Stuff it, fluff it, stitch it, dress it: Build-a-Bear Founder and former CEO Maxine Clark built a retail-entertainment empire by letting people make their own furry friends. Two hundred million of them. What’s the secret to her success? Listen as she tells EconTalk’s Russ Roberts how she developed a customer-focused culture, why she sought to […] The post Maxine Clark on Building the Build-a-Bear Workshop appeared first on Econlib.

In his opening speech at the recent 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) held in Glasgow, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson told politicians and activists they were meeting in the city where, 250 years before, James Watt “came up with a machine that was powered by steam that was produced by burning coal.” In Johnson’s take, Glasgow was the birthplace of the ticking “doomsday machine” that heroic eco-worriers, much like the (imaginary) Scotsman James Bond, had to defuse before it was too late. Some locals have also defamed Watt and his legacy. High ranking officials for the University of Glasgow thus tried to appease a few Extinction Rebellion activists dressed in modern clothing who had chained their necks to their institution’s gate. Instead of telling protesters none of these three things would have been possible without petroleum and coal, they reminded them that theirs was the first university in Scotland “to declare a Climate Emergency” and of their commitment to “the ambitious target of achieving net carbon neutrality by 2030.” One wonders how past generations of Britons who celebrated Watt and his machine would have reacted to this indictment. One can surmise that people raised in much harsher conditions would have little patience for well-to-do rebels looking for a cause. Perhaps the biggest substantive disagreement would be over calls for leaving carbon fuels in the ground in the name of social justice, for earlier generations often celebrated this development. A case in point is a moving tribute to Watt published shortly after his death by Sir Walter Scott. Mr. Watt of Birmingham (for it is there he conducted his most important work), readers were told, was the “man whose genius discovered the means of multiplying our national resources to a degree perhaps even beyond his own stupendous powers of calculation and combination.” He made it possible to bring the “treasures of the abyss to the summit of the earth” and give the “feeble arm of man the momentum of an Afrite.” From then on, man was able to command “manufactures to arise, as the rod of the prophet produced water in the desert.” It also afforded him the “means of dispensing with that time and tide which wait for no man,” and of “sailing without that wind which defied the commands and threats of Xerxes himself.” Watt was thus a “potent commander of the elements,” an “abridger of time and space,” a “magician, whose cloudy machinery has produced a change on the world, the effects of which, extraordinary as they are, are perhaps only now beginning to be felt.” He was also “not only the most profound man of science, the most successful combiner of powers and calculator of numbers as adapted to practical purposes,” the “most generally well-informed,” but also “one of the best and kindest of human beings.” In his 1840 treatise on the steam engine, the Irish scientist and political economist Dionysius Lardner praised the new technology for having “penetrated the crust of the earth, and drawn from beneath it boundless treasures of mineral wealth, which, without its aid, would have been rendered inaccessible.” It had also simultaneously “drawn up, in measureless quantity, the fuel on which its own life and activity depend.” Through the steam engine, coal was “made to spin, weave, dye, print and dress silks, cottons, woolens, and other cloths.” It made “paper, and print books upon it when made.” It “convert[ed] corn into flour” and “express[ed] oil from the olive, and wine from the grape.” It drew up “metal from the bowels of the earth; pound[ed] and smelt it, to melt and mould it; to forge it; to roll it, and to fashion it into every desirable form.” It transported “these manifold products of its own labour to the doors of those for whose convenience they are produced.” It carried “persons and good over the waters of rivers, lakes, seas, and oceans, in opposition alike to the natural difficulties of wind and water.” It carried the “wind-bound ship out of port” and placed it “on the open deep ready to commence her voyage.” It transported “over the surface of the deep persons and information, from town to town, and from country to country, with a speed as much exceeding that of the ordinary wind, as the ordinary wind exceeds that of a common pedestrian.” People who lived through these changes understood why the steam engine triumphed over water mills and windmills. The American economist Francis Wayland thus wrote in 1837 that water power was capable of “exerting great mechanical force” and was often “cheap [and] tolerably constant.” Unfortunately, it could only be used in “situations where it has been created by nature” and the best sites were often “at a considerable distance from the seaports whence the manufacturer derives his supplies” and exports the products, thus adding significant transportation costs to the price of manufactured goods. Water could also often not “be commanded in sufficient quantity.” Mill-seats often “suffer[ed] from the want of water” in “seasons of drought.” As a result, “a large number of the laborers must be unemployed, and a large portion of the expenses of the establishment must be incurred, without yielding any remuneration to the proprietor.” Water power was further liable to “dangers from inundation.” (Wayland could also have added freezing conditions and siltation to his list.) In the end then, costlier steam engines triumphed because they could be used “to create any required degree of mechanical force” while being “perfectly under human control.” Power could “be created in any place where fuel can be obtained,” be “used at will” in either stationary or locomotive applications and “be made to act with perfect regularity.” The Caribbean planter Thomas Kerr similarly observed in 1851 that “water power exists only in some favoured localities.” Although it was “economical, powerful, and easily regulated,” its supply was “often irregular, and, in seasons of drought, cut off either totally or partially.” It was therefore “liable to one of the same objections as wind power, viz., that it cannot always be made available.” The steam engine then was “far superior to any other motive power in economy, force, regularity of action, independence of all local influences which affect other motions, the perfect control under which it can be maintained, the ease with which it can be directed, and its readiness of adaptation to any purpose for which it may be required.” The waste steam was also “useful for many purposes in the manufactory, where elevated temperatures are necessary.” In his 1865 The Coal Question, the economist William Stanley Jevons similarly wrote that the water-wheel “possesses a natural tendency to uniformity of motion, even more perfect than that bestowed on the engine by Watt’s “governor.” It was therefore sometimes even preferred when a “very delicate machine requires to be driven at a perfectly constant rate.” Nothing could be “cheaper or better than water power” when an “abundant natural fall of water is at hand.” Unfortunately, the best sites had long been secured and many of the remaining ones (e.g., destructive mountain torrents, streams and rivers that often dried up, flat countries) were not conducive to manufacturing operations. Another problem was the necessity of “carrying the work to the power, not the power to the work.” This prevented the “concentration of works in one neighbourhood which is highly advantageous to the perfection of our mechanical system” while the “cost of conveying materials often overbalance[d] the cheapness of water power.” Even worse is that water power could never deliver the energy required by the United Kingdom, for at the time of his writing “steam power employed in factories” already exceeded “water power six-fold.” Jevons further observed that while some windmills were “powerful machines,” their intermittency meant that “in a long tract of calm weather the mines were drowned, and all the workmen thrown idle.” Thus, while the wind was free, the real costs of “these machines were very great.” Moreover, windmills only proved somewhat useful in “open and elevated situations” and “no possible concentration of windmills” could “supply the force required in large factories or iron works.” Another problem with today’s activists is that their single-minded emphasis on decarbonisation and net zero mandates the sacking of biodiversity on Earth, for arguably the greatest environmental benefit of the steam engine was that it started a process of substituting resources produced on the surface of the planet by others that came from below. Crucially, coal made great quantities of energy available from smaller volumes than biomass while alleviating crippling fuelwood and charcoal shortages. As Jevons observed, “forests of an extent two and a half times exceeding the whole area of the United Kingdom would be required to furnish even a theoretical equivalent to [the country’s] annual coal produce.” Coal solved this problem while sparing the landscape. The historical demographer and economic historian Edward Anthony Wrigley later argued that economic growth was ultimately made possible only when the organic economy – or the economy as it existed before the impact of the steam engine became significant – was able to break free from photosynthesis. This came “by gaining access to the products of photosynthesis stockpiled over a geological time span.” It was therefore the “steadily increasing use of coal as an energy source which provided the escape route.” The development of synthetic products out of coal tar also paved the way to drastically reduced overall demand for wild fauna such as whales (e.g., whale oil, baleen, perfume base), birds (e.g., feathers), elephants, polar bears, alligators and countless other wild animals (e.g., ivory, fur, skin); trees and other plants (e.g., lumber, firewood, charcoal, rubber, pulp, dyes, green manure); agricultural products (e.g., fats and fibers from livestock and crops, leather, dyes and pesticides from plants); work animals (e.g., horses, mules, oxen); and human labor in various forms (e.g., lumbering, weeding). In later years, refined petroleum products such as gasoline, diesel, kerosene and bunker fuel proved a superior alternative to coal in the transportation sector while natural gas proved preferable in electricity production and home heating. Unlike the ruinous and unreliable “renewable” energy transition currently being foisted on us through subsidies and mandates by the likes of Boris Johnson and COP attendees, these substitutions occurred spontaneously because they delivered numerous technical and economic advantages. For instance, refined petroleum products have a higher energy density than coal and subsequently helped give much greater range to ships and railroads while displacing early electric cars and trucks. Both petroleum products and natural gas burnt more cleanly and were easier to get out of the ground. They were also easier to handle, transport and store in a wide variety of applications. Coal burning was never perfect, but with its judicious use, Jevons noted “almost any feat is possible or easy.” Giving up on its power and versatility would have thrown humanity “back in the laborious poverty of earlier times.” The same can be said for petroleum and natural gas today. “Building back better” while ignoring the lessons of history will not make these realities go away. Pierre Desrochers, is Associate Professor of Geography, University of Toronto Mississauga. Joanna Szurmak, is Research Services and Liaison Librarian, University of Toronto Mississauga. (0 COMMENTS)

  The UK has imposed sanctions on Russian businessman Roman Abramovich, freezing his assets even after he vowed to sell off a major football club and donate the proceeds to victims of the war in Ukraine. The much-needed humanitarian aid is now in limbo amid a Western inquisition against all things Russian. This is from Kyle Anzalone and Will Porter, “UK Sanctions Russian Billionaire, Barring Him From Aiding Ukrainians,” Antiwar.com, March 10, 2022. Another excerpt: In announcing the sanctions, UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said “oligarchs and kleptocrats have no place in our economy or society,” and that their “close links to Putin” make them “complicit in his aggression.” “The blood of the Ukrainian people is on their hands. They should hang their heads in shame,” she added. However, Truss failed to explain how Abramovich is “complicit” in the Russian invasion. The industrialist – who also owns Millhouse Capital and holds a major stake in the steel and mining giant Evraz – has not endorsed the attack on Ukraine. In fact, in the press release announcing his plan to sell the team and create a charitable foundation for war victims, Abramovich appeared to sympathize with Ukrainians. Fortunately, Ms. Truss was not around to prevent Oskar Schindler from selling pots and pans to the Nazis. Note: I’m taking as given the idea that Abramovich is sincere in wanting to help Ukrainians. I could be wrong. But what I found interesting in researching this and finding a lot of denunciations of the guy is that no one who denounced him, at least no one that I could find, addressed the issue of what he planned to use the funds for. Their argument was no more complex than this: Abramovich had a relationship with Putin; Abramovich is rich; Putin probably helped make him rich; therefore we should freeze his assets even if he wants to use them to implicitly go against Putin. (0 COMMENTS)

For 2021, here are the top 10 episodes, which is actually 12. Number 10 was a three-way tie: Sebastian Junger on Freedom; Lamorna Ash on Dark, Salt, Clear; and Don Boudreaux on Buchanan. Number 9, Jason Riley on Race in America. Number 8, Tyler Cowen on the Pandemic, Revisited. Number 7, Dana Gioia on Learning, Poetry, and Studying with Miss Bishop. Number 6, Megan McArdle on Belonging, Home, and National Identity. Number 5, Mike Munger on Free Markets. Number 3, a two-way tie: Daniel Shoup on Parking; and Mike Munger’s second appearance in the top five, Michael Munger on Constitutions. And a tie at Number 1 for your favorite episode of 2021: Sam Quinones on Meth, Fentanyl and the Least of Us; and Rowan Jacobsen on Truffle Hound. I want to thank the 1,300 or so people who voted. Many thanks. –Russ Roberts (0 COMMENTS)

It’s clear that governments can use financial censorship to squeeze worthy and unworthy targets alike for the time being, but it’s less clear if governments can maintain this power for much longer. The moment raises a pressing question for cryptocurrency enthusiasts: Does bitcoin solve this? Does a global, decentralized monetary system that nobody can manipulate or control take away the power of the state to use financial censorship as a weapon, for good or for ill? A surprisingly successful bitcoin-based crowdfunding campaign called “Honk Honk HODL,” which raised more than $1 million worth of bitcoin for the Canadian truckers, shed some additional light on that question. And the answer appears to be, “eventually, maybe, but there’s more work to be done.” This is from Zach Weissmueller, “The Canadian Government Couldn’t Stop Bitcoin,” Reason, March 11, 2022. Having never bought or sold Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency, I don’t claim to understand all the ins and outs that Weissmueller discusses, but I kind of get them. The bottom line is that there is some reason for hoping that Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies will protect us from some of governments’ worst assaults on our financial liberty. The whole thing is worth reading. (0 COMMENTS)

I recent read an excellent book on rationality and asset markets, entitled Rational Myopia: How Capital Markets Learn. When discussing a certain type of efficient market, the author (Kent Osband) makes the following observation: Even though traders compete vigorously against each other and share no information other than the bids that determine price, the market behaves like an optimally unified rational learner. I call this the Invisible Mind theorem. . . . However, capital markets are not fully Kelly-driven.  Suppose my research suggests that the fair price is E, while the market consensus sets a fair price for F.  Out of respect for the consensus, I might accord it a 1 – f chance of being correct.  This shaves my bet to a fraction f of full Kelly, which if applied consistently is known as fractional Kelly.  Fractional Kelly can be viewed as a type of herding.  While the term is often used pejoratively to suggest that people are too dumb or lazy to think for themselves, it is hard to fault some deference to the wisdom of the crowd. That got me thinking about the question of when we should defer to the crowd, and when we should think for ourselves.  My strong support for the Efficient Market Hypothesis, and more broadly the wisdom of crowds, makes me a contrarian within the economics profession.  I deny the existence of a bubble in the US housing market during 2006, or the NASDAQ in 2000.  Is there something oxymoronic about being a contrarian believer in the wisdom of crowds?  More broadly, when should we trust our own personal view and when should we trust the consensus view? Imagine the US government holds an auction for offshore drilling rights in a section of ocean off the coast of Louisiana.  Suppose you are one of ten companies bidding on the tract.  How much should you bid?  One answer would be to estimate the value of the drilling rights to your firm, and then bid that amount (or slightly less.)  But you also know that your bid doesn’t matter unless you win the auction, in which case your bid—i.e., your estimate of the value of the tract—would be higher than for any other bidder.  If you also believe in efficient markets, then conditional on winning the auction your firm is likely to overestimate the value of the drilling rights.  If oil firms are rational, they presumably factor in this “winner’s curse” and bid a fraction less than their estimate of the value of the drilling rights in order to offset the fact that if they win they will likely have overestimated the actual value.  Perhaps they could look at previous actions and estimate the difference between the typical winning bid and the typical average bid. In every single area of our lives we might want to assign a weight of f to our personal view of what is correct, and a weight of 1 – f to the consensus view.  But how do we determine f?  And how would this fraction vary between religious beliefs, political beliefs, scientific beliefs, estimates of asset values, and beliefs about economic policy issues?  A good place to start is with a famous remark by G.K. Chesterton: There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it. Suppose I read an article by a contrarian scientist that rejects the theory of evolution.  He raises some objections to evolution that seem quite persuasive to me.  I cannot think of any objection to his argument.  Should I accept the critique?  According to Chesterton’s Fence reasoning, the answer is a resounding NO!  Paradoxically, it would never be rational to accept this contrarian theory of the origin of species unless I could see what was wrong with it.  After all, I know that roughly 99% of scientists support the theory of evolution, in some form.  They presumably have reasons for rejecting these contrarian theories.  So what are those reasons?  If I don’t know, then I have no basis for accepting the heterodox scientist and rejecting the consensus.  I’m merely an outsider, with no expertise in science. People occasionally send me articles taking a contrarian stance on climate change.  I’d be much more impressed if they also sent me an article explaining why mainstream climatologists reject that contrarian take, and then why the mainstream climatologist’s critique of the contrarians is wrong.  In contrast, I am an expert on a few areas of economics. When I take a contrarian stance on a particular topic—as with my opposition to FDIC—I try to make sure that I understand why my views are contrarian.  Why do other economists disagree with me on FDIC?  It is only because I believe that I do understand their objection, that is, I understand why the conventional view tends to favor government deposit insurance, that am I willing to take a contrarian view.  [When I attended the University of Chicago in the late 1970s, I felt that we understood mainstream economics better than mainstream economists understood Chicago School economics, for essentially the same reason that Canadians understand the US better than Americans understand Canada.  We were in the minority.  (I don’t know what the UC is like today.)] Strictly speaking, one could argue that I should not say, “FDIC should be abolished”, rather I should say that I place a probability f that FDIC should be abolished and a probability 1 – f on the claim that the consensus in favor of FDIC is correct.  I don’t do that because I assume that the intelligent reader already makes this mental adjustment.  In my recent book entitled The Money Illusion, I wrestled with the question of why should readers accept my contrarian take on the Great Recession: Also keep in mind that even if markets are efficient, it is only because each trader is willing to take a fresh, independent look at the situation and do his or her best to make accurate forecasts. Similarly, the market for ideas does tend toward efficiency in the long run, but only because intellectuals are willing to continually probe weaknesses in existing theories, and seek better ones. I view myself as just one tiny component of the wisdom of crowds, which means I can’t do my job if I blindly accept the conventional wisdom. In a world where most intellectuals are arrogant, if I try to appear overly modest and humble then people will get a misleading impression of the strength of my argument, just as employers misjudge a person in a job interview that is modest about their abilities.  At the same time, intellectuals should never appear more confident than they actually are.  Let readers decide how to weight our views against those of the consensus.  Readers will understand that I am a contrarian on the Great Recession (and on FDIC). The wisdom of crowds can also be affected by motivated reasoning.  It is possible that residents of Spain checked out all of the possible religions and just happened to (mostly) adopt Catholicism, whereas residents of nearby Morocco went through the same careful analysis and chose the Muslim religion.  More likely, cultural factors played a role in both cases—people like to fit in with their neighbors.  Motivated reasoning is also important in politics.  Teachers prefer to believe that more spending on education isn’t just good for them personally, but is also good for society as a whole.  Farmers feel that way about crop subsidies.  Some have even claimed that there is a sort of tribalism behind the surge in GameStop stock, which has become very popular among a certain internet subculture.  Nonetheless, motivated reasoning is probably less of a factor in financial markets than in politics.  Stocks soared when FDR devalued the dollar in 1933, even though many of the conservative financiers in the Wall Street subculture opposed FDR’s decision to abandon the gold standard.   Bryan Caplan’s BetOnIt approach to debate can be seen as a way to push people away from motivated reasoning, and toward their actual beliefs.  Talk is cheap. PS.  While Osband’s book is full of thought-provoking ideas, be aware that it is also fairly technical in places. (0 COMMENTS)

Piketty and Saez (2003) found a pronounced U-curve pattern of American income inequality since 1917, displaying a precipitous decline during World War II to a level that would hold until 1980. We offer revisions to their income inequality estimates prior to 1960 with three important findings. First, Piketty and Saez overstate inequality levels in this period. Second, the decline during WWII was smaller than depicted. Third, the Great Depression, rather than WWII, played the more significant role. These findings indicate a need to reevaluate commonly held assumptions about the evolution of inequality during the period of the ‘Great Leveling,’ as well as the nature of its posited relationship to tax policy. This is from Vincent J. Geloso, Phillip Magness, John Moore, and Philip Schlosser, “How Pronounced in the U-curve? Revisiting income inequality in the United States, 1917-1960,” The Economic Journal, March 8, 2022. The Economic Journal is a prestigious British journal that also charges you a lot to buy the paper. So instead, you can read an earlier version that was published on SSRN. It’s here. Here’s an excerpt from that earlier version: The purpose of this paper, we must emphasize, is not to assert that the United States was an exception to century-long international patterns in inequality. Neither do we question the idea that top income shares fell then rose over the 20th century. We accept the general occurrence of the “great levelling,” subject to further investigation of its shape and magnitude. We show instead that the left-side of the PS [Piketty/Saez] U-curve likely overstates the original height and ensuing decline of top income shares, with implications for distributional pattern[s] over time and for other derivative works that rely upon the PS series. Our adjustments do not change the fact that inequality fell between 1929 and 1945. What they do is attenuate this decline so that, when combined with other proposed corrections to the right-side of the U-curve, we see a much shallower “tea saucer” of inequality in the United States over the the course of the twentieth century. We confirm an inequality peak in 1928-1929, which is actually much more acute to those years than in PS. However, the “great levelling” (an expression we borrow from Lindert and Williamson [2016]) becomes a comparatively gradual story where the Great Depression is a more readily visible factor. This draws into question numerous inferential claims that wartime income tax policy and its subsequent entrenchment as a permanent feature of the mid-century tax system played a major role in the observed levelling. Past editors of The Economic Journal included Francis Y. Edgeworth (from 1891 to 1911) and John Maynard Keynes (from 1912 to 1944.) HT2 Phil Magness. (0 COMMENTS)

Kyle Smith reviews on National Review a film on Carl Icahn. Icahn is among the most famous activists investors of the 1980s, and is still, pardon the pun, active. For example, he acquired a stake in McDonald’s and challenged its governance, not because of poor performance but for reasons related with animal welfare and the conditions in pig farms. The HBO documentary Icahn: The Restless Billionaire, produced and directed by Bruce David Klein, offers a portrait of the investor and shows his life as a (quasi) rags-to-riches story (“The family didn’t have much. Dad was a cantor in the local synagogue, but only because he liked to sing: He was a “dogmatic atheist. But Icahn got into Princeton, became a stockbroker, and got a loan from an uncle in order to buy a seat on the New York Stock Exchange”). Judging from the review, Klein does something which is miraculous in a movie: that is, he offers a fair treatment of activist investing, showing it as an antidote against the complacency of the business establishment. Smith reminds us that Icahn inspired Oliver Stone’s Gordon Gekko and suggests that Stone was not repelled but also fascinated by Icahn: Icahn so impressed Oliver Stone that, as the filmmaker explains in a new interview, he used several of the financier’s ideas in Wall Street. An amusing interlude intercuts an actual Icahn speech from the Eighties with Gordon Gekko’s very similar remarks at the shareholder convention in the 1987 film. Icahn mentioned a company that had five floors of overpaid vice presidents doing nothing much, and Gekko mocked the same corporate gluttony. Stone was intrigued by Icahn, which is why Gekko makes such strong arguments. Today, the director describes Icahn as half right and half wrong for making private profits while neglecting public profits. Read the whole piece. I really look forward to the movie. By the way, The Guardian also reviews the movie. The piece by Andrew Lawrence is less enthusiastic, but there is a glimpse of admiration. Far less dubious is the rationale for spending 100 minutes with the 86-year-old businessman whom one pundit affectionately calls capitalism’s “great white shark”. Immediately, you see how Stone could be inspired. Good or bad, the man is definitely a character. (0 COMMENTS)

Why would a rational person believe a government? Given the politicians’ and their minions’ incentives to lie and their capacity to avoid (their low cost of avoiding) accountability, there can be only one circumstance: when free speech and competition in the provision of news provide continuous tests of the statocrats’ declarations. For example, one is justified to give more credence to the US government than to the Russian government about the war in Ukraine. It is not necessarily because American politicians are more virtuous than Russian ones, even if it is true that more freedom generates more virtue; it is instead because US government rulers and agents have less incentive to lie than their Russian counterparts, that is, the cost of lying is higher for the former than for the latter. It is therefore troubling, although not totally unexpected, to see European governments, including that of the European Union, censoring RT (“Russia Today”), a TV and Web outfit that is part of the Russian Leviathan. The Wall Street Journal reports (“EU Orders Removal of Russian State-Owned Media From Search Results, Social-Media Reshares” March 10, 2022): Europe’s effort to cut off access to Russian state-owned media extends to search engines and social-media posts, not just their television channels and online-video feeds, according to a copy of an email from the bloc’s executive arm. … In response to last week’s sanctions, telecommunications companies were obliged to remove the RT television channel from their TV services in Europe, and so far in at least some EU countries, they have also blocked the RT and Sputnik websites from being accessible to internet users. … The email from the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, specifies that its sanctions order should be interpreted to cover search engines because they “facilitate the public’s access to the content of RT and Sputnik.” It also says that social-media companies must either not post or delete posts from individuals that broadcast or recopy content from RT or Sputnik. It is true that our governments should not go out of their ways to protect the freedom of speech of the Russian government. But they should not interfere with the freedom of their “citizens” to listen to what they want and make up their own opinions. If European residents are prone to blindly believe Russian propaganda (which, on RT, is more discrete because aimed at, and only available to, foreigners, and has the potential advantage of informing the careful student on what Russian rulers think), what legitimacy do the elected rulers of such a democracy of idiots have? How can the infantilization of citizens make them anything else than subjects? What does this portend for the future? (0 COMMENTS)

In his recent State of the Union speech, President Biden stated, “Unlike the $2 trillion tax cut passed in the previous administration that benefited the top 1 percent of Americans, the American Rescue Plan helped working people — and left no one behind.” Excuse me? It’s true that the Trump tax cut benefited the top 1 percent of Americans. But it also helped Americans at all income levels. It helped in two ways. First, it cut taxes for virtually everyone and often by a lot. Second, the 2017 tax cut increased incentives to invest in more capital. With more capital to work with, workers were more productive and their higher productivity showed up in higher wages. These are the opening two paragraphs of David R. Henderson, “Correcting Biden,” Taxbytes, Institute for Policy Innovation, March 9, 2022. Final paragraph: In his speech, President Biden used the term “trickle down” to refer to the idea that tax cuts on corporations and on the most productive people will help workers generally. Here’s the interesting thing about that term: no one who advocates such tax cuts uses the term “trickle down.” There’s an obvious reason why. Given how well tax cuts have worked, a much more accurate term is “gush down.” Do read the whole thing. It’s quite short.   (0 COMMENTS)