Mar 22
“Austerity” means cuts in government spending and/or benefits. The word often appears in mainstream news reports and on the lips of politicians who decry it. Yet austerity has not been seen in any western government anywhere in the world in generations. The governments of all western countries have grown and grown in relation to their …
May 04
The Billings Gazette delivers a steady stream of pro-government content. Today, May 4, 2017, the Gazette featured a typical smattering of pro-government news commentary, local business stories and feature stories. But at the bottom of the Gazette’s webpage there appeared a photo feature entitled: “Here’s what seven years of Greek austerity looks like.” See here. …
Dec 11
“Austerity” means cuts in government staff or welfare spending. The word appears often in false news, speeches of government trusters, and reporters. But austerity exists almost nowhere outside such rhetoric. None of the governments of the western world have done much cutting of their budgets. When George W. Bush won the presidency, the Republicans controlled …
Jul 05
The word “austerity” means cuts in government payroll, welfare or other spending. Many opinion writers–and even a few “journalists”–write that there is “austerity” going on in various places. Rarely do they point to any specific events. Here is a recent example. A Huffington Post writer named Dean Baker claims in a headline that “Bill Gates …
Dec 17
Two of the largest news aggregator sites are Huffingtonpost.com and Drudgereport.com. Today, December 17, 2015, both sites led with headlines about the massive, record-breaking, unpaid-for federal budget that just cleared Congress. Both sites linked to the same article in politico.com, which details the impending budget. The Politico tagline is “Budget austerity takes a back seat …
Jul 15
The occasionally brilliant John Stossel is out with a good column. Stossel attended Freedomfest in Las Vegas recently and learned about countries such as New Zealand and Canada, which saw their economies greatly improve after cutting government spending. Greece, however, has been in the news for years, unable to stay afloat financially. Greece recently defaulted …
Jul 10
The word “austerity” has been in the news a lot lately. Austerity means cuts in government payroll or other spending. Trusters of government like to claim that “severe” (Paul Krugman) or “harsh” (the Guardian) austerity measures are being imposed on the people of Greece, or maybe in some other European country. The truth is that …
Feb 01
Every claim of “campaign finance reformers” is false. Every single claim. For-profit corporations actually contribute almost nothing to political campaigns. Common law rules of corporate governance (i.e., the rule that corporations must seek profits as their primary interest) prohibit for-profit corporations from wasting money on politics. (And shareholders could sue them if they did waste …
