Category Archives: free Stuff

What Leftists Don’t Understand About Economics–a Reflection

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My comments are in response to an article which appeared yesterday entitled, What Leftists Don’t Understand about Economics, by Daniel Carter, of Investment Watch.

WHAT LEFTISTS DON’T UNDERSTAND ABOUT ECONOMICS

Where do you want me to start?  Liberals and their philosophical/political brethren understand little if anything about economics, and even less about the principles of Natural Law and Natural Rights which underscore free-market capitalism.  Volumes have been written about Natural Rights beginning with Thales of Miletus in the 6th century B.C.  He and the Seven Sages of Miletus (a rather raucous group I’m told), rather than the later Greeks Plato and Aristotle, are credited with giving philosophical birth to the Western Tradition.  There is a straight philosophical line from Thales and his Sages, to Aristotle, to Cicero, Polybius, significantly to Aquinas who bridged Christian thought with Aristotelianism, to the Enlightenment philosophes and Founding Fathers, and finally the Objectivism of Ayn Rand.  Rand’s masterpiece, Atlas Shrugged, has been rightly called Aristotle’s Eudaemonics (or flourishing) in novel form.  Having read both several times, I can confirm this comparison.  That’s pretty much what it is.

Reduced to its essence, Natural Rights includes freedom of life, liberty, and property.  In the Declaration, the pursuit of happiness was substituted for property.  The pursuit of happiness, or flourishing, is the subject of Aristotle’s Eudaemonics.  The closest English word for “eudaemonia” is “flourishing.” All agree that flourishing is pre-supposed by ordered liberty.  Man cannot rise to the occasion, or find meaning in his life, shoot for the stars, or soar on the wings of eagles without liberty, not anarchy, but ordered liberty.  The state exists for one purpose–to protect one’s life and property—not your right to hold a claim check to someone else’s money.

Also, the Ten Commandments have much to say about the primacy of Natural Rights and its place in our Judeo-Christian ethic.  Natural Rights were codified by the Ten Commandments.  Mosaic Law and Natural Law have much in common.  The Fifth Commandment (“Thou Shalt not Kill”) couldn’t make the right to life any clearer.  Likewise, The Seventh Commandment (“Thou Shalt not Steal”) could not have come down more firmly on behalf of private property rights.

Unfortunately, Natural Rights philosophy is no longer taught, or only in the darkened corner of the candlelit sanctuary of a hermit.  It is ignored or considered hate speech.  It was long ago thrown under the bus by the Progressive Movement of Marx and Woodrow Wilson and the Frankfurt School of Irrational Thought.

If you aren’t schooled or steeped in liberty or the principles of Natural Law, you can neither appreciate nor understand nor defend the offspring of Natural Rights—the free market.

http://investmentwatchblog.com/what-leftists-dont-understand-about-economics/

Red Robin will offset minimum wage hikes by canning busboys | New York Post

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The Red Robin article is a lesson in fundamental economics which the average politician nearly always fails to comprehend. If the cost of labor goes up due to a government-mandated increase in the minimum wage, one or two outcomes are certainties. One, employees will be laid off or fewer will be hired, as in the case of Red Robin. Hours are cut back on kitchen and counter staff and the manager removes the “Now Hiring” sign from the entrance door. Two, companies may have to raise prices for goods and services, or in the case of Red Robin raise prices and/or cut back on their portions. The once classic half-pound burger is reduced to seven ounces, maybe six . The once-mighty side of fries, enough to slake the appetite of a high-school linebacker, is discernably smaller. Or Red Robin decides to start buying a lower grade of ground beef. Or all of the above.

The average consumer, or citizen, or voter, thinks increases in the minimum wage are good, especially for low-income, low-skilled workers.  Sadly, nothing could be further from the truth.

The signing ceremony makes the headlines and the evening news. The politicians who sponsored the increase are hailed by the media and talking heads as champions of the disadvantaged, having triumphed over the tight-fisted, mean-spirited opposition financed by evil Big Business. Unfortunately, the consequences mentioned above never make the headlines. If Red Robin raises its prices, lays off employees, imposes a hiring freeze, or cuts back on their portion sizes in response to the minimum-wage increases, will the media hop right on it? Not bloody likely. Will the company hold a news conference explaining that the lay-offs, price increases, and smaller portions are directly attributable to the state-mandated increase in the minimum wage? Again, not bloody likely.

The political establishment and their dutiful, fawning media just want you to hear the fun stuff.  Then they box it up, put a bow on it, and attach a cutesy jingle to it like “America’s Getting a Raise !!”  Then it’s repeated ad nauseum till the woefully ignorant electorate unconsciously swallows it hook, line, and sinker.   

The laws of economics are universal, transcendent, and immutable.  They always have the last word.  Unfortunately, they are seldom heard.  

 

https://nypost.com/2018/01/08/red-robin-will-offset-minimum-wage-hikes-by-canning-busboys/

Mental Exercise

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Here’s a mental exercise for everyone—name one government program in recorded history that’s been a success–on balance. Go ahead—name one. Just one government program that has made someone wealthier without making someone poorer; just one program by which a country’s citizens have benefited without the equivalent loss of independence or liberty or dignity. History is littered with the corpses of civilizations which have sacrificed their liberty and that of their progeny for a bowl of thin gruel. We are no different.

VIDEO: Woman Finds Out She’s Approved for Welfare

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VIDEO: Woman Finds Out She’s Approved for Welfare
Political Insider

Commentary:  This video says it all.  As I noted in yesterday’s post, there was a time when being on public assistance, like getting pregnant out of wedlock or going into rehab, was a source of embarrassment, or at least kept under wraps.  And being on public assistance was a only a short-term fix, a temporary waystation till you put your life back together after losing a job or suffering a personal setback.

This is no temporary situation.  This woman will be on the public dole till she reaches room temperature.  She’ll spend her days watching soaps and eating bon-bons.

This woman is the face of the Culture of  Dependency.  The poster child of what we have become.

It’s Free

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One of the most misused words in the English language is “free,” as in “it’s free.” Whether it’s the free samples of stuff at Costco, or the free pens and refrigerator magnets they give away at your local bank or car dealership, or the free hip replacement your mother-in-law just received, we use the term freely, so to speak, without ever considering it’s true meaning.  When we say “it’s free,” what we really mean is that someone else is paying for it—voluntarily or involuntarily.  And this is a very important distinction. Because one is morally defensible, while the other is not.  One involves a clear violation of private property rights, enshrined in the Seventh Commandment, while the other does not.  The Seventh Commandment states, “Thou Shalt Not Steal Thy Neighbor’s Goods.” This is the clearest affirmation of private property rights ever handed down.  By The Man Himself.  And it’s etched in stone.  You can’t take someone else’s things, period. And just because you take something from someone and turn around and give it to someone you believe is deserving doesn’t justify it either. The Seventh Commandment is everything the Good Lord ever had to say about “social justice,”–about what is mine and what is thine. Continue reading →