Posts Tagged ‘economy’
“Seinfeld” Free Market Economics
Jerry examines a his less-than-desirable 'doo in "The Barber."
It’s not a very good time to be a free market right now. Everyone blames you for their lost jobs, their foreclosed homes, and corporate exploitation. Although this blame is misplaced, most people are fearful of the free market and don’t take the time to learn and understand that the free hand of the market benefits the consumer. The theory is simple: good products/services thrive, bad ones fail, and consumers are left with the cream of the crop.
Here’s a site with an interesting look at the economics of the popular sitcom, “Seinfeld.”
The Barber: (Competition) Jerry gets a bad haircut but refuses to change barbers because he is loyal. Eventually, he is convinced to leave his barber of 12 years for the barber’s nephew. Bad quality doesn’t persist in the marketplace; it is competed away. Perhaps the answer to bad haircuts is not more regulation, but more competition.
At last, A free market example to which everyone can relate! There’s lots of other interesting economic concepts presented here using Seinfeld. Since the show is a comedy, many of the examples are not only humorous, but memorable and can be useful in understanding free market principles.
This should come in handy during the inevitable fight over the Barbers Bailout of 2011.
(via kottke.org)
James Robertson currently attends the University of Mississippi, where he plans to receive degrees in Political Science and English. He is the President of the Ole Miss Chapter of Young Americans for Liberty.
Audit the Fed, Then End It!
There are not too many topics that Americans seem to shy away from politically. Unfortunately, however, one of those topics we don’t like to talk about just happens to be the most important. The monetary system in this country receives absolutely no airtime on the major media networks. There is no debate about monetary creation during the presidential races. And, amazingly, most Americans don’t even know where their money comes from and how it receives its value. This is a trend that truly needs to change before America will be able to break the horrid boom and bust cycle of our economy.
Too Big to Fail and Growing
We all remember the scary dooms-day rhetoric flowing from the mouths of the MSM commentators when the credit crisis finally reared its ugly head. The banks in trouble were too big to fail, and without government aid our economy would turn to dust, take the rest of the world with it, and usher in the return of Christ.
Now, according to a Washingtonpost.com article, the banks bailed out have gotten even bigger. Due to all the government aided mergers, JP Morgan Chase, Banks of America, Wells Fargo, and Citigroup are now issuing one of every two mortgages, and two of every three credit cards.
Regulators are somehow alarmed that these institution are actually growing larger and more interconnected than ever. Even more alarming, thanks to near-government granted monopoly, these large institutions have actually raised their rates while smaller institutions in America have been lowering theirs:
In the last quarter, the top four banks raised fees related to deposits by an average of 8 percent, according to research from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. Striving to stay competitive, smaller banks lowered their fees by an average of 12 percent.
So while over 70 smaller banks have been allowed to go bankrupt, and even more projected, the government is still playing favorites with the Wall Street giants. Its hard to tell somebody no when they are stuffing your pockets with campaign contributions.
Regulation Can’t Solve our Problems
How many times have we heard the mantra that the free market is incapable of regulating itself? This claim has been exposed as false many times, yet we still have people whipping up arguments that have been used for centuries to limit economic freedom and steal the power from the citizen and place it in the hands of the government.
What is most troubling is that history is always invoked as being on the side of the government. As if without Big Brother stepping in to save us from ourselves, the population would be in such a state of economic chaos we would certainly be unable to progress as a society. Of course, anybody willing to actually sift through the history will find that the main culprit in almost any economic, and especially social, catastrophe is the government itself. The same is true for the current economic downturn.
Obama’s Recovery Plan
Statistics do seem to ail governments and their projections. Here is a graph put together from PowerLine Blog. It compares Obama’s projections of unemployment with his recovery plan to the actual unemployment that has been recorded. How is it going so far? Take a look for yourself.
(The red triangles are the actual unemployment figures that have been recorded. Compare them to the predicted unemployment line.)
Obamanomics
Would it be safe to say that the Obama recovery plan is a failure seeing as how the line predicted without the recovery plan is better than what actually happened with the recover plan?
Government never can seem to fix our economy. We should not stand for any more impovershiment at the hands of our financial planners.
We’ll Say it Again, Peter Schiff WAS RIGHT!!
You can literally hear people laughing at the man predicting our current crisis. The same idiots who criticized him for his prediction then, are now saying nobody predicted it. Don’t believe them!
Blame the Market, Everybody’s Doing It
I think it’s safe to say that our country is going through some very challenging times. As if a war half way across the world isn’t enough, we have now been hit with a recession touted as being the worst since the Great Depression. While the US has weathered other recessions that could arguably be considered worse than the current one, none of those were near as threatening. The US has never been in such terrible financial shape while going through such a crisis. This is not to say that we were in good shape at the time of the Great Depression. However, our current national debt, which makes the debt of the early 20th century seem like chump change, is threatening this country in ways never before experienced.
There is a lot of finger pointing going on, mainly by our politicians who don’t want blame to fall on their shoulders. The government’s main culprit thus far has been the greed of corporate executives. Our situation has transformed into another blame game where the free market is destined to lose. The strategy of big government during recessions is to blame capitalism in order to gain support for more governmental regulations. If the market gets better, the politicians cheer the effectiveness of the new regulations. However, if the market should go deeper into recession, the government claims it is because not enough regulations were instituted. Do you see how this is a tad bit unfair to capitalism? How will the free market ever get a chance under these unjust critiques?
Anybody claiming the free market caused this crisis should seriously reconsider. The US is not a free market economy. We haven’t had a free market since the Federal Reserve (a.k.a. the Fed) was established in 1913. A free market cannot exist in a society where interest rates are controlled by a central bank.
Thomas Woods Speaking at Ole Miss
MEDIA ADVISORY
For April 15, 2009
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: YAL – Ole Miss Chapter
WHEN: Thursday, April 23, 2009
7:30 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.
WHERE: Bishop Hall Room 209
University of Mississippi
501 Fraternity Row
University, MS 38677
WHO: University of Mississippi Young Americans for Liberty
University of Mississippi Constitutionalists
WHAT: Public Speech by Thomas Woods, author of Meltdown.
WHY: The University of Mississippi Young Americans for Liberty have teamed up with the UM Constitutionalists to attract Thomas Woods to speak on the Ole Miss campus. Woods, author of the New York Times Bestseller Meltdown: A Free Market Look at why the Stock Market Collapsed, the Economy Tanked, and Government Bailouts Will Make Things Worse, will be offering explanations on what caused our current recession and free market approaches to fixing the problem. The two on-campus organizations hope to stir up some discussion among the student body and in the local community on the costs and consequences of what the US government is currently doing to combat the ailing economy. His book has already gained popular recognition with his harsh criticism of government bailouts and the Federal Reserve’s monetary expansion policies. Mr. Woods will be explaining how these government bailouts will make things worse and the effect they may have on the state of Mississippi.
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Letter to Congressman Childers
One of my friends on myspace is a very serious Liberty supporter. He recently forwarded me an email that he sent to Congressman Childers (who voted for the recent stimulus). I thought I would share what he wrote.
Congressman Childers, I have read your statements on why you voted on the stimulus package. I’d like to point out that you and many of your colleagues are ignoring the fact that using inflation as a means to prop up government spending is not only irresponsible, it’s also highly unethical. You are forcing people to accept the burden of your actions by further deliberate devaluation of their money. If you are concerned with the well-being of our state, why saddle us with the detrimental effects of inflationary monetary policy? The new administration is repeating the mistakes of Hoover and Roosevelt, and seeking government intervention as a means to alleviate our economic woes. Keep in mind that the crash of 1919 was handled much differently (no government intervention) and the economy was back on track in no time. It was this sort of intervention that prolonged the Great Depression. We are being led into the fire by Keynesian economists, who are just as wrong today, as they were in that time. The economists who truly understand this crisis come from the Austrian school of economic thought (Ludwig von Mises, Murray Rothbard, F.A. Hayek). President Obama is not an economist. He gets bad advice from Keynesians and he is repeating the mistakes of the Great Depression. If you care about the well being of Mississippians, please take a few moments to look into the Austrian theory of the business cycle and the wisdom of these economists, before it’s too late. If you discover truth in those writings, you can contact one of your colleagues in the House if you want to learn more– Dr. Ron Paul of Texas.
Debt and the Money Supply
These are troubling times for our country. This recession, touted as the biggest since the great depression, has everybody running scared. Obama loves ratcheting up fear about it when he addresses our nation. Of course, he is just following the Big Brother game plan. In order to subdue the masses into accepting your seemingly tyrannical proposals, you must frighten them into submission. And even though the republican president who just left office also passed a huge TARP bill costing our nation over $1 trillion and was a huge predictable failure, republicans are now acting as if they care about too much spending.
Our government added around $1.5 trillion dollars to its total debt in 2008, bringing the new total to right at $10.7 trillion. That number, of course, does not take into effect future obligations. All in all, our government owes $65.5 trillion now and in the future. Do you think the current politicians are going to be blamed for bankrupting our country when the full debt starts coming due? Obama will be a distant memory in 2030 or 2050, which are estimated to be the times when we finally wreak the fruits of our massive government spending. But how can our government currently owe $10.7 trillion when based on the M1, only around $1.4 to $1.5 trillion in actual cash and coin exists? The main reason is our money is created out of nothing.
