Brookes News Update

US economy, Ben Bernanke and recession: Ben Bernanke, the new Fed Chairman, could be seriously misinterpreting economic data. If so, the consequences could be very severe
Is the Australian economy sinking into recession?: Economic indicators are looking bad for the Australian economy. Profits are being slashed and productivity is dropping
Liberal Government's labour market reforms looking shabbier -- so who's to blame?: The Government does not seem to understand that some of its claims are bogus -- unless it believes labour markets were freer in the 1960s than they are today?
Jobs and income security: another union myth: It is impossible for unions to bring about a permanent increase in real wages for everyone. Only by raising the amount of capital invested per head of the population can this be achieved
Economic growth, exports and falling currencies: Would a depreciation of the dollar promote exports and stimulate growth?
Why payroll taxes are really income taxes: Payroll taxes are not similar to so-called consumption taxes: and they can be no more passed on in the form of higher prices than can taxes on profits. They are part of the gross wage

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ELSEWHERE

Further to my post yesterday about the poor reality-contact of the Left, I thought I might note how even when they do acknowledge reality, they are very selective about it. One of the more serious attempts from the Left to find parallels that would justify their constant "Bush=Hitler" mantra is by Thom Hartmann. As is usual with Leftist rhetoric, it's what Hartmann leaves out that is instructive, however. Just one example: GWB has been trying for years to get all US grade schools to use phonics in teaching kids how to read and write -- and still has not succeeded at it. So, at that rate, if he is a dictator he must be the most pissweak dictator of all time! And how long do you think Hitler allowed a press that was critical of him?

A detailed article here on how the NYT collaborates with antisemitism. Excerpt: "While the Times exerts its immense resources to protest what they see as ill-treatment of every minority group under the sun, it seems to have little will to use its prestige to help one of the smallest minorities, Jews. Why American Jews continue their allegiance to a paper that ignores them at best and maligns them at worst is unfathomable. However, maybe some Jews are beginning to wake up and smell the coffee when they unfold the paper in the morning. Readership and circulation figures are plunging in its home market, and it is no longer the most-read paper in New York City. As the internet continues its ascent to become the number one news source for Americans, the Times will now have to face stiff competition. The news will no longer be what they choose to print as the news, and they will face the toughest competition they have yet to face: the truth". (Hat tip to Commonsense & Wonder)

Apparently, the Muslim rioters (sorry: "youths") in France have burnt a lot of churches as well as cars. Astute Blogger comments: "That's one every other day over the last two weeks. Quite a clip. And during the same period, not a single mosque was torched by the rioters, (whose Muslim-ness has nothing to do with the riots - according to the MSM. And nothing about these targeted attacks against churches has appeared in the MSM, either)".

Why not fair-trade beer and cakes?: "I heard the story again just a few days ago. You know the basic plotline: Poor coffee growers in third world countries get paid $1 per bag of coffee, which Starbucks then turns around and sells for $10 a pound. The story always concludes with a discussion about the evil firms involved and how markets result in people at the top getting rich and people at the bottom getting ripped off. But, in the end, this story can only survive due to ignorance of how markets work.....A six-pack of beer, for example, uses perhaps 5-8 ounces of barley (i.e. a few cents worth), and may sell for $3 to $9. That beats Starbucks. Or take wedding cakes. While an inexpensive one might cost a few hundred dollars, you could easily pay thousands for a cake by a master chef whose wheat (flour) cost $10. If Starbucks is evil for the vast difference between what growers get paid and what Starbucks receives for its coffee, these other cases are worse. Difference between input price and output price doesn't inherently imply injustice, and the example of the cake case captures this best. The value doesn't come from the ingredients, but from the skill that went into the cake"

Welfare is the real opiate: "Marx called religion the opiate of the people, and as usual, got it wrong. It was Marx's contention that religion and religious inhibitions against violence kept the proletariat in a stupor that prevented them from overthrowing their capitalist masters. The analogy is false because religion has no addictive quality. Quite the opposite, people must struggle to maintain faith and adherence to God's law. Choosing between good and evil requires awareness, not a stupefied state. Socialism, whether you call it communism, liberalism or whatever, is the opiate dependent ideology.... American liberals haven't quite convinced the American public to abandon the capitalist system for rule by an oligarchy of socialist elites. To advance their cause, liberals employ opiates. The attack on capitalism using opiates to diminish free will and abandon moral responsibility is incessant and insidious.... The welfare state is an opiate. The recipients receive their fixes in exchange for political support. It may not be paradise, but it sure beats working, saving and having to struggle for a living, at least for those whose greatest aspiration is to not miss their favorite television talk-show host or win the lottery."

Bush as Truman: "Why President Bush waited so long to respond to the baseless "Bush lied" lie is a mystery. Perhaps he thought he had more to gain by remaining above the fray than by rolling up his sleeves and wading into it. Perhaps he imagined that because the slander was so brazen, -- so easily refuted, so self-evidently untrue -- it wouldn't deceive the majority of Americans who supported his re-election last year. As the president has finally started pointing out, after all, leading Democrats argued forcefully during the runup to the Iraq War that Saddam Hussein was a lethal menace who had to go. "The war against terrorism will not be finished as long as he is in power," Senator Carl Levin of Michigan said at the time. While Bush never described the danger from Iraqi WMDs as imminent, there were Democrats who did.... With public opinion of Bush's competence and honesty at record lows, it may be hard for many to imagine his ever being seen as anything but a failure. But in 1952, when Truman's approval rating was down to a miserable 22 percent, when he was so unpopular that he stood no chance of winning re-election, who would have guessed that millions of Americans 50 years later would look back on him with admiration as a man of character and a gutsy, plainspoken leader?"

According to my last look at Technorati my new "Australian Politics" blog already has 19 links, but as far as I can see only 2 of them are Australians. I have got a heap of Australian bloggers on my blogroll so a few people are being a bit slack.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. On Social Security see Dick McDonald and for purely Australian news see Australian Politics (mirrored here).

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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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