Whatever crosses my mind.
So, yes, foreign investment in the United States is quite important for future economic growth and employment, and there are very real obstacles to reaping the full benefits of that investment, particularly as they relate to China. But those obstacles have very little to do with American “laziness” and very much to do with our arcane and often protectionist regulatory apparatus and an administration that has been slow to embrace - and at times outright hostile to - foreign investment.
In a 3-year study, EU concluded there is no evidence that drinking water can cure dehydration and has banned bottles from stating that claim. Previously, EU officials banned the selling of overly bent bananas and curved cucumbers but backed off after international ridicule. Yes, I am serious.
I add only that nothing removes the restraints on selfishness more readily and surely than does access to government power.
One hundred years ago, if you did not know what else to do, you could offer your labor to a farmer. Today, the farmer can not find anything that you can do that is worth a subsistence wage.
By my calculations, at least 10 times as many girls are now trafficked into brothels annually as African slaves were transported to the New World in the peak years of the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
In such a target rich environment,. how on earth is it possible that Bank Fraud prosecutions are dropping? It is an outrage!
Entrepreneurs are having a hard time coming up with productive uses for anyone other than health care professionals or software engineers.
It was John Maynard Keynes, a man of great intellect but limited knowledge of economic theory, who ultimately succeeded in rehabilitating a view long the preserve of cranks with whom he openly sympathised. He had attempted by a succession of new theories to justify the same, superficially persuasive, intuitive belief that had been held by many practical men before, but that will not withstand rigorous analysis of the price mechanism: just as there cannot be a uniform price for all kinds of labour, an equality of demand and supply of labour in general cannot be secured by managing aggregate demand.
from Hayek. Of course, this challenges the foundations of much modern macroeconomics.
The loss of confidence, to paraphrase Rudiger Dornbusch, takes longer to happen than you think it should and happens faster than you thought it could. Governments can finance themselves until they can’t. Risk free is risk free until it isn’t.
