Archive for money
News of the Week: November 7-13, 2010
Posted by: |Recapping interesting things in the news and on the net in the past week.
The internet is going crazy right now with talk about the TSA nekkid-scanners and groping, it’s clearly the hottest topic of the week. FoxNews.com has a pretty good article explaining what’s going on, as does the Mises Institute.
Barack Obama says the new power-sharing agreement in Iraq marks another "milestone" for the country. Riiiiight.
My good friend Jason Rink says David Ramsey is cool, but wrong about a lot of macroeconomics.
Have you been watching silver and gold prices reaching new highs? It’s kind of a big deal.
Facebook appears poised to release a new email app in the next week. Is Project Titan a Gmail killer?
Here is a little something for all you gamers out there (inside-joke alert).
Tags: economics, iraq, money, News, privacy, technology, TSA, war
News of the Week: October 17-23, 2010
Posted by: |On Saturdays, I am going to start recapping some of the interesting news highlights of the week. Some things will be serious, and it will always be fun, but by no means will it be comprehensive.
Bob Murphy is looking to raise money to debate Paul Krugman. Big name “mainstream” economists like Krugman demand thousands for a mere appearance, so if this is pulled off it will be an amazing feat. So far he has raised 21k. AND, all money raised will actually be donated to FoodBank.
Rolling Stone published a very interesting article on General Stanley McChrystal in July that I recently read. Old news but good.
The amazing whistleblower organization Wikileaks has released 400,000 new documents, yet again showing the terrible nature of the Iraq War.
Wes Messamore encourages busy student libertarians with a list of particularly good articles on personal productivity.
Between November 2008 and April 2010, 39 percent of households had either been unemployed, had negative equity in their house or had been in arrears in their house payments. Yikes.
Cal Newport has words of wisdom for those falling into the passion trap of perpetually looking for the “perfect job.”
TechCrunch reports on how data that the government collects is being used by private entities in a “silent revolution” of public data analysis. Kind of interesting and creepy at the same time.
Have you written a book you would like to publish? Publish it in the iBookstore.
My favorite comic of the week.
And if anybody knows where I can get some fused silica optical windows with 15 mm diameter and 10 mm thickness, you know where to find me…
Tags: comics, fun, jobs, money, News, privacy, productivity
Tax Slavery Sucks
Posted by: |This article is #19 of a weekly series highlighting the former memes of Bureaucrash, an organization once headed by my friends Pete Eyre and Jason Talley of the Motorhome Diaries. The memes were originally authored by Pete Eyre and Anja Hartleb-Parson, and were intended as means of communicating ideas about liberty in catchy and succinct ways.
According to the Tax Foundation, Americans will spend about 30 percent of their income on taxes in 2008. For comparison, in 1900, it was around 6 percent. Put differently, for almost four months out of the year you work just to pay for government. In the current system most types of income are taxed, sometimes twice, and often progressively. These are just some of the taxes levied by government: federal and local income tax, sales tax, property tax, gasoline tax, cigarette tax, liquor tax, vehicle sales tax, utility tax, marriage license tax, inheritance tax, and capital gains tax, etc. On top of that, you pay to compensate for taxes levied on others. For instance, you, as a consumer, pay higher prices for goods and services because of the corporate income tax levied on businesses. The government, if it is to exist, should protect people from force and fraud. Therefore, at most, government should tax only to maintain a national defense, a police force and law courts. But instead, legislators seek to fulfill the so-called “needs” of the constituencies and special interest groups that put and keep them in office. So, the government has tasked itself with providing cheaper prescription drugs for seniors, improving education for children, supporting for farmers by keeping food prices high and paying them for any product they fail to sell, covering the living expenses of the poor, paying for medical research, and so on. The result is not a system that protects our individual rights but a system that provides benefits to some at the expense of others. Typically there will be concentrated benefits and dispersed costs, which makes organizing resistance difficult and leads to even larger government interference.
Tags: economics, ethics, memes, money, property rights, taxation, taxes




