First it was the Dominican limo driver, who disappeared while driving a client upstate. When my husband extracted him from Utica jail a month later, it turned out he’d been arrested on bogus drug charges, and his limo confiscated. Then it was a friend, set up for a drug bust by his ex-wife, to gain custody . . . → Read More: What Drives the War on Drugs?
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In my last post on meat markets and securities markets, I argued that competitive markets require government oversight to prevent fraud and monopoly. The post drew a response from Libertarian friends: didn’t I know that government regulators would immediately be captured by the regulated industry, resulting in worse fraud and monopoly? Industry . . . → Read More: Can Killing Government Prevent Special Interest Capture? Starting in the Colonial Era, New York, Boston and Philadelphia required all fresh meat to be sold by licensed butchers in regulated public markets. New York abandoned public markets in the 1840’s, with disastrous effects on public health. A working paper[1] by economic historian Gergely Baics lays out the story: Travel back in time to 1811, the . . . → Read More: From Public Meat Markets to Derivatives Markets: A Lesson from Old New York The internet, it has long seemed, frees us from the bounds of location. We can work from home. We can shop in London or Tokyo. On Skype, we can chat with friends in Sydney, Australia as if they were next door. Meanwhile, Mozy.com backs up our computers to a bank of servers in Texas. As reported Feb . . . → Read More: Can Cyberspace Liberate Us from Earthly Space? In Higher Taxes Wouldn’t End Some Deficits (Jan 20) the New York Times reported how a few state governors have timidly proposed small income tax increases. There’s a better alternative: undo the legal shackles that keep residents of towns or school districts from voting themselves higher property taxes. Property taxes are wealth taxes, intrinsically more progressive than . . . → Read More: To End Deficits, Allow Localities to Raise Property Taxes State and local officials propose drastic cuts in public services. There’s an alternative: restore the property tax. It’s the oldest wealth tax of all, the tax that financed Chinese civilization over 2000 years ago, the tax that until World War II financed most of government in the USA. The property tax? Our most hated tax? The tax . . . → Read More: To Save Essential Public Services, Restore the Original Wealth Tax! It had been a rainy summer in Colorado. No surprise to find mushrooms as we hiked the Andrews Glacier trail in Rocky Mountain National Park. But these mushrooms! Three inches across, deep crimson with white splotches, glowing in the mountain sunlight! Amanita muscaria, the original deadly toadstool, the mushroom of fairytales, Alice . . . → Read More: Magic Mushrooms A New York Times article by Louise Story asks, “Do widening gaps between rich and poor necessarily lead to financial crises?” (Aug. 21) The answer is yes, for a reason observed over 100 years ago by American economist and reformer Henry George: Economic growth enhances the value of titles to real estate and . . . → Read More: Income Inequality and Financial Crises, NYT, Aug 21 On vacation in Colorado, we drive through the Littleton shopping mall. There it is, a two-story building, black and empty behind its glass facade. Mervyn’s Department Store. Founded in 1949, Mervyn’s grew to a chain of 189 stores in 10 Western states. But in 2008, Mervyn’s went bankrupt , laying off 18,000 employees without severance or . . . → Read More: The Buyout of America: How Private Equity Will Cause the Next Great Credit Crisis, by Josh Kosman This is the scariest book I’ve read since The Day of the Triffids. Back in the ‘70’s, US business monopolization seemed bad, but not getting worse. Spinoffs and breakups balanced mergers. Since then, as documented in Cornered by financial journalist Barry Lynn, global monopolization has rapidly returned us to a new age of robber barons. . . . → Read More: Cornered: The New Monopoly Capitalism and the Economics of Destruction, by Barry C. Lynn |
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