Tax-Feeders Get a Pay Raise

Unemployment is in the double digits, and yet Washington goes ahead and gives those already living off their fellow citizens a pay raise.

Thank Goodness for That Stimulus!

Yeah. Right.



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What Our Coins Say About Us

Michael Nystrom reviews Charles Goyette's book, The Dollar Meltdown: Surviving the Impending Currency Crisis with Gold, Oil, and Other Unconventional Investments. He quotes one passage in the book that "poignantly summarizes America's journey though the designs on our coinage":

America's earliest coins portrayed Liberty. Not rulers and politicians. Just Liberty. A symbolic representation of the country's highest ideal. In the beginning, Americans had an affair of the heart with Liberty. She was their muse and they were aflame in their love for her. They talked about her everywhere, in their churches and taverns and town squares.

But she hasn't appeared on our circulation coinage for more than sixty years, not since the beautiful "Walking Liberty" half-dollar. It represented Liberty striding gracefully into the rising sun of the future, arm extended in peace and carrying a bounty of riches. It was a beautiful representation, because abundance accompanies Liberty wherever she goes. Our devotion would be no less if it were not true, but it is one of her secrets: Liberty creates prosperity. ...

... Today's coinage, looking each year more like subway tokens, celebrate the state. Just as words replace deeds and paper substitutes for gold, politicians have displaced ideals. The American state, which was created to serve Liberty, is now commemorated instead.

Read Nystrom's review here.

Archaeologists have long understood the value of coins. The images depicted on them can reveal much about a particular civilization's culture and tradition. It doesn't require much effort to imagine what future generations will conclude about us based on the way our coins idolize the state.

What Stimulus?

Obama was right. The stimulus bill really did affect jobs:

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Government Handouts Create Chaos

More on this story here and here.

Now Showing at Liberty Theater: The Incredible Bread Machine

The Incredible Bread Machine, the classic educational film on liberty and capitalism from 1975, is available for viewing here.

Peter Schiff on "The Daily Show"

The Death of American Capitalism

There is no question that American capitalism as we once knew it is dead. How did it happen? Russian blogger Mat Rodina provides an interesting perspective:

First, the population was dumbed down through a politicized and substandard education system based on pop culture, rather then the classics. Americans know more about their favorite TV dramas then the drama in DC that directly affects their lives. They care more for their "right" to choke down a McDonald's burger or a BurgerKing burger than for their constitutional rights. Then they turn around and lecture us about our rights and about our "democracy". Pride blindeth the foolish.

Then their faith in God was destroyed, until their churches, all tens of thousands of different "branches and denominations" were for the most part little more then Sunday circuses and their televangelists and top protestant mega preachers were more then happy to sell out their souls and flocks to be on the "winning" side of one pseudo Marxist politician or another. Their flocks may complain, but when explained that they would be on the "winning" side, their flocks were ever so quick to reject Christ in hopes for earthly power. Even our Holy Orthodox churches are scandalously liberalized in America.

The final collapse has come with the election of Barrack Obama. His speed in the past three months has been truly impressive. His spending and money printing has been a record setting, not just in America's short history but in the world. If this keeps up for more then another year, and there is no sign that it will not, America at best will resemble the Wiemar Republic and at worst Zimbabwe.

Read the full article here.

How an Economy Grows and Why It Doesn't

How an Economy Grows and Why It Doesn't - Irwin Schiff

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Business eBooks Business-Economics economics austrian s

Ron Paul on Bill Maher's Show

Why So Many People Prefer Government Handouts to Real Jobs

A brilliant observation by Dr. Raymond Stantz in Ghostbusters:

Talk About Free market

Mises.org is going open source.

If You Really Want an Economic Stimulus...

...start cutting back on the number of government employees.

First of all, these public sector jobs are virtually unaffected by free market principles. It's all political. Secondly, many of these government workers are guaranteed hefty pensions when they retire, regardless of the state of the economy in the real world.

If you want to see where a lot of your tax dollars are going, take a look at this article in Forbes. Though the article barely scratches the surface, the comments section has already received quite a few gripes from those who live off the money taken by force from ordinary citizens. Some even play the "we're risking our lives, therefore we're above criticism" card. Such is the entitlement mindset of most government employees.

Obama's Politics of Fear

Forget the message of hope Barack Obama preached during his campaign for the presidency. He's in the White House now, which means he can let his true colors begin to show. So, it was no surprise when he used his first press conference to spread a message of fear.

And what a dismal picture he painted. People can't pay their bills. They aren't spending, and businesses are being forced to lay off workers as a result. He drew attention to the fact that last month we lost 598,000 jobs (or 500 million, according to Nancy Pelosi). Everywhere you look it's doom and gloom.

But wait...there may be hope for the economy after all. Why not let the government kiss it and make it better? The president didn't mince words, saying that "at this particular moment, with the private sector so weakened by this recession, the federal government is the only entity left with the resources to jolt our economy back to life." Oh, yay. We're saved.

Interestingly, no mention was made about what these "resources" are or where the nearly $1 trillion will come from to pay for this pork-filled spending package. That's because the federal government has no resources of its own. It produces nothing. It must borrow the money from foreign sources and increase the national debt, print more money and further devalue the dollar, or simply steal it from productive citizens, which defeats the whole purpose of trying to get people to consume more.

The fact of the matter is that this "stimulus" package is nothing more than a wealth redistribution scheme, the largest in our nation's history. But it will sell because people are gullible when they're afraid.

Just as Dubya frightened people into thinking that it was a good idea to send teenage girls overseas to keep us safe from the Axis of Evil, Obama is scaring people into believing that spending money we don't have (i.e. doing exactly what got us into this mess in the first place) will actually prevent economic collapse. Either our new president is pitifully ignorant, or he thinks we are. But one thing is certain: you can count on him exploiting our fears for as long as he can.

We Are All Socialists Now

So says Newsweek:

All of this is unfolding in an economy that can no longer be understood, even in passing, as the Great Society vs. the Gipper. Whether we like it or not -- or even whether many people have thought much about it or not -- the numbers clearly suggest that we are headed in a more European direction. A decade ago U.S. government spending was 34.3 percent of GDP, compared with 48.2 percent in the euro zone -- a roughly 14-point gap, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. In 2010 U.S. spending is expected to be 39.9 percent of GDP, compared with 47.1 percent in the euro zone -- a gap of less than 8 points. As entitlement spending rises over the next decade, we will become even more French.

No Cutbacks for Uncle Sam

While private (i.e. legitimate) companies are being forced to lay off workers due to the economic downturn caused by Washington's incessant meddling, the parasitic federal workforce is actually growing.

Abortion Funding Part of Democrat Stimulus Plan

Why? Because children are a drag on financial resources, and with the government funding just about everything under the sun, expect to see more of this in the future.

When watching this video clip, keep in mind that terms like "family planning services" and "contraception" are pro-choice euphemisms for infanticide:

Ain't change wonderful?

Peter Schiff Has the Solution for Our Economic Woes

Spend less, not more.

Obama's Idea of Change: A Government-Run Bank

From Reuters:

The incoming Obama administration is considering setting up a government-run bank to acquire bad assets clogging the financial system, a person familiar with the Obama team's thinking said on Saturday.

The U.S. Federal Reserve, Treasury and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp have been in talks about ways to ease a banking crisis that is once again deepening -- and a government-run "aggregator bank" is among the options.

Outgoing Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair both said on Friday a government bank was one of a number of ideas U.S. regulators had been discussing.

The source said advisers to President-elect Barack Obama, who takes office on Tuesday, were also considering the idea of an aggregator bank among a range of options that could be pursued.

With the government taking over more and more of the economy, soon "change" is all we'll have left.

Recession is the Cure

According to economist Peter Schiff, a recession is what's needed at this point in time. He writes:

By borrowing more than it can ever pay back, the government will guarantee higher inflation for years to come, thereby diminishing the value of all that Americans have saved and acquired. For now the inflationary tide is being held back by the countervailing pressures of bursting asset bubbles in real estate and stocks, forced liquidations in commodities, and troubled retailers slashing prices to unload excess inventory. But when the dust settles, trillions of new dollars will remain, chasing a diminished supply of goods. We will be left with 1970s-style stagflation, only with a much sharper contraction and significantly higher inflation.

The good news is that economics is not all that complicated. The bad news is that our economy is broken and there is nothing the government can do to fix it. However, the free market does have a cure: it's called a recession, and it's not fun, easy or quick. But if we put our faith in the power of government to make the pain go away, we will live with the consequences for generations.