Lincoln; Stages; Work; Warren Buffett

I’ve finally secured a job this week, thankfully, and will now, once again, be paying taxes to the government against my will.
On to the ramblings.

‘Free Speech’ Board

My school has a dry erase board in the cafeteria where they put political questions then have a bunch of socialists argue how much socialism should happen. Starting this week I will put the weekly question here, along with my answer and the dumbest answer, or exchange that happened on the board.

This week’s question: Should there be Free Trade with all other nations.

My answer: Yes, other countries have comparative advantages over Americans when they specialize in certain areas. This allows Americans to do other jobs which promote progress.

Dumbest Answer: NO, THIS ALLOWS MULTI-NATIONAL CORPORATIONS TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF POOR PEOPLE IN OTHER COUNTRIES.

My response: I don’t know where to start. If it’s free trade then the person working at this ‘multi-national corporation’ chose to work there and if he still works there he obviously likes it and is fine with the pay. Most corporations who expand overseas pay their workers two or three times the average pay. The cost of living is much lower in countries other than America.

Lincoln was not good!

Over and over again I read and hear the Lincoln worship alive today, yet I never hear a contrary opinion, so here is mine.

The Civil War was not started over slavery. The ending of slavery was an outcome of the war, but it was not the point.

Most southern states seceded, as was their constitutional right, because they did not like how big the federal government was becoming or how high it put tariffs on everything the south needed, which was killing the southern economy. In the Journals of most Southern soldiers you find writings about independence, not about slavery. In fact, Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson were both morally against slavery and wanted it to end.

After the Southern States seceded, Lincoln unconstitutionally sent the military to attack the South to bring them back to the Union. This whole time, by the way, he repeatedly said how he wished to end the war without stopping slavery, and had, in fact, called Blacks second-class citizens with less human rights than Whites in his first inaugural address.

During the war Lincoln held thousands of South supporters in jail without a trial or any sort of Habeas Corpus, just because he wanted to.

Not only did Lincoln do this, but he is probably the cause of today’s neocons, he combined imperialism with big government and set an example for the future republicans.

Quote of the Week

Creating false distinctions between human rights and property rights plays into the hands of Democrat and Republican Party socialists who seek to control our lives. If we buy into the notion that somehow property rights are less important, or in conflict with, human or civil rights, we give the socialists a freer hand to attack our property.

-Walter Williams

Poll

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How will Obama Govern?

• Well, will help civil liberties

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• Both

• Neither, won't pass anything

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Jackpot

I was exploring the Mises.org site the other day, and I found, perhaps, the bets libertarian site that currently exists.

In the media section they have a crapload of audio and video files available including many books and lectures for free download.

Beyond Stage One

I am currently reading Applied Economics: Thinking Beyond Stage One
by Thomas Sowell, the focus of the book is looking beyond stage one of any situation. This is also touted by Bastiat and Hazlitt (both used the Broken Window Fallacy) and I believe is the easiest way to quickly kill any crazy economic notions preached by politicians or the media. Here are a few examples:

Minimum Wage- Stage One: Wages in general are lifted for workers.

Stage Two: Employers find themselves paying more in wages than before and have to correct other expenses to make up for it.

Stage Three: Prices rise, returns diminish and employees are laid off.

Stage Four: Employers who are held down by minimum wage laws cannot hire people with minimum experience because those people’s production would not be worth minimum wage.

Stage Five: People are unable to gain valuable experience and are never able to find a job.

Unions – Stage One: A union is put in place and the wages of workers in general rise.

Stage Two: Since the employer is being forced to pay his workers more than their worth (if he was paying them less in the first place they easily could have gone somewhere else where they could make more) he raises prices and lays off workers.

Stage Three: Good employees who ordinarily would have been influenced by bonuses no longer have that incentive because in union plants each worker must be given the same raise, and their quality of work goes down.

Stage Four: The person with seniority gets a promotion first; even though it is very possible (and likely considering he would have gotten a promotion sooner if he was capable) someone a lot better for the job is available.

Pay Higher Wages Multi-National Corporation- Stage One: A US Corporation who is producing its shoes in Mexico is forced to raise its raises to US levels. Immediately after, the workers have higher wages and are temporarily more prosperous.

Stage Two: The workers are about one/fifth as productive (an actual statistic) as US workers so as the factory begins to lose money many are laid off.

Stage Three: Eventually, the company cannot afford to keep the factory in Mexico and shuts it down moving back to the US. Workers who just a few months (maybe weeks) later were making twice as much as the average wage in their area now are jobless.

Stage Four: Consumers have to pay more for their product and investors lose money as the company first loses money then needs to spend a lot of it buying a new factory and hiring and training workers, all the while losing the products they would have been able to make in the past.

Having a Job is Very Good

I was out of work for a year while finishing up high school then starting college, but I recently got a job at a KFC near the college (I had worked at one for a year-and-a-half in the past).

The feeling of production and the self-confidence one gets while working is rarely eclipsed.

Warren Buffett is not an Economist

Warren Buffett is without a doubt a genius and one of the best businessman and investors in American history.

That said he is far from an economist.

Reading Snowball (the newest biography on him) one finds that Buffett’s father was an Old-Right republican very similar to Barry Goldwater, and as close as one gets to libertarianism without being a libertarian. This is extremely surprising considering Buffett is pretty much a socialist, consider that he said budget deficits don’t matter, but trade deficits do.

What?!

A budget deficit necessarily means the government is spending more money then it steals from citizens, which means the money cannot be used in the economy, on this basis alone budget deficits are bad.

Trade deficits, on the other hand, are good. The current US trade deficit means that US workers are freed from doing things they do not want to do (if they wanted to do them they would accept the wages making it possible for them to be employed in these jobs) and doing things where they are more productive.

A Surprisingly Libertarian Movie

I watched Other People’s Money in a management class (we were talking a business’ social responsibility which I’ll get to in another post). I rolled my eyes throughout the movie as Danny DeVito’s character was made to look evil.

But, at the end of the movie when his character gives a speech trying to take over a company and get rid of a losing division, the character makes a pretty good speech knocking down protectionism, though I do not agree with all of his statements I recommend this movie.

The Government Does Not Produce

This seems to be unknown, even considering its obviousness, so I’ll say it here:

“The government produces nothing any money it has was stolen from someone.”

If you have any questions about this please comment with them.

Thomas Aquinas is an 18 year-old college student who recently started reading more than watching tv and the result has been immense knowledge, that however seems to be a negative as not very many people share this knowledge.