If Bernie were paying attention, there is a minimum wage experiment going in real time in Venezuela right now. Sure, there’s some serious money printing going on there and plenty of socialist schemes to keep the shelves empty. However, the fact there’s nothing to buy hasn’t kept Venezuelan president Maduro from hiking that country’s minimum wage 24 times since 2013 when he took office.
Las Vegas hotels are more in the space renting business than the games of chance business. Want a place to sit while you tan at Encore? Ms. Bond writes, “Prices can range from $5,000-ish for a daybed to $10,000 for a “water couch,” a 10-person table-sofa-lounge combo situated in a shallow part of the pool.”
U.S. Consumers and their lenders are seeing the world through Trump’s rose colored glasses. So much to buy and not enough time to save for it! Plus, the Fed’s inflation will chip away at their debts.
However, entrepreneurs and business people cannot lie around the market. If they make outlandish promises, the markets punish them. Ask Elon Musk, whose Tesla Trump trick recently flopped.
Trade wars create winners and losers, at home and abroad. American consumers lose, as the prices are hiked while capital and labor are misallocated. This makes everyone, over time, poorer--even the tier two real estate developer.
Caplan explains, “Graduation tells employers, ‘I take social norms seriously--and have the brains and work ethic to comply’ Quitting tells employers, ‘I scorn social norms--or lack the brains and work ethic to comply.’”
Quart claims members of the middle class are happy idiots, encouraged to do what they love, while being pummeled by capitalism, no union protections, and a frayed social safety net.
With Royal Caribbean's business plan evidently to make sure its passengers have every opportunity to remain intoxicated for the duration of the entire voyage, it was the rare out-of-step, teetotaling cruiser who is up by 7:00 am to walk the narrow, cobblestone streets of Old San Juan.
Actual free trade would be a brash approach, not going full blown Smoot-Hawley. But don’t try to convince the guys on the Banner shop floor of any economics 101 mumbo-jumbo .
There’s plenty of blather that Trump is breaking with presidential norms by criticizing Jerome Powell’s rate hikes, but, the Donald is merely channeling Richard Nixon. When Nixon appointed Arthur Burns to be Fed Chair in October of 1969, Burns was soaking up the applause during the announcement of his appointment when Nixon broke in, saying, “You see, Dr. Burns, that is a standing vote of appreciation in advance for lower interest rates and more money.” Later, in private, Nixon told his new Fed Chair, “You see to it: no recession”
Ronaldo and Messi take elaborate steps to keep money they’ve earned away from the government of Spain. Bagus and his colleagues point out the benefits of their actions. “Lacking a removal or reduction in tax levels, evasion will allow for an at least partial reinstatement of individuals’ rights of association, with resultant improvements in ethical considerations as well as economic efficiency.”
The primary problem is size itself. Ludwig von Mises explained that socialism doesn’t work because there was no market to determine prices and thus calculate how resources should be used. Behemoth companies are no more immune than government bureaucracies.
Consumers decide what they will pay and determine value. Tariffs, the use of political force, determines where the buyer’s proceeds end up. Favored industries receive more and the entrepreneurs receive less, lowering their profits and making them less likely to take future risks in a similar political climate. As a real estate developer, the President should know better.
Hayek wrote that psychopaths, er politicians, have to “weld together a closely coherent body of supporters”...appealing “to a common human weakness. It seems to be easier for people to agree on a negative programme – on the hatred of an enemy, on the envy of the better off – than on any positive task.”
Rothbard’s reservation was, "There are increasing tendencies for the Panthers to abandon black nationalism almost completely for the Old Left virus of black-white Marxist working-class action." He wisely noted "an unfortunate eagerness to reach out and make alliances with white radicals,
The markets believe Mr. Powell is cooking his porridge just right--not too hot, not too cold--and, most importantly, not blow up the stove, or the whole house.
It used to be that the only stick men that mattered were at the city’s craps tables pushing dice and barking “new shooter coming out.” A hockey puck was what Don Rickles called the dim witted. Now the town is cuckoo for hockey as the Golden Knights skate against Washington D.C.’s Capitals for the Stanley Cup.
At the end of last year, Deutsche’s U.S. operations had $7.3 billion of equity supporting $148 billion of assets, or 20 to 1 leverage. Then there is the derivatives exposure of $50 trillion (with a T).
Despite a shortage of labor, builders have pulled over 4,000 permits for new home construction through this year’s first four months a 33 percent increase from a year ago. Andrew and Dennis Smith ominously write, “This also marks the first time since 2007 that we have reported more than 1,000 permits pulled in two consecutive months.”
After Wolfe’s passing, I read his last, “The Kingdom of Speech,” a book that was reportedly “not well received by critics.” Many of his books weren’t “well received” yet sold well enough for him to live in a 12-room apartment in New York.
