Monthly Archives: April 2022

An example of classical economics in the real world

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There is an article in The Oz on who used to be my favourite American president but is now only my second-favourite – Warren G. Harding. As the article points out, although he was president for only 29 months, he is regularly listed among the worst presidents in American history by that motley crew of academic historians (and economists) who have no idea about which direction is up. They would almost all have voted for Joe Biden so you can see how sound their judgment must be.

The title of the book under review is The Jazz Age President: Defending Warren G. Harding. Alas, I only have the review to find out what the author wrote, but this is the bit that I wish to focus on:

Harding’s first priority was the economy – gross national product was down 17 per cent, stock values were cut nearly in half, unemployment was over 12 per cent, and farmers were devastated by plunging prices.

This was the economy Harding inherited on becoming President. You hardly need to guess what a modern political leader would do, and be expected to do, if these were the circumstances they had to deal with. Anyway, he did precisely what no one would do today – the article continues:

Harding reduced government spending, slashed individual taxes (the marginal rate had reached a high of 77 per cent), increased tariff rates, and reduced the intrusiveness of the federal government.

The result was what is today recalled as The Roaring Twenties.

What is even more astonishing is that you can no longer find an economics text that will explain why such policies deliver the outcomes they always do, other than, of course, my own Free Market Economics. And then there is this if you would like more detail on the entire history and framework of an economic theory that provides wealth and prosperity: Classical Economic Theory and the Modern Economy.

Donald Trump did the same to the American economy but you will hardly ever find a good word about any of it virtually across the entire media and certainly not from within the academic world of economics.

It’s all asches, vaxxines that is

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From Vaccine Skeptics are the True Critical Thinkers. This is what caught my eye:

The Asch Experiment

“All experts agree that the vaccine is safe and effective. ”

That was enough to get most people vaccinated. Except that anyone could ask two questions:

  • How can I know that all experts agree, if those disagreeing are not allowed to speak up?
  • How can anyone know that “Covid vaccine” is safe and effective, if no time actually passed to ensure that?

Finally, someone with just a bit of knowledge could also ask a question, “are you sure that it is safe and effective, if no coronavirus vaccine ever worked, and no mRNA product was ever approved”?

And if you would like to know more about the Asch Conformity experiment you can go the link or perhaps here. As for how safe the vaxxines in reality are, there is so much evidence being suppressed and unreported that it must by now be wilful ignorance amongst people who do not wish to realise the extent to which they have been sold a bill of goods.

Melbourne has lost what it once had

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Australia though it may be, picked up at that great Canadian site, Small Dead Animals. I will also provide this comment from amongst those found there.

Melbourne used to be a great city, the best in Oz. It has become irretrievably Leftist in the past 30 years and now there is no hope. VicPol is a hard left organisation doing the bidding of the authoritarian pseudo Marxists in power. This cannot end well, especially given that the inner parts of our other major cities are going ultra woke also.

It’s really the idiocies of Covid that have done us in coupled with a particularly stupid and vicious premier. Who knows when we will return to what we were of even if we can.

“The undecided” will ultimately decide

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I watched the first “debate” between the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition, and this is what I now find out from the papers: Undecided voters give win to Anthony Albanese after leaders’ debate. This was the final tally:

Of the 100 undecided voters at the debate, 40 per cent gave the debate to Anthony Albanese, 35 per cent to Mr Morrison and 25 per cent remained undecided, results show.

Of course, no one is actually undecided. You may be sure that at least 40% were ALP voters since there is no way to really keep them out. An undecided is someone who says they remain unsure, but anyone who watched the flow of words and thought the ALP leader was the more persuasive has demonstrated a decided lack of grasp of the issues, or has very little idea of what will make their lives more secure or more prosperous.

I will just say that the PM took the Leader of the Opposition to the cleaners. He understands the issues more clearly, he has a vision, he is realistic and recognises the nature of the problems our country faces. That should lead to his re-election but that unfortunately is now how things work. The people will be consulted and they will make the decision. So we will end up with our version of Joe Biden.

Let me end with this, which is in all essentials the promise being made to Australians by the ALP: however bad things are now, we will make them worse, or as it says at the link but in reference to the US: Red states [ie States governed by Republicans] top blue states [ie states governed by Democrats] for low taxes and best economies.

The ALP plan, as usual, is to introduce some unaffordable freebie welfare program, then lose government and let the Libs work out how to pay for it.

Of course, the ALP pitch is to say that had they been the government everything would have turned out better than they have. Meanwhile, they promise to fix our non-existent global warming problems by crashing our carbon-based power-generating system, and will eliminate the non-existent racism that supposedly ruins social relations in this country by blaming everything on people who ancestors have come – either recently or in the distant past – from Northern Europe.

The Australian left has not a single sensible policy idea to offer

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Let me start with this, which is in all essentials the promise being made to Australians by the ALP: however bad things are now, we will make things worse, or as it says at the link but in reference to the US: Red states [ie States governed by Republicans] top blue states [ie states governed by Democrats] for low taxes and best economies.

I just sat through the first of the Sky News debates. The Prime Minister explained one policy position after another along with trying to weave in an understanding of how limited are the resources available to deal with the phenomenal costs involved. But what was most extraordinary to me was the absence of any actual proposal by Labor to shape any specific policy outcome.

The ALP plan, as usual, is to introduce some unaffordable freebie welfare program, then lose government and let the Libs work out how to pay for it.

Of course, the AP pitch is to say that had they been the government everything would have turned out better than they had. Meanwhile, they will fix our non-existent global warming problems by crashing our carbon-based power-generating system and will eliminate the non-existent racism the supposedly ruins social relations in this country by blaming everything on people who ancestors have come – either recently or in the distant past – from Northern Europe.

Surely the leaders of the American left do not believe the things they say they believe

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This is an article by the incomparable David Mamet: American Occupation. Let me get to the core points he makes:

Over the last two years in America, I’ve witnessed our own forces of evil with incredulity, despair, and rage. Corruption, blasphemy, and absurdity have been accepted by one-half of the electorate as the cost of doing business; as has the fear this acceptance generates. Does anyone actually believe that men change into women and women into men who can give birth, that the Earth is burning, the seas are rising, and we’ll all perish unless we cover our faces with strips of cotton?

No one does. These proclamations are an act of faith, in a new, as yet unnamed religion, and the vehemence with which one proclaims allegiance to these untruths is an exercise no different from any other ecstatic religious oath. They become the Apostles’ Creed of the left, their proclamation committing the adherent physically to their strictures, exactly as the oath taken on induction to the armed services. The inductee is told to “take one step forward,” and once they do he or she can no longer claim, “I misunderstood the instruction.”

Those currently in power insist on masking, but don’t wear masks. They claim the seas are rising and build mansions on the shore. They abhor the expenditure of fossil fuels and fly exclusively in private jets. And all the while half of the country will not name the disease. Why?

Because the cost of challenging this oppressive orthodoxy has, for them, become too high. Upon a possible awakening, they—or more likely their children—might say that the country was occupied. And they would be right.

There was a time one might be able to debate and discuss. But for those of us who were once even on the left, as it then was, the modern left is very possibly insane although it is much more likely they say things they do not personally believe. Insanity should not however be ruled out.

Who really wants you to know what is going on in the Ukraine?

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Not that we may ever know, but this is a contrary view of what passes for fact in the Western media: Is It Possible To Actually Know What Has Been and Is Going On in Ukraine? 

This is from near the start.

While I freely admit that I have a longstanding predisposition to distrust the standard American sources on the conflict in that part of Europe—and that my reading about and study of post-Communist Russia over the past twenty years inclines me to be more open to the Russian position in this crisis—at the same time I am very conscious that the first thing to suffer and disappear during war time is truth. And that both sides in this gruesome conflict employ propaganda and whatever media sources available to them.

This is from near the end.

In Ukraine, with the blessing of the Western countries, those who are in favor of a negotiation have been eliminated. This is the case of Denis Kireyev, one of the Ukrainian negotiators, assassinated on March 5 by the Ukrainian secret service (SBU) because he was too favorable to Russia and was considered a traitor. The same fate befell Dmitry Demyanenko, former deputy head of the SBU’s main directorate for Kiev and its region, who was assassinated on March 10 because he was too favorable to an agreement with Russia—he was shot by the Mirotvorets (“Peacemaker”) militia. This militia is associated with the Mirotvorets website, which lists the “enemies of Ukraine,” with their personal data, addresses and telephone numbers, so that they can be harassed or even eliminated; a practice that is punishable in many countries, but not in the Ukraine.

Nothing is really known other than that there are plenty of those running the various shows who are deeply invested in our remaining as ignorant as they can possible ensure.

There is a real symbiosis between the major American media and the political
establishment, centered in Washington D.C. That virtual unity includes both the Democrats and the Republicans, who, if anything, are more war like than their supposed opponents. Indeed, a friend of mine commented that he thought it significant that on the war the positions of Fox News and CNN were almost identical; he said that because he believed that since all the
major news sources were in agreement, then certainly what they presented was truthful….

The more I read, each morning dozens of sources from all over the world, the
more I seriously doubt the commonly-held mantra of the near-totality of our major news media.

That is the one certainty and how things are likely to remain. And does this matter: Hundreds of Ukrainian nationalists march in honor of Nazi collaborator.

“Today, when there is a war with the occupier at the front, and the struggle against the ‘fifth column’ continues in the rear, we remember and honor the memory of Stepan Bandera,” said Andriy Tarasenko, leader of the nationalist party Right Sector.

During World War II, Bandera led the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, whose men killed thousands of Jews and Poles, including women and children, while fighting alongside Nazi Germany against the Red Army and communists.

It may not matter to others, but it matters to me.