EAB 01 – Axioms and Fundamental Principles of a Free Market Economy
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Monthly Archives: May 2021
Value added
This is video I did for my introductory course in economics on Value Added (you will have to set it back to the beginning if you would like to see the whole thing yourself). When I came to write my text, it was an absolute necessity in my own mind that the core piece of understanding was the concepts that surrounded the notion of value added. You will virtually never see any mention of the concept in any modern text other than occasionally in relation to estimating the National Accounts.
But I cannot emphasise enough that it is a proper understanding of value added that transforms someone into an economist. If you don’t get this, you are useless in making judgments about how an economy works or what is needed to improve an economy’s performance.
There were a series of videos that were put together to cover my course material, but these are all covered, and far more comprehensively in my economics text: Free Market Economics: An Introduction for the General Reader.
If you are genuinely interested in what is wrong with modern economics, this is where you can find out. If you would like to understand the flaws in Keynesian macro, this is the book you must read. If you are interested in marginal analysis properly explained, you again need to read this book. Based on the classical principles of John Stuart Mill, it is what is missing today; a text based on explaining how an economy works from a supply-side perspective.
If you sincerely wish to understand how an economy works, other than reading John Stuart Mill himself, this is the place to find out.
My book launch with Andrew Bolt
Thanks to my very good friend Rodney, I have now discovered these on Youtube. This was on the day that Andrew Bolt launched my Art of the Impossible which was my collected blog posts on the election of Donald Trump in 2016. Quite a day, in many ways foreshadowing the events of the four years that would follow. My thanks to Andrew Bolt again.
Why is it good to know that?
Just finished John Armstrong’s In Search of Civilisation: Remaking a Tarnished Idea (Penguin 2009) and then went to look for more which turned out to include the video above. The oddest part is that the authorial sound of the book as you read it has no resemblance to the actual sound of the book’s author. That said, a wonderful book and cannot recommend it more highly. Excellent throughout, but this particularly caught me.
I try out an old strategy of inquiry: one most vigorously pursued by St. Augustine. Why, he asked of of the results of scholarly investigation, is it good to know that? … Augustine was in search of a principle of quality – a principle that would help us see what, out of the infinite variation of possible knowledge, it was important to devote one’s time and effort to. (Armstrong 2009: 159)
Why is it good to know anything? More to the point here, which bits of knowledge will make one “civilised” and which is just part of life. And in what way and for what reason is it good to be familiar with The Mona Lisa or with Cosi Fan Tutti?
Vaccine one day death two days later as part of a safety demo
This is from The Gateway Pundit.
Indian Health Ambassador Gets COVID Vaccine Live on TV to Show Everyone How Safe It Is – Dies 2 Days Later
By Jim Hoft
Published May 12, 2021 at 4:14pm
1706 CommentsShare(4.5k)TweetShare to GabTelegramShareEmail
Indian Health Ambassador and former comedian Vivek got his COVID-19 vaccine live on TV in late April to show everyone how safe it is.
The health ambassador died two days later.
This is from the Democrats
Part of the regular mailout I receive from Florida. No better proof than this that Liz Cheney had no place in among the Republicans. Utterly dishonest – the ad that is – but what else would you expect.? I’m sure they are really shocked. I, of course, am pleased to see her go, but she has been quite an insight into the political thoughts of George Bush Jr and Dick Cheney.
FIRST: Republicans expelled loyal Liz Cheney from her leadership position — all because she refused to support Trump’s election lies!
THEN: Trump attacked her! He called her “a bitter, horrible human being” and said he wants her OUT of politics.
NOW: Liz Cheney needs our support more than ever before. We need to show her that sticking to her values and standing up to Trump was RIGHT.
SIGN YOUR NAME Thank you for standing up for what’s right,
Did you know that the “C” in YWCA stands for “Christian”?
We knew it was going to be bad, but not this bad this soon
From the Desk of Donald J. Trump. Highly recommended. The best blogger in the United States, and almost certainly the best informed. First:
A guy named Miles Taylor, who I have no idea who he is, don’t remember ever meeting him or having a conversation with, gets more publicity pretending he was in the inner circle of our Administration when he was definitely not. Some people refer to him as “absolutely nothing.” I hear he is on CNN and MSDNC all the time, but he had nothing to do with any of my decisions, and I wouldn’t even know what he looks like. He is the guy who fraudulently wrote a make-believe book and statement to the failing New York Times calling himself “Anonymous.” That’s right, he, a lowlife that I didn’t know, was Anonymous. Now he’s putting together a group of RINOs and Losers who are coming out to protest President Trump despite our creating the greatest economy ever, getting us out of endless wars, rebuilding our Great Military, reducing taxes and regulations by historic levels, creating Space Force, appointing almost 300 Judges, and much, much more! He is a phony who will probably be sued over his fake book and fake “Anonymous” editorial, which caused so much treasonous stir. Miles Taylor and his fellow RINO losers like Tom Ridge, Christine Todd Whitman, and Crazy Barbara Comstock voted for Biden, and now look what they have—a socialist regime with collapsing borders, massive tax and regulation hikes, unrest in the Middle East, and long gas lines. He is even giving us men setting new records playing women’s sports. What a disaster for our Country it has been!
And then:
I see that everybody is comparing Joe Biden to Jimmy Carter. It would seem to me that is very unfair to Jimmy Carter. Jimmy mishandled crisis after crisis, but Biden has CREATED crisis after crisis. First there was the Biden Border Crisis (that he refuses to call a Crisis), then the Biden Economic Crisis, then the Biden Israel Crisis, and now the Biden Gas Crisis. Joe Biden has had the worst start of any president in United States history, and someday, they will compare future disasters to the Biden Administration—but no, Jimmy was better!
And speaking of Jimmy Carter, from Instapundit.
WELCOME BACK, CARTER:
Inflation over last 12 months: 4.2%, highest year over year rate since September 2008. Inflation in March: 0.9%, highest since April 1982 (note a monthly rate of 0.9% is 10.8% annualized). Avg. price gallon of regular gas: $2.99, highest since November 2014. Used Car prices: up 12.4% in last year. New car prices up 7.0%. Median home price: up 18.4% over year. April jobs report: 266,000 new jobs, vs. predicted 1 million. Stagflation, anyone?
AND HERE’S THE QUESTION: From inflation to jobs to the border, Biden is flailing — when will the media notice?.
If the media could take a break from obsessing over the House Republicans choosing a new conference chair, they might have noticed that Joe Biden’s presidency is falling apart.
On every major front, Biden is flailing — even by the depressingly low bar set for him by the Washington press corps.
April just saw the highest rate of inflation in 13 years, according to the Department of Labor. Prices for everything, including food and gasoline, immediately skyrocketed after Biden’s $2 trillion welfare scheme (sometimes referred to as a “stimulus package”) went into effect and flooded the economy with more money than anyone knows what to do with.
Biden’s preoccupation? Spending even more.
The unemployment rate actually went up from March to April, even as Biden bragged that he’s the one responsible for mass vaccinations that are, at least in theory, supposed to be moving people back into the workforce. But no, his extension of the obscene amount of federal unemployment benefits has would-be workers choosing to sit pretty at home cashing government checks. Those benefits don’t end for another four months, assuming they aren’t extended again (you can never assume anything with Nancy Pelosi in charge).
They will notice when they can blame it on Donald Trump and not a minute sooner.
Bosko the first Looney Tune
And speaking of Bosko, there is also Bosco. This
Then there’s this ad with Dick van Dyke from 1959.
But then there’s the version I remember.
I hate Bosco! It’s so bad for me. Mommy puts it in my milk she tries to poison me.
But I fooled Mommy and put it in her tea. Now there’s no Mommy left to try to poison me.
Bad. But the tune and the words are with me sixty years later.
The edge of lunacy
Actually beyond the edge and fully unhinged! Note the singular: “case”. That, by the way, is the front page.
HUNDREDS of Victorians have been ordered to isolate after a man returned from hotel quarantine in Adelaide and tested positive for coronavirus. The Craigieburn to Southern Cross and Flinders Street to Craigieburn May 7 train services were listed as exposure sites on Tuesday night. That followed alerts for Melbourne’s CBD, Epping and Altona North.
Lucky there is the budget to distract us from all this idiocy, other than the fact that the budget is a major part of it.
AND LET ME ADD THIS: From A Plague of Politicians.
It is becoming clearer each day that the global imposition of lockdowns in the name of fighting COVID-19 has been one of the greatest political, economic, and social blunders of the decade, and perhaps even the century. Yet many leaders across the world continue to mandate existing lockdowns and even impose new ones in vain attempts to curb the spread of COVID in their populations.
Originally opposed as an ineffective measure by nearly every epidemiologist worldwide, leaders across the globe followed, in monkey-see, monkey-do fashion, the example of China when it locked down the city of Wuhan and a few nearby areas. Aping the act of a totalitarian regime, leaders of liberal democracies across the world implemented lockdowns in what seemed to them, if to no one else, a good idea at the time.
Sold as “two weeks to flatten the curve,” lockdowns have continued for over a year, despite great evidence that the only curve flattening that happened was the curve of economic prosperity, and boy, were lockdowns effective at flattening that.
Law of Markets 