I have just added Cornerstone of Liberty: Property Rights in 21st Century America by Timothy Sandefur to my current reading rotation and even though I am just getting started I can tell this is going to a #facepalm sort of book. The early part of the book takes a quick survey of some of the more outrageous property rights cases, such as the case where a Toyota dealership was condemned so the property could be taken via eminent domain…to give to the BMW dealership next door.
The first case
While I do not agree 100% with what Andrew Mellon talks about in his 1924 book, Taxation: The People’s Business, I do wish more of today’s politicians would read it before they advocate for some of the economic measures they champion, such as higher corporate taxes, higher taxes on the “rich”, sales tax on medical devices, and higher minimum wages to name a few.
This quote of just one sentence comes in the context of a discussion on the effect of the high tax rates at the
It is still amazing to me that in reading a book written 90 years ago I find situations that appear essentially the same as those we face today. In Andrew Mellon’s Taxation: The People’s Business he quotes Henry Ford on the effect of high taxes on the rich.
High taxes on the rich do not take burdens off the poor. They put burdens on the poor. As far as our company is concerned, we can go on about as we now are, whether the surtax is 25% or 50%. We can make some improvements,
I am still mixing things up between Objective Communication and, among other things, Taxation: The People’s Business. Today’s quote from the latter is one that could just as easily have been written today rather than in a book written nearly 90 years ago.
Subsidies have been granted to some industries to encourage production until demand should become normal and bonuses have been granted to relieve certain classes of consumers burdened by the high prices of necessaries. Such efforts
The Huffington Post has an article up about Jon Stewart blasting the House Republicans for causing the government shutdown over the “… f**king law!”
The article also states, and I don’t believe they are quoting Stewart here, that Jon:
placed the blame squarely on the House Republicans for going to great lengths in their one-sided fight against the Affordable Care Act.
My first thought in reading that was: And this is as opposed the the Democrats going to great lengths, including
I am getting more into “How Capitalism Saved America.” The topic in chapter 3 is the experience of the early settlers in what was to become the United States. In both Jamestown and Plymouth a collectivist approach was initially used, where all the people in the colony worked “to support the colony and to generate profits” for the underwriters of the colony.
I am reading, among other things, “The Myth of the Robber Barons,” which is a fascinating book about 19th and early 20th century big business. This particular quote deals with the government’s decision to build its own munitions factories so they would no longer “be at the mercy of identical bids from the “greedy and hoggish” steel companies.”
The identical bids were the result of the government’s policy of, after seeking bids from the three companies
Yesterday I shared on Facebook the link to a blog post by Rituparna Basu of the Ayn Rand Center, on Rand Paul’s argument for a doctor’s political freedom. I received the following comment:
Comments completely miss the mark. Doctors are slaves to the same system patients are slaves to. They are not making the money in our broken health care system. Capitalism ate democracy a long time ago. We need to stop blaming the surfs for all our problems.
My response:
You say capitalism, but it
I am still reading Ayn Rand’s “Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal,” this time her essay on the art of the smear. Once again I am struck at how situations she pointed out nearly 50 years ago are still present in our society today. I am unsure whether this is hopeful, if the same things are still being done then maybe we haven’t gone as far down this road as I might fear, or not.
This particular quote is referring to an interview given by New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller
As I write this, I have actually finished reading “The Myth of the Robber Barons” but I have a lot of quotes built up that I think deserve to be shared.
When I read this quote, I could not help but think of the recent tariffs imposed on Chinese made solar panels. This was done supposedly to help protect domestic solar panel producers against “dumping” done by Chinese companies that receive a large amount of support from their government.
First the quote:
One of the traditional