Every one of us obeys laws with which he does not agree, and takes advantage of incentives which, if he were the decision-maker, would not exist. If you don’t believe me, ask George Soros whether his income tax return includes deductions.

I think that a lot of structural changes are taking place that are driving the marginal product of many workers well below their opportunity cost. Their lost output is not missed terribly much, because productivity is doing so well elsewhere.

It is beyond stupid to demand terms so onerous they cannot possibly be paid back.

Every government-employee union is a political machine that lobbies relentlessly for higher taxes, increased government spending, more featherbedding, and more pension promises – while demonizing hesitant taxpayers as uncaring enemies of children, the elderly, and the poor (who are purportedly “served” by the government bureaucrats the unions represent). It is the old socialist trick that Frédéric Bastiat wrote about in his famous essay, The Law: The unions view advocates of school privatization, not as legitimate critics of a failed system, but as haters of children. And the unions treat critics of the welfare state, not as persons concerned with the destruction of the work ethic and of the family that has been caused by the welfare state, but as enemies of the poor. This charade is over. American taxpayers finally seem to be aware that they are the servants, not the masters, of government at all levels. Government-employee unions have played a key role in causing bankruptcy in most American states, and their pleas for more bailouts financed by endless tax increases are finally ringing hollow.

What cannot be paid back, won’t, and pretending that it will just makes problems worse.

Again, we need to be mindful of what is “inflation:” it is always an increase in money supply. One of the effects of inflation is price increases. Other effects, even more serious, include the destruction of real capital (that is, capital saved from production or labor, not from printing fiat money). The destruction of real capital accompanying inflation is the only explanation for stagflation. The result of an oil shock will add to our economic woes, compounding the recessionary side of stagflation. There has been a lot of buzz about stagflation in the mainstream media lately. Most economists pooh-pooh the idea. The reason is that they don’t understand inflation, mostly confusing price increases as a cause of something bad rather than an effect of something bad.

We have tried buy local before. It is called the Middle Ages.

All the gold ever mined would only fill one large swimming pool, and most of that gold is still recoverable.

In this world, when you tax a citizen a bit less to try to generate economic growth, you are not taking less from the taxpayer but “stealing” from a third party who at some point in his life was told he had an indelible right to your wallet, no matter the cost. And if you don’t hand it over? Well, even though Wisconsin is home to some of the nation’s highest taxes, and even though the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported that tax cuts were “not even in effect yet, so they cannot be part of the current problem,” you can’t stop unionists from blaming “giveaways” to the rich.