Tag Archives: government

Kill the Rich, Confiscate All S&P 500 Profits, and Pay the Debt?

 

and

and

The National Debt and Federal Budget Deficit Deconstructed – Tony Robbins

Tony Robbins deconstructs our debt and deficit problem. How long could we fund our government if we took 100% of all income and assets of the rich and the S&P 500 companies? Two Years? Ten Years?  The answer would shock you–five months. But then what would we do the following year after all the wealth has been confiscated and sold? A fascinating 19 minute video with Tony Robbins: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jboTeS9Okak

Inflation, Price Controls and Rome; Tweedy Browne, TAVF

My last mention of the Roman Empire, http://wp.me/p1PgpH-vM.

The fall of the Roman Empire ushered in the Dark Ages (Wow! Now THAT is a bear market–an age of fear, despair, fiefdoms, and darkness)  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Ages_(historiography)

If Only Edward Gibbon Could Have Read Mises

By Daniel J. Sanchez at www.mises.org

Monday, June 4th, 2012

Thanks to Ed Smith for pointing out this passage in the Decline of the Rome Wikipedia article:

Historian Michael Rostovtzeff and economist Ludwig von Mises both argued that unsound economic policies played a key role in the impoverishment and decay of the Roman Empire. According to them, by the 2nd century AD, the Roman Empire had developed a complex market economy in which trade was relatively free. Tariffs were low and laws controlling the prices of foodstuffs and other commodities had little impact because they did not fix the prices significantly below their market levels. After the 3rd century, however, debasement of the currency (i.e., the minting of coins with diminishing content of gold, silver, and bronze) led to inflation. The price control laws then resulted in prices that were significantly below their free-market equilibrium levels. It should, however, be noted that Constantine initiated a successful reform of the currency which was completed before the barbarian invasions of the 4th century, and that thereafter the currency remained sound everywhere that remained within the empire until at least the 11th century – at any rate for gold coins. According to Rostovtzeff and Mises, artificially low prices led to the scarcity of foodstuffs, particularly in cities, whose inhabitants depended on trade to obtain them. Despite laws passed to prevent migration from the cities to the countryside, urban areas gradually became depopulated and many Roman citizens abandoned their specialized trades to practice subsistence agriculture. This, coupled with increasingly oppressive and arbitrary taxation, led to a severe net decrease in trade, technical innovation, and the overall wealth of the Empire.[8]

The passage of Human Action in which Mises discusses the decline and fall of Rome was recently featured as a Mises Daily.

Tweedy Browne Annual Report:

http://www.tweedy.com/resources/library

_docs/reports/TBFundsAnnualReportMarch2012.pdf

Third Avenue Value Funds 2nd Qtr. Report: http://www.thirdave.com/ta/documents/reports/TAF%202Q%202012%20Shareholder%20Letters.pdf

The Crisis of Interventionism and Government Spending

There are two articles that pertain to our current economic crisis from two outstanding writers, Henry Hazlitt and Ludwig von Mises.

I combined both of these excellent articles for easier reading in a PDF here: Govt Spending and Deficits

What Government Spending and Deficits Will do by Henry Hazlitt

http://www.thefreemanonline.org/features/what-spending-and-deficits-do/

Henry Hazlitt, noted economist, author, editor, reviewer and columnist, is well-known to readers of the New York Times, Newsweek, The Freeman, Barron’s, Human Events and many others. Best known of his books are Economics in One Lesson, The Failure of the “New Economics,” The Foundations of Morality, and What You should Know About Inflation.

The direct cause of inflation is the issuance of an excessive amount of paper money. The most frequent cause of the issuance of too much paper money is a government budget deficit.

The majority of economists have long recognized this, but the majority of politicians have studiously ignored it. One result, in this age of inflation, is that economists have tended to put too much emphasis on the evils of deficits as such and too little emphasis on the evils of excessive government spending, whether the budget is balanced or not.

So it is desirable to begin with the question, What is the effect of government spending on the economy–even if it is wholly covered by tax revenues?

The economic effect of government spending depends on what the spending is for, compared with what the private spending it displaces would be for. To the extent that the government uses its tax-raised money to provide more urgent services for the community than the taxpayers themselves otherwise would or could have provided, the government spending is beneficial to the community. To the extent that the government provides policemen and judges to prevent or mitigate force, theft, and fraud, it protects and encourages production and welfare. The same applies, up to a certain point, to what the government pays out to provide armies and armament against foreign aggression. It applies also to the provision by city governments of sidewalks, streets, and sewers, and to the provision by States of roads, parkways, and bridges.

But government expenditure even on necessary types of service may easily become excessive. Sometimes it may be difficult to measure exactly where the point of excess begins. It is to be hoped, for example, that armies and armament may never need to be used, but it does not follow that providing them is mere waste. They are a form of insurance premium; and in this world of nuclear warfare and incendiary slogans it is not easy to say how big a premium is enough. The exigencies of politicians seeking re-election, of course, may very quickly lead to unneeded roads and other public works.

von Mises on The Crisis of Government Interventionism

http://www.mises.org/daily/6030/The-Crisis-of-Interventionism

Mises in Human Action (1949) explains how repeated failures of government interventions just bring forth more cries for intervention by government propagandists.  Massive bailouts for banks and auto companies will always be justified no matter what the outcomes.

Mises, “The interventionist policies as practiced for many decades by all governments of the capitalistic West have brought about all those effects which the economists predicted. There are wars and civil wars, ruthless oppression of the masses by clusters of self-appointed dictators, economic depressions, mass unemployment, capital consumption, famines.

However, it is not these catastrophic events which have led to the crisis of interventionism. The interventionist doctrinaires and their followers explain all these undesired consequences as the unavoidable features of capitalism. As they see it, it is precisely these disasters that clearly demonstrate the necessity of intensifying interventionism. The failures of the interventionist policies do not in the least impair the popularity of the implied doctrine. They are so interpreted as to strengthen, not to lessen, the prestige of these teachings. As a vicious economic theory cannot be simply refuted by historical experience, the interventionist propagandists have been able to go on in spite of all the havoc they have spread.”  

Sound familiar? Just read Paul Krugman’s articles: http://www.mises.org/daily/6055/Charting-Fun-with-Krugman