Professor Per Bylund of Oklahoma State University, author of How to Think About the Economy joins Jeff and Bob to dissect how economics went so badly wrong. A discipline rooted in theory, axioms, and deduction has devolved into statistics, models, and hard science envy. Is the economics profession doing any good, or active harm?
Per’s new book How to Think About the Economy: Mises.org/Primer
Gary North and Walter Block debate “Is it Smart to Get a PhD in Economics”: Mises.org/HAP380a
On January 10, the French government announced plans to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64. The change would mean that after 2027, workers in France would have to work 43 years to qualify for a government pension, instead of 42 years. French workers promptly took to the street in protest decrying even this very small reduction government welfare.
Like many countries in Western Europe and North America, France faces a major demographic problem in that its population is aging and demanding ever larger amounts of public pension funds. Meanwhile, the younger working-age population is shrinking as birth rates continue to fall. So, the French state is looking for ways to stay relatively solvent.
For Americans who follow our own old-age social benefits systems, this problem will seem quite familiar. Although the US regime is not in as dire fiscal straits as the French one, the US’s federal government nonetheless faces huge and growing obligations to current and future pensioners. This will only grow more urgent as the population continues to age and as the numbers of prime-age workers stagnates.
Indeed, the Social Security scheme is an excellent example of how government programs, once established, gradually become far more costly—in real per capita terms, not just aggregate terms—as time goes by. Many recipients now spend decades collecting benefits on a program that had been sold as a program only for people who were too old, exhausted, and injured to work at all. Meanwhile, fewer and fewer workers are called upon to foot the inflated bill.
At the center of this mission creep for Social Security is the fact that Social Security benefits originally began at age 65. Yet, at that same time, the life expectancy at birth was below 65. (It’s much higher now.) Many people lived well past 60 back then, of course, but not nearly as many as do today. In other words, a far smaller fraction of the work force collected Social Security, and for a shorter period. Today, however, more workers live long enough to collect Social Security, and they now receive payments for longer. That’s a sure way to inflate the cost to taxpayers of old-age benefits. (It’s also a sure way to encourage able-bodied workers to leave the workforce, thus tilting the economy more toward consumption rather than production.)
Even if we ignore the moral problems presented by transferring huge amounts of income from current workers to pensioners, the realities of demographics in the twenty-first century mean the minimum “retirement age” should really be at least 75. Too long has a shrinking pool of workers been forced to fund pensioners who start collecting government benefits in their 60s and can now expect to be on the dole for 20 years or more. Moreover, this phenomenon is growing. Social Security increasingly forces today’s workers to shoulder an ever-greater burden on their ability to earn a living and support their families. The days of subsidized extended vacations for able-bodied 65-year olds must come to an end, but until that day comes, the damage can at least be limited by raising the age of eligibility.
When it was being sold to the public in 1935, those promoting Social Security took advantage of sentiments that people over age 65 were essentially too old to work, and thus would soon fall into poverty. This certainly would have seemed plausible at the time. Most jobs in 1935 involved significant amounts of physical labor whether we’re talking about cleaning laundry, waiting tables, farming, mining coal, or building houses. Work was also more dangerous—as historical work injury data makes clear—and workers were more likely to sustain injuries that would render one unable to work. For example, a 65-year-old simply could not safely perform much of the work required at a steel mill. (As shown in this 1944 video on the steel industry.)
Especially important to efforts at presenting Social Security as fiscally prudent was the fact that with a minimum age of 65, the number of Social Security beneficiaries would also be limited by the realities of life expectancy. In 1940, for example—the first year that pensioners could receive benefits—life expectancy at birth was only 61 for men and 65 for women. Indeed, even if we eliminate the toll of childhood diseases on life expectancy, the numbers do not change dramatically. In 1940, total life expectancy for persons over 15 years of age was 68. Moreover, in 1940 the percentage of the population surviving from age 21 to 65 was only 54 percent for males and 61 percent for females. But what about those who actually made it to age 65? In 1940, a male at age 65 would, on average live another 13 years. A female would live another 15 years. So, when looking at the work force in 1940, we can eliminate nearly half of the men and about 40 percent of the women as likely future Social Security recipients. About half of those who actually made it to 65 would then collect benefits for no more than 15 years.
Now let’s contrast that with life expectancy realities in our own time.
Life expectancy at birth today is 78 years, and for those who reach age 15, it is 80. for both men and women, more than 75 percent of the population reaching 21 will survive to age 65. That’s an increase of 50 percent for men, and around 30 percent for women. For those reaching age 65 in 2022, males will live another 18 years on average, while females will live another 20 years.
These growing commitments from Social Security are further aggravated by the fact that while the retiree population is growing, growth in the work force is stagnating. Since 1960, the total number of Social Security recipients has increased by 364 percent. Meanwhile, the prime age population (age 25-54) has grown by only 90 percent. Put another way, in 1960, there were 4.6 prime age workers per Social Security recipient. In 2020, that number was 1.9.
Now let’s look at this in dollar terms. Per prime-age worker, inflation-adjusted dollars spent on SS amounted to $9,590 in 2022. That’s up from $4,814 in 1980, or an increase of 99 percent over the period. During the same period, inflation-adjusted weekly earnings for workers increased 16 percent. Part of this discrepancy is due to the fact SS payments are consistently—as mandated by law—bumped up by cost-of-living adjustments to account for price inflation. Wage workers enjoy no such guarantees.
Social Security benefits are rapidly outpacing both population growth and earnings growth. In the aggregate, the program is more generous (toward pensioners) than ever.
To stanch some of the bleeding from today’s workers who get an increasingly raw deal on this, the time has come to stop the ever-upward creep in how much Social Security recipients collect.
As noted above, we see that, on average, mean and women collect Social Security for a period that has grown by five years since 1940—an increase of 38 percent for men, and 33 percent for women. To even put a dent in this, the minimum age for SS needs to rise to 70. Yet, even this is much too low given how turning 65 in 2022 is nothing like what it was in 1940. Ever since it was first put forward, Social Security has assumed that reaching the age of 65 is also closely associated with disability. That may have been a good assumption in 1935 when work was more often dangerous, likely to produce disability, and medical care was much less adept at addressing these disabilities.
In 2022, however, the word “disabled” hardly describes the majority of Americans in the 65-74 age range. Indeed, only one quarter of this population reports having any disability at all. The share of Americans from 65-74 who report poor health has been declining, as has the proportion of workers in physically demanding jobs. It’s unclear why 100% of these workers would require government income subsidies. In any case, workers who are actually disabled would qualify for disability benefits even if the age is raised. Moreover, a male worker today who reaches age 75 can still expect to live another 11 years. A female can expect to live even longer. Raising the age to 75 still wouldn’t eliminate a taxpayer-subsidized “official” retirement, but the change certainly would reduce the length of time today’s workers toil in a state of indentured servitude to today’s pensioners.
One thing raising the age has going for it, of course, is that it’s been done before. A 1983 change very gradually increased the full-benefits age from 65 to 67. That’s much too little, and even an increase to age 75 would be a mild reform. Other reforms, up to and including abolition, should include means-testing pensions and totally defederalizing and decentralizing the program. But it’s also easy to imagine the tidal wave of opposition from activists who vehemently oppose even a very mild reduction in Social Security payouts. Raising the age is no cure-all. But it’s a start.
The Federal Reserve has created a huge boom full of bubbles. But after the boom must eventually come a bust. Ryan and Tho talk to Mises Institute Senior Fellow Mark Thornton about what to expect from the next recession and how we got ourselves into our current inflationary mess.
“Eliminating Economic Crises” by Mark Thornton: Mises.org/RR_118_A
“The REAL Solution to the Coming Economic Crisis” by Mark Thornton: Mises.org/RR_118_B
“Wholesale Price Inflation Is Slowing as Economy Worsens” by Ryan McMaken: Mises.org/RR_118_C
The Skyscraper Curse: And How Austrian Economists Predicted Every Major Economic Crisis of the Last Century by Mark Thornton: Mises.org/RR_118_D
“Will the Fed Pop the Everything Bubble?” by Daniel Lacalle: Mises.org/RR_118_E
“The Trillion-Dollar Coin Idea Is Just Another Way to Rip Us Off” by Ryan McMaken: Mises.org/RR_118_F
“The Fed’s Real Mandate” by Mark Thornton: Mises.org/RR_118_G
Be sure to follow Radio Rothbard at Mises.org/RadioRothbard.
Whenever an armed conflict breaks out, regardless of where it is, we are instantly presented with the number of people killed, along with how many families and entire communities have been forced from their homes. As regrettable as it sounds, those of us who have been so lucky to remain safely distant from such conflicts throughout our lives have become relatively inured to them. Ukraine, to put it coldly and crudely, is the folie du jour in this regard.
As a result, the only violence toward the displaced communities we tend to discuss is the immediate physical damage: the harm done to individuals through murder, torture, and sexual assault, and the violation of their property rights by either the armed forces or revolutionary militias. However, regimes will often utilize a lesser known, or rather, less understood, tactic against these vulnerable communities that some may argue does not constitute violence as it is not an overt physical attack.
Rather, the strategy employs what psychiatrist Mindy Fullilove, in her 2004 work, Root Shock: How Tearing Up City Neighborhoods Hurts America, and What We Can Do about It termed the “root shock of forced displacement,” which she defines as the traumatic stress reaction to the destruction of all or part of one’s emotional ecosystem. This root shock is often the precursor to a plethora of other mental illnesses, such as depression. Regimes of all shades and labels have often forced communities from their own lands and capitalized on the subsequent trauma resulting from such violence to categorize them as undesirable elements within society in order to alienate them and enact subtler forms of discrimination.
It’s never been uncommon for those suffering from mental illnesses to be vilified and identified as less than human; it is customary for regimes to define what makes people dangerous to the rest of society and use the state apparatus to target them. In their 2004 book, Violence in War and Peace, anthropologists Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Philippe Bourgois assert:
The mad, the differently abled, the mentally vulnerable have often fallen into this category of the unworthy living, as have the very old and infirm, the sick-poor, and, of course, the despised racial, religious, sexual, and ethnic groups of the moment.
This is not a stance unique to either end of the political spectrum, as Murray Rothbard pointed out in For a New Liberty: when afforded the powers of coercion inherent to the state, both liberals and conservatives will use their newfound powers to impose their own vision of what behaviors and lifestyles are acceptable, or “sociable,” and antagonize, or even criminalize, whatever does not meet their criteria.
British political commentators Peter Hitchens and Owen Jones, the former an ardent conservative thinker and the latter a left-leaning journalist and activist, have even agreed on the point that governments deliberately inflate incarceration figures with mentally ill inmates, classifying them as violent. In an interview, Hitchens glibly remarked that while conservative icon Enoch Powell was rightly loathed for his “Rivers of Blood” speech, he committed a more atrocious act when he closed residential facilities for people suffering from mental health issues. This placed the burden of their care on law enforcement, which in turn resulted in mentally ill people’s being moved into correctional institutions.
Regimes similarly provide the legal grounds to label refugees and others fleeing persecution in their native regions as “violent,” “unstable,” or “abnormal,” which in turn leads to their alienation from a society that does not permit their integration.
To first understand how mental health, or rather illness, is used by the state against displaced communities, one must first understand the role that homelands as a concept play in the social, mental, and emotional well-being of individuals. While this role may differ from region to region due to cultural, socioeconomic, and linguistic contexts, we can find parallels that point to the homeland as representing normality and harmony. In Narratives of Exile and Identity (2018), in which he describes the experiences of deported Lithuanians after the expansion of the USSR into the Baltic states in 1940, Tomas Balkelis found that Lithuanian refugees associated their native region with ordinary civilian life and freedom as citizens. Similarly, the Korwa, a displaced tribal community originating in central India, are described by Mokshika Gaur and Soumendra M. Patnaik in their 2011 study in the following manner:
The Korwa, both young and old, consider the forest as their actual “home” and associate all of their maladies with the new living space. In the forest, their economic pursuits were in direct relationship with nature, required working together as a community, and kept them close to their ancestors, which is not possible in the current set-up.
The association developed between the onset of new diseases, both physical and mental, and forced relocation, is not unique to tribal lifestyles. It is a phenomenon that seen in a multitude of groups, across several generations, and under a variety of circumstances, whether colonization, civil war, or ethno-religious persecution. In their 1997 work, Social Suffering, Arthur Kleinman, Veena Das, and Margaret Lock cite Jews and other minorities’ fleeing the Holocaust, Native Americans’ growing up on reservations in the United States, and Iraqi refugees’ fleeing militarized conflict as examples of communities who have been rendered vulnerable as a result of war and forcibly evicted from their lands and homes.
This vulnerability allows state institutions to further undermine sociocultural bonds and dynamics, which causes several behaviors to repeat themselves across generations; the very same psychological phenomena that Sir William MacGregor observed in Fiji while serving as a medical officer in the 1870s, are reported in refugees in Sri Lanka who fled their villages due to escalated conflict during the Sri Lankan civil war, and in the Chagossians, who were exiled to Mauritius from their islands in the Chagos Archipelago by the British government between 1968 and 1973, as described by David Vine in Island of Shame (2011). In all three instances, depression, mania, anger, and “melancholia” all contributed to an uptick in figures for institutionalization, incarceration, and last, but not least, suicide.
It can be easy to understand the injustices committed toward civilians in a war or conflict merely as physical damages, but when there are state institutions or government-funded bodies that actively discriminate against and stigmatize the “abnormal” behavior of displaced communities, further scrutiny is required. In order to better understand how, why, and when regimes target certain groups, it is necessary to determine how state institutions inflict longer-lasting scars and wounds that transcend generations, beginning with the physical damage to their bodies and homes.
The similar challenges facing America and Brazil, including concerns about the state of their democracies, is worthy of exploration, as is the global response to the protest and what that response means for those opposed to the current “neoliberal” international order.
Original Article: “America, Brazil, and the Illegitimacy of Weaponized Democracy”
This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon.
The US Bureau of Labor Statistics released new Producer Price Index (PPI) data on Wednesday, and it looks like the rate of increase in price inflation is slowing. Nonetheless, year-over-year price inflation in December remained near 40-year highs, and shows the marketplace is still dealing with the nearly six-trillion-dollar surge in the money supply that took place during 2020 and 2021.
The PPI is a measure of prices at the production phase of goods and services. Prior to 1978, the index was known as the Wholesale Price Index.
In December, year-over-year PPI growth came in at 6.2 percent which was a 21-month low. The PPI had most recently peaked in March of 2022 at 11.6 percent. December’s print was a (seasonally-adjusted) drop of 0.8 percent, month, over month. According to this measure, it does indeed seem that price inflation is slowing.
Of course, if we look at the index overall, and not just at rates of increase, we find wholesale prices are up 17 percent from where they were in early 2020. This generally reflects a similar trend in the CPI index which is up about 15 percent over the same period. Notably, the 17-percent increase in wholesale prices also outpaces the increase in the Dow which is up 14 percent over the same period.
At appears both workers and businesses need growth of 15 percent or more during this period just to keep up with consumer prices, and 17 percent or more to keep up with wholesale prices. These numbers also belie the popular narrative on the Left that consumer prices are only rising because of “greedflation” or corporate greed. By that narrative, inflation is fueled by sellers arbitrarily marking up their prices to exploit workers and consumers. Yet, if growth in wholesale prices is similar to consumer price growth, it’s hard to see how sellers are enjoying a windfall from rising prices. Rather, one could interpret this is a matter of sellers attempting to keep up with their own rising costs.
So why are PPI prices slowing now? There’s good reason to believe it reflects a slowing economy. Indeed, the economic data pointing toward a slowing economy and recessions continues to pile up. December’s Leading Economic Indicators measure is flashing recession. Homebuyers are canceling purchases at levels exceeding what we saw in 2008. The New York Fed’s recession modeling shows the highest recession probability since 1982. The yield curve is inverted to a depth not seen in more than 40 years.
Indeed, once PPI growth takes a sustained downward turn, the US is often already in a recession or headed into one. We can see this pattern in 1982, 1990, 2000, 2008, and 2019. And now in 2022.
Changes in wholesale prices often are described as an early indicator of where consumer prices are headed. One way to interpret this is to conclude that as wholesale prices change, retailers are forced to respond with higher prices themselves. This isn’t quite right, however. Ultimately, the prices of wholesale or “production goods” are actually determined by the prices of goods at the final retail, consumer stage. That is, it’s the reverse of the usual view of PPI inflation. After all, a retailer wouldn’t pay for materials or wholesale goods at all if he didn’t think he could sell them—or sell goods made with them—at a profit. Thus, beyond the short term, the prices of these production goods cannot be set without regard for the expected prices of retail goods. For example, a producer of wood furniture won’t buy certain woods if the prices of that wood make it impossible to sell furniture as a price consumers are willing to pay. If the furniture maker does make the mistake of paying for wood at unprofitable prices, then he will go out of business, and he will no longer demand any of that wood at all. Thus, those firms that provide unfinished wood wholesale to furniture makers cannot dictate prices to the furniture makers. Ultimately, it is the consumers of the finished furniture who dictate the price.
On the other hand, in an inflationary environment consumers, flush with cash from money-supply inflation will bid up the prices of furniture while depleting the furniture makers’ inventory. In turn, furniture makers will bid up the prices of wood in order to build more furniture. We’ll then see increases in both consumer prices and producer prices. It is possible we could observe cases in which changes in producer prices appear to cause changes in consumer prices. Thanks to competition at the retail level, many retailers may attempt to keep down prices to maintain customer loyalty, even while bidding up producer prices.
Nonetheless, given that producer prices are heavily affected by consumer spending, slowing growth in producer prices is exactly what we’d expect to see right now. After all, fundamentals in consumer buying power continue to show growing weakness. Credit card debt is mounting. Disposal income is falling. Real wages have fallen for twenty-one months in a row.
It appears that consumers are finally reaching their limits in terms of willingness to pay higher prices. The Wall Street Journal reported last week that unit sales of general merchandise fell 7 percent year over year in 2022, even though sales in dollar terms fell only 2 percent. Similarly, unit sales of food and beverage fell 3 percent during the same period, but dollars spent on these items rose ten percent.
In other words, people paid more money for goods, but bought fewer items. According to the Journal, many retailers now report they can’t afford to keep raising prices. The consumer well is drying up. That’s a recipe for slowing price inflation, both at the producer and consumer levels.
President Biden is likely to celebrate slowing inflation as some sort of great achievement on the part of the administration. But it’s just what we’d expect from from a weak economy.
Not that long ago, my grandparents explained to me why they never discussed politics, religion, or sex in mixed company. Politeness was their currency. And why antagonize people or create ill will over private matters?
Fast-forward to 2023, and their advice seems needed more than ever. Today nothing is private; everything is political. And American politics is characterized by a perverse degree of bad faith.
Whether the country really is more divided than any time since the Civil War or this is merely our perception—thanks to social media rancor, nonstop cable news, and rabid political partisanship—scarcely matters. Either way, the psychology is clear. Anger directed toward the “other” delivers the desired dopamine hit. Under conditions of extreme distrust, scapegoating is far easier and more satisfying than cooperation. We see this clearly with attitudes toward Brexit, Hillary versus Trump, covid lockdowns, vaccines, Ukraine, Antifa, January 6, the 2022 midterm elections, and a host of other manufactured issues. Americans are watching at least two different movies.
So does this political polarization cause, or merely reflect, broader social and cultural rifts? The late Andrew Breitbart insisted politics is downstream from culture, which seems broadly correct when we observe the progressive near monopoly over cultural institutions. But there has been a concurrent quiet revolution in law and politics, creating a “rival constitution” and placing politics more squarely at the center of American life. Today we live today in a crass and hyperpoliticized reality where every facet of life—race, sex, sexuality, family, marriage, money, career—is seen as a political statement. This aids and abets the progressive project, which leverages the Leninist/Stalinist “Who, Whom?” distinction as carrot and stick.1
Operating effectively in this environment requires us to be clear eyed and honest about the rules of engagement. Politics is not war, but it suggests violence. People who simply don’t want to fight, or who don’t recognize the fight taking place, are at a tremendous disadvantage. Ideas, debate, logic, and persuasion satisfy our sense of fairness and honor. But they are effective only when widely accepted and their results adhered to. We are not required to delude ourselves about this or to turn the other cheek to retain our humanity.
These rules of engagement may seem obvious and commonsense but nonetheless may be helpful for your family and friends who do not fully grasp the situation.
Many politicians, especially at the federal level, have dropped any pretense of working to achieve democratic consensus. Lying, gaslighting, and subterfuge are the operative tools to win elections and vanquish the other side. This is not the simple cynicism of my grandfather’s day, when the whole political charade might well have been viewed as a gang of crooks fighting over spoils. This is not a period scandal like Watergate, Iran-Contra, or Teapot Dome. Today we must entirely rework our understanding of modern US politics, understanding it as a precursor to violence rather than a mechanism for governance and dispute resolution. Americans acutely feel this brutal winner-take-all element in our politics. Consensus has nothing to do with it. “Democracy” is nothing more than a cheap moniker for “when progressives win.” So your default position regarding any political statement or proposal must be disbelief.
Like it or not, the nonmarket, nongovernmental institutions of civil society no longer operate as a buffer between individual and state. They have been almost entirely captured by progressive ideology, from mainline Protestant denominations and Catholic leaders to the American Civil Liberties Union and Boy Scouts of America. We no longer can assume their stated purpose is their actual purpose or that their public stances can be separated from politics. Thus, Robert Conquest’s third law can be updated slightly to reflect bureaucratic control of institutions that not only places them at odds with their original raison d’être but tasks them with an entirely new agenda of serving the progressive project.
Medicine, education, law, banking, accounting, insurance, pharmaceuticals, arms manufacturing, and much of the tech world have been enormously affected. Firms operating in these industries often resemble what Michael Rectenwald terms “governmentalities,” in which ostensibly private market actors willingly take on the role and imperatives of the state. Add DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) and ESG (environmental, social, and governance) to the mix, and virtually all US public companies now at the very least toe the government line when it comes to all manner of political positions. This means heroic smaller and privately held companies must be the true “private sector” drivers of the economy, a bright spot where real win-win social cooperation can take place.
Beware of those advancing a particular agenda under the guise of “public policy.” In a hyperpolitical environment, this is simply code for preferred politics. There may have been a time in American history when there actually were nonpartisan policy wonks laboring away in the basements of federal agencies or in think tanks, but that time clearly is past. Politics, not policy, drives federal lawmaking and the administrative state. If Joe Biden manages to enact his student loan forgiveness bill, for example, it won’t have anything to do with some study or statistical analysis provided by the Brookings Institution. It will reflect raw politics and patronage toward younger voters, just as George W. Bush’s Medicare Part D bill pandered to older voters. And remember, we don’t need “policy” at all, whether monetary policy or housing policy or energy policy. We need markets. This is not to say we cannot participate in policy debates or support a particular measure (e.g., an actual tax cut) and oppose another. But we should no longer allow a pseudoprofessional class of people in and around DC to claim an expertise or neutrality they don’t possess. And we should never elevate politics with the window dressing of “policy.”
We like to think logic rules the day, but every indication says otherwise. Consider Al Gore’s unhinged rant at Davos last week, a fire-and-brimstone homily which would have elicited mirth from attendees had it been delivered by an evangelical preacher. Or consider the religious zeal with which a National Hockey League player was attacked not for any action or statement concerning LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) issues, but merely for his forbearance—refusing to wear a rainbow flag jersey before a designated game. Progressives live in an emotional, faith-based universe, every bit as removed from pure reason as the religious observers they mock. Simply appealing to reason rather than hearts and minds is a surefire way to lose in the current environment. This is especially true for young people. Effective argumentation today recognizes and adjusts for this reality without sacrificing principle or truth.
Progressives not only won the twentieth century handily but enjoyed a rout. Now they are winning the culture wars handily while capturing young people for their cause in alarming numbers. And top to bottom, progressives have more money and power than conservatives. Yet still progressives get away with presenting themselves as victims and underdogs fighting some mysterious oppression or nonexistent WASP power structure. It is important to understand the dynamics at play, because any worthwhile concept of justice differentiates between aggression and self-defense.
At this point it scarcely needs to be said that large media organizations promote government narratives almost without exception. Deep skepticism is the order of the day, but with this comes the responsibility to go beyond easy headlines and social media to become informed on the pressing matters of the day. And always remember it is OK not to have opinions on issues that you lack understanding about.
Learning and improving is a lifelong endeavor, and it has never been easier, thanks to digital platforms. Relentless reading is one of the keys to your personal and professional development. You can choose to constantly improve and expand your knowledge using the principles of kaizen, as personified by Robert Luddy.
Whether we like it or not, most Americans are not interested in political history or economic theory. They are interested in the what—primarily the material quality of their lives—more than the how or the why. And we won’t counter the activist progressive project with books and philosophy alone. Now is the time to get active in civil society, to make the case for applied theory, and to approach politics at the most local levels. A single voice can reach outsized audiences with the right digital platforms and the right message. And entrepreneurship may be the single best form of activism against state propaganda, demonstrating the win-win alternative to politics on a daily basis.
So how do we even begin to depoliticize America? This is a fundamental question if we hope to improve conditions. All people of goodwill have an obligation to fight the escalation of politics and reduce the likelihood of outright political violence (as we’re seeing this week in Atlanta). Yet as stated many times before, we won’t vote our way out of this and we should not expect help from Washington, DC. The incentives for politicians are all wrong. Division sells. In fact, division makes the very politicians promoting it appear more necessary than ever to a fearful and gullible electorate. So we should turn our backs on DC, work to ignore mainstream media and captured institutions, and build out parallel structures wherever possible. We have new rules of engagement, but they conjure up an old one from economist Herb Stein: “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.” Better to realize this ahead of time.
It is no coincidence that the boom in mass-produced goods made specifically for children, “coincided closely with the rise of the middle-classes, industry, and capitalism.”
Original Article: “How Capitalism Made Christmas a Holiday for Children”
This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon.
While an increase in the supply of gold money would lead to higher consumer prices, such increases in the gold supply do not lead to boom-bust cycles.
Original Article: “Can Increases in the Supply of Gold Lead to Boom-Bust Cycles?”
This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon.