SOME MORE ECONOMICS

Envy unleashed at the New York Times: "In a front page editorial (Sunday June 5), thinly disguised as its lead news story, The New York Times has unknowingly provided a case study in envy and ignorance. The 'article' is titled 'Richest Are Leaving Even the Rich Far Behind,' subtitled 'Tax Laws Help to Widen Gap at Very Top.'.... an attentive reader, willing to go to the trouble of doing some simple addition based on numbers supplied along with the graphics, is able to see that the bottom 80 percent of all taxpayers in 2001 paid only 29.5 percent of all federal taxes, while the top 20 percent of taxpayers paid the remaining 70.5 percent of all federal taxes and that the top one-tenth of one percent of taxpayers paid 12 percent of all federal taxes. The Times is upset because under the Bush tax cuts, in the year 2015 the top one-tenth of one percent of taxpayers is forecast to pay only 10.8 percent of all federal taxes"

Corporations and governments "The idea that big corporations are untamed beasts that wreak havoc upon civilized society is immensely popular throughout the academy everywhere in the world, including the United States of America. Most professors in the humanities and social sciences, a great many writers, journalists, artist, and entertainers -- centered mainly in New York City and Hollywood -- cling firmly to their view that corporations are a threat to the well being of nearly everyone in society and that those who do not share this belief are deluded, period. It is not only Ralph Nader who embraces this idea and the only reason Nader hasn?t reached national political office is that he is viewed as a naive idealist who wants to take on forces that must be appeased, not fought."

French soul-searching: "But there's one area in which France would love to emulate that place across the Atlantic -- the ability to foster small businesses and turn them into big ones. It's not exactly haute culture , but these days this is a vital topic here in France, where the unemployment rate has been stuck between 9 and 10 percent for a quarter of a century and where not a single enterprise founded here in the past 40 years has managed to break into the ranks of the 25 biggest French companies. By comparison, 19 of today's 25 largest U.S. companies didn't exist four decades ago. That's why France is looking to the United States for lessons.... It's no small thing for a country like France to admit its weaknesses, yet many opinion leaders here now concede that France has the rhetoric of a world power without the economic means of one".

The waiting game "It is always instructive to look at how the government controls what we do in our leisure time. Almost everyone now accepts the notion that government should control business, since almost everyone seems to believe that people are basically rotten and will lie, exploit and manipulate others if given half a chance. The idea of a man or woman in business who thinks that honesty and integrity might be a means to success now seems to be utterly foreign to our way of thinking. Therefore, government -- which people conveniently forget is run by other people, but people who somehow are far more perfect than the rest of us will ever be and not subject to the foibles which plague all non-governmental humans -- must regulate business for 'the public good.'"

Foreign aid counterproductive: "Over the past 50 years, foreign aid has largely been counterproductive: it has crowded out private sector investments, undermined democracy, and enabled despots to continue with oppressive policies, perpetuating poverty, says the International Policy Network (IPN). The reason countries are poor is not that they lack infrastructure -- be it roads, railways, dams, pylons, schools or health clinics. Rather, it is because they lack the institutions of a free society: property rights, the rule of law, free markets and limited government"

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ELSEWHERE (Some great stuff today!)

The world's wealthiest nations have just decided to help Africa's dictators to buy more golden bedsteads and arms from China.

Hube's Cube has a comment on "reparations" for slavery that will knock your socks off.

A superb comment on the way the American military torture people here

The Australian Left has hardly any workers in it: ""Today there are less than 8000 ALP members in this state who work for a living. There are 3,240,000 people in the NSW workforce. Only one-quarter of 1 per cent have joined the Labor Party. Members of affiliated unions who are themselves members of the ALP [number] around 3000. That is less than 1 per cent of the 393,000 trade union members affiliated to the party through their trade union. "In turn, understand that the NSW ALP's trade union affiliates represent just 12 per cent of the NSW workforce and the figure is declining. The party of the workers has hardly any workers as members".

Hooray! House committee votes to slash UN budget: "American taxpayers pay a whopping 22 percent of the U.N.'s more than $2 billion annual operating budget -- and that figure does not include the hundreds of millions of dollars we pay each year for the world body?s peacekeeping, education and development programs. What have we gotten for our money? Frankly, to say the U.N. is an unaccountable, corrupt and out-of-control bureaucracy that consistently fails to advance its stated mission of promoting international peace would be too kind."

V.D. Hanson on the EU: "The French and Dutch rebuffs of the European Union constitution will soon be followed by other rejections. Millions of proud, educated Europeans are tired of being told by unelected grandees that the mess they see is really abstract art. The E.U. constitution - and its promise of a new Europe - supposedly offered a corrective to the Anglo-American strain of Western civilization. More government, higher taxes, richer entitlements, pacifism, statism and atheism would make a more humane and powerful new continent of over 400 million to outpace a retrograde United States.... In fact, 2005 is a culmination of dying ideas. Despite the boasts and threats, almost every political alternative to Western liberalism over the last quarter-century is crashing or already in flames.... Global communications now reveal hourly to people abroad how much better life is in Europe than in the Middle East and Asia - and how in America, Australia and Britain the standard of living is even better than in most of Europe."

Now for the important things: The CHILI CON CARNE debate! Long-time readers of this blog will remember that I also have a recipe blog -- though I post to it very rarely now. A conoisseur of Chili con carne has however just emailed me with what looks like scrumptious recipe for it so have a look!

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald

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That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftist movers and shakers is perfectly shown by the 2004 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.

Leftist ideologues 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 and can con "the masses" into giving them power.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist"

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