MORE ECONOMICS

The socialist love of the State still flourishes: "A famous theory about taxes has it that wealth belongs to society and taxation merely determines how much of it the citizenry may use. This is what is argued in The Myth of Ownership by co-authors Thomas Nagel and Liam Murphy (Oxford, 2002). You and I do not own even our labor. It belongs to society and government is in charge of telling what we get to use and what remains in its coffers. According to this socialist view of wealth, there are no private property rights at all, only government grants."

There is a most illuminating and very fully referenced article here about the "Dickensian" British factory system of the 19th century and how it "abused" child labour. Economic historian Bill Hutt shows that the accounts of the system we almost always hear come from its opponents -- the romantics and do-gooders of the day. And that more objective evidence is readily available that shows factory work to have been the preferred employment of the day -- as it was "lighter" (less physically demanding) and better paid than the main alternative then available -- agricultural labour. And the health of factory workers was at least no worse than that of the general community at the time.

Icelandic blogger Willy Sutton has a good lesson in pictorial economics up. It takes a little while to load all the pictures but they certainly educate

Outsourcing is a natural force in the free market "Free markets provide what the great economic historian Joseph Schumpeter called a process of 'creative destruction.' Always dynamic, always progressive, free markets constantly generate new products, new jobs, and new wealth on the foundations of earlier creations. In the end, they replace these earlier creations. Free markets propel society forward."

Corruption: "To put it in very simple words, countries that have a free market policy are the least corrupt, whereas countries that are dependant on government are the most corrupt. This then is the simple truth about corruption. ... The government is not the solution for corruption, but it is definitely the precursor of corruption."

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