Keynes v. Hayek, Round 2
Another excellent video from our Keynes v. Hayek rappers:
Ron Paul, Spitzer, and the General Welfare Clause
In view of the following exchange between Ron Paul and Elliot Spitzer, we should revisit the meaning of the Constitution’s “general welfare” clause. Take a look:
Let’s say you are an account receivables worker in a small business. On your first day on the job, your boss walks up to you and says “Jimmy, as an accounts receivables manager at this company, you have the power to charge our clients and send them bills to provide the operating income of our widget factory, to pay our debts, and to provide for the general welfare of this company, but all bills you send out must be according to the the number and price of widgets that the client has purchased.”
Did your boss just give you permission to set up a retirement plan for all the company’s workers? Modern constitutional law scholars say yes, but Thomas Jefferson thinks they’re wrong.
The Debt Ceiling and the Budget Debate
For those of us who are aware that the Federal Government has run up an astounding $14.3 trillion dollar debt (http://www.usdebtclock.org/), it might come as somewhat of a surprise that there is such a thing as a “debt ceiling”–which is a maximum amount which the Treasury can borrow. Of course, this is a surprise only if you’ve been living under a proverbial rock for the last six months (or during any of the political wrangling over the last 79 changes to the debt ceiling). As a sum of all the hemming and hawing by political figures such as Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, we are led to believe one thing: failure to raise the debt ceiling will lead to certain financial armageddon.
To address the problem with the Federal Budget and the debt ceiling, let us consider a few points.
“Slam” Slammed
I’ve noticed an increasing prevalence of the use of the word “slammed” in news articles. To illustrate, I did a quick Google news search for the use of the word “slammed” in the last 24 hours, with over 15,000 results. Below is a quick list of some of these headlines that use the word “slam” inappropriately, with some suggested corrections.
History (of Money and Banking by Rothbard) Repeating Itself
Decades ago, when discussing the causes of the Great Depression, Murray Rothbard unwittingly wrote an editorial piece fit for today’s newspapers.
Below is an excerpt from Murray Rothbard’s History of Money and Banking from the Colonial Era to World War II. The book itself was published posthumously by the Mises institute in 2002 after Rothbard’s death in 1995 and is a compilation of various of his available manuscripts. I have taken the liberty of updating some of the text in red parentheticals where appropriate.