Saturday, July 24, 2021

In the news, Saturday, July 10, 2021


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JUL 09      INDEX      JUL 11
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from FEE (Foundation for Economic Education)
RIGHT-CENTER BIAS, HIGH, non-profit organization

The American Federation of Teachers (AFT), which is the second-largest teachers union in the country, recently announced their new "campaign to ‘stamp out racism.'" While that sounds innocent enough — we should all oppose racism, of course — the details are quite troubling. The centerpiece of their campaign is the release of an AFT edition of the book Stamped, by the well-known activist Ibram X. Kendi and writer Jayson Reynolds. ... But any campaign looking to promote Ibram X. Kendi’s particular brand of antiracism should be approached with extreme skepticism, especially when it is aimed at our children’s schools. After all, Kendi is a truly radical figure who openly embraces racial discrimination.

It’s unfortunately par for the course in recent history for American presidents to pursue unilateral executive action instead of the more difficult, yet constitutionally preferable, business of working with Congress to pass legislation.  Intended to “establish a whole-of-government effort to promote competition in the American economy,” President Biden’s latest sweeping executive orders are just the latest example.  The vast set of orders contains 72 different initiatives involving more than a dozen different federal agencies. It starts at least from an agreeable, if vague, premise: promoting competition in the economy. Left-leaning economists and free-market economists alike would agree that, generally speaking, competition in markets fosters more innovation, lower prices, and better outcomes compared to monopolies or markets otherwise dominated by a select few industry giants.

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If there is one thing every honest money-saving advisor would agree on, it's that a payday loan is a bad idea. Taking a high interest loan backed by nothing but your word to pay off your current account to fuel consumption with no capital investment is just leading you on the road to ruin. However this simple message of living within one’s means does not seem to have reached the gilded ears of central banks and governments around the world. As inflation rises (who could have guessed the borrowing binge of 2021 would have resulted in higher inflation?), both the EU and American governments are now caught between a rock and … well, a rock.
Review: Curiosity and Its Twelve Rules for Life by F. H. Buckley
Frank Buckley, a Canadian-born lawyer who teaches at the Scalia School of Law at George Mason University, has given us in this remarkable book a philosophy of life, based on unusually wide knowledge and penetrating reflection. In what follows, I shall discuss only a few of the topics he covers, concentrating on his observations about politics and economics. In doing so, I risk conveying a wrong impression of the book, as these topics by no means exhaust it; but Buckley himself emphasizes the value of taking risks.

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from The Spokesman-Review
Newspaper in Spokane, Washington

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