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from FEE (Foundation for Economic Education)
RIGHT-CENTER BIAS, HIGH, non-profit organization
Oil prices hit a 6-year high this week as talks between OPEC and its allies (collectively known as OPEC+) broke down. The intergovernmental organization was expected to establish higher output targets among its member nations to meet the increasing global demand for oil, but talks were abandoned after Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates failed to resolve a dispute over oil production levels. Though oil is always a tricky market, it has been especially difficult to navigate during the pandemic. “OPEC+ took historic measures in April 2020 and removed nearly 10 million barrels per day of production in an effort to support prices as demand for petroleum-products plummeted,” CNBC reports. “Since then, the group has been slowly returning barrels to the market, while meeting on a near monthly basis to discuss output policy.” ... If it seems odd that OPEC has so much power over the oil industry, well, it should.
If you don’t spend your days on TikTok or Reddit, you may be blissfully unaware of a growing movement urging people to quit their jobs en masse this fall. It’s called “The Great Resignation of 2021,” and for businesses already struggling to attract workers back to the office it could spell very bad news. The social media trend coincides with broader disruptions in the labor market. Monster, a global employment website, recently reported 95 percent of employees are considering changing jobs. This is on top of the 4 million people who already followed through and resigned in April. The country’s labor market is in a precarious position. The policies of the pandemic spurred the sharpest economic contraction in US history, millions lost their jobs and are still out of work, and yet businesses have been unable to fill their open positions. ... Central planners were warned that these kinds of problems would result from their policies, and yet they persisted anyway. As a result, it is likely we will all continue to see supply shortages and an increase in the price of goods and services.
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from HumanProgress.org
Education Website
Revelations of graveyards containing the bodies of some 4,000 children from the First Nations in Canada have shocked the world. The dead were some of the 150,000 indigenous children sent or forcibly taken to residential schools meant to divorce the former from their birth culture. The graves represent the injustice and misery of the past, but our reaction to them is proof of our advancement. In pre-industrial times, child deaths were so common that those graves wouldn’t have shocked anyone. In fact, a death rate of some three percent of children is low by historical standards. It was only in the past 50 or 60 years that the child mortality rate fell below 3 percent – even in rich countries. The usual estimation is that half of all children died before adulthood in archaic societies, one quarter before their first birthday and another quarter before the age of 15, which is the end of puberty and our reasonable definition of becoming an adult. That seems to hold over all societies examined, including the Roman Empire, 18th century Britain, and all other groups of humans over time. (It is also, roughly speaking, true of the other Great Apes.)
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from Mises Institute
RIGHT-CENTER BIAS, MIXED
The Electoral College as a Restraint on American Democracy: Its Evolution from Washington to Jackson
The growth of political parties and interest group politics, and the promotion of democracy as a fundamental principle of American government, all came as a result of the move to popular voting for president.
RIGHT-CENTER BIAS, MIXED
The Electoral College as a Restraint on American Democracy: Its Evolution from Washington to Jackson
The growth of political parties and interest group politics, and the promotion of democracy as a fundamental principle of American government, all came as a result of the move to popular voting for president.
According to a popular way of thinking, the central bank can influence the rate of economic expansion by means of monetary policy. It is also held that this influence carries a price, which manifests itself in terms of inflation. Those analysts that insist on following the Phillips curve in order to ascertain the future course of the momentum of prices of goods are deceiving themselves.
In his book Denationalisation of Money, F.A. Hayek argued that governments have never devoted their power to providing proper money over time. They “have refrained from grossly abusing it only when they were under such a discipline as the gold standard imposed.”1 The gold backing of the US dollar as the global reserve currency was lifted in the early 1970s, and paper currencies, so-called fiat currencies, have since become the norm. Following this decision, the paper currencies have dramatically lost value against gold (figure 1). Since the turn of the millennium, this process has substantially accelerated.
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from The Spokesman-Review
Newspaper in Spokane, Washington
There may not be five political love languages but there are at least two: more government and less government. Blue political love is expressed and received through new federal and state initiatives, believing in both the responsibility and power of government to fix people problems. Red political love focuses on individual responsibility and is skeptical of the government’s ability to act effectively, as expressed by the punchline “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” The result is Democrats accusing Republicans of not caring about an issue when they oppose a bill with an attractive title because they don’t think it will work, and Republicans accusing Democrats of not caring about whether it works or not as long as it sounds good. America needs relationship counseling.
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