What’s funny is that masses are easy to manipulate, they act on impulses without pausing to think for a moment, this is how terrorists are created because people are easily enraged about some issue- they want something done desperately but can’t think of a way.

John Maynard Keynes, more than any other person, diverted economics from its task of understanding how order emerges unplanned from the self-interested and knowledge-limited choices and actions of countless individuals. Far more than Marx, the consequence of Keynes on economics has been lamentable.

North Korea’s government, after all, offers cradle-to-grave economic supervision and protection of its citizens; incomes in North Korea are quite equal; and the government there actively directs the economy.

That is a truly astonishing datapoint: An unprecedented 10 Year loss of private sector jobs going back as far as reliable data has been available.

Those who make a living from giving the appearance of caring for the poor and destitute (or who wear the fair trade t-shirts) while simultaneously lobbying for the eradication of the best opportunities that the least advantage have, should be exposed for the weakness of their morals. It is a profound weakness to prefer having the ‘right’ social image to having the nerve to confront the best evidence and to support what really works.

“Shared sacrifice” is one of the shibboleths of the redistributionist left, but the sharing always seems to stop short of the caring classes and government employees.

Half of Last Month’s New Jobs Came from a Single Employer — McDonald’s

The most critical feature of any Ponzi scheme is that the early entrants must do well. Why did people crave the privilege of entrusting their money to Bernie Madoff? Because those who did so in the beginning got wonderful returns, through good times and bad. Likewise with Medicare: those who are now enrolled in the program are consuming medical services at a rate that dwarfs the modest payments they made over their working lives. They are making out like bandits, just like Madoff’s early investors. And, exactly like Madoff’s early marks, the vast surplus they are reaping has nothing to do with any “investment” they made. Rather, it represents the government’s deliberate perpetration of a fraud–in this case, a fraud that is intended to make Medicare politically sacrosanct so that it will survive, for now, despite the fiscal train wreck that we all know is coming.

As of the close of markets Friday, Apple was worth more than Microsoft and Intel combined.