wall Street bailouts. John Cassidy wrote in the New Yorker that “on the biggest issue of all, the vitality of capitalism, he was vindicated to such an extent that it is hardly an exaggeration to refer to the 20th century as the Hayek century.”
In much of his work Hayek explored how society can best make use of “the dispersed bits of incomplete and frequently contradictory knowledge which all the separate individuals possess.” Read the rest of this entry »
ESPN To Lay Off About 100 Employees Including On-Air Personalities And Writers
Posted: April 26, 2017 Filed under: Economics, Entertainment, Mediasphere | Tags: Aaron Hernandez, Africa, ESPN, Michelle Beadle, National Basketball Association, NFL, SportsCenter, Television, The Walt Disney Company, Walt Disney World Leave a comment
No one has been identified yet. These disclosures likely will trickle out once the people affected are told.
“A necessary component of managing change involves constantly evaluating how we best utilize all of our resources, and that sometimes involves difficult decisions,” ESPN President John Skipper says in a memo to staffers.
Changes in ESPN content must “go further, faster…and as always, must be efficient and nimble,” he says.
That means “we have been engaged in the challenging process of determining the talent—anchors, analysts, reporters, writers and those who handle play-by-play—necessary to meet those demands. We will implement changes in our talent lineup this week. A limited number of other positions will also be affected and a handful of new jobs will be posted to fill various needs.”
ESPN said in March that the layoffs announced today were a possibility.
So far this year sports viewing on Disney networks is down about 4%, Pivotal Research Group’s Brian Wieser noted this week. Read the rest of this entry »
[VIDEO] Felipe Moura Brasil: How Socialism Ruined My Country
Posted: March 30, 2017 Filed under: Economics, Education, Global, Health and Social Issues, Mediasphere, Politics, Think Tank | Tags: Black Book of Communism, Communism, Felipe Moura Brasil, Marxism, Poverty, Prager U, Prager University, Rio de Janeiro, Socialism, Socialismo, video Leave a comment
[VIDEO] Big Government Kills Small Businesses
Posted: March 24, 2017 Filed under: Economics, Education, Mediasphere, Think Tank, U.S. News | Tags: Big Government, Business, Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Prager U, Prager University, Small business, video Leave a commentSmall businesses employ over 57 million Americans. And yet, the government’s taxes and regulations overwhelmingly favor big businesses at the expense of small ones. Why? Find out in this short video.This video is part of a collaborative business and economics project with Job Creators Network and Information Station. To learn more, visit informationstation.org.
Source: PragerU
[VIDEO] The Morality of Profit
Posted: March 20, 2017 Filed under: Economics, Education, Mediasphere, Think Tank | Tags: Barack Obama, Club for Growth, Donald Trump, Free market, Freedom Caucus, Health Insurance, Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Republican Party (United States), White House Leave a comment
The free market needs and deserves a moral defense.
Source: Libertarianism.org
[VIDEO] Charles Krauthammer on Trump Budget Proposal: Cuts Dead on Arrival, Entitlements Are What Matter
Posted: March 17, 2017 Filed under: Economics, Mediasphere, Politics, Think Tank, White House | Tags: Barack Obama, Charles Krauthammer, Discretionary spending, Donald Trump, George W. Bush, Neil Gorsuch, Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Republican Party (United States), Ronald Reagan, Supreme Court of the United States 1 CommentCharles Krauthammer dismissed Trump’s budget as “dead on arrival” and pointed out that entitlements are what matter, even if proposed cuts focus on domestic discretionary spending such as public broadcasting:
“This is a budget, like every other one I’ve seen in decades that I’ve been here, it is dead on arrival at Capitol Hill. Capitol Hill is a huge morgue of presidential budgets. There is not one that actually croaked into life. They all come in dead. They are wish lists. They are expressions of one’s interests, and a way to respond to promises. The beginning of this, the premise of this is defense. In the eight years under Obama, we had a real destruction of the defense budget. Obama came in, it was about 4.6 percent of GDP. When he left, it was 3.2 percent. To put it in context, under the sainted John Kennedy it was around 10 percent. We are at the lowest ebb since about Pearl Harbor, and you can see it in the readiness, so that had to be done.”
“All the real stuff, where the money is — the Willie Sutton bank money — is in entitlements, which isn’t even in here. The problem is it’s not in here because we’ve got a president who promised in the campaign, unlike just about every other Republican opponent, he wasn’t going to touch a hair on the head of entitlements. So if you don’t, it all has to come out of the domestic discretionary spending, and when you do that, you end up with these cuts which are never going to happen, and you get the old perennials. Big Bird is going to get roasted again, or at least proposed to be. I guarantee you, he will or she will — I’m not sure which it is these days — it is going to escape unscathed.”
Source: National Review
[VIDEO] There Is No Gender Wage Gap: Christina Hoff Sommers for Prager U
Posted: March 6, 2017 Filed under: Economics, Education, Mediasphere, Think Tank | Tags: American Enterprise Institute, Christina Hoff Sommers, Gender Gap, Prager U, video Leave a comment
Is there a gender wage gap? Are women paid less than men to do the same work? Christina Hoff Sommers, Resident Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, explains the data.
Source: PragerU
California Exports its Poor to Texas, other States, While Wealthier People Move In
Posted: March 6, 2017 Filed under: Economics, Health and Social Issues, Mediasphere | Tags: Cajon Pass, California, California Department of Water Resources, Los Angeles, National Weather Service, Pacific Storm, San Bernardino County, San Francisco, Southern California 3 Comments
California exports more than commodities such as movies, new technologies and produce. It also exports truck drivers, cooks and cashiers.
Every year from 2000 through 2015, more people left California than moved in from other states. This migration was not spread evenly across all income groups, a Sacramento Bee review of U.S. Census Bureau data found. The people leaving tend to be relatively poor, and many lack college degrees. Move higher up the income spectrum, and slightly more people are coming than going.
About 2.5 million people living close to the official poverty line left California for other states from 2005 through 2015, while 1.7 million people at that income level moved in from other states – for a net loss of 800,000. During the same period, the state experienced a net gain of about 20,000 residents earning at least five times the poverty rate – or $100,000 for a family of three.
Kiril Kundurazieff, 56, is among the low-income residents who left California. He spent more than a decade working in a small bookstore, then at Target, then at a Verizon call center, in Southern California. After some medical issues that hampered his eyesight, he found himself unemployed in Santa Ana, with monthly rent of about $1,000 in 2012.
“There was really nothing left for me in California,” said Kundurazieff, who also writes a blog about his cats. “The cost of living was high. The rent was high. The job market was debatable.”
Friends in Texas suggested he relocate. He now works at a Walmart in Houston, making a little north of $10 an hour. He works 40 hours a week, riding his bike about 7 miles to work many days. He does not pay state income tax. His rent is just over $500, with utilities.
[Read the full story here, at The Sacramento Bee]
About the same time that Kundurazieff was leaving, Tamara and Kit Keane were arriving from Oklahoma. Both had been working on their doctorate degrees at Oklahoma universities, Kit in biology and Tamara in education.
The Keanes already knew California. Kit, 34, was born and raised in Sacramento. Tamara, 31, spent most of her life in Southern California. They met at UC Davis about a decade ago.
With graduate degrees, they had options. They liked the cost of living in Oklahoma and bought a two-bedroom house with a backyard for the bargain basement cost of $121,000.
But they wanted to come back to California, for its beauty and to be near family. “We knew coming here, we would have to make a lot more money to live a similar lifestyle,” Tamara Keane said.
After moving back last year, both now work for the Twin Rivers Unified School District as teachers on special assignment. They are expecting a child and recently purchased a three-bedroom house in Hollywood Park for $360,000. Tamara is still working on her Ph.D.; Kit is looking into eventually teaching at the university level. “Teacher salaries are not great,” Tamara Keane said. “But they are enough for us to want to come here.”
Well-paid new arrivals in California enjoy a life that is far out of reach of much of the state’s population. Besides Hawaii and New York, California has the highest cost of living in America. Read the rest of this entry »
Robots Will Be The New Illegal Immigrant, Economists Say
Posted: March 1, 2017 Filed under: Economics, Robotics, Science & Technology, Think Tank | Tags: Artificial Intelligence, Automation, Bank of England, Bank Underground, Robots, Unemployment, United Kingdom, Workforce 1 Comment
The U.S. stands to lose 80 million jobs to automation.
Thomas Phippen reports: The robotic labor revolution is coming quickly, and the workforce may not be able to adapt without long periods of unemployment, according to economists at the Bank of England.
“Economists should seriously consider the possibility that millions of people may be at risk of unemployment, should these technologies be widely adopted.”
“Economists should seriously consider the possibility that millions of people may be at risk of unemployment, should these technologies be widely adopted,” BOE economists Mauricio Armellini and Tim Pike wrote in a post on Bank Underground, a blog for bank employees, Wednesday.
Artificial intelligence (AI) “threatens to transform entire industries and sectors,” the authors write, arguing that with the speed of industries adopting technological developments won’t give the labor force time to adjust. Read the rest of this entry »
[VIDEO] REWIND: Thomas Sowell on the Worst President Ever
Posted: February 18, 2017 Filed under: Economics, Education, Mediasphere, Politics, Think Tank, White House | Tags: Barack Obama, Thomas Sowell, Uncommon Knowledge, video Leave a comment
Spooked by Spike in Cyber Extortion, Businesses are Stockpiling Bitcoin for Payoffs
Posted: February 17, 2017 Filed under: Crime & Corruption, Economics | Tags: Affiliate marketing, Andrei Soldatov, California, Federal Security Service, Kaspersky Lab, Massachusetts, Mountain View, Ransomware, RUSSIA, Russian language, Waltham Leave a comment
Paying ransom just invites the next attack.
Tim Johnson reports: U.S. corporations that have long resisted bending to the demands of computer hackers who take their networks hostage are increasingly stockpiling bitcoin, the digital currency, so that they can quickly meet ransom demands rather than lose valuable corporate data.
The companies are responding to cybersecurity experts who recently have changed their advice on how to deal with the growing problem of extortionists taking control of the computers.
“It’s a moral dilemma. If you pay, you are helping the bad guys,” said Paula Long, chief executive of DataGravity, a Nashua, New Hampshire, company that helps clients secure corporate data. But, she added, “You can’t go to the moral high ground and put your company at risk.”
“A lot of companies are doing that as part of their incident response planning,” said Chris Pogue, chief information security officer at Nuix, a company that provides information management technologies. “They are setting up bitcoin wallets.”
Pogue said he believed thousands of U.S. companies had prepared strategies for dealing with hacker extortion demands, and numerous law firms have stepped in to facilitate negotiations with hackers, many of whom operate from the other side of the globe.
Symantec, a Mountain View, California, company that makes security and storage software, estimates that ransom demands to companies average between $10,000 and $75,000 for hackers to provide keys to decrypt frozen networks. Individuals whose computers get hit pay as little as $100 to $300 to unlock their encrypted files.
Companies that analyze cyber threats say the use of ransomware has exploded, and payments have soared. Recorded Future, a Somerville, Massachusetts, threat intelligence firm, says ransom payments skyrocketed 4,000 percent last year, reaching $1 billion. Another firm, Kaspersky Lab, estimates that a new business is attacked with ransomware every 40 seconds.
[Read the full story here, at The Star-Telegram]
“If you’re hit by ransomware today, you have only two options: You either pay the criminals or you lose your data,” said Raj Samani, chief technical officer at Intel Security for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. “We underestimated the scale of the issue.”
Hackers often send out email with tainted hyperlinks to broad targets, say, an entire company. All it takes is one computer user in a company to click on the infected link to allow hackers to get a foothold in the broader network, leading to hostile encryption.
“At least one employee will click on anything,” said Robert Gibbons, chief technology officer at Datto, a Connecticut company that offers digital disaster recovery services. Read the rest of this entry »
[VIDEO] Rand Paul’s ‘Audit the Fed’ Bill May Have Friend in New Administration
Posted: February 7, 2017 Filed under: Economics, Law & Justice, Mediasphere, Politics, Think Tank | Tags: Americans, Donald Trump, Economic growth, Federal Open Market Committee, Federal Reserve System, Fox News, Interest rate, Janet Yellen, media, Monetary policy, Rand Paul, Tucker Carlson, United States, video Leave a comment
Kentucky senator explains controversial proposed legislation that would subject Federal Reserve‘s monetary policy powers to outside scrutiny as it gets new life under a new administration – and may stand its best chance at becoming law.
Shinzo Abe to Propose Plan for Creating 700,000 U.S. Jobs
Posted: February 3, 2017 Filed under: Asia, Breaking News, Diplomacy, Economics, Foreign Policy, Japan | Tags: Andrew N. Liveris, Aso Villa, Big Data, Bilateral trade, Donald Trump, Dow Chemical Company, Research and development, Shinzō Abe Leave a comment
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe intends to propose during a meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump on Feb. 10 a bilateral economic cooperation plan, including the creation of a $450 billion (¥51 trillion) market through railways and other infrastructure investments in the United States to generate 700,000 jobs, The Yomiuri Shimbun has learned.
Trump has recently been stepping up criticism against the Japanese car market and the depreciation of the yen. Given the circumstances, Abe plans to emphasize during the upcoming talks that the bilateral cooperation will be of great advantage to the U.S. economy.
A draft for the Japan-U.S. economic cooperation plan sets forth bilateral cooperation in five fields as the “Japan-U.S. growth and employment initiative.” The five fields are: development of the world’s most advanced infrastructure in the United States; drawing on demand for infrastructure around the world; research and development of robots and artificial intelligence; collaboration in new areas such as cyber and space; and cooperation in employment and defense.
The envisioned infrastructure development in the United States includes high-speed railway projects in the northeastern part of the country, and in Texas and California, to which Japan would provide technical cooperation and extend low-interest loans. Japan would also help replace as many as 3,000 train cars currently in use on railways and subways with new models over the next 10 years.
Japan would further cooperate in highly efficient gas-fired power generation and the latest compact nuclear power generation systems.
In the research and development field, the draft calls for cooperation between Japan, which has the edge in robot technology, and the United States, which leads the world in AI technology.
Japan and the United States will jointly develop robots to be used for inspecting aging infrastructure, decommissioning nuclear power plants, and carrying out medical diagnosis and surgery.
[VIDEO] Fernando Díaz Villanueva: How to talk to a Socialist
Posted: January 26, 2017 Filed under: Economics, Education, Global, Health and Social Issues, History, Mediasphere, Politics | Tags: Communism, Cuba, Dictatorship, Fernando Díaz Villanueva, Fidel Castro, Havana, Marxism, Socialism, Socialismo, Totalitarianism, video Leave a comment
.@RightWingIowa Captain America DGAF if you’re a National or International Socialist, he’s gonna fuck your socialist face up pic.twitter.com/RD3tBsDTcT
— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) January 26, 2017
#RealNews
Posted: January 25, 2017 Filed under: Breaking News, Economics, History, Mediasphere, Politics, U.S. News | Tags: Down Jones, media, news, Newspaper, Stock market, Wall Street Journal, WSJ Leave a comment
President Trump’s Anti-Regulation Policies Might Actually be Good for Tech Startups
Posted: January 25, 2017 Filed under: Economics, U.S. News, White House | Tags: 2016, ABC News, Activism, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, Donald Trump presidential campaign, Hope Hicks, Hulk Hogan, Linda McMahon, PayPal, Peter Thiel, Rex Tillerson, Silicon Valley, Small Business Administration, The New York Times, Vince McMahon, WWE Leave a comment
‘I know, I know. But I’m begging you to read this till the end, and not take me out of context.’
Ashu Garg is a general partner at Foundation Capital, where he invests in B2B software across the stack. He currently serves on the boards of TubeMogul, Localytics, Conviva, ZeroStack and Yozio, among others. Reach him @ashugarg.
Ashu Garg writes: Well, it happened. I thought it was a joke when he started campaigning, and I was aghast when he was elected, but that’s all history at this point: Donald Trump is president. Rather than spend time on sour grapes, I think it’s more productive to make a clear-eyed appraisal of what his administration might mean for my industry. I know that what I say next risks being taken out of context, but from my vantage as a longtime tech entrepreneur and venture capitalist, I believe that there’s a real chance Trump will be — I’m begging you to read till the end and not take me out of context — good for startups.
“The most significant reason Trump might be good for early-stage companies is that he is very anti-regulation.”
First off, change in general is good for entrepreneurs, because it creates new circumstances for them to exploit or gaps for them to fill. Regulatory change, more specifically, is ripe with opportunity. Moreover, Trump has historically made a lot of pro-small-business noises, and has signaled that he will shake up the Small Business Administration.
[Read the full story here, at Recode]
Professional-wrestling magnate Linda McMahon is potentially taking over, and may be receptive to the type of changes that would allow emerging enterprises — in tech and outside it — to grow, including making it easier for first-time entrepreneurs to access startup grant funding.
“Trump has promised to make huge investments in infrastructure, largely to be funded by debt — for entrepreneurs, this will create enormous possibility.”
The most significant reason Trump might be good for early-stage companies is that he is very anti-regulation. The White House has already issued a freeze on new or pending regulations to all executive departments and agencies, for example. One can argue whether less regulation is good or bad for society. But it’s only good news for startups, which are always in a hurry to ship their ideas into the real world. Read the rest of this entry »
Obama’s Parting Gift: Trillion-Dollar Deficits As Far As The Eye Can See
Posted: January 25, 2017 Filed under: Economics, Entertainment, Mediasphere, Politics, White House | Tags: Barack Obama, Congressional Budget Office, Donald Trump, Medicaid, Medicare (United States), Nancy Pelosi, Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Republican Party (United States), United States, United States Congress Joint Committee on Taxation Leave a comment
Legacy: Barack Obama came into the White House in 2009 promising a “new era of responsibility.” What he’s left President Trump is a government careening toward fiscal ruin.That’s what the latest report from the Congressional Budget Office shows.
The CBO report looks at what federal spending and revenues will look like over the next decade if the government is left on autopilot. The picture is grim.
Deficits this year are expected to be $559 billion. By 2023, the government will once again be running trillion-dollar annual deficits that will quickly climb in the following years.
Left unchanged, the national debt will worsen by an additional $10 trillion in a decade, equaling almost 90% of the economy.
And that’s despite the fact that, thanks to Obama’s multiple tax increases, revenues are on track to consume more than 18% of the nation’s economy, which is a full percentage point above the average since 1967.
Spending, however, is completely out of control. It’s set to climb from 20.5% of GDP next year to 23.4% by 2027. The post-1967 average was 20%.
ObamaCare subsidies alone will, according to the CBO, climb 22% this year and 20% the next — thanks to the massive increase in premiums. This cost explosion is in addition to the vast increase in Medicaid spending ObamaCare already generated. And it’s all on top of fast-growing Social Security and Medicare, both of which are rapidly headed toward insolvency.
Perhaps the biggest driver of future deficits, however, is the incredibly sluggish economy the CBO expects current economic policies to produce. Read the rest of this entry »
[VIDEO] Supercuts: The Dow Is Great Again
Posted: January 25, 2017 Filed under: Economics, Entertainment, Mediasphere, Politics | Tags: Dow, Free Beacon, media, news, Stock market, video 1 Comment
[VIDEO] York: Optimism Polls May Hold More Weight than Popularity
Posted: January 20, 2017 Filed under: Breaking News, Economics, Mediasphere, U.S. News, White House | Tags: Byron York, Donald Trump, Optimism, Poll Numbers, Presidential Inauguration 2017 Leave a comment
The Economist Goes ‘Tremendous’
Posted: January 19, 2017 Filed under: Economics, Mediasphere, Politics, Think Tank, White House | Tags: Donald Trump, Illustration, journalism, Magazines, media, President-Elect, The Economist, Tremendous Leave a comment
[VIDEO] Thomas Sowell: Dismantling America
Posted: January 17, 2017 Filed under: Economics, History, Law & Justice, Mediasphere, Think Tank | Tags: Congressional Review Act, Democratic Party (United States), Donald Trump, Hoover Institution, James Mattis, Kevin McCarthy (California politician), Law, Left-wing politics, Thomas Sowell Leave a comment
Thomas Sowell has studied and taught economics, intellectual history, and social policy at institutions that include Cornell University, UCLA, and Amherst College.
A senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Sowell has published more than a dozen books, the latest of which is Dismantling America.In introducing his new book, Sowell asserts that the Obama administration “is the embodiment, the personification, and the culmination of dangerous trends that began decades ago,” trends that are “dismantling America.” Sowell sees this in the dismantling of marriage, of culture, and of self-government.
[VIDEO] Soros Lost Nearly $1 Billion After Trump Win
Posted: January 12, 2017 Filed under: Economics, Mediasphere, Politics | Tags: Donald Trump, George Soros, Investments, media, Money, news, Presidential Election 2016, video, Wall Street, WSJ Leave a comment
[VIDEO] Will the Dow hit 20,000 before January 20th?
Posted: January 12, 2017 Filed under: Economics, Mediasphere, Politics, U.S. News, White House | Tags: Business, Dow Jones, Fox News, Investments, media, news, video, Wall Street Leave a comment
[VIDEO] 13 Inconvenient Truths About Obama’s Legacy
Posted: January 10, 2017 Filed under: Economics, Health and Social Issues, Law & Justice, Mediasphere, Politics, White House | Tags: Barack Obama, Democratic Party, Divisive, Farewell Address, Legacy, media, news, Policy Failures, POTUS, Progressivism, propaganda, video Leave a comment
From the president’s speech, you wouldn’t know the administration’s biggest policy failures.
Source: dailysignal.com
[VIDEO] Trump Meets With Alibaba Chairman at Trump Tower
Posted: January 9, 2017 Filed under: Economics, Entertainment, Mediasphere, Politics, White House | Tags: Alibaba, Beijing, Beijing Film Academy, Donald Trump, Hollywood, Trump Tower Leave a comment
Bitcoin Value Crashes by Nearly 20%
Posted: January 6, 2017 Filed under: Asia, Economics | Tags: Accel Partners, Altec Lansing, Bitcoin, Blockchain (database), China, Chinese yuan, Digital currency, Donald Trump, India, United States 1 Comment
Bitcoin made headlines earlier this week when the cryptocurrency value surpassed $1000, its highest valuation since 2013, but Bitcoin traders didn’t enjoy the sudden increase for too long as the price began to fall rapidly. By 8AM EST on Thursday a single coin was valued at $892. Read the rest of this entry »
The Survival of the Left
Posted: December 31, 2016 Filed under: Art & Culture, Economics, Education, Global, Politics, Think Tank | Tags: Barack Obama, Communism, Cuba, Democratic Party (United States), Fidel Castro, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, Hoover Institution, Law, Left Wing, Marx, Marxism, Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Progressivism, Socialism, Soviet Union, Stanford University, Thomas Sowell Leave a comment
Thomas Sowell writes: Biologists explain how organisms adapt to their physical environment, but ideologues also adapt to their social environment. The most fundamental fact about the ideas of the political left is that they do not work. Therefore we should not be surprised to find the left concentrated in institutions where ideas do not have to work in order to survive.
“The academic world is the natural habitat of half-baked ideas, except for those fields in which there are decisive tests, such as science, mathematics, engineering, medicine;and athletics. In all these fields, in their differing ways, there comes a time when you must either put up or shut up. It should not be surprising that all of these fields are notable exceptions to the complete domination by the left on campuses across the country.”
The academic world is the natural habitat of half-baked ideas, except for those fields in which there are decisive tests, such as science, mathematics, engineering, medicine;and athletics. In all these fields, in their differing ways, there comes a time when you must either put up or shut up. It should not be surprising that all of these fields are notable exceptions to the complete domination by the left on campuses across the country.
“You might think that the collapse of communism throughout Eastern Europe would be considered a decisive failure for Marxism, but academic Marxists in America are utterly undaunted. Their paychecks and their tenure are unaffected. Their theories continue to flourish in the classrooms and their journals continue to litter the library shelves.”
In the humanities, for example, the test of deconstructionism is not whether it can produce any tangible results but whether it remains in vogue. So long as it does, professors skilled in its verbal sleight-of-hand can expect to continue to receive six-figure salaries.
“Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it. Even countries that were once more prosperous than their neighbors have found themselves much poorer than their neighbors after just one generation of socialistic policies. Whether these neighboring countries were Ghana and the Ivory Coast or Burma and Thailand, it has been the same story around the world.”
You might think that the collapse of communism throughout Eastern Europe would be considered a decisive failure for Marxism, but academic Marxists in America are utterly undaunted. Their paychecks and their tenure are unaffected. Their theories continue to flourish in the classrooms and their journals continue to litter the library shelves.
Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it. Even countries that were once more prosperous than their neighbors have found themselves much poorer than their neighbors after just one generation of socialistic policies. Whether these neighboring countries were Ghana and the Ivory Coast or Burma and Thailand, it has been the same story around the world.
Discredited elsewhere, the nostrums of the left live on in public television.
Nor is economic failure the worst of it. The millions slaughtered by Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot for political reasons are an even grimmer reality.
People who live and work in a world where there is a business bottom line, an athletic scoreboard, a military battlefield or life-and-death surgery may find it hard to fully 
appreciate the difference between that kind of world and one in which the only decisive test is whether your colleagues like what you are saying.
“These endowed and insulated institutions, often full of contempt for the values of American society and Western civilization, are not the only bastions of the left counter-culture. So are Hollywood and Broadway.”
Academia is only one of the places where wholly subjective criteria rule;and where leftists predominate. Endowed institutions such as foundations and museums likewise often face no test other than what like-minded people find “exciting” and what enables those who run these institutions to get the heady feeling that they are “making a difference.” The same is true of cultural institutions supported involuntarily by the taxpayers, such as the Smithsonian or the National Endowments for the Arts and the Humanities.
Taxpayer-supported “public” radio and television are similarly insulated from reality and similarly dominated by the left, not only in the United States but in other countries as well. All the nostrums of the left that have brought hunger to millions in countries which used to have surplus food to export, all the pretty words and ugly realities that have caused millions more to flee the lands of their birth, these nostrums live on in public television;much like old classic movies with familiar lines that the audience of aficionados can recite along with the characters on the screen.
These endowed and insulated institutions, often full of contempt for the values of American society and Western civilization, are not the only bastions of the left counter-culture. So are Hollywood and Broadway. Although show biz faces the financial need to get an audience, the truth of what they portray is hardly crucial. Read the rest of this entry »
The End of an Era: Economist Thomas Sowell Says ‘Farewell’
Posted: December 27, 2016 Filed under: Economics, Health and Social Issues, History, Mediasphere, Think Tank | Tags: Alliance for School Choice, American Enterprise Institute, Ancillary revenue, Anderson Bridge, Free market, Freedom, Milton Friedman, Poverty and Politics: An International Perspective, Thomas Sowell, United States, Wealth 1 Comment
‘There is no economist alive today who has done more to eloquently, articulately, and persuasively advance the principles of economic freedom, limited government, individual liberty, and a free society than Thomas Sowell.’
Mark J. Perry writes: After writing a weekly (sometimes semi-weekly) column for the last 25 years (here’s an archive of his columns back to 1998), economist, scholar, author and national treasure Thomas Sowell made this announcement in his column today (“Farewell“):
“Even the best things come to an end. After enjoying a quarter of a century of writing this column for Creators Syndicate, I have decided to stop. Age 86 is well past the usual retirement age, so the question is not why I am quitting, but why I kept at it so long.”
Here’s a link to Thomas Sowell’s second column today (“Random Thoughts, Looking Back“), here’s some of the reaction on Twitter and the Internet to Sowell’s retirement, here’s Thomas Sowell’s webpage, and here’s his Wikipedia entry. Milton Friedman once said, “The word ‘genius’ is thrown around so much that it’s becoming meaningless, but nevertheless I think Tom Sowell is close to being one.”
“I don’t think any living free-market economist even comes close to matching Sowell’s prolific record of writing about economics. And I don’t think there is any writer today, economist or non-economist, who can match Thomas Sowell’s “idea density” and his ability to consistently pack so much profound economic wisdom into a single sentence and a single paragraph.”
In my opinion, there is no economist alive today who has done more to eloquently, articulately, and persuasively advance the principles of economic freedom, limited government, individual liberty, and a free society than Thomas Sowell. In terms of both his quantity of work (at least 40 books and several thousand newspaper columns) and the consistently excellent and crystal-clear quality of his writing, I don’t think any living free-market economist even comes close to matching Sowell’s prolific record of writing about economics. And I don’t think there is any writer today, economist or non-economist, who can match Thomas Sowell’s “idea density” and his ability to consistently pack so much profound economic wisdom into a single sentence and a single paragraph.
Even at 86 years old, Thomas Sowell has remained intellectually active with his syndicated newspaper columns and the publication last year of his 40th book — Wealth, Poverty and Politics: An International Perspective — which was, amazingly, his 13th book in the last decade! To honor Thomas Sowell’s well-deserved retirement from writing his invaluable weekly column for the last quarter century, I present below some of my favorite quotations from Dr. Thomas Sowell (most were featured on a CD post in June on Sowell’s birthday) and a bonus video of the great economist:
1. Knowledge. The cavemen had the same natural resources at their disposal as we have today, and the difference between their standard of living and ours is a difference between the knowledge they could bring to bear on those resources and the knowledge used today.
[Read the full story here, at Carpe Diem Blog » AEIdeas]
2. Obamacare. If we cannot afford to pay for doctors, hospitals and pharmaceutical drugs now, how can we afford to pay for doctors, hospitals and pharmaceutical drugs, in addition to a new federal bureaucracy to administer a government-run medical system?
3. Economics vs. Politics I. Economics and politics confront the same fundamental problem: What everyone wants adds up to more than there is. Market economies deal with this problem by confronting individuals with the costs of producing what they want, and letting those individuals make their own trade-offs when presented with prices that convey those costs. That leads to self-rationing, in the light of each individual’s own circumstances and preferences. Read the rest of this entry »
China Auto Glass Tycoon Cao Dewang Moves Jobs to U.S., Citing High Taxes at Home
Posted: December 22, 2016 Filed under: Asia, China, Economics | Tags: Anatomical terminology, Auto Glass, Barack Obama, Boeing, Boris Johnson, Cao Dewang, Donald Trump, JOBS, President of the United States, United States, White House Leave a comment
Shanghai (AFP) – A Chinese auto glass tycoon has caused a stir by shifting part of his empire to the United States and setting up a factory in Ohio, citing high taxes and soaring labour costs at home.
Cao Dewang’s $600-million investment comes after Donald Trump threatened to declare Beijing a currency manipulator and slap 45 percent punitive tariffs on Chinese imports to protect American jobs.
The 70-year-old tycoon’s decision to open a glass factory in the eastern American state of Ohio in October — a rare case of jobs being exported from China to the US — triggered an outpouring of criticism on social media.
The phrase “Cao Dewang has escaped” became a hot topic, generating nearly 10 million views on the Twitter-like Weibo microblog and many comments urging China to “not let Cao Dewang run away”.
Cao’s Fuyao Glass Industry Group — a supplier to big names including Volkswagen and General Motors — claims to be the biggest exporter of auto glass in the world, reporting 2.6 billion yuan ($370 million) profits last year. Read the rest of this entry »
To Problems With China’s Financial System, Add the Bond Market
Posted: December 21, 2016 Filed under: Asia, China, Economics, Global, Politics | Tags: Bond market, Chair of the Federal Reserve, Chief executive officer, Christine Lagarde, Economic growth, European Central Bank, Federal funds rate, Federal Open Market Committee, Federal Reserve System, Fiscal policy, International Monetary Fund, Janet Yellen, Monetary policy Leave a comment
SHANGHAI — Keith Bradsher Chinese officials cheered on the country’s stock market when it reached heady new highs, offering hope that it could become a new source of money to fix China’s economic problems. Then, last year, the market crashed.
“China is struggling with its own balancing act. The Chinese bond slump also stems from Beijing’s efforts to wring excess money from its financial system and to stop potential bubbles that may lurk in shadowy, hard-to-track corners of its economy. Should it continue with those efforts, bonds could fall further.”
Now another fast-growing part of China’s vast and increasingly complicated financial market is showing signs of distress: its $9 trillion bond market.
Prices for government and corporate bonds have tumbled over the past week, a sell-off that continued on Tuesday. The situation has spooked investors, prompting the government to temporarily restrain some trading and to make emergency loans to struggling financial institutions.
“The adjustment has not yet finished. It will continue and normalize until money is put where the government can see it.”
— Miao Zuoxing, a partner at the FXM Brothers Fund
The price drops have resulted in higher borrowing costs at a time when more Chinese companies need the money to cope with slowing economic growth. Yields reached new highs again on Tuesday.
In part, China is reacting to financial shifts across the globe. With the Federal Reserve raising short-term interest rates and many expecting the presidency of Donald J. Trump to lead to heavier government spending, investors worldwide are selling bonds.
“Due to recent, relatively large market fluctuations, our company decided to cancel the issue of the current bond, and will reissue it at a chosen time.”
— Jiangsu Sumec Group
But China is struggling with its own balancing act. The Chinese bond slump also stems from Beijing’s efforts to wring excess money from its financial system and to stop potential bubbles that may lurk in shadowy, hard-to-track corners of its economy. Should it continue with those efforts, bonds could fall further.
“The adjustment has not yet finished,” said Miao Zuoxing, a partner at the FXM Brothers Fund, a Shanghai-based investment fund that trades stocks, bonds and futures. “It will continue and normalize until money is put where the government can see it.”
At least 40 companies have said they would postpone or cancel bond offerings rather than risk being forced to pay high interest rates to sell the bonds — or being unable to sell them at all. Among them was the Jiangsu Sumec Group Corporation, an industrial trading house that exports items as varied as gardening tools and auto parts; the company said on Thursday that it would not go through with the sale of $130 million in short-term bonds.
“Due to recent, relatively large market fluctuations, our company decided to cancel the issue of the current bond,” Jiangsu Sumec Group said in a statement, “and will reissue it at a chosen time.”
China has particular reason to worry. As the world’s second-largest economy, after the United States, it relies on a rickety financial system that is mired in debt and susceptible to hidden stresses. Higher overseas interest rates could also prompt more Chinese investors to move their money out of the country, either to chase higher returns elsewhere or to avoid what some see as China’s growing problems.
Read the rest of this entry »
China Not Following Through on Market Reform Promises, says German Ambassador
Posted: December 20, 2016 Filed under: Asia, China, Economics | Tags: Barack Obama, China, China–United States relations, Donald Trump, Iowa, President of the People's Republic of China, President of the United States, Terry Branstad, United States Ambassador to China, Xi Jinping Leave a comment
Michael Clauss hits out at lack of progress in market reforms and a reality that contradicts Beijing’s declared intentions.
Wendy Wu reports: China isn’t following through on its market reform pledges as quickly as desired, German ambassador to China Michael Clauss said in an interview.
“I regret to note that the reform initiatives taken at the third plenum apparently have lost momentum,” Clauss told the South China Morning Post in Beijing.
The Communist Party, under the leadership of Xi Jinping, pledged three years ago that China would allow the market to play a “decisive” role in resources allocation. But the promises of adopting more market-oriented changes have mostly been shelved as Beijing beefs up intervention in economic activities, from coal mine operations to capital account controls.
“It seems that preserving social stability and discipline are the order of the day much more than implementing the necessary economic reforms,” Clauss said.
“Officially, China propagates a policy of open markets and unfettered access for foreign trade and investment. However, we note that very often [the] reality on the ground does not correspond to the declared intention of the Chinese government to facilitate foreign direct investment.
“On a long-term perspective, we sense a growing tendency in China towards market closure and favouring of indigenous production,” he said.
At a key policy meeting that ended on Friday, the leadership again highlighted “stability” and “financial risk prevention” as priorities for the coming year, sending a clear message that bold moves in market opening or liberalisation were off the table, observers said.
They are worried that Beijing is also unlikely to make painful cuts in the bloated state sector, for fear of possible social unrest, before the top leadership reshuffle at 19th party congress in the autumn.
[It’s time for China to honour its pledge to open up the market and society – and play fair]
Survey results of commerce chambers of China’s major trading partners have underscored the increasing difficulties of doing business in China, including ambiguous security laws, limited market access and an official favouring of domestic technology.
Last year Beijing launched “Made in China 2025” – a campaign to revamp its manufacturing sector, and establish a home-grown hi-tech powerhouse.
“We wonder whether this is what in the end China 2025 is all about: a future Chinese economy relying on its own, leaving no room for exchanges with its partners,” Clauss said, adding that plans for German companies to expand investment in China had fallen to a three-year low.
Since late last year, Beijing has strengthened controls on individuals and companies transferring funds overseas to stem capital outflows and defend the yuan’s exchange rate. Read the rest of this entry »
As Yuan Weakens, Chinese Households Rush to Open Foreign Currency Accounts
Posted: December 20, 2016 Filed under: Asia, China, Economics, Global | Tags: Adam Smith, Arthur O'Shaughnessy, Asia Pacific, Beijing, China, Economy of China, Federal Reserve System, HSBC, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China, One-China policy, South China Sea, Tsai Ing-wen, United States Leave a comment
Since October, the government has acted to slow outflows by tightening existing measures, such as approvals for foreign currency transfers, and has leant on banks to be stricter, making it harder for companies and individuals to change money and transfer money abroad.
SHANGHAI: Zhang Yuting lives and works in Shanghai, has only visited the United States once, and rarely needs to use foreign currency. But that hasn’t stopped the 29-year-old accountant from putting a slice of her bank savings into the greenback.
“Expectations of capital flight are clear. I might exchange more yuan early next year, as long as I’ve got money.”
She is not alone. In the first 11 months of 2016, official figures show that foreign currency bank deposits owned by Chinese households rose by almost 32 per cent, propelled by the yuan’s recent fall to eight-year lows against the dollar.
The rapid rise – almost four times the growth rate for total deposits in the yuan and other currencies as recorded in central bank data – comes at a time when the yuan is under intense pressure from capital outflows.
The outflows are partially a result of concerns that the yuan is going to weaken further as US interest rates rise, and because of lingering concerns about the health of the Chinese economy.
US President-elect Donald Trump’s threats to declare China a currency manipulator and to impose punitive tariffs on Chinese imports into the US, as well as tensions over Taiwan and the South China Sea, have only added to the fears.
“Expectations of capital flight are clear,” said Zhang, who used her yuan savings to buy US$10,000 this year. “I might exchange more yuan early next year, as long as I’ve got money.”
Household foreign currency deposits in China are not huge compared to the money that companies, banks and wealthy individuals have been directing into foreign currency accounts and other assets offshore.
All up, households had US$118.72 billion of foreign money in their bank accounts at the end of November, while total foreign currency deposits were US$702.56 billion.
But the high growth rate in the household forex holdings are symbolic of a growing headache for the government as it struggles to counter the yuan’s weakness.
Since October, the government has acted to slow outflows by tightening existing measures, such as approvals for foreign currency transfers, and has leant on banks to be stricter, making it harder for companies and individuals to change money and transfer money abroad. Read the rest of this entry »
King Canute vs. the Climate Planners
Posted: December 19, 2016 Filed under: Economics, Education, History, Think Tank | Tags: Climate change, Friedrich Hayek, Jeffrey Tucker, John Kerry, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Development (France), Paris Climate Summit Leave a comment
“Let all men know how empty and worthless is the power of kings.”
Jeffrey Tucker writes: “With a small hammer you can achieve great things.”Oh really?
This claim comes from French foreign minister Laurent Fabius as he banged his gavel at the close of the Paris climate summit. To the cheers of bureaucrats and cronies the world over, Fabius announced the deal that the press has been crowing about for days, the one in which “humanity” has united to stop increases in global temperature through the transfer of trillions of dollars from the rich to the poor, combined with the eventual (coercive) elimination of fossil fuels.
“The recognition of the insuperable limits to his knowledge ought indeed to teach the student of society a lesson of humility which should guard him against becoming an accomplice in men’s fatal striving to control society — a striving which makes him not only a tyrant over his fellows, but which may well make him the destroyer of a civilization which no brain has designed but which has grown from the free efforts of millions of individuals.”
And thus did he bang his gavel. To his way of thinking, and that of the thousands gathered, that’s all you have to do to control the global climate, cause the world to stop relying on fossil fuels, and dramatically change the structure of all global industry, and do so with absolute conviction that benefits will outweigh the costs.
One bang of a gavel to dismantle industrial civilization by force, replace it with a vague and imagined new way of doing things, and have taxpayers pay for it.
Markets Yawn
Interestingly, the news on the Paris agreement had no notable impact on global markets at all. No prices rose or fell, no stocks soared or collapsed, and no futures responded with confidence that governments would win this one. The climate deal didn’t even make the business pages.
[Read the full story here, at Foundation for Economic Education]
Investors and speculators are perhaps acculturated to ignoring such grand pronouncements. “The Paris climate conference delivered more of the same — lots of promises and lots of issues still left unresolved,” the US Chamber of Commerce said in a statement. And maybe that’s the right way to think, given that the world is ever less controlled by pieces of paper issued by government.
“Historians have challenged the point of the story. The only account we have of this incident, if it occurred at all, is from Henry of Huntingdon. He reports that after the sea rose despite his command, the King declared: ‘Let all men know how empty and worthless is the power of kings, for there is none worthy of the name, but He whom heaven, earth, and sea obey by eternal laws.’”
Still, breathless journalists wrote about the “historic agreement” and government officials paraded around as planet savers. Meanwhile, the oil price continues to fall even as demand rises, and the Energy Information Administration announced the discovery of more reserves than anyone believed possible. As for alternatives to fossil fuels, they are coming about through private sector innovation, not through government programs, and successful only when adopted voluntarily by consumers.
“He did and said this, say modern experts, to demonstrate to his courtiers and flatterers that he is not as wonderful and powerful as they were proclaiming him to be. Instead of subservience to his own person, he was urging all citizens to save their adoration for God.”
It’s a heck of a time to announce a new global central plan affecting the way 7 billion people use energy for the next century. Anyone schooled in the liberal tradition, or even slightly familiar with Hayek’s warning against the pretensions of the “scientific” government elites, shakes his or her head in knowing despair.
“His point was that power — even the absolute power of kings — has limits. During his rule, King Canute was enormously popular and evidently benefitted from the common tendency of people to credit authority for the achievements of the spontaneous evolution of the social order itself. His sea trick, if it happened at all, was designed to show people that he is not the man they thought he was.”
The entire scene looks like the apotheosis of the planning mentally — complete with five-year plans to monitor how well governments are doing in controlling the climate for the whole world and do so in a way that affects temperature 10-100 years from now.
King Canute?
The scene prompted many commentators to compare these people celebrating in Paris to King Canute, who ruled Denmark, England, and Norway a millennium ago. According to popular legend, as a way of demonstrating his awesome power, he rolled his throne up to the sea and commanded it to stop rising.
It didn’t work. Still, the image appears in many works of art. Even Lego offers a King Canute scene from its historical set.
[Read the full test here, at Foundation for Economic Education]
Historians have challenged the point of the story. The only account we have of this incident, if it occurred at all, is from Henry of Huntingdon. He reports that after the sea rose despite his command, the King declared: “Let all men know how empty and worthless is the power of kings, for there is none worthy of the name, but He whom heaven, earth, and sea obey by eternal laws.”
He did and said this, say modern experts, to demonstrate to his courtiers and flatterers that he is not as wonderful and powerful as they were proclaiming him to be. Instead of subservience to his own person, he was urging all citizens to save their adoration for God.
His point was that power — even the absolute power of kings — has limits. During his rule, King Canute was enormously popular and evidently benefitted from the common tendency of people to credit authority for the achievements of the spontaneous evolution of the social order itself. His sea trick, if it happened at all, was designed to show people that he is not the man they thought he was.
The Pretensions of the Planners
Lacking a Canute to give us a wake-up call, we might revisit the extraordinary speech F.A. Hayek gave when he received his Nobel Prize. He was speaking before scientists of the world, having been awarded one of the most prestigious awards on the planet. Read the rest of this entry »
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