Or was it Richard Milhous Lenin?
Well, here proof that price controls don't work:
Nixon’s wage and price controls included a freeze on wages, prices, rents, and extended to calling for a freeze of corporate dividends. He also announced the creation of a "Cost of Living Council," that would be run by Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy Dick Cheney. Although Nixon’s August 1971 announcement was for a 90-day price freeze, the program went through four separate phases that lasted ten time that long, until April 1974. An iatrogenic disease is one introduced by the treatment of a physician. If rising prices were the ailment from which the economy suffered, Nixon’s prescription of wage and price controls proved to be bad medicine with its own iatrogenic disease. Its most debilitating symptom? Shortages.
Costs of some raw materials such as cotton were allowed to rise, but the costs of finished products made of those materials were not. So the finished goods were not made. Store shelves emptied. Farmers discovered it cost more to raise poultry than they could recoup selling it at the controlled prices. Chickens were drowned before they consumed more costly feed. The same thing happened with ranchers and feedlots that would lose money bringing cattle to market at the controlled prices. There were low prices for beef posted in the supermarkets, but the meat counters were empty. Because Nixon was afraid of political reaction to the creation of swarms of officers and price inspectors crawling under the tables and peering from behind curtains at every American business transaction, he styled the mandatory price controls as "voluntary." But they were only voluntary in the sense that paying income taxes is "voluntary." And he held the threat of IRS audits over businesses that failed to comply.
Another chapter from the bitter legacy of the Central Bank.
Friday, February 25, 2011
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Monday, February 21, 2011
Thursday, February 17, 2011
More Evidence
That "public" schools have turned into police state prisons.
Things have gotten so bad that it doesn’t even take a toy gun to raise the ire of school officials. A high school sophomore was suspended for violating the school’s no-cell-phone policy after he took a call from his father, a master sergeant in the U.S. Army who was serving in Iraq at the time. A 12-year-old New York student was hauled out of school in handcuffs for doodling on her desk with an erasable marker. In Houston, an 8th grader was suspended for wearing rosary beads to school in memory of her grandmother (the school has a zero tolerance policy against the rosary, which the school insists can be interpreted as a sign of gang involvement). Six-year-old Cub Scout Zachary Christie was sentenced to 45 days in reform school after bringing a camping utensil to school that can serve as a fork, knife or spoon. And in Oklahoma, school officials suspended a first grader simply for using his hand to simulate a gun.
What these incidents, all the result of overzealous school officials and inflexible zero tolerance policies, make clear is that we have moved into a new paradigm in America where young people are increasingly viewed as suspects and treated as criminals by school officials and law enforcement alike.
Uncle Adolf and Uncle Joe would be so proud.
Things have gotten so bad that it doesn’t even take a toy gun to raise the ire of school officials. A high school sophomore was suspended for violating the school’s no-cell-phone policy after he took a call from his father, a master sergeant in the U.S. Army who was serving in Iraq at the time. A 12-year-old New York student was hauled out of school in handcuffs for doodling on her desk with an erasable marker. In Houston, an 8th grader was suspended for wearing rosary beads to school in memory of her grandmother (the school has a zero tolerance policy against the rosary, which the school insists can be interpreted as a sign of gang involvement). Six-year-old Cub Scout Zachary Christie was sentenced to 45 days in reform school after bringing a camping utensil to school that can serve as a fork, knife or spoon. And in Oklahoma, school officials suspended a first grader simply for using his hand to simulate a gun.
What these incidents, all the result of overzealous school officials and inflexible zero tolerance policies, make clear is that we have moved into a new paradigm in America where young people are increasingly viewed as suspects and treated as criminals by school officials and law enforcement alike.
Uncle Adolf and Uncle Joe would be so proud.
Thursday, February 10, 2011
How The Fed Fuels Unemployment
Author Thomas J. DiLorenzo testified on Wednesday before the Committe on Financial Services, Subcommittee on Domestic Monetary Policy and Technology.
Pro Libertate: Let's Play "Name That Arab Despotism"!
Pro Libertate: Let's Play "Name That Arab Despotism"!
I wonder what's next, a new TV game show entiled "Where's Hosni?"
I wonder what's next, a new TV game show entiled "Where's Hosni?"
Monday, February 7, 2011
Saturday, February 5, 2011
Thursday, February 3, 2011
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