Missed it by that much

 


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The Cost of Lockdowns

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  My governor is threatening tighter restrictions on mask wearing and event attendance limits. To back up these restrictions he is promising to charge violators with fines and misdemeanors. This has of course spooked the locals and that’s why I just spent $200 On-groceries-I-don’t-need-but-might-need-in-the-next-four-months. That’s $200 I can’t invest in a 401K. That’s $200 I can’t use for Christmas shopping. That’s $200 I won’t have on hand for emergencies. Now granted, if none of these emergencies happen, my investment will balance out and the money I spent today will turn into money that I save in the future. But I only have that option because I was able to get ahead of the panic and I had an extra $200 in the bank. But what about the people who don’t get ahead of the panic or don’t have the cash on hand? This is the true devastation of the lockdowns. They disproportionately impact those who also are least able to prepare or react. So what’s the solution? Well on an individual ...
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Private Property Saved the Pilgrims

The common defense of communist economies is, "Yeah, but that's not real communism." Enter The Pilgrims. The people that risked their lives to sail across the Atlantic Ocean on little sail boats to be free of the Church of England. They were as homogeneous as a congregation could be. This is also a bit redundant but I think it's worth mentioning that this was back in 1623. Think of all our complaints about the younger generations: they need participation trophies, are lazy, spoiled and addicted to their phones/social media/video games. The pilgrims didn't have any of these distractions. And yet even they couldn't prosper under communism. Fortunately, William Bradford recognized the importance of property rights and that's something to be thankful for. Here is a condensed summary of the Pilgrims story: https://www.heritage.org/.../pilgrims-beat-communism-free... And a longer, more thorough summary https://www.hoover.org/.../how-private-property-saved...
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How the minimum wage is maximized to hurt the poor

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Simply put, the minimum wage should be 0. And for you Bernie Sanders fans, Denmark, Finland, and Sweden agree with me.  But that didn’t stop Florida from becoming the next state to require a minimum wage of $15. Like all recent increases in the minimum wage this too was touted as, "a huge win for the working people of the Sunshine State!"(1) At first it seems simple. Well-meaning people want to help the poor by forcing businesses to pay them more money. If you look at the economy in a vacuum that would play out. But life is not so simple. The topics of prices and Karl Marx’ defunct Labor Theory of Value are worth spending a whole essay on, but suffice it to say that the price of goods and services are based on how much the customer is willing to spend.(2) And in this particular instance the goods and services are the employee and the customer is actually the business itself. Raising the minimum wage makes the employee more expensive. And when you make something more expensive...
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