Quotes - Henry Hazlitt on Inflation

I just finished reading chapter XXIII: The Mirage of Inflation in Hazlitt's Economics In One Lesson and I hit many statements, arguments, and logical deductions that I felt are significant and should be posted. These are two of my favorites.

"Even the clerk who used to get $75 a week and now gets $120 thinks that he must be in some way better off, though it costs him twice as much to live as it did when he was getting $75. He is of course not blind to the rise in the cost of living. But neither is he as fully aware of his real position as he would have been if his cost of living had not changed and if his money salary had been reduced to give him the same reduced purchasing power that he now has, in spite of his salary increase, because of higher prices. Inflation is the autosuggestion, the hypnotism, the anesthetic, that has dulled the pain of the operation for him. Inflation is the opium of the people."

The concluding paragraph of the chapter:

"Like every other tax, inflation acts to determine the individual and business policies we are all forced to follow. It discourages all prudence and thrift. It encourages squandering, gambling, reckless waste of all kinds. It often makes it more profitable to speculate than to produce. It tears apart the whole fabric of stable economic relationships. Its inexcusable injustices drive men toward desperate remedies. It plants the seeds of fascism and communism. It leads men to demand totalitarian controls. It ends invariably in bitter disillusion and collapse"

Its like he predicted the stock market bubble of the 90s, the recent housing boom, the collapse of the financial sector, the credit freeze, and the reaction by government to all of it in one paragraph, decades prior.

End The Fed

Flu Vaccine Protests in New York

My general position on this is that the government has no place forcing a vaccine of any kind on anyone, for any reason.

However, if the owners of the hospital wish to require employees to take a vaccine, this is perfectly legit. They are protecting the interests of their patients and have a right to do so. Workers who disagree can find employment with a different hospital if they disagree.

Ron Paul Visits The Federal Reserve Bank Of New York

Ron Paul on The Daily Show

I'm sure this won't stay up too long on YouTube.

Quote - Henry Hazlitt

"The belief that labor unions can substantially raise real wages over the long run and for the whole working population is one of the great delusions of the present age. This delusion is mainly the result of failure to recognize that wages are basically determined by labor productivity. It is for this reason, for example, that wages in the United States were incomparably higher than wages in England and Germany all during the decades when the "labor movement" in the latter two countries was far more advanced."

Henry Hazlitt, the first paragraph Chapter XX: Do Unions Really Raise Wages, in Economics In One Lesson

Quote - Glenn Greenwald on U.S. v. Iran

"And, oh yeah -- we're currently occupying two Muslim countries on either side of Iran, having invaded them many years ago. There's nothing Iran has done that we and our clients/allies haven't done ourselves to a far greater extent. But remember: it's Iran that is run by people with crazy, belligerent, fanatical, war-loving sentiments and is therefore a grave threat to world peace (imagine if Iran had invaded, bombed and then spent the last eight years militarily occupying Canada and Mexico, only for Iranian media elites to keep insisting that it was the U.S. that was the rogue state run by aggressive fanatics who threatened world peace)."

Read Mr. Greenwald's column here.

Glenn Greenwald was recently on the left-wing war-mongering US cable network MSNBC arguing against war-mongering left-winger Arianna Huffington:

Dr. Paul on Iran's Nuclear Program

Quote - Henry Hazlitt

Yet among the arguments put forward in favor of huge foreign lending one fallacy is always sure to occupy a prominent place. It runs like this. Even if half (or all) the loans we make to foreign countries turn sour and are not repaid, this nation will still be better off for having made them, because they will give an enormous impetus to our exports.
It should be immediately obvious that if the loans we make to foreign countries to enable them to buy our goods are not repaid, then we are giving the goods away. A nation cannot grow rich by giving goods away. It can only make itself poorer.

90 pages into Hazlitt's Economics In One Lesson and I'm finding gems all over the place I wish our politicians would read. This would be a good one for China to consider as it ponders whether or not to lend the United States any more cash.

Not Every Kid In The US Supports Obama

The "Jesus" line a little creepy; they could have discussed a little more the dangers of idolizing a simple man, as all men are inherently imperfect; and their accusation that children are being organized by Obama to serve Obama is a hard sell at best; but god-damn, gotta love the big poster of the Declaration of Independence in the background.

Highlights from HR1207 Hearing

Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

Quote - Henry Hazlitt, 1946

Government-guaranteed home mortgages, especially when a negligible down payment or no down payment whatever is required, inevitably mean more bad loans than otherwise. They force the general taxpayer to subsidize the bad risks and to defray the losses. They encourage people to "buy" houses that they cannot really afford. They tend eventually to bring about an oversupply of houses as compared with other things. They temporarily overstimulate building, raise the cost of building for everybody (including the buyers of the homes with the guaranteed mortgages), and may mislead the building industry into an eventually costly over expansion. In brief, in the long run they do not increase overall national production but encourage malinvestment.

Henry Hazlitt, 1946, Economics In One Lesson

I'm only 50 pages into this book. I usually post stuff on here showing predictions from Ron Paul, Jim Rogers, and Peter Schiff in regard to the economy as they come true. How about this prediction from 60 years ago? Those crazy, wacky, backwards Austrians.

Ron Paul: Imagine

"Iran is on notice that they are going to have to come clean and they are going to have to make a choice"

Its all over the news. Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. No more time for diplomacy. Ultimatums have been made. The media is lining up behind the president. The world must be kept safe.

What is not being broadcast? Iraq has started demanding euros for oil.

Wait. This isn't 2003, its 2009. Its not Iraq. Its Iran.

Its all over the news. Iran has a secret under-ground nuclear-fuel plant. No more time for diplomacy. Ultimatums have been made. The media is lining up behind the president. The world must be kept safe.

What is not being broadcast? Iran has started demanding euros for oil and has moved to using euros as their reserve currency within the past month.

This is very troubling. The US is still fighting one war in Iraq and we're with them in another in Afghanistan. These wars are taking longer than either World War I or World War II and our countries, our men and women, the civilians in the respective countries we have invaded, and our treasuries are paying dearly for it.

Now, suddenly, you can feel our government lining up for a new initiative, a new war, there's a new boogey-man and we must destroy him.

Obama, the president of peace, change and hope, released this BUSHIAN statement,"Iran is on notice that they are going to have to come clean and they are going to have to make a choice".

There is no hope, no peace, no change. Its all the same.

Unfortunately for us, Chretien is no longer the Prime Minister. We have Harper. He released a statement that is even more fearful to me than Obama's. He said Canada would back “whatever actions are necessary to deal with what is a tremendous threat to international peace and security.”

Right now they're talking about sanctions, but sanctions are acts of war. They always hurt the people, the civilians, more and they are designed to weaken the country to make war easier. They say they want to stop all transport of gasoline into Iran.

We're scared of a country that is flush with oil but cannot produce its own gasoline.

If our governments choose to march down this road, we have a responsibility to each other, and the people around the world, to do what we can to stop them.

Pittsburgh G20 Protest Montage

As lame as I think the protesters are, this is a decent video depicting how the oppressing nature of the governments around the world is beginning to show itself closer to home.

Alan Grayson Grills Federal Reserve Top Lawyer Scott Alvarez @ HR 1207 Hearing

On the G20 Protestors...

...they're idiots.

Now, that doesn't mean the police should be shooting beanbag, firing pepper spray, and blasting piercing sound waves toward them. This is a clear violation of their natural right of free assembly which is protected by the 1st Amendment.

In fact, protesting this use of force by police would be a far superior use of time than the supposed purpose of this loosely organized group of 1000 protestors that don't even understand what they're protesting.

They're protesting "profits", "capitalism", and all misery experienced by every individual in the entire world. I'm feeling sad today, and its the G20's fault!

If it smells like socialism, if it looks like socialism, and if it acts like socialism, well..this crowd calls it free-markets. If it smells like fascism, if it looks like fascism, and if it acts like fascism, well...this crowd calls it capitalism.

Obviously they have not read anything written by any free-marketeer, ever.

The leaders of the richest 20 governments in the world getting together to plan world policy is a glaring example of central planning which is accustomed with political philosophies that has historically brought more suffering and pain to the world than free-markets have ever done.

From one protester in an article on RawStory.com:

Our message here is about climate change, poverty, capitalism: they're all very intertwined and it's time that we all understand that if we are going to do anything, we have to work together.

Well la-dee-da. Could this individual ooze anymore main-stream left-wing talking points? Climate-change BAD, Poverty BAD, Capitalism BAD! We need to work together and live in cotton-candy land! How ironic is it that these talking point are propagandized by organizations like the UN and G20 and then these idiots use the talking point to protest the people who originated them! Which organization talks most about the evils of climate-change? The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a UN backed organization that calls for economic policies that would kill capitalism. Where does the UN get funding for organizations like the IPCC? ALL OF THE COUNTRIES GATHERED AT THE G20.

Let us take a look at the list of countries being represented at the G20:

* Argentina
* Australia
* Brazil
* Canada
* China
* France
* Germany
* India
* Indonesia
* Italy
* Japan
* Mexico
* Russia
* Saudi Arabia
* South Africa
* South Korea
* Turkey
* United Kingdom
* United States

Which one of these countries is pushing strongly for free market principles? They are almost all ruled by a political philosophy which is the anti-thesis of free markets and capitalism. They pretty much all espouse support of welfare policies supposedly "for the poor". These governments are responsible for subverting capitalism at every turn.

These protesters are protesting governments which are doing exactly what they want! They should be outside cheering.

Idiots.

Updated: Marines Kidnap Protestor: Fake or Real?

Update: Apparently they were state patrol officers dressed in military garb.

"We Should Never Be Afraid Of The Truth"

Who Dares Compare Obama To King George?

From RawStory.com (derived from The New York Times):

President Barack Obama has quietly decided to bypass Congress and allow the indefinite detention of terrorist suspects without charges.
...
Rather than seek approval from Congress to hold some 50 Guantanamo detainees indefinitely, the administration has decided that it has the authority to hold the prisoners under broad-ranging legislation passed in the wake of Sept. 11, 2001. Former President George W. Bush frequently invoked this legislation as the justification for controversial legal actions -- including the NSA's warrantless wiretapping program.