Brookes News Update

US economy and recession: theory and counter theory: When manufacturing was sinking 2000 and the US economy along with it the causes of the oncoming recession were still being hotly debated in some quarters, with very few focusing their attention on monetary factors
Effective minimum wages do cause unemployment: Economics teaches that if the real price of any service, including labour services, is raised above its market clearing level a surplus will emerge. In the case of labour the surplus is called unemployment
The `Real' War against Islam has begun: For years those who speculate have predicted Israel, not oil, would be the spark that lit the fire of World War III. Surrounded for decades by a religion that motivates its devotees with hate for Jews, Israel has been a boil on the Islamic body politic
Terrorism and Israel - one slice at a time.: A member of Hezbollah gloated that the Jews `fear death and love life. We are believers in another life, and we welcome death'. Well, it's time to give `em what they want!
The Bush tax cuts, capital gains and growth: Anything that hinders investment slows growth - and this where capital gains taxes do the most damage. Levied on the sale of assets, e.g., businesses and shares, they not only reduce savings they misallocate resources. This is because taxes on realised capital gains amount to transaction taxes as well as investment taxes
Taxing houses: more economic stupidity: Some economists think those who own their own homes should pay an imputed rent. No wonder so many people sneer at so-called rational economics (free market economics) when this kind of nonsense is seriously defended by economists are who paid to know much better
Politic$, Inc: Principle, Not Profit: The current political model is broken, due to professional politicians who are more concerned with personal advancement and financial gain than

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Heh! The success-haters lose one: "A first-of-its-kind state law that would have required Wal-Mart to spend more on employee health care in Maryland is invalid under federal law, a judge ruled Wednesday. The state law would have required non-governmental employers with 10,000 or more workers to spend at least 8 percent of payroll on health care or pay the difference in taxes. The measure was aimed at Bentonville, Ark.-based Wal-Mart Stores Inc.... U.S. District Judge J. Frederick Motz decided that the Maryland Fair Share Health Care Fund Act would have hurt Wal-Mart by requiring it to track and allocate benefits for its Maryland employees in a different way from how it keeps track of employee benefits in other states. Motz wrote that the law "imposes legally cognizable injury upon Wal-Mart." Motz cited the federal Employee Retirement Income Security Act, which he said pre-empts "any and all state laws insofar as they may now or hereafter relate to any employee benefit plan."

Coincidentally, the second edition of the Carnival of Wal-Mart is just up. See here.

Another example of general bodily fitness being indexed by IQ: "Social class [which is associated with IQ] determines how quickly the body ages, irrespective of factors such as health, diet and bad habits, research suggests. A groundbreaking study of twins led by British scientists has shown that people of lower socioeconomic standing, whether because of the job they do or the person they marry, age seven years more quickly than their more fortunate peers. Poorer health, worse habits and less pampering may have long been associated with shorter lifespans for Britain’s blue-collar workers, but now biological mechanisms have also be identified. The study, which involved more than 1,500 women, shows a dramatic and unexplained association between social class and the rate of the body’s cellular deterioration."

Blame Big Business for High Gas Prices: "This past week, the average price for a gallon of gasoline rose above $3 for the first time since the brief post-Katrina spike. On cue, politicians, journalists, and liberal agitators are crying "price gouging," and telling us we need federal policy to guide us towards a petroleum-free world. These complaints hold traces of the truth: (1) We ought to be angry at big business for the high gas prices; and (2) there is something the government can do about it. But the problem is not corporate "price gouging" and the solution is not new subsidies or regulations. The corporate misbehavior causing high gas prices is what I call "subsidy suckling" and "regulatory robber-baronry." The solution, as Ronald Reagan would tell us, is for government to get out of the way."

Immigration and Usurpation: Elites, Power, and the People's Will : "If mass immigration from Latin America has debatable benefits for the United States as a whole, if a majority of the American people is against it, and if immigrants cannot vote until they become naturalized (which can take years after their arrival), why would nine-tenths of the legislators we spoke with be so keen on increasing immigration? ... Also curiously, the Republican enthusiasm for increased immigration also was not so much about voting in the end, even with 'converted' Latinos. Instead, these legislators seemingly believed that they could weaken the restraining and frustrating straightjacket devised by the Founding Fathers and abetted by American norms. In that idealized 'new' United States, political uncertainty, demanding constituents, difficult elections, and accountability in general would 'go away' after tinkering with the People, who have given lawmakers their privileges but who, like a Sword of Damocles, can also 'unfairly' take them away. Hispanics would acquiesce and assist in the 'natural progress' of these legislators to remain in power and increase the scope of that power. In this sense, Republicans and Democrats were similar. ..."

Mideast Conflict Hard to Solve, Easy to Explain: "The Middle East conflict is difficult to solve, but it is among the simplest conflicts in history to understand. The Arab and other Muslim enemies of Israel (for the easily confused, this does not mean every Arab or every Muslim) want Israel destroyed. That is why there is a Middle East conflict. Everything else is commentary. Those who deny this and ascribe the conflict to other reasons, such as "Israeli occupation," "Jewish settlements," a "cycle of violence," "the Zionist lobby" and the like, do so despite the fact that Israel's enemies regularly announce the reason for the conflict. The Iranian regime, Hizbollah, Hamas and the Palestinians -- in their public opinion polls, in their anti-Semitic school curricula and media, in their election of Hamas, in their support for terror against Israeli civilians in pre-1967 borders -- as well as their Muslim supporters around the world, all want the Jewish state annihilated."

No doubt with reference to my recent birthday, a reader sent me this link about us oldsters. There are some serious points amid the humor. Turn your sound on. I have also just put up a few pics from my birthday bash here

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

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