SOME ECONOMICS

Germany will not face the fact that German laws have priced Germans out of work: "The number of people out of work in Europe's largest economy has risen for the tenth straight month as growth remains stubbornly slow. German unemployment rose 7,000 in November to 4.464 million people, or 10.8% of the workforce.... With unemployment stuck above 4 million for years, the government of Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has put job creation at the top of the agenda. A controversial package of measures to shake up incentives to get back to work, paid for by cutting some cherished benefits, has sparked anger among some German workers.... Among the new initiatives are the so-called "one-euro jobs" which top up unemployment benefit.... "The deterioration of the labour market does not come as a surprise," said Isabelle Kronawitter at Hypovereinsbank. "Job creation measures probably prevented a stronger increase in the seasonally adjusted numbers."" [German workers now get so many government-dictated benefits that it is prohibitive to employ them. For comparison, deregulation of the labour market in Australia has just led to record LOW unemployment]. (Link via Reliapundit)

End corporate income tax: "On Nov. 18, in a speech given at the Finance Ministry in Vienna, Austria, the very highly regarded European economist and first woman president of the Mont Pelerin Society, Professor Victoria Curzon Price, called for eliminating the corporate income tax. There, in the center of socialist Europe, was not only the call to get rid of this destructive tax, but almost everyone in an audience of economists, various government finance officials and public policy experts appeared to agree with her. The idea and practice of the corporate income tax has been dying slowly for the last two decades. The corporate income tax is a highly destructive tax that greatly distorts proper economic decision-making, taxes the same income more than once, is endlessly complex, and provides a declining share of tax revenue in most countries." [Double-taxing of company profits was abolished long ago in Australia -- by a LEFTIST government! And I have just received a big refund cheque to prove it!]

Tough row to hoe: "When Nebraska Gov. Mike Johanns, whom President Bush has just nominated as the next agriculture secretary, takes office, his first order of business should to push for an end to America's drastically distorted farm subsidy programs. Eliminating U.S. farm subsidies would dramatically reduce government spending, end a program that mostly benefits corporate interests and the wealthy, strengthen U.S. agriculture, give us much needed leverage in international trade negotiations, and allow the United States to extricate itself from embarrassingly undermining its own foreign aid program."

The Chinese are coming!: "Until recently, the Chinese have taken the boatloads of dollars we sent them and recycled them into Treasury bonds. Now Chinese companies are investing some of those greenbacks into something more productive: companies and businesses. Here in the United States, we're schooled to think of foreign direct investment -- a vital component of global capital flows -- as going from the First World into the Third. Now the river is running in the opposite direction. These American businesses, some of them bankrupt or on the verge of abandonment, are getting dynamic new parent companies. It's just another step in the continued seamless integration of the world's economy. Man, globalism is cool!"

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ELSEWHERE

The very Leftist EU: "Christians are bad. Comrades are good. That is the lesson of the recently concluded parallel process by which the European Union Commission and the European Parliament accepted Laszlo Kovacs of Hungary as a European commissioner while vociferously rejecting Italy's European affairs minister, Rocco Buttiglione, for his views on marriage and homosexuality. The media describe Laszlo Kovacs as a "socialist." In fact, he is a career communist with decades of totalitarian experience. Mr. Kovacs worked closely with the leadership of Janos Kadar's sinister regime, installed literally over the dead bodies of the Hungarian democracy activists killed by Soviet tanks after the 1956 popular uprising against the Communist Party's monopoly of power. Years before glasnost, Mr. Kovacs was one of the dictator's henchmen"

Nobel discredited again: "Just a day before she is scheduled to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, the Kenyan environmentalist Wangari Maathai tried Thursday to defuse a controversy over reports that she said "evil-minded scientists" in the developed world intentionally created AIDS to decimate the African population."

Milton Friedman has a great article pointing out that it is time to start rolling back government.

Jeff Jacoby says that the medical marijuana case before SCOTUS is really about stopping unlimited Federal power.

Nazis and other Leftists get together again: "Arafat`s attention-grabbing series of airplane hijackings set the standard for the new generation of terrorists who took his invention and improved upon it on September 11, 2001. In death, he continues to inspire, and is already sorely missed by "progressives" and neo-Nazis who share one thing in common - enthusiastic support for the slaughter of unarmed Jewish men, women, and children - and who sound eerily alike in their online remarks praising the PLO chief and cursing the Jews."

The People's Republic of Berkeley: "John Kerry won 90 percent of the votes cast for president in Berkeley, while George Bush won the support of only 6.6 percent of Berkeley's voters.... Among cities with a majority of white residents, there is no question that Berkeley ranks number one in the nation in support for Kerry".

Californian legislators are rushing through a law to OK homosexual marriage. Wayne Lusvardi thinks Arnie will veto it and comments: "Something like 70% of California voters nixed same sex marriages a few years ago; this legislation is meant to depict Gov. Schwarzenegger as prejudiced".

Arlene Peck has some pungent comments about the spineless Dutch response to Islamic terrorism. Many of them want to emigrate from their own country rather than crack down on the evildoers.

Darlene Taylor is a relatively new blogger from my home town of Brisbane. I don't really follow what she is on about but she seems to be a disillusioned member of the Australian Labor Party.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH and SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here

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That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftists are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions

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