from Mises Institute
RIGHT-CENTER BIAS, MIXED
Envy, Inc.
Why do so many people resent capitalism, even when they benefit enormously from it? Presidential aspirant Kamala Harris promises to compel private companies with more than 100 employees to disclose what they pay employees to the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission. Companies that don't pay women "enough" will pay fines until they demonstrate an acceptable level of gender parity. South Bend, Indiana's "Mayor Pete" Buttigieg thinks America needs a federal "Equality Act" to make up for past racism, sexism, and homophobia. Senator Elizabeth Warren champions direct cash payments to black Americans as reparations for slavery. And all of the 2020 hopefuls take great pains to characterize income and wealth disparity as the defining issue of our time. The ostensible thread connecting all of these public policy ideas is equality. Millions of Americans firmly believe the proper role of government is to make us more equal, and thereby make society more just. Old-fashioned liberal ideas about private property and natural rights barely register in this worldview. And it won't be changed by an election or politician; egalitarianism as an animating political, economic, and social principle is firmly entrenched across the West today.
Central Banks' Forecasts Are Basically Garbage
Central banks' economic models repeatedly and incessantly over-estimate economic growth. They also consistently miss the mark on price inflation. Why do we think these people are "experts"? Over the last decade – or even longer – central bankers have exaggerated their benign impacts on the economy and their forecasts have consistently misjudged its future path. The central bank projections of the most important variables for monetary policy – GDP growth, unemployment and the Fed’s favored inflation metric, the PCE – have been rosier than reality later revealed, over and over and over again. When graphed, as those projections occasionally are, the erroneous forecasts stick out from the observed reality like the spiky outer armor of hedgehogs.
END FEDERAL CONTROL OF TRIBAL LANDS
There are 326 Native American reservations across the country with a total of approximately 1,150,000 residents, and another four million Native Americans living outside of these reservations. The Navajo Nation reservation is the largest and covers 27,413 square miles, the size of the Netherlands and Belgium combined. These reservations are considered “domestic dependent nations,” and are under the trust of the Department of the Interior. Native American tribes cannot freely access the massive natural resource reserves under their own land, or develop the land itself, without permission from the Department of the Interior, and so the federal government has locked them into a state of perpetual bureaucratic repression.
Elizabeth Warren Shows Us Why Government Must Get Out of the Student Loan Business
As candidates in the 2020 Democrat primary race try to outbid each other with grandiose promises to voters, the rising level of student loan debt makes for attractive campaign fodder. Making headlines with a plan aimed at addressing the student loan problem is Elizabeth Warren, whose loan forgiveness plan already enjoys the support of more than half the voting population, even among those who do not have student loans. It’s no mystery why the policy is popular. With government-guaranteed access to loans, combined with a culture that inundates young people with the idea that success depends on a college degree—any college degree—there has been little restraint on borrowing, creating a cycle of rising tuition that necessitates ever-larger loans. Making the situation worse, the consequent increase in university education has effectively eliminated any potential financial return on non-STEM degrees. The problem has begun to reach a tipping point, with “strategic default” becoming a cultural norm .
