- The ideological Left, including presidential candidate Kamala Harris has it backwards regarding capitalism and believe its prime motivation is selfishness and greed. And while you cannot extract the human condition from any economic system, capitalism begins not with taking but with giving to others. While this may sound counter intuitive, the underlying motivation of the entrepreneur is to improve his or earn economic well-being, which means his #1 priority is not to satisfy his needs but to satisfy the business’s customers’ needs because that’s the only path to success and profitability.
- Kamala’s “Opportunity Economy” will include “new penalties for opportunistic companies that exploit crises and engage in price gouging,” however, Harris has never explicitly defined “price gouging” nor what the penalties would be nor how the federal government would enforce them.
- For as long as governments have been coming up with solutions to problems, those solutions have had a habit of backfiring, either by making the original problem worse or by generating unintended consequences that are even more harmful or costly.
- As a practical matter, “solutions” that depend on government coercion and top-down directives fail far more often than those that rely on local ingenuity and diffused authority. As Thomas Jefferson told us, “Were we directed from Washington when to sow and when to reap, we should soon want bread.”
- Rent control, enacted to keep housing affordable, causes demand to rise while shrinking normal turnover. The result? Housing grows more scarce, not more abundant.
- It’s now a sad reality that voters have come to expect—and maybe even accept—that our politicians are going to lie about their resumes and their personal lives.
- At the same time, it’s the lies about policy that the voters end up paying for, such as the Inflation Reduction Act that did little more than create a series of complicated tax breaks and incentives aimed at greening the economy while doing nothing to reduce our $30 trillion debt.
- Why is it that liberal celebrities who threaten to leave the country such as, Lena Dunham, Snoop Dogg, Amy Schumer, Samuel L. Jackson, Cher, Whoopie Goldberg, Miley Cyrus, Brian Cranston and dozens more if their Democratic candidate lost the presidential election never do?
- Historically speaking, the only law I’m aware of that’s always been adhered to by politicians on both sides of the isle is The Law of Unintended Consequences.
- When I hear someone say that a woman is someone who defines themselves as a woman, they are violating the most basic laws of logic because logic dictates that a definition must A) be clearer than the term defined, and B) must not contain the term being defined, making it illogical to define something by itself. What these misguided souls are actually doing is engaging in circular reasoning, which is of course also illogical.
- Why do you suppose that newspapers that carry inflammatory charges against Donald Trump with banner headlines on Page 1 only carry the story of how the charge was false, fake, or misleading as a small item deep inside the paper?
- If corporate “greed” is the explanation for high gasoline prices, why are government taxes not an even bigger sign of “greed” since taxes add more to the price of gasoline than oil company profits do?
- When explaining inflation, the Left will never entertain the concept of supply and demand, not because it’s too “complex,” but rather because the topic isn’t very emotionally satisfying without someone to blame , e.g., big oil or big pharma. The Left would much rather listen to their political heroes talking about how to stop these “greedy villains” from “gouging” or “exploiting” them with high prices.
- Outrage and moral melodrama are the hallmarks of the ideological Left.
- I’ll leave you with just one more thought about the most fundamental reality of economics: “What everybody wants has always added up to more than there is.”
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