Ron Paul Liberty Report
  • Home
  • Archives
  • About

Mueller Report Decimates 'Russiagate' Hoax - What's Next?

3/25/2019

 
The two-plus year great hoax has come to an end. Trump is not Putin's puppet, as the vast majority of the mainstream media and Democrats have claimed. There was no "collusion" with Russia. So after so much wasted time and money, where do US/Russia relations stand and where should they be heading? What does it mean for the Venezuela regime change operation?

Ron Paul Classic: No War in Iraq

3/22/2019

 
Picture
By Norm Singleton

This month marks when the war-hawks in both parties assured us that we would never see the 16th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Remember, this invasion was going to be a "cakewalk" and "we’d be greeted as liberators!"

To commemorate this sad anniversary, here is Campaign for Liberty Chairman Ron Paul’s speech opposing the “authorization of military force against Iraq.” This was not a declaration of war. Instead, it gave the President authority to launch a military action whenever he sees fit.

Dr. Paul debunks every claim that was made to justify getting into Iraq. If only Congress would had listened:
RON PAUL: I oppose the resolution authorizing military force against Iraq. The wisdom of the war is one issue, but the process and the philosophy behind our foreign policy are important issues as well. But I have come to the conclusion that I see no threat to our national security. There is no convincing evidence that Iraq is capable of threatening the security of this country, and, therefore, very little reason, if any, to pursue a war.

But I am very interested also in the process that we are pursuing. This is not a resolution to declare war. We know that. This is a resolution that does something much different. This resolution transfers the responsibility, the authority, and the power of the Congress to the President so he can declare war when and if he wants to. He has not even indicated that he wants to go to war or has to go to war; but he will make the full decision, not the Congress, not the people through the Congress of this country in that manner.

It does something else, though. One-half of the resolution delivers this power to the President, but it also instructs him to enforce U.N. resolutions. I happen to think I would rather listen to the President when he talks about unilateralism and national security interests, than accept this responsibility to follow all of the rules and the dictates of the United Nations. That is what this resolution does. It instructs him to follow all of the resolutions.

But an important aspect of the philosophy and the policy we are endorsing here is the preemption doctrine. This should not be passed off lightly. It has been done to some degree in the past, but never been put into law that we will preemptively strike another nation that has not attacked us. No matter what the arguments may be, this policy is new; and it will have ramifications for our future, and it will have ramifications for the future of the world because other countries will adopt this same philosophy.

I also want to mention very briefly something that has essentially never been brought up. For more than a thousand years there has been a doctrine and Christian definition of what a just war is all about. I think this effort and this plan to go to war comes up short of that doctrine. First, it says that there has to be an act of aggression; and there has not been an act of aggression against the United States. We are 6,000 miles from their shores.

Also, it says that all efforts at negotiations must be exhausted. I do not believe that is the case. It seems to me like the opposition, the enemy, right now is begging for more negotiations.

Also, the Christian doctrine says that the proper authority must be responsible for initiating the war. I do not believe that proper authority can be transferred to the President nor to the United Nations.

But a very practical reason why I have a great deal of reservations has to do with the issue of no-win wars that we have been involved in for so long. Once we give up our responsibilities from here in the House and the Senate to make these decisions, it seems that we depend on the United Nations for our instructions; and that is why, as a Member earlier indicated, essentially we are already at war. That is correct. We are still in the Persian Gulf War. We have been bombing for 12 years, and the reason President Bush, Sr., did not go all the way? He said the U.N. did not give him permission to.

My argument is when we go to war through the back door, we are more likely to have the wars last longer and not have resolution of the wars, such as we had in Korea and Vietnam. We ought to consider this very seriously.

Also it is said we are wrong about the act of aggression, there has been an act of aggression against us because Saddam Hussein has shot at our airplanes. The fact that he has missed every single airplane for 12 years, and tens of thousands of sorties have been flown, indicates the strength of our enemy, an impoverished, Third World nation that does not have an air force, anti-aircraft weapons, or a navy.

But the indication is because he shot at us, therefore, it is an act of aggression. However, what is cited as the reason for us flying over the no-fly zone comes from U.N. Resolution 688, which instructs us and all the nations to contribute to humanitarian relief in the Kurdish and the Shiite areas. It says nothing about no-fly zones, and it says nothing about bombing missions over Iraq.

So to declare that we have been attacked, I do not believe for a minute that this fulfills the requirement that we are retaliating against aggression by this country. There is a need for us to assume responsibility for the declaration of war, and also to prepare the American people for the taxes that will be raised and the possibility of a military draft which may well come.

I must oppose this resolution, which regardless of what many have tried to claim will lead us into war with Iraq. This resolution is not a declaration of war, however, and that is an important point: this resolution transfers the Constitutionally-mandated Congressional authority to declare wars to the executive branch. This resolution tells the president that he alone has the authority to determine when, where, why, and how war will be declared. It merely asks the president to pay us a courtesy call a couple of days after the bombing starts to let us know what is going on. This is exactly what our Founding Fathers cautioned against when crafting our form of government: most had just left behind a monarchy where the power to declare war rested in one individual. It is this they most wished to avoid.

As James Madison wrote in 1798, "The Constitution supposes what the history of all governments demonstrates, that the executive is the branch of power most interested in war, and most prone to it. It has, accordingly, with studied care, vested the question of war in the legislature."

Some- even some in this body- have claimed that this Constitutional requirement is an anachronism, and that those who insist on following the founding legal document of this country are just being frivolous. I could not disagree more.

Mr. Speaker, for the more than one dozen years I have spent as a federal legislator I have taken a particular interest in foreign affairs and especially the politics of the Middle East. From my seat on the international relations committee I have had the opportunity to review dozens of documents and to sit through numerous hearings and mark-up sessions regarding the issues of both Iraq and international terrorism.

Back in 1997 and 1998 I publicly spoke out against the actions of the Clinton Administration, which I believed was moving us once again toward war with Iraq. I believe the genesis of our current policy was unfortunately being set at that time. Indeed, many of the same voices who then demanded that the Clinton Administration attack Iraq are now demanding that the Bush Administration attack Iraq. It is unfortunate that these individuals are using the tragedy of September 11, 2001 as cover to force their long-standing desire to see an American invasion of Iraq. Despite all of the information to which I have access, I remain very skeptical that the nation of Iraq poses a serious and immanent terrorist threat to the United States. If I were convinced of such a threat I would support going to war, as I did when I supported President Bush by voting to give him both the authority and the necessary funding to fight the war on terror.

Mr. Speaker, consider some of the following claims presented by supporters of this resolution, and contrast them with the following facts:

Claim: Iraq has consistently demonstrated its willingness to use force against the US through its firing on our planes patrolling the UN-established "no-fly zones."

Reality: The "no-fly zones" were never authorized by the United Nations, nor was their 12 year patrol by American and British fighter planes sanctioned by the United Nations. Under UN Security Council Resolution 688 (April, 1991), Iraq's repression of the Kurds and Shi'ites was condemned, but there was no authorization for "no-fly zones," much less airstrikes. The resolution only calls for member states to "contribute to humanitarian relief" in the Kurd and Shi'ite areas. Yet the US and British have been bombing Iraq in the "no-fly zones" for 12 years. While one can only condemn any country firing on our pilots, isn't the real argument whether we should continue to bomb Iraq relentlessly? Just since 1998, some 40,000 sorties have been flown over Iraq.

Claim: Iraq is an international sponsor of terrorism.

Reality: According to the latest edition of the State Department's Patterns of Global Terrorism, Iraq sponsors several minor Palestinian groups, the Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK), and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). None of these carries out attacks against the United States. As a matter of fact, the MEK (an Iranian organization located in Iraq) has enjoyed broad Congressional support over the years. According to last year's Patterns of Global Terrorism, Iraq has not been involved in terrorist activity against the West since 1993 – the alleged attempt against former President Bush.

Claim: Iraq tried to assassinate President Bush in 1993.

Reality: It is far from certain that Iraq was behind the attack. News reports at the time were skeptical about Kuwaiti assertions that the attack was planned by Iraq against former. President Bush. Following is an interesting quote from Seymore Hersh's article from Nov. 1993:

Three years ago, during Iraq's six-month occupation of Kuwait, there had been an outcry when a teen-age Kuwaiti girl testified eloquently and effectively before Congress about Iraqi atrocities involving newborn infants. The girl turned out to be the daughter of the Kuwaiti Ambassador to Washington, Sheikh Saud Nasir al-Sabah, and her account of Iraqi soldiers flinging babies out of incubators was challenged as exaggerated both by journalists and by human-rights groups. (Sheikh Saud was subsequently named Minister of Information in Kuwait, and he was the government official in charge of briefing the international press on the alleged assassination attempt against George Bush.) In a second incident, in August of 1991, Kuwait provoked a special session of the United Nations Security Council by claiming that twelve Iraqi vessels, including a speedboat, had been involved in an attempt to assault Bubiyan Island, long-disputed territory that was then under Kuwaiti control. The Security Council eventually concluded that, while the Iraqis had been provocative, there had been no Iraqi military raid, and that the Kuwaiti government knew there hadn't. What did take place was nothing more than a smuggler-versus-smuggler dispute over war booty in a nearby demilitarized zone that had emerged, after the Gulf War, as an illegal marketplace for alcohol, ammunition, and livestock.

This establishes that on several occasions Kuwait has lied about the threat from Iraq. Hersh goes on to point out in the article numerous other times the Kuwaitis lied to the US and the UN about Iraq. Here is another good quote from Hersh:

The President was not alone in his caution. Janet Reno, the Attorney General, also had her doubts. "The A.G. remains skeptical of certain aspects of the case," a senior Justice Department official told me in late July, a month after the bombs were dropped on Baghdad…Two weeks later, what amounted to open warfare broke out among various factions in the government on the issue of who had done what in Kuwait. Someone gave a Boston Globe reporter access to a classified C.I.A. study that was highly skeptical of the Kuwaiti claims of an Iraqi assassination attempt. The study, prepared by the C.I.A.'s Counter Terrorism Center, suggested that Kuwait might have "cooked the books" on the alleged plot in an effort to play up the "continuing Iraqi threat" to Western interests in the Persian Gulf. Neither the Times nor the Post made any significant mention of the Globe dispatch, which had been written by a Washington correspondent named Paul Quinn-Judge, although the story cited specific paragraphs from the C.I.A. assessment. The two major American newspapers had been driven by their sources to the other side of the debate.

At the very least, the case against Iraq for the alleged bomb threat is not conclusive.

Claim: Saddam Hussein will use weapons of mass destruction against us – he has already used them against his own people (the Kurds in 1988 in the village of Halabja).

Reality: It is far from certain that Iraq used chemical weapons against the Kurds. It may be accepted as conventional wisdom in these times, but back when it was first claimed there was great skepticism. The evidence is far from conclusive. A 1990 study by the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College cast great doubts on the claim that Iraq used chemical weapons on the Kurds. Following are the two gassing incidents as described in the report:

In September 1988, however – a month after the war (between Iran and Iraq) had ended – the State Department abruptly, and in what many viewed as a sensational manner, condemned Iraq for allegedly using chemicals against its Kurdish population. The incident cannot be understood without some background of Iraq's relations with the Kurds…throughout the war Iraq effectively faced two enemies – Iran and elements of its own Kurdish minority. Significant numbers of the Kurds had launched a revolt against Baghdad and in the process teamed up with Tehran. As soon as the war with Iran ended, Iraq announced its determination to crush the Kurdish insurrection. It sent Republican Guards to the Kurdish area, and in the course of the operation – according to the U.S. State Department – gas was used, with the result that numerous Kurdish civilians were killed. The Iraqi government denied that any such gassing had occurred. Nonetheless, Secretary of State Schultz stood by U.S. accusations, and the U.S. Congress, acting on its own, sought to impose economic sanctions on Baghdad as a violator of the Kurds' human rights.

Having looked at all the evidence that was available to us, we find it impossible to confirm the State Department's claim that gas was used in this instance. To begin with. There were never any victims produced. International relief organizations who examined the Kurds – in Turkey where they had gone for asylum – failed to discover any. Nor were there ever any found inside Iraq. The claim rests solely on testimony of the Kurds who had crossed the border into Turkey, where they were interviewed by staffers of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee…

It appears that in seeking to punish Iraq, the Congress was influenced by another incident that occurred five months earlier in another Iraqi-Kurdish city, Halabjah. In March 1988, the Kurds at Halabjah were bombarded with chemical weapons, producing many deaths. Photographs of the Kurdish victims were widely disseminated in the international media. Iraq was blamed for the Halabjah attack, even though it was subsequently brought out that Iran too had used chemicals in this operation and it seemed likely that it was the Iranian bombardment that had actually killed the Kurds.

Thus, in our view, the Congress acted more on the basis of emotionalism than factual information, and without sufficient thought for the adverse diplomatic effects of its action.

Claim: Iraq must be attacked because it has ignored UN Security Council resolutions – these resolutions must be backed up by the use of force.

Reality: Iraq is but one of the many countries that have not complied with UN Security Council resolutions. In addition to the dozen or so resolutions currently being violated by Iraq, a conservative estimate reveals that there are an additional 91Security Council resolutions by countries other than Iraq that are also currently being violated. Adding in older resolutions that were violated would mean easily more than 200 UN Security Council resolutions have been violated with total impunity. Countries currently in violation include: Israel, Turkey, Morocco, Croatia, Armenia, Russia, Sudan, Turkey-controlled Cyprus, India, Pakistan, Indonesia. None of these countries have been threatened with force over their violations.

Claim: Iraq has anthrax and other chemical and biological agents.

Reality: That may be true. However, according to UNSCOM's chief weapons inspector 90-95 percent of Iraq's chemical and biological weapons and capabilities were destroyed by 1998; those that remained have likely degraded in the intervening four years and are likely useless. A 1994 Senate Banking Committee hearing revealed some 74 shipments of deadly chemical and biological agents from the U.S. to Iraq in the 1980s. As one recent press report stated:

One 1986 shipment from the Virginia-based American Type Culture Collection included three strains of anthrax, six strains of the bacteria that make botulinum toxin and three strains of the bacteria that cause gas gangrene. Iraq later admitted to the United Nations that it had made weapons out of all three…

The CDC, meanwhile, sent shipments of germs to the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission and other agencies involved in Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs. It sent samples in 1986 of botulinum toxin and botulinum toxoid – used to make vaccines against botulinum toxin – directly to the Iraqi chemical and biological weapons complex at al-Muthanna, the records show.

These were sent while the United States was supporting Iraq covertly in its war against Iran. U.S. assistance to Iraq in that war also included covertly-delivered intelligence on Iranian troop movements and other assistance. This is just another example of our policy of interventionism in affairs that do not concern us – and how this interventionism nearly always ends up causing harm to the United States.

Claim: The president claimed last night that: "Iraq possesses ballistic missiles with a likely range of hundreds of miles; far enough to strike Saudi Arabia, Israel, Turkey and other nations in a region where more than 135,000 American civilians and service members live and work."

Reality: Then why is only Israel talking about the need for the U.S. to attack Iraq? None of the other countries seem concerned at all. Also, the fact that some 135,000 Americans in the area are under threat from these alleged missiles is just makes the point that it is time to bring our troops home to defend our own country.

Claim: Iraq harbors al-Qaeda and other terrorists.

Reality: The administration has claimed that some Al-Qaeda elements have been present in Northern Iraq. This is territory controlled by the Kurds – who are our allies – and is patrolled by U.S. and British fighter aircraft. Moreover, dozens of countries – including Iran and the United States – are said to have al-Qaeda members on their territory. Other terrorists allegedly harbored by Iraq, all are affiliated with Palestinian causes and do not attack the United States.

Claim: President Bush said in his speech on 7 October 2002: " Many people have asked how close Saddam Hussein is to developing a nuclear weapon. Well, we don't know exactly, and that's the problem…"

Reality: An admission of a lack of information is justification for an attack?

This article was originally published at Campaign for Liberty.

The Fed's In Over Its Head...And Chaos Is Mounting

3/22/2019

 
With each passing month, we're greeted with more evidence of a fact that The Federal Reserve has no idea what it's doing. For many of us, this is not the least bit of a surprise. Central planning of the economy cannot work. Yet, never ones to admit that they're wrong, the main job of a central planner is to find just one more way to kick the can down the road. Eventually, they must run out of schemes. Ron Paul discusses on today's Liberty Report!

Healthcare Is a Good, Not a Right

3/21/2019

 
Picture
By Ron Paul

[This article was originally published in 2009.]

Political philosopher Richard Weaver famously and correctly stated that ideas have consequences. Take for example ideas about rights versus goods. Natural law states that people have rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. A good is something you work for and earn. It might be a need, like food, but more “goods” seem to be becoming “rights” in our culture, and this has troubling consequences. It might seem harmless enough to decide that people have a right to things like education, employment, housing or healthcare. But if we look a little further into the consequences, we can see that the workings of the community and economy are thrown wildly off balance when people accept those ideas.

First of all, other people must pay for things like healthcare. Those people have bills to pay and families to support, just as you do. If there is a “right” to healthcare, you must force the providers of those goods, or others, to serve you.

Obviously, if healthcare providers were suddenly considered outright slaves to healthcare consumers, our medical schools would quickly empty. As the government continues to convince us that healthcare is a right instead of a good, it also very generously agrees to step in as middleman. Politicians can be very good at making it sound as if healthcare will be free for everybody. Nothing could be further from the truth. The administration doesn’t want you to think too much about how hospitals will be funded, or how you will somehow get something for nothing in the healthcare arena. We are asked to just trust the politicians. Somehow it will all work out.

Universal Healthcare never quite works out the way the people are led to believe before implementing it. Citizens in countries with nationalized healthcare never would have accepted this system had they known upfront about the rationing of care and the long lines.

As bureaucrats take over medicine, costs go up and quality goes down because doctors spend more and more of their time on paperwork and less time helping patients. As costs skyrocket, as they always do when inefficient bureaucrats take the reins, government will need to confiscate more and more money from an already foundering economy to somehow pay the bills. As we have seen many times, the more money and power that government has, the more power it will abuse. The frightening aspect of all this is that cutting costs, which they will inevitably do, could very well mean denying vital services. And since participation will be mandatory, no legal alternatives will be available.


The government will be paying the bills, forcing doctors and hospitals to dance more and more to the government’s tune. Having to subject our health to this bureaucratic insanity and mismanagement is possibly the biggest danger we face. The great irony is that in turning the good of healthcare into a right, your life and liberty are put in jeopardy.

Instead of further removing healthcare from the market, we should return to a true free market in healthcare, one that empowers individuals, not bureaucrats, with control of healthcare dollars.

'Shock & Awe'? 16 Years Later, Who Won The Iraq War?

3/21/2019

 
This week marks 16 years since the US attacked an Iraq that had neither attacked nor threatened us. Claims that Iraq had WMDs were lies and the Bush Administration knew they were lies. So 16 years later who is coming out on top after the US attack? Here's a hint: the most unintended of consequences.

What Are Socialism’s Dirty Secrets That Must Be Kept From America’s Youth?

3/20/2019

 
Picture
By Thomas DiLorenzo

  1. Socialism has always and everywhere been an economic disaster, and every honest scholar knows this. After seventy years of socialism, the Soviet economy was barely 5% of the U.S. economy, despite the false assertions of pro-socialist economists like Paul Samuelson, who wrote in the 1988 edition of his famous textbook that the Soviet economy would exceed the U.S. economy by the year 2000.
  2. You cannot fix socialism with smarter government planners or plans. Socialism cannot work because the rational economic calculation is impossible without private property, free-market prices, the profit-and-loss market feedback mechanism, and economic freedom in general.
  3. The ostensible goal of socialism – egalitarianism – is at war with human nature because all human beings are unique in thousands of different ways. The only kind of “equality” that socialism has ever created is equality of misery and poverty.
  4. Socialism generates far more societal inequality than economic freedom does. In all socialist societies the politically-connected elite live lives of luxury while nearly everyone else is equally impoverished.  In democratic socialist Venezuela today the economy has been ruined by socialism while the daughter of the late Hugo Chavez, the father of Venezuelan socialism, is reportedly worth $4.5 billion.
  5. The worst kind of people – the most immoral, corrupt, cynical, uncaring, and brutal – rise to the top under socialism because socialism is all about forcing people to abandon their own plans for their own lives and complying with mandatory government plans instead. It is no accident, in other words, that socialism is associated with such violent thugs as Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, and Mao.
  6. Fascism was just another variety of socialism. The word “Nazi” was an acronym for national socialism. The German socialists distinguished themselves from the Russian socialists by calling their variety of socialism “national” as opposed to “international.” 
  7. It is a myth that Scandinavian socialism has been successful. Swedish capitalism was extremely successful in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.  The Swedes began living off of the fruits of capitalist prosperity by adopting a version of democratic socialism in the 1950s.  As a result, there was not a single net new job created there from 1955 to 1995.
  8. Nineteenth-century socialism was “government ownership of the means of production,” but it now includes the welfare state progressive income taxation and the strangulation of capitalism with regulation and taxation. The welfare state has destroyed the work ethic of millions; destroyed millions of families; caused a 400% increase in out-of-wedlock births in America since 1960; and transformed millions into lifelong beggars and wards of the state.
  9. Government-run healthcare systems – medical care socialism – is like all other government enterprises in that it operates with all the efficiency of the Post Office or Department of Motor Vehicles and all the compassion of the IRS. Anything as important as medical care should never be put in the hands of politicians and bureaucrats.
  10. The worse pollution problems on the planet for the past century or more have been in the socialist countries, as documented by books with titles like Ecocide in the USSR.  After the collapse of socialism the world learned that, in addition to being economic basket cases, socialist countries were also ecological cesspools.
Excerpted from LewRockwell.com
Picture

Trump Wants Brazil In NATO...To Help Oust Maduro?

3/20/2019

 
Brazil's president Bolsonaro made an unprecedented visit to CIA headquarters as the first stop of his Washington visit. There he was briefed on Venezuela, according to press reports. Later, President Trump came out in favor of "major non-NATO ally" status for Brazil. What's really at play here? Invasion plans?

To Hate Profits Is To Not Understand Profits

3/20/2019

 
Picture
By Chris Rossini

If you're walking around and talking about how you "hate profits," you might as well say that you "hate oxygen" too. The truth is that you really don't hate profits because you can't hate profits.

Every moment of your life, you're seeking to profit, and concomitantly are trying to avoid losses.

Every single moment!

Human life is a continuous sequence of single purposeful actions. The purpose of every one of our actions is to profit in some way, or exchange one end result for another that we value more at the moment.

Every action requires us to trade both our limited time, and some form of our energy (or labor) for the end result that we desire.

If you have an itch that makes you uncomfortable, you decide to trade a few seconds of your time, along with the labor of moving your hand and fingers to scratch it. 

If the itch goes away as a result of your action?...And you're satisfied?

Profit! ...... PROFIT!!!

That's it!

That's what profits are. Action that leads to the removal of some dissatisfaction. We're doing this all day ... every day. We're doing it right now.

Seems rather strange to "hate profits," doesn't it?

If there's something worth hating, it's losses, not profits. 

Let's take another scenario. Your son has a baseball game in another town, and you want to catch it after work. You don't know exactly where the field is, but you'll wing it.

After work, you get in your car (capital) .... and drive (labor/energy) ... for an hour (limited time).

You have an end in mind to see your son play his baseball game, and you're going to act by using your capital, labor, and time to achieve that end.

If you achieve your end and you're satisfied? .... Profit!

But let's say that after an hour of driving, you don't end up at the baseball field, but at a shopping mall! Uh...oh....problem....

You stop at a gas station to ask where the baseball field is, and they have no idea what you're talking about. You can't call anyone because your phone is dead.

You're now suffering LOSSES....one after another. The end result that you've chosen is not being reached, and you're squandering your limited time, energy, and money (on gas).

Isn't it rational, not to hate profits, but to hate losses instead? Doesn't it make more sense, not to hate the proper allocation of time, energy and resources, but the improper allocation?

Now, it's smart not to hate losses either. No human is all-knowing and omnipotent. We all make mistakes in judgement and we make them quite often. It's best to learn from our mistakes, so that we make them once, and never again.

Now you may be thinking to yourself.....

"No, you don't understand. I don't hate those profits. I only hate profits that have to do with money."

To which I would respond: "Well you don't understand monetary profits either then."

Monetary profits operate on the same exact principle.

Let's go to our scenario:

Let's say that the American military empire finally has to close its doors. It can't afford to fight any more wars because they're now completely broke.

As a result of this, the vast majority of Americans are as happy as ever. Troops are coming home from all over the world.

An entrepreneur thinks to himself: "I've never seen Americans so happy. I bet there's going to be another baby boom. I'll take a risk with my resources."

The entrepreneur then starts putting everything together. He has savings built up, so he allocates those. He sets aside a large amount of his limited time. He hires employees and provides jobs to those who sell their labor, talents and skills. He gets manufactures and warehouses lined up, etc...etc...

Keep in mind, this is all a risk that the entrepreneur is taking. He doesn't know if there's going to be a baby boom in 9 months.

Everyone else gets paid though, no matter what happens. The employees don't assume the risk. They get their paychecks no matter what. The manufacturers are paid up front as well. They make...They don't sell.

Sure enough, the entrepreneur was right.

Americans ended up being really happy with the end of the military empire, and 9 months later the Internet is filled with stories of a lot of babies being born; well above the average.

The  entrepreneur guessed right!

All the new mothers rush out to the stores (and Amazon) and there are baby products galore waiting for them!

Hardly anyone thinks this, because it's taken for granted, but 'Thank God for The Entrepreneur!'

In miracle-like fashion, a big demand is met with an abundant supply.

Consumers reward the entrepreneur with profits. His risk is now being rewarded. If the entrepreneur didn't have the foresight, and the stomach to take a risk, there would be a lot of mothers looking at empty shelves.

This miracle could have easily went the other way.

If a baby boom did not occur, the entrepreneur would have lost his time, lost his capital, would have paid employees for something that no one wants to buy, and he'd be stuck with a huge inventory of baby products.

In a free society, there's no one to bail him out.

Profits & Losses ..... It's how human beings allocate scarce resources to achieve their desired ends.

If you think about it deeply enough, you realize that we're all entrepreneurs on some level; even if it's on a personal level. We're always striving for profits and trying to avoid losses.

In a free society, this all takes place under one overarching condition: Don't use aggressive force against anyone else as you strive to achieve your ends.

There's nothing to "hate," and there's nothing better than Liberty. 

The only time that there's something to "hate," is when government interferes.

When government introduces aggressive force, everything becomes distorted and economic life goes into a perpetual downward spiral until the government's actions are reversed.

Free Trade: A Key to a Rising Standard of Living

3/19/2019

 
Picture
By Jacob G. Hornberger

Trade is a key to a rising standard of living in society, especially for those at the bottom of the economic ladder.

In every exchange, both sides benefit from their own individual subjective perspective. That’s because at the moment of the trade, they are both giving up something they value less for something they value more. Thus, trade enables people to improve their standard of living. The greater the ability of people to trade, the better off they are.

A simple example: Suppose John has 10 apples and George has 10 oranges.  John would like some oranges and George would like some apples. They decide to enter into a trade. What would be a “fair” trade? 5 apples for 5 oranges? We can’t say that. It is impossible to say what would be “fair.” That’s because trades are always based on the subjective valuations of the traders. It depends on how much value that each of the traders places on what he is giving up and on what he is getting in exchange.

Suppose John and George reach a deal in which John gives George 9 apples and George gives John 1 orange. Would that be an “unfair” trade? Of course not because John is voluntarily giving up something he values less (9 apples) for something he values more (1 orange). And George is giving up something he values less (1 orange) for something he values more (9 apples). Both sides have increased their own standard of living through the mere act of exchange.

It stands to reason, therefore, that the wider the ambit of possible trades, the better off people are economically. They have more opportunities to improve their standard of living if there are 1,000 people with whom to trade as compared to, say, 10 people.

A corollary to this principle becomes obvious: To the extent that government interferes in any way with people’s freedom to trade, to that extent the government is suppressing the ability of people to improve their standard of living. The harsher the restrictions, the bigger the trade “wars,” or the more brutal the sanctions and embargoes, the worse off the government is making its own citizens in terms of economic well-being.

Thus, among the greatest things that could ever happen to the American people would be the U.S. government’s liberating them, fully and completely, to travel wherever they want and trade with whomever they want. No more tariffs, trade restrictions, trade wars, sanctions, and embargoes.

What if other countries refuse to follow suit? So be it. The fact that some foreign government is imposing  restrictions on the freedom of its own citizenry to trade with others should not serve as an excuse for U.S. officials to “retaliate” by doing the same to American citizens. If a foreign regime restricts the ability of its citizens to trade with Americans, that is something American sellers and consumers will have to deal with it. It is no business of the U.S. government.

Finally, and much more important than the utilitarian arguments for free trade, we should always keep in mind that trade involves the exercise of fundamental, natural, God-given rights. Such rights include the right to private property, the right to do what one wants with his own money, economic liberty, freedom of travel, liberty of contract, and freedom of association.

God has created a consistent universe, one in which freedom, including free trade, is the moral system and also works to improve the lot of mankind.


This article was originally published at The Future of Freedom Foundation.

Why Stop At 15? ... Why Not A $100/hr. Minimum Wage?

3/19/2019

 
Picture
By Liberty Report Staff

​Walter Block eloquently explains:
The minimum wage does not require any employee to be hired. It mandates, only, that if he is taken on, then a lower bound on wages is applied. It is thus an unemployment law. It implies that low skilled workers will not get jobs. Suppose a worker’s productivity is $7 per hour, while the law requires a payment of $10. If a firm takes on such a person, it will lose $3 per hour.
There isn't a person or business out there that is going to purposefully lose money. 

But why stop at $10/hr....or even $15/hr. as many on the Left desire?
Suppose it were raised to $100 per hour. Virtually none of us are worth that amount of money. Will this change in law help you? Posit that your productivity is only $60 per hour. That means, anyone hiring you at that wage will lose $40 per hour.  If they do, they will soon be visited by bankruptcy.
And yet, the Left continues to demagogue this issue. They harm the very people they say that they're helping.

​Over and over, they claim to be "Giving Americans A Raise."

Of course, they're doing no such thing:
The minimum wage is not a floor under wages, one that boosts them as the amount required by law increases. Rather, it is like a hurdle over which you have to jump in order to get a job in the first place and keep it.
When the minimum wage is raised, businesses must adjust their practices so that they can stay profitable and stay in business. They fire people, give extra jobs to the people that stay on, they automate....etc.

The minimum wage outlaws jobs. It's a generator for unemployment.
<<Previous
Forward>>

    RSS Feed

    Archives

    June 2025
    May 2025
    April 2025
    March 2025
    February 2025
    January 2025
    December 2024
    November 2024
    October 2024
    September 2024
    August 2024
    July 2024
    June 2024
    May 2024
    April 2024
    March 2024
    February 2024
    January 2024
    December 2023
    November 2023
    October 2023
    September 2023
    August 2023
    July 2023
    June 2023
    May 2023
    April 2023
    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015



  • Home
  • Archives
  • About