SOME MORE ECONOMICS

Amusing: The two almost universally-known icons of American business are arguably McDonalds and Coca Cola. McDonald's is now headed by an Australian and the outgoing head of Cocal Cola, Douglas Daft, is also an Australian. Watch out KFC! The international marketplace in skills certainly produces results that no planner would ever dream of.

Marginal Revolution points out two new Hayek sites. One of them is CafeHayek -- which has this comment on the many millions of Americans who pay zero tax: "But the political economy of large numbers of people paying little or no tax is a bit frightening for the long-run growth of government. When you pay little or nothing for something, you tend to want a lot more of it."

Charles Murray on how to give taxpayers more say over where the dollars go. Marginal Revolution on where US tax dollars actually go. Health and welfare is the big item -- nearly three times bigger than defence spending.

"Free trade is again under assault. If there is one reason for the perennial attack it is likely the one Frederic Bastiat made so much of: the failure to look for what is "unseen." The costs of free trade (temporary job loss, closed firms) are easily traced to the free movement of goods, services, and capital. The benefits (lower-priced goods, new products, new job opportunities), though great and impossible to produce any other way, are not readily traceable to that movement.... Bastiat illustrated the point with his tale about Crusoe and the plank that washes ashore. Crusoe had intended to make a plank. Should he destroy the free one in order to protect the plank-making job he anticipated? Or should he welcome the good fortune because now the hours earmarked for plank-making are free for coconut-gathering, hammock-weaving, or leisure? The answer is obvious.... Import restrictions intended to protect jobs inevitably reduce foreigners' export-buying power; that costs Americans well-paying jobs. The restrictions also tend to provoke protectionist retaliation, which harms still more Americans. Living standards just don't stagnate; they drop."

"They call him 'rightwing extremist' and 'xenophobic' among many other epithets but this hasn't stopped Switzerland's Christoph Blocher from standing tall in his love of limited government, independence and sound finances. Just last week, he made the tourist promotion people upset by suggesting that the government reduce the subsidy it gives them to a mere 30 centimes (about 25 US cents). Their sceaming and name calling echoed all through the Gotthard tunnel but the message was clear. Why should the taxpayer subsidize any industry?"

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ELSEWHERE

Another triumph of socialized medicine: They left a large pair of scissors inside a woman after surgery and only a demand for X-rays by the woman herself finally revealed them. And it was NOT human error. It was a careless system. Careful surgery would count everything in and everything out but who cares about public patients? And the "Health Care Complaints Commission" refused to look into it until the media got involved! But you can always rely on your government to protect you, can't you? That's what all those regulations and all that bureaucracy is for!

Unarmed robbery is not a serious offence according to California judges! I guess that means that "hate speech" and pollution must be no crimes at all! Or am I being naive here?

Conservative Truth points out in detail why and how the 9/11 Commission has become a kangaroo court rather than a serious judicial body.

Good stuff from a Leftist leader: "The federal Opposition Leader, Mark Latham, has unveiled a new conservative vision for an Australian identity that redefines multiculturalism. In a wide-ranging, landmark speech delivered in Sydney yesterday, Mr Latham said Australians had moved on from the concept, which he said risked being frozen in time.. Multiculturalism needed to be redefined to prevent it being a policy that separated people from each other, he said. A "new and realistic way of thinking about multiculturalism" was necessary, he said, emphasising that "social cohesion is as important as respect for difference"."

Australia's federal system fights tax too: "Victoria is expected to lure property investors with a $1 billion tax reduction, just as NSW buyers have been hit with higher land taxes. The real estate industry is predicting investment dollars could also move south as a result of the changes, which the Victorian Government claims will mean 96 per cent of Victorian property owners paying less land tax than they would in NSW."

My recipe for today is another Thai chicken recipe -- for when you are tired of KFC. See here or here.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

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The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.

America is engaged in a titanic struggle with hate. The American Left hate America, much of Europe hates America and, most of all, the Islamic fundamentalists hate America. Fortunately America is -- in every sense -- the world's strongest country.

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