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from Competitive Enterprise Institute
Thirty-six states and the District of Columbia today filed an antitrust lawsuit against Google over its control over the company’s app platform for Android, Google Play. Director of CEI’s Center for Technology and Innovation Jessica Melugin said: “The state’s case against Google is about app developers, who would likely not have had the mass distribution nor the profits without the extensive distribution advantage of the Play Store, wanting to change the rules mid-stream. Not only are there already other alternatives for down loading these apps on Android devices, but consumers benefit from the security, privacy and convenience of centralized payment systems. US antitrust law should protect consumers, not renegotiate private business arrangements via government meddling.”
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from Mises Institute
RIGHT-CENTER BIAS, MIXED
Classical Natural Law and Libertarian Theory
Keynes Said Inflation Fixed the Problems of Sticky Wages. He Was Wrong.
RIGHT-CENTER BIAS, MIXED
Classical Natural Law and Libertarian Theory
If libertarianism wishes to give up modern political categories, it has to think about law in a different way. Murray N. Rothbard, the most important exponent of the radical libertarian school, is right when he rejects the historicism and relativism of legal realism and when—for the same reasons—he criticizes Hayek and Leoni. But unfortunately, he does not really grasp the function of the evolution into classic natural law. Furthermore, his idea of building a libertarian code is completely inconsistent with his frequent references to the Greek and Christian legal heritage.
Money supply growth slowed again in May, falling for the third month in a row, and to a 15-month low. That is, money supply growth in the US has come down from its unprecedented levels, and if the current trend continues will be returning to more "normal" levels. Yet, even with this slowdown, money-supply growth remains near some of the highest levels recorded in past cycles. During May 2021, year-over-year (YOY) growth in the money supply was at 15.3 percent. That's down from April's rate of 23.1 percent, and down from the May 2020 rate of 29.5 percent. Growth peaked in February 2021 at 39.2 percent.
Keynes Said Inflation Fixed the Problems of Sticky Wages. He Was Wrong.
Britain’s economy had been suffering chronic unemployment for a decade prior to 1936. Economic theory as it was then understood clearly showed that the cause of a market surplus was sellers asking a price in excess of what buyers are willing to pay. If buyers and sellers simply disagree, then so be it. But if the situation is aggravated by excessive regulation or other institutional problems, then economists would advise dissolving institutional barriers that prevent the smooth functioning of the market price system. Contemporary British economists were aware that labor union contracts fixed wages above market-clearing levels and that unemployment subsidies were a factor in preventing labor markets from clearing. The revolutionary John Maynard Keynes rejected the orthodox view. In his 1936 book The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, he proposed a wholly different approach. While carefully obscured in a sophisticated model, Keynes’s solution was simple: to leave nominal wages alone, but lower real wages through inflation. If business firms understood the difference, then when real wages reached an attractive level, they would begin to hire at the union pay scale.
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from New York Times
Newspaper in New York
Newspaper in New York
Guest Essay by Noah Millman: From its beginning, the United States was built to expand. Article IV, Section 3 of the Constitution grants Congress the power to create states. Starting with the Vermont Republic in 1791, as America grew, the country’s roster of states expanded as well. But since the addition of Alaska and Hawaii in 1959, America hasn’t increased the number of states, and unless some future president winds up buying Greenland, the United States is unlikely to expand territorially. Nonetheless it continues to expand — demographically. Since 1960, the country has added over 150 million people through a combination of immigration and natural population increase. Yet we haven’t upped our state count. This is a problem. America needs new states not only to provide representation for those living in territories but also more urgently to provide adequate representation to those who have congressional representation but whose votes perversely carry less weight because of their state’s size. And America needs new states to improve the internal governance of the states and the country. We need new states — and the place to start is to carve them out of the largest states that already exist. Since 1980, about 40 percent of America’s population growth has accrued to only three megastates: California, Texas and Florida. California has more than eight times the population of the median U.S. state; on its own, Los Angeles County would be the 10th-largest state in the union. The four largest states by population now make up roughly one-third of the population of the entire United States — more than the smallest 34 put together.
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from The Spokesman-Review
Newspaper in Spokane, Washington
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from U.S. Department of the Interior
The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Spokane District will increase fire restrictions on public lands administered by the BLM and the Bureau of Reclamation (BOR) in eastern Washington. The fire restrictions order has been modified to prohibit the building, maintaining, attending or using a fire, including charcoal briquette fires, even when contained within provided metal rings. The temporary ban will take effect July 8, 2021 at 12:01 a.m. in the following counties: Adams, Asotin, Benton, Chelan, Columbia, Douglas, Ferry, Franklin, Garfield, Grant, Kittitas, Klickitat, Lincoln, Okanogan, Pend Oreille, Spokane, Stevens, Walla Walla, Whitman, and Yakima.
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from The Wall Street Journal
Because lives matter, New York City Democrats have decided that Gotham’s next mayor should be a former cop. Like the residents of other U.S. locales suffering pandemic violence following the political left’s successful 2020 campaign against law enforcement, New Yorkers are voting to refund the police. The latest news follows a Republican mayoral nomination for the founder of the Guardian Angels. There is finally bipartisan agreement in New York City: The next mayor must enable police to protect the citizenry.
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