Christianomics: A blog on economics, politics, and law

https://www.newsweek.com/ro-khanna-defends-small-business-comments-minimum-wage-1570911 "We don't want low wage businesses" If you run a business and you don't pay your people more than $15 an hour. This man thinks you deserve to go bankrupt. If you don't find this deeply upsetting, you need to meet more small business owners.

First everyone has a legal right to do what they did: Gina Carano had a right to post on her Twitter account. People upset at her post had the right to call for her being fired. Disney had the right to fire her. Disney also has the right to not fire Pedro Pascal (Mr. Mandalorian) and other employees for posting very similar nazi/holocaust content on their own Twitter accounts. (1) People upset at the hypocrisy of Gina’s firing have the right to boycott and #canceldisney .(2) And Ben Shapiro and the Daily Wire have the right to partner with her for their next movie.(3) So all of that is legal and constitutional. And considering none of the actions are mandated by the government I would also claim this is the free market at work. However, free market or not, the fact that this situation happened at all, begs the question: “Where does this end? Leftists told Trump supporters to, “Build your own social media.” When Parler was shut down, they said, “Build your own servers.” Now when Disney ...

This past week has seen lots of eagerness and angst directed at Gamestop, hedge funds, Reddit, and Robinhood. There are plenty of explanations for what is happening and the various legalities (and illegalities). I’ll provide a link to Ben Shapiro’s summary which I found to be succinct and clear.(1) But what I want to cover is [1] this emerging idea that the stock market doesn’t improve economic prosperity, [2] that the stock market is just gambling, and [3] how the government got us into this situation. [1] In the traditional sense of investments and buying stocks, there are tangible economic gains to be made for both the companies and the investors. It’s the same reason I went to the bank to ask for a lot of money to buy a house, and the bank said “Okay.” My house provides shelter, heat, air conditioning, a place to hang out with friends and makes my life better and more comfortable than before. The bank is similarly going to profit because it will recoup all the money it gave to me, ...