Looks great!
Key question: do the ladies like it?
1,496 karma · joined June 15, 2011
Key question: do the ladies like it?
All the seminal works (especially "Economics in One Lesson") are very elementary. You need no prior exposure to economics.
They say you can identify an Austrian work by flipping through it, as it will undoubtedly contain no graphs or formulas.
This is a somewhat vague statement but I'm assuming you're referring to the Austrians' "a priori" approach to economics.
> nor respected in the wider economic sphere.
Given the adversarial stance that the Austrians take toward government intervention in the economy it is no surprise that their ideas are not endorsed by academics.
Individuals should make their own judgement about the persuasiveness of the Austrian arguments and not dismiss them because they are unpopular.
If you have the time, I'd welcome a critique of any argument contained in that Hazlitt book quoted above.
This book is an outstanding place to start. It addresses a myriad of economic concepts in simple language. It's available for free through the Mises Institute.
"How an Economy Grows and Why It Crashes" by Peter Schiff http://www.amazon.com/How-Economy-Grows-Why-Crashes/dp/04705...
This book gives a simple overview of macro issues and is an interesting and well-presented tale about how economies grow from the basic "man on an island" scenario to a complex market. It also covers Austrian business cycle theory which explains the boom-bust cycle in economies.
Both of these books are from the "Austrian School" of economics, which is named for its Austrian founder, Carl Menger. I find these arguments compelling as they are firmly grounded in logic and are based on the principle that the human individual and her actions form the basis of all economic activity.
The giants of the Austrian school are Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard (highly readable) if you want to seek out more advanced theory.
Salinger had kept his writing habit his entire life. He'd simply stopped publishing.
There was a room in his house with several manuscripts in it. Some labeled "publish as is" and some labeled "needs editing."
They were all to be published after his death. This way he could share his works with the world without being around to deal with any of the criticism.
And I just looked back over my Alice orders from a few years ago. They do indeed include tax charges! Bummer.
Amazon charges tax in some states.
Alice didn't charge sales tax in my state.
In the case of the Great Northern railroad, the efficiencies were passed on to the customer in terms of ever falling costs and an expanding network of service.
> The population of low-volume regions will be under-served
No, it's the opposite! Low-volume regions are underserved with centrally planned government transportation. The planner has limited resources that must be "democratically" administered.
In a free market, any underserved area provides an opportunity for an entrepreneur to serve that need in the market! It's an elegant system that serves the needs of the people faster with less waste.
I understand your point, but am providing a real world example in the form of a privately run railroad that was more efficient than its subsidized competitors.
> put the burden of paying for that infrastructure entirely on people who travel instead of all the people who benefit thereby
I agree with this part of the statement, but it's false to assume the free market can't utilize this payment model.
The bulk of the railways and roads that I cited were paid for not only with user fees but investments by businesses or entrepreneurs who rightly assumed that they'd reap benefits from railways and roads being constraucted in their districts.
We actually have some historical record to examine in this area, though you have to look pretty far back in US history to find a time when the government wasn't directly involved in the transit business.
James J. Hill built the Great Northern railroad in the late 1800's without taking any subsidies. He competed directly with subsidized railroads in the mid- and far west, consistently delivering lower prices and superior service to his customers.
As for highways, thousands of miles were created by private for-profit companies during the first half of the 19th century before highways and railways began to be taken over by government beginning with the Lincoln administration.
Peter Schiff's focus is long term trends. He's constantly saying it's impossible to forecast exactly when the bottom will drop out. Just that it will if we continue down QE infinity.
That seems sensible. How can endless money printing end in anything but inflation?
Could you please explain that?
Here is the same article: http://mises.org/daily/6435/A-Virtual-Weimar-Hyperinflation-...
Shouldn't the users of Kickstarter determine whether a project is worthy?
You have personal reasons for not funding this project but seem to suggest that other people shouldn't be allowed to fund it either.
If Kickstarter users think they're getting value for their money, let them fund the project.
But still, gold has never dipped below its 1918 low on that chart. Twice it shot up as a hedge against paper inflation, but it never went below where it started.
Isn't that a terrific store of value? I'm talking about a time frame of centuries here. Not just a few years during a bubble.
And before you counter that we're currently in a low inflation period - we're not. If the CPI was measured using the same metrics that the government used itself in the early 80's, inflation would be running at 9% annually.
Also, I don't know what "real gold price" means. Some details of the measurement would help.
> also has the added benefit of a much higher long-run rate of return
When measured in dollars, which have lost 98% of their value since 1913.
Gold and silver stand in opposition to this statement.
You can't buy groceries with gold or silver coins, but they're a fantastic store of value and time-tested investment.
Furthermore, according to Gresham's Law, people keep "good money" (i.e. money that holds its value) out of the marketplace and spend their "bad money" (i.e. fiat) acquiring goods and services.
So when you say "USD has fallen 80%" it always has to be qualified with something like "against BTC."
But yeah, it sounds ridiculous.
Say they charge $10,000 for a procedure that costs them $500. They collect $1000 from the insurance company and claim a loss of $9000 in the "uncompensated care pool" for which they can apply for a government rebate at the end of the year.
The practice originated to help reimburse hospitals that provided charity care, but it's morphed into something entirely different.
1: By 2014 it will be illegal for an insurance company to deny coverage to a customer with pre-existing conditions. This is great news for people with pre-existing conditions, but bad news for everyone else, who will have to cover the cost through increased premiums.
2: Obamacare carries a clause in which consumers may opt out of government-approved healthcare and pay a tax penalty instead. The CBO estimates that in 2016 the average penalty will be $1200 per year.
In combination these two factors will create massive upward pressure on health insurance premiums.
Healthy consumers who carry mainly catastrophic insurance will choose to drop their coverage en masse in favor of paying the penalty.
After all, if they ever get really sick, they can always sign up for insurance because it's now illegal to deny coverage to someone with pre-existing conditions!
This will drive insurance prices higher, as there will be an ever-shrinking pool of consumers paying premiums.
This made me chuckle.
The "traditional" investment vehicles of US stocks, real estate and bonds are anything but "safe" these days.
This is probably true, but wouldn't ending corporate welfare be a better strategy to achieve that end?
Wow this is finally happening. Hopefully the sequels will surpass the prequels.
FYI, "work it's magic" should be "work its magic"
A sound, stable currency is an essential component to a free market. When a currency is manipulated it can drastically upset the natural balance within a marketplace.
When money is cheap (i.e. artificially low interest rates combined with Fed pumping new money into system) it leads to malinvestment.
Consumers buy things they wouldn't normally buy. Companies invest in projects they normally wouldn't invest in.
There is an initial "boom" (i.e. asset prices rise) that comes from people spending the easy money. But it can't last because the spending didn't come from savings or underlying productivity increases. It came from artificial stimulus.
I'm glossing over a lot of points here, but it's called "business cycle theory" if you care to investigate.
Free markets fuel capitalism.
The Fed's market manipulation is abhorrent to pure capitalism; it throws the elegant system of free competition and trade horrifically out of balance.
The set decorator was George DeTitta Jr.
Your points about the perception of quality and digestible signals of quality are spot on, but what you're describing still boils down to supply and demand.
Supply and demand is a dynamic, complex system of the ever changing wants and needs of the producers (i.e. programmers producing code) and consumers (i.e. companies purchasing code) in a marketplace that determine prices (i.e. programmer salaries).
All considerations of programmer quality, signals of quality, type of programmer required for a specific job and so on are encapsulated within "supply and demand." It's an elegant system!