Brookes News Update

US economy, trade deficit and monetary policy: Because of the sheer size of its economy, a monetary-induced deficit by the United States distorts the pattern of international trade as well as disarranging internal investment
Labour market reform attacked by Paul Keating: Keating's attack on labour market reform at least served the purpose of demonstrating just how bad the critics' so-called economic thinking is
Labour market reform and productivity: Liberal Party stuffs it up again: When it comes to productivity and labour market reform the Liberal Government and its advisers just cannot get it right
Liberal Party treats members with contempt: I am not surprised that Liberal Party membership is shrinking. What can one expect when it treats ordinary members with contempt
Does consumer confidence raise economic activity?: The view that by means of opinion surveys one can ascertain the future direction of an economy is somewhat questionable
Australian economy: Inflation and jobs: Critics of 'fight inflation first' policies are wrong. The unemployment they attack is the cost of having inflation
Deflation and economic confusion: Deflation is a greatly misunderstood phenomenon. In fact, I am inclined to go so far as to suggest that very few Australians actually know what it means

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ELSEWHERE

I have just put up on my scripture blog a treatment of the important passage in Romans 13:1-7. The passage is one which causes many Christians to ask: "Should Christians obey the government, no matter what sort of government it may be?" What are we to make of: "Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God"?

I have just put up here a counterblast to a Leftist parallel between resistance to Hitler and resisting the allied intervention in Iraq.

I have just put up here a short post from one of my regular readers about the infantilization of modern American culture. I don't entirely agree with him but he has some good points. The infantile nature of the modern American Left is something that Evan Sayet often writes about.

I've always said Chomsky is just an entertainer for Leftists: "One of the most persistent themes in Chomsky's work has been class warfare. He has frequently lashed out against the "massive use of tax havens to shift the burden to the general population and away from the rich" and criticized the concentration of wealth in "trusts" by the wealthiest one percent. The American tax code is rigged with "complicated devices for ensuring that the poor -- like eighty percent of the population -- pay off the rich." But trusts can't be all bad. After all, Chomsky, with a net worth north of $2,000,000, decided to create one for himself. A few years back he went to Boston's venerable white-shoe law firm, Palmer and Dodge, and with the help of a tax attorney specializing in "income-tax planning" set up an irrevocable trust to protect his assets from Uncle Sam. He named his tax attorney (every socialist radical needs one!) and a daughter as trustees. To the Diane Chomsky Irrevocable Trust (named for another daughter) he has assigned the copyright of several of his books, including multiple international editions".

Pathetic: "The French campaign against the global tide of American entertainment will take a big stride forward today when almost every nation backs the first world convention on protecting culture. Most of the 191 members of Unesco, the United Nations' cultural agency, are expected to vote for a "convention on cultural diversity", which enshrines on a global level France's longstanding policy of subsidising its arts and imposing quotas on American films and music. The vote will be a big defeat for the United States, which held out against the plan with partial backing from Israel, Australia and Japan".

Threat to jobs averted: "Senate proposals to raise the minimum wage were rejected Wednesday, making it unlikely that the lowest allowable wage, $5.15 an hour since 1997, will rise in the foreseeable future. A labor-backed measure by Sen. Edward Kennedy would have raised the minimum to $6.25 over an 18-month period. A Republican counterproposal would have combined the same $1.10 increase with various breaks and exemptions for small businesses."

Fred Reed on "reparations": "I suggest that blacks ought to be grateful that their faster ancestors caught their slower ancestors -- which is exactly what happened -- and sold them to the slavers. American blacks would otherwise be somewhere on the Slave Coast of Africa, barefoot, illiterate, blankly ignorant, wearing loincloths, living in stick huts that would give Eeyore the willies, and shuddering with malaria. That's what Africa is: primitive, hopeless, godawful. I've been in Masai hutments, spent time in the outback of Cuando Cubango. It's not Stone Age. It's more like Stick Age. No country in Africa today comes close, or ever has, to the culture of Fifth Century Athens, 2500 years ago. Yes, slavery was brutal and ugly. It was, however, hard on the slaves, not on today's blacks. Slavery brought our blacks into contact with a vastly superior civilization from which they benefit enormously, and without the slightest gratitude. Everything blacks enjoy in this country today -- air-conditioning, writing, automobiles, television, medicine, welfare, medicine, everything -- they enjoy only because they were brought here. Further, they have contributed almost nothing to the industrial and technological flowering that has provided the benefits they enjoy."

Taxes and economic growth: "New York Times editorial board member Teresa Tritch believes our tax system should serve one purpose and one purpose only -- to soak the rich. Any reduction in tax rates, especially on saving and investment, has nothing to do with raising growth, but is nothing but a give-away to the ultra-wealthy. The reality is that the wealthy pay almost all of the federal income tax and there is clear and compelling evidence that our tax system - especially its misguided redistributive elements -- impose a heavy cost in terms of growth that is ultimately paid by the non-wealthy in the form of lower productivity and, hence, lower wages and incomes ..."

This site keeps track of the unending atrocities committed in the name of "the religion of peace".

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

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Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.

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" (Nationalsozialistisch)

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