The Macro View uses Statistics, Logic, Reason, History and Common Sense to Guide the Dialogue toward finding REAL Solutions to major issues facing us today
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Rhetoric has recently trumped reality. It has become a misconceived bit of common “knowledge” that the United States of America is a bastion of free trade. Little could be further from the truth.
Episode 54: Marx's Mistakes Part 5 of 5 explains why The Incentive Problem with socialism, while popular, is not the technically correct way to debunk socialism, and why The Calculation Problem is a much sounder argument against communism and socialism.
With that said, this episode rephrases explains The Incentive Problem, and walks through the socialist answers to the incentive problem, and why they are outrageous.
Marx made a number of mistakes, as we have been pointing out in the last 5 episodes, but the calculation problem escaped many for far too long. It wasn't until Ludwig von Mises wrote the essay "Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth".
This essay was pivotal in pointing out why even if humans could "evolve past self-interest", why socialism would still fail.
Andrew N. Smith is the Co-Founder of OWLshares, a Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst, and Host of TheMacroView Podcast. He is an Austro-Libertarian. His first book - STOP BLAMING FREE MARKETS...
The “capitalism kills” memes assume that the world in its most natural state was flowing with abundance and fairness, that everyone was well fed, and that anti-biotics and other life-saving medications magically grew on trees. They assume that water was fresh, clean and safe to drink in pre-capitalist civilizations. Most ignorantly of all, they assume that every country on earth has a free market capitalist system with no government involvement – and that particularly the poorest countries on earth have the freest markets.
One of the most popular memes circling left-wing social media groups is “Capitalism Kills”. It was likely popularized in response to the communist democide memes highlighting the hundred million...
The “capitalism kills” memes assume that the world in its most natural state was flowing with abundance and fairness, that everyone was well fed, and that anti-biotics and other life-saving medications magically grew on trees. They assume that water was fresh, clean and safe to drink in pre-capitalist civilizations. They assume that, most ignorantly of all, they assume that every country on earth has a free market capitalist system with no government involvement – and that particularly the poorest countries on earth have the freest markets.
One of the most popular memes circling left-wing social media groups is “Capitalism Kills”. It was likely popularized in response to the communist democide memes highlighting the hundred million...
In part 3 of this 5 part series, we destroy the "average rate of profit" argument that Marx made in order to try an assert that workers were exploited by capitalists...
In doing so we borrow heavily from Eugen Bohm-Bawerk the great 19th century Austrian Economist, and his book Karl Marx and the Close of His System.
Marx attempts to assert that commodities carry an average rate of profit which can be tied back to the labor hours, and attempts to use this reasoning to tie all value back to the amount of labor that goes into the production process.
Not only did he fail to do so, but in some ways he actually blew his own reasoning up with contradictions to his logic that highlight fully different arguments from those he was attempting to make.
Tune in to hear the Marx's argument explode.
Andrew N. Smith is the Co-Founder of OWLshares, a Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst, and Host of TheMacroView Podcast. He is an Austro-Libertarian. His first book - STOP BLAMING FREE MARKETS...
Allocation Matters Folks!
The Keynesian view of the world states that during economic downturns, anything and everything must be done to stimulate consumption to jumpstart so-called idle resources, primarily labor. There is a...
TheMacroView Episode 51: Marx's Mistakes Part 2 of 5
Part two of our 5 part episode discusses the flaws in the "Cost of Production" or "Labor Cost" Theory of Value, and the flaws in the Exploitation theory of Capital & Interest - tomorrow we discuss the Exploitation Theory of Profits and the flaws in the "Average Rate of Profit" theory!
Check it out - Now Available!
Andrew N. Smith is the Co-Founder of OWLshares, a Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst, and Host of TheMacroView Podcast. He is an Austro-Libertarian. His first book - STOP BLAMING FREE MARKETS...
Heritage Was Too Conservative in Their Estimates - We'll Likely Go Bankrupt Sooner Than Anyone Expects
"Why is this so scary? Well, given that their projections were hyper conservative, their projections of when Mandatory Spending and Net Interest on the Debt will reach 100% of tax revenues are likely hyper conservative as well. In their 2012 report, they project that it would take an additional 36 years before the “big three”, consisting of Social Security, Health Care Entitlements and Net Interest on the National Debt, would reach 100% of federal tax revenues, projecting it would take til about mid-century.
As of 2015, however, mandatory spending already reached three quarters of all federal tax revenue, and this was before interest rates on treasury bonds began rising from their historic all-time lows. As interest rates rise deficit financing will become more expensive, and with an aging population so will the other 2 components of the “big three”, Social Security and Medicare. There is absolutely no sign of President Trump cutting back on the so-called mandatory spending. In fact, he promised throughout his campaign and since being in office that Social Security and Medicare will not be reformed at all."
For years, the Heritage Foundation released an annual study titled Federal Spending: By the Numbers . In it they would make a range of projections, guided by the recent past, including debt growth....
Heritage Was Too Conservative in Their Estimates - We'll Likely Go Bankrupt Sooner Than Anyone Expects
"Why is this so scary? Well, given that their projections were hyper conservative, their projections of when Mandatory Spending and Net Interest on the Debt will reach 100% of tax revenues are likely hyper conservative as well. In their 2012 report, they project that it would take an additional 36 years before the “big three”, consisting of Social Security, Health Care Entitlements and Net Interest on the National Debt, would reach 100% of federal tax revenues, projecting it would take til about mid-century.
As of 2015, however, mandatory spending already reached three quarters of all federal tax revenue, and this was before interest rates on treasury bonds began rising from their historic all-time lows. As interest rates rise deficit financing will become more expensive, and with an aging population so will the other 2 components of the “big three”, Social Security and Medicare. There is absolutely no sign of President Trump cutting back on the so-called mandatory spending. In fact, he promised throughout his campaign and since being in office that Social Security and Medicare will not be reformed at all."
For years, the Heritage Foundation released an annual study titled Federal Spending: By the Numbers . In it they would make a range of projections, guided by the recent past, including debt growth....
Karl Marx made a whole host of mistakes, as many of his “socialist” and classical economics predecessors did. No figure in history, however, has been as widely influential on society despite making error after error. Marx’s mistakes have largely been disregarded. He has been treated as a cult-figure, god-like in many ways, and his errors were never explained – rather his theories were just taken on faith. Still to this day, many highly influential professors buy into his cockamamie irreconcilable and contradictory theories of capital and interest, profit, value and so much more.
His work is utter garbage. Not only was it absolutely destroyed by economist after economist, none more ferociously and accurately than Eugen Bohm-Bawerk in the late 1800s, but it was disproven in practice time and again throughout the 20th century.
No single man in history has been responsible for such astounding human regress and international carnage as Karl Marx.
From N**i Germany, to the Soviet Union, to Communist China, To Cambodia under Pol Pot, to Cuba under Castro (and the many other countries that were destroyed and largely haven’t recovered from revolutions led by Che Guevarra), to today’s Venezuela, to most of sub-Saharan Africa – nearly every nation on earth has felt the wrath of Marxism.
Many of us that know Marxism is a total disaster and a skid mark on the underpants of human history, however I believe you’ll be hard pressed to hear someone coherently explain the reasons why. The mistakes of the Marxist philosophy that have been bought into to by far too many people for far too long. Over the course of the next 5 days, every single one of my listeners will become an expert at debunking Marxism from a logical standpoint as we embark on this five-episode series discussing the Mistakes of Karl Marx
Andrew N. Smith is the Co-Founder of OWLshares, a Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst, and Host of TheMacroView Podcast. He is an Austro-Libertarian. His first book - STOP BLAMING FREE MARKETS...
After the Party There's Always a Mess... Trump is Right - He Inherited a Mess...
During the middle of a party, nobody stops to look around and say “afterwards there is going to be a lot of cleaning to do”. Ok, well some of us do – especially if the party is at our house and...
"Thomas Carlyle, Charles Dickens, and Karl Marx saw the mechanization pioneered by Whitworth and his peers as dehumanizing and spiritually impoverishing. But for all the poverty and squalor associated with rapid industrialization, the expanding population enjoyed enduring improvements in living standards, and the economy began to grow at an unprecedented rate. In the long run, writes the economist Robert C Allen, the economic growth that got going in the mid-1800s 'compounded to the mass prosperity of today.'
The lesson for today is that technological innovation can be extremely painful, but that over the longer term it does not necessarily come at the price of jobs or prosperity: indeed, new technology begets further innovation that creates wealth and employment in entirely unforeseeable ways. This was not appreciated by the frock-wearing Luddites of the early 19th century, nor is it understood by their spiritual heirs two centuries later."
-David Waller, Foundation for Economic Education, March 6, 2017
Technological innovation can be painful, but over the long term, new technology begets further innovation that creates wealth and employment in entirely unforeseeable ways. This was not appreciated by the frock-wearing Luddites of the early 19th century, nor is it understood by their spiritual heirs...
TheMacroView Episode 49: We Told You So... and We LOVE Being Right!
Wendy's Settles the Minimum Wage Debate in Glorious Fashion, making clear that the reason the are putting kiosks in 1,000 stores across the country. Kiosks are just getting cheaper and cheaper, and at the same time labor is getting more and more expensive.
As the so-called fight for $15 picks up steam, and has a couple wins in a few of the biggest states in the Union, employers of low skilled laborers look for was to "slash labor costs" according to restaurant industry trend analysts.
It doesn't take a genius to figure it out. It's simple. The law of demand states "all else equal, the higher the price, the less people buy" wages are prices for labor, government dictates for higher wages means less people will buy labor aka create jobs.
The ignorance of those fighting for $15 an hour minimum wage is on full display over the past few months, and all their fallacious claims are being proved wrong, undeniably wrong.
We aren't going to play coy and say "I hate to say I told you so", we LOVE to say we told you so at TheMacroView. This one is worth celebrating! Tune in for Episode 49 to get the full take on this story that is blowing up in the face of leftists everywhere
Andrew N. Smith is the Co-Founder of OWLshares, a Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst, and Host of TheMacroView Podcast. He is an Austro-Libertarian. His first book - STOP BLAMING FREE MARKETS...
Want to Make America Great - Privatize Everything
"Instead of engaging in more boondoggle spending at the government level, and encouraging the misallocation of real and finite resources to bureaucratically directed projects, the better solution for rebuilding our infrastructure is to simply privatize it all. It would take a bold move that is unlikely to come out of the administration of a President that believes it requires nothing more than “strong” leadership to “fix” government, and one that is extremely ignorant of economics, but it would be a great surprise if it did. I, for one, am not going to hold my breath."
President Donald Trump in his address to the joint session of Congress on Tuesday touted his $1 Trillion infrastructure plan. While he claims that some of the money is going to come from the...
In Episode 48, Host Andrew Smith discusses the perversion of the Taking Clause, why the takings clause should be removed from the Constitution via a constitutional amendment, the Kelo case, and now Pleasant Ridge vs the City of Charlestown, Indiana.
He sets the record straight regarding the "fair market value" myth, and discusses why it is economically fallacious.
Now most people agree that the Kelo decision was egregious. Most people would be appalled by the situation in Charlestown, but at the same time, most people thing that the use of eminent domain is the only way to cheaply and efficiently execute upon the construction of so-called public infrastructure projects.
Andrew also discusses why eminent domain actually costs a lot MORE than voluntary transactions would costs for public infrastructure costs, and why it is logically fallacious to claim that any other way of constructing roads and other so-called public infrastructure could not otherwise occur.
Andrew N. Smith is the Co-Founder of OWLshares, a Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst, and Host of TheMacroView Podcast. He is an Austro-Libertarian. His first book - STOP BLAMING FREE MARKETS...
Bureaucracies Operate Under a Different Incentive than Private Enterprise...
In private enterprise companies and even not-for-profits (with more than one donor) operate under the profit and loss motive - prices send signals to entrepreneurs, telling them what society most urgently demands be produced with the means of production....
Bureaucracies on the other hand, operate under the Budget Increase Motive - the sole goal is to spend their entire budget to insure they get a larger appropriation from congress the next year. Further, it prevents them from ever solving the problems... We discuss why...
Andrew N. Smith is the Co-Founder of OWLshares, a Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst, and Host of TheMacroView Podcast. He is an Austro-Libertarian. His first book - STOP BLAMING FREE MARKETS...
"On Monday, President Trump made remarks at a budget meeting – remarks that highlighted what he would be proposing in his first budget. Everyone on the left went absolutely crazy at the “massive cuts” he was proposing to everything except military spending. Contrary to what you may have heard, the proposed 2018 budget is set to grow by 3.2%. There were no cuts. All in all, President Trump proposed a small cut back in non-defense discretionary spending, while jacking military spending up by $54 billion. While the “rate of growth” may be getting cut slightly, by less than 2 percentage points, the overall budget will be once again larger."
On Monday, President Trump made remarks at a budget meeting – remarks that highlighted what he would be proposing in his first budget. Everyone on the left went absolutely crazy at the “massive...
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TheMacroView Episode 46: On The Bargaining Power Myth
Left-Wing Economist and Politicians use the fallacious claim that "low skill workers have no bargaining power" to justify the minimum wage, while simultaneously stripping bargaining power from them through overtime pay laws. They base their fallacious claim on another fallacy - the low skill labor buyers monopoly.
In Episode 46 of TheMacroView Host Andrew Smith debunks both myths and explains where "bargaining power" comes from in the labor market.
Getting back to the basics of economics - Andrew teaches listeners why low skilled workers have a tougher time earning raises, and what they can potentially do about it in a free market setting.
Andrew N. Smith is the Co-Founder of OWLshares, a Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst, and Host of TheMacroView Podcast. He is an Austro-Libertarian. His first book - STOP BLAMING FREE MARKETS...
Time for Divorce - Irreconcilable Differences & the Case for Secession
"On the national level, secession shouldn’t be treated as a joke either. It would do great service to the people of the coastal regions of California, Oregon and Washington if they could form their own nation. The coastal regions of these three states are virtually socialist, but are largely held in check by the federal government. While I live in Los Angeles, and would likely opt to move if secession occurred, I would also likely vote for it. There is no way to change the minds of the people in this regions. They want to try socialism – full on central planning of the economy – and why should they not have the opportunity to collectively trash their economies.
It would not only do a great service to the people living in this region, but it would finally provide a large scale, undeniable example of the failings of such a system to the rest of the country. Detroit’s failure was scapegoated in so many ways the truthful narrative of overwhelming pension liabilities and 40 years of left-wing policies was hijacked. The left-coast seceding and having their own experiment would give us something close enough to home that those out there that still deny the power of decentralized economic activity being the best path toward progress would have to wake up."
One of the most common reasons for divorce is irreconcilable differences . The word irreconcilable inherently implies that they are not solvable. No amount of therapy, no vacation, no time away from...
On Bureaucracies and The Budget Increase Motive:
"Specifically, the budget increase motive tells bureaucrats to spend their entire budget. Why? Agencies that do not spend their entire budget will have their budget cut in the next year’s appropriation from congress. As mentioned earlier, the goal is to spend all this money without solving the problem the bureaucracy in question is tasked with solving. If the agency in question solves the problem, they are tasked with they become obsolete.
The great Thomas Sowell highlighted this incentive problem with an extreme, yet highly illusory example to his students back when he was still teaching. His thought experiment was used in an article he wrote for his syndicated column back in 2013, and consisted of the following:
'Imagine a government agency with only two tasks: (1) building statues of Benedict Arnold and (2) providing life-saving medications to children. If this agency's budget were cut, what would it do?
The answer, of course, is that it would cut back on the medications for children. Why? Because that would be what was most likely to get the budget cuts restored. If they cut back on building statues of Benedict Arnold, people might ask why they were building statues of Benedict Arnold in the first place.' "
Government agencies operate under a different incentive structure than do competitive enterprises. Competitive enterprises operate under what is known as the Profit & Loss Motive. Entrepreneurs make...
President Trump & Mary Jane - An On Again, Off Again Relationship
"The story gets more interesting, if you remember back a couple weeks ago when President Trump’s daughter, Tiffany Trump, was arrested in a well-known kink-club called “paddles” in New York City, allegedly for Ma*****na. The odd, and out of nowhere attack on state’s rights seems to be a flip flop from his stance on ma*****na on the campaign trail. At a rally in Reno, Nevada back in October of 2015 now President Trump said that he thinks it should be left up to the states, and on top of that, said that the medical ma*****na “for whatever reason”, is the only thing that helps some of his friends who are very sick. Now all the sudden, Jeff Sessions is Attorney General of the United States, the President has been harassed endlessly since taking the oath of office, and Mary Jane is no longer OK with his administration."
This Thursday, Sean Spicer – White House Press Secretary – threatened the legal w**d industry across the country, stating that the Feds will step up enforcement of federal ma*****na laws....
Bill Gates is Quickly Becoming a Common Theme on TheMacroView thanks to his continuous nonsense spewing in public interviews - and the use of his wealth by other outlets as examples of how so-called income inequality is worse than ever before...
This time, once again, it is thanks to his own economic ignorance...
Either Bill Gates has intellectually regressed and adopted the fight of the Luddites - or he recently joined an Amish sect.
Despite the evidence that technological advancement does not cause unemployment that he clearly witnessed from his own life's work, Bill is now claiming the robots will take the jobs of so many that the government should tax the productivity of robots in order to retrain people who lose their jobs.
Oh the Irony... Bill why don't you just stick to technology and leave economic analysis to the pros...
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"Bill Gates is at it again… This time, instead of begging for socialism to cure climate change, he’s saying that Robots should be taxed… The reason being is that he thinks far too many people will be put out of work, and that the government should tax the productivity of labor in order to fund the retraining of the people that lose their job. Bill Gates fears of mass and permanent unemployment caused by robots reminds me of the claims made by David Wells in his book Recent Economic Changes published in 1889. Mr. Wells claimed “The power capacity already being exerted by the steam engines of the world in existence and working in the year 1887 has been estimated by the Bureau of Statistics at Berlin as equivalent to that of 200,000,000 horses, representing approximately 1,000,000,000 men; or at least three times the working population of the earth….”
While the math may have been true regarding the production power, all that it meant was more people were able to buy more goods at cheaper prices while entrepreneurs were able to produce them profitably despite the lower price. People of the time were then able to dedicate their work efforts in other fields, more valued uses for their labor. Further, there are far more people today – population adjusted, working in the manufacturing and global trade industries than there were when this book was written, and yet the productivity power of fossil fuel engines is far greater than that of the what now seems to be ancient steam engine."
"There’s an old saying, typically used by religious people as a backhanded compliment against highly intelligent atheists – You’re too Smart for Your Own Good. This is the classic case. There is no doubt that Bill Gates is highly intelligent. He had great foresight, seeing the massively positive impact that a personal computer usable by the layman could have on society. He saw that the increased efficiency in all sorts of tasks caused by such machines would dramatically increase the labor productivity and raise the standard of living. He was right. I doubt that Bill or anyone else – except the Amish – would claim that his invention was a net negative for society. I don’t know a ton about Bill Gates’ religious beliefs, but given the work he has dedicated his life to I don’t think that he recently converted and became Amish."
"There’s an old saying, typically used by religious people as a backhanded compliment against highly intelligent atheists – You’re too Smart for Your Own Good. This is the classic case. There is no doubt that Bill Gates is highly intelligent. He had great foresight, seeing the massively positive impact that a personal computer usable by the layman could have on society. He saw that the increased efficiency in all sorts of tasks caused by such machines would dramatically increase the labor productivity and raise the standard of living. He was right. I doubt that Bill or anyone else – except the Amish – would claim that his invention was a net negative for society. I don’t know a ton about Bill Gates’ religious beliefs, but given the work he has dedicated his life to I don’t think that he recently converted and became Amish."
Bill Gates is at it again… This time, instead of begging for socialism to cure climate change, he’s saying that Robots should be taxed… The reason being is that he thinks far too many people...
Burning Strawmen Podcast with Hosts Dale Mooty and Andrew Smith Episode 1 now available!
Burning Strawmen is a weekly podcast focused around debunking fallacious claims on a whole range of topics! It's a fun show and we hope you'll enjoy!
Burning Strawmen is a Weekly Podcast Dedicated to Debunking Fallacious Claims by Anti-Capitalists
"If you are in a field in which there are many millions of people that can provide the productivity that an employer seeks, while there are only a couple million jobs available, naturally you will have less bargaining power. If you are in a field in which very few, say maybe ten thousand people, have the skills necessary to the production of a specific good or service, and there are one hundred thousand jobs available for people with your skill set, you will have more bargaining power. It’s pretty simple. It works the same way as any other good in competitive supply or in low supply and high demand, respectively. A grocery store in the heart of the suburbs does not have great bargaining power on the price of lettuce, why? Because if they charge too high of a price the consumers will simply go down the street to their competitor and purchase the head of lettuce. On the other end of the spectrum the Cleveland Cavaliers have tremendous bargaining power regarding the price they charge people that want to come see the reigning champions play a basketball game. There is only one professional basketball team in the city of Cleveland, and there’s way more people that want to watch LeBron James and the reigning champs play than there are seats."
Andrew N. Smith is the Co-Founder of OWLshares, a Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst, and Host of TheMacroView Podcast. He is an Austro-Libertarian. His first book - STOP BLAMING FREE MARKETS...
"In Modern Mainstream Economics, academics and the well-read politician may refer to a concept which they call friction or frictional costs. In doing so what they are referring to is the cost of living for the unemployed that is seeking a job.
Examples they may cite as frictional costs include the cost of traveling around the city or town in an effort to find employment, moving from one city to another for better opportunities and/or a lower cost of living, and general living expenses incurred on a daily basis.
What they often fail to realize, however, is that much of these so-called frictional costs are caused by government hampering the market with rules and regulations, with wage laws and distortive capital guarantees.
In the unhampered market economy unemployment is voluntary – always – for the generally decent person without a long rap sheet of physical violence or property crimes.
As Mises put it in his renowned treatise Human Action:
"A job seeker who does not want to wait will always get a job in the unhampered market economy in which there is always unused capacity of natural resources and very often also unused capacity of produced factors of production. It is only necessary for him either to reduce the amount of pay he is asking for or to alter his occupation or his place of work."
In the unhampered market there is always employment to be found."
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In the first part of this two part series discussing the Federal Reserve, Host of TheMacroView Andrew Smith, walks listeners through the history and mechanics of the Fed plus more! The Central Bank of the United States has re-emerged into the forefront of the American Populace's dinner table discussions, much thanks to Ron Paul and the push for transparency that his campaign in 2008 sparked. While we all hear about the Fed, and their interest rate adjustments, few understand the mechanics and effects of actions that the Fed takes. Tonight we unveil the Wizard behind the manipulation of markets and discuss exactly what it is about the Fed that makes it such a potent force in the United States
*CORRECTION* IN TONIGHT'S EPISODE HOST ANDREW SMITH MISSTATED THE BEGINNING OF THE CAPITAL GAINS TAX. THE CAPITAL GAINS TAX BEGAN IN 1922 AT 12.5%. UPDATED CHART WILL BE INCLUDED IN TONIGHT'S SHOWPAGE BY MIDNIGHT SATURDAY 12/17/2016. The 16th Ammendment was ratified in 1913, before that income taxes had been ruled unconstitutional because of the apportionment clause in the constitution, which required revenues to the federal government to be apportioned by each state. In the 2nd part of a 2 part series, TheMacroView host walks listeners through a history of taxes in the US before and beyond the income tax and discusses the implications of the 16th amendment beyond granting the power to tax income in a non-apportioned manner to congress.
What is Money? Why is there money? What problem does it solve? Did the government create money? Money is an universally accepted medium of exchange. Carl Menger gave answers to these questions and many more about where money came from and why it exists... Tonight we explore these three key questions - tomorrow night and the following we discover much more... Questions such as why gold and silver emerged as money, how it happened, the problems with fiat currency, crypto-currencies... You do not want to miss this series! Tune in to garner the knowledge you need to Spread the Logic of Liberty!
TheMacroView Episode 23 Debt Overload The '08 Saga Creating a Financial Crisis In this Episode, host Andrew Smith discusses the environment leading up to, during and after the financial crisis! Slideshow accompanying this episode shows the statistics mentioned, if you are NOT listening to this from the Show page at MacroViewNews.com or on BlogTalkRadio directly you will want to tune in via one of these two channels so that you can follow along. If NOT stay tuned anyways and try to follow along. Just sit back an listen to some of these statistics...
TheMacroView Episode 22: DEBATE - No State or Minimal State Tonight on The First Ever TheMacroView Debate Kyle Wagner - Founder of the Anarcho-Capitalism vs Minarchism Debate Group on Facebook - Joins TheMacroView to Debate the Host Andrew Smith. The Libertarian Movement has grown significantly, with the growth however, there have been the development of factions that - frankly to many the believe in the original libertarian ideals - can be quite frustrating. The Libertarian Movement at its heart always had two core factions - Minarchist and Anarcho-Capitalists. Tonight Host Andrew Smith takes the Affirmative Position for No State while Kyle takes the Affirmative Position on Minimal State! DO NOT MISS OUT ON THIS LIVE DEBATE! It is sure to be intellectually stimulating and exciting!
TheMacroView Episode 24: The History of Taxes in the US Part 1 of 2 Living Caricatures of the Political Left - such as Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, have been pitching massive tax hikes, as high as 70% or higher for the top 1% - they use past tax rates as reference but whats the truth? Tonight on TheMacroView we walk listeners through the Income Tax rate history of the United States in less than 25 minutes. Its very important to understand the nuances of this history to debunk the myth's preached by leading politicians with socialist tendencies. The fact of the matter is that these high tax rates were levied on incomes of such a high level that very few people, if any at times, even came close to paying the top rates, while rates on the "Top 1%" at any given time could carry a wide range, many many brackets, and other nuances. Middle class folks were promised upon the ratification of the 16th amendment that they would NEVER have their income taxes. That this was just a tax on the "the Top 1%" - meanwhile, since 1913, the effective rate on taxable income have climbed from 0% initially, to 6% during WW I, back down to 2% in the mid 20s, before skyrocketing - reaching their high, believe it or not, in the early 1990s. Social Security taxes are included in tonights episode, as they have been a deceptive form of taxing income, and doing so in a highly regressive manner. Further, there are all sorts of distortive loopholes, and incentives to get people to behave a certain way, invest in certain things, donate money to not-for-profits, and much more! Tune in to get a full history of income taxes in the US - delivered in less than 25 minutes
TheMacroView Episode 23 Debt Overload The '08 Saga Creating a Financial Crisis In this Episode, host Andrew Smith discusses the environment leading up to, during and after the financial crisis! Slideshow accompanying this episode shows the statistics mentioned, if you are NOT listening to this from the Show page at MacroViewNews.com or on BlogTalkRadio directly you will want to tune in via one of these two channels so that you can follow along. If NOT stay tuned anyways and try to follow along. Just sit back an listen to some of these statistics...
TheMacroView Episode 20: WWII Deficits Did NOT End the Great Depression Popular opinion, especially among Keynesian's, but forfeited by Monetarists as well, states that World War II budget deficits ended the Depression But the Truth Is by 1940 - before War Time Spending Provisions DRASTICALLY increased the budget - Private Investment had ALREADY driven Per Capita REAL GDP to above its 1940 levels... Primarily in the face of the ACTUAL budget cuts (Real Per Capita) in 1932 and 1933. Hoover's first two years 1930 and 1931 spending actually increased, and despite the later year cuts was NEVER actually cut below 1929 Levels! Tonight we debunk the whole history, Great Depression, through WWII, through the Great Society, up through the Ford-Carter-Reagan Presidencies, and then through the Bush, Clinton, Bush in a History of Government Spending, Private Investment, Consumption and Incomes in
TheMacroView Episode 21 Tight Money DID NOT Prolong the Great Depression Part 2 In Episode 20 we debunked the mainstream Keynesian economic theory detailing the great depression, WWII Deficit spending, and how in fact – said spending HURT the economy and caused a net drag for decades to come. Tonight – on a much more concise show, we’re going to discuss the monetarist view, which was presented originally by Milton Friedman in Monetary History of the United States. Milton Friedman and Co-Author Anna Schwartz in a Monetary History of the United States – argued, however that the Fed did NOT do enough. The theory – at the time – was considered revolutionary and caught on strong with a lot of the non-Austrian “Right” side of the political spectrum, because it gave those on the right a way to say “Fiscal Stimulus wasn’t needed”. The argument that Friedman laid out was one that essentially said, and properly so, that low interest rates and quote unquote “EASY MONEY” were NOT synonymous. While true – there are still a lot of flaws with the monetarist view of the Great Depression – Namely that it purely encourages another unsustainable boom by propping up prices before markets fully clear and pulls its evidence from the previous decade and the fact that the Fed kept propping up the market at every downturn. When the Fed finally decided NOT to continue propping up the overvaluation of assets then the market crashed. By Milton Friedman’s account had the Fed just propped up asset prices once again in 1929 and despite the malinvestment and the fact that many businesses were booming on credit with no sustainable organic growth just doesn’t matter. There’s other issues with what Milton Friedman and the Monetarists say. Tonight we Discuss
TheMacroView Episode 19: The Jobs of Nations Jobs, Jobs, Jobs Jobs at the Expense of Wealth Jobs at the Expense of Prices Jobs at the Expense of Productivity Jobs at the Expense of Freedom Jobs at the expense of everything. Tonight we Debunk the Zero-Sum game Fallacy using the greatest reductio ad absurdum ever written, one of the most beautiful short essays revealing logic behind economic theory. Namely we focus on trade and government/the populace's, view of contempt towards it. We discuss the other areas in which the logic, rationale or end result, is similar. We, because sometimes I can't resist it, destroy, once again Keynesian's view of unproductive labor to make the final case in point in this obliteration of the interventionists that believe in trade AND interventionists that don't.
TheMacroView Episode 18: Poverty is NATURAL... Wealth is the Anomaly For most of human history, the wealthiest people in the world maintained a standard of living inferior to some of the poorest working people in the developed countries of today. Using numbers from the Maddison Project, Host Andrew Smith, guide's listeners through the economic productivity history of the past 2000 years, from 1 AD to 1700 AD productivity among the most productive country of each the time, didn't even double. From 1700 to 2010, economic productivity EXPLODED. The average person in the most productive country in 1700 (Great Britain) produced the equivalent of about 6 loaves of bread per person. By 2000 that productivity had increased 19 fold, and the average person in the US (the most productive country at the time) was producing the equivalent of 112 loaves of bread per day. Meanwhile in countries with tyranical, oppressive governments and collectivist economic policies have not only lagged behind the rest of the world, but in some cases, still maintain a per person productivity measure in constant dollars LESS than the Ancient Empires (Roman, Greek, Persian, Ottoman, Byzantium, Spanish, British, Prussian and Nordic). The war-torn Congo for example, has a per person production measures that is equal to about a single loaf of bread per person per day.
TheMacroView Episode 16: Corporate Subsidies... Immoral & Ineffective Corporate subsidies are welfare for the wealthy - but they have many devastating effects - furthering barriers to competition and allowing underemployment and less valuable uses of real scarce resources to continue... Tonight we debunk the logic behind corporate subsidies and then discuss the misunderstood history of Capitalism in the United States Listeners will get some historical context of the subsidy and, for those of you that don't have the ammunition will gain it to destroy your leftist friend (or enemy) the next time they say "without out subsidies companies will fail"!
TheMacroView Episode 17: De Facto Nationalization... State Ownership of Companies through Pensions
TheMacroView Episode 14: Muh Roads... Without Government Who Will Build Them Federal & Local Government Taxes for The Roads Cost Drivers in Los Angeles about $800 a year each - a total that reaches into the $10s of Billions of Dollars Annually. The City of Los Angeles Spends about $155 Million Per Year (about $1.00 per daily Driver on the Downtown - Santa Monica I-10 daily drivers and about $77.5 per year for ALL Drivers in LA that Drive DAILY)... Statists that Tell you We Couldn't Pay for the Roads just Don't Understand Entrepreneurship and Worse - Don't Understand the Tragedy of the Commons as Compared to Private Ownership. Tonight I pay Tribute to My 'Road Hating' Liberty Lovers by Arming them w the Logic, History & Numbers Needed to Destroy the Next Statist that Accuses them of Being a Roadist!
TheMacroView Episode 15: Real Savings & Investment vs Aggregate Demand Theory Mainstream Economic Theory is driven by the old Broken Window Fallacy - Increased Aggregate Demand Despite It's Productivity or Lack Thereof Must by Stimulated. The keynesians, as a result have made some of the most ridiculous declarations that one could imagine. From Keynes himself advocating the government bury money in bottles deep in coal mines and let people go dig them up - to Krugman advocation deception of the public and a false threat from aliens as a way to justify massive deficit spending to stimulate aggregate demand, despite it's wastefulness. Tonight we discuss the basic logical fallacies, we discuss the flaws in aggregate demand theory and we close out discussing WHY, fundamentally, private savings and investment as a result of overproduction, that is each individual producing more than they consume (or household), is what leads to real, sustainable, strong economic growth.
TheMacroView Episode 14: Muh Roads... Without Government Who Will Build Them Federal & Local Government Taxes for The Roads Cost Drivers in Los Angeles about $800 a year each - a total that reaches into the $10s of Billions of Dollars Annually. The City of Los Angeles Spends about $155 Million Per Year (about $1.00 per daily Driver on the Downtown - Santa Monica I-10 daily drivers and about $77.5 per year for ALL Drivers in LA that Drive DAILY)... Statists that Tell you We Couldn't Pay for the Roads just Don't Understand Entrepreneurship and Worse - Don't Understand the Tragedy of the Commons as Compared to Private Ownership. Tonight I pay Tribute to My 'Road Hating' Liberty Lovers by Arming them w the Logic, History & Numbers Needed to Destroy the Next Statist that Accuses them of Being a Roadist!
TheMacroView Episode 13: The Largest Heist in History... Social Security Social Security is a Ponzi Scheme Through and Through and The Market Solution is FAR Better Anyways... Tonight We Level with the Those on both the Right and the Left who just Won't Accept the Truth! Social Security is the largest inter-generational heist in the history of the world. Over the Next 2 decades, individuals aged 15-45 will transfer $40 TRILLION of wealth to people aged 46 and Older Today! Back on November 7th, Host of TheMacroView Andrew Smith Published a Whitepaper length blog post at MacroViewNews.com - Detailing a way that those counting on it will get it, those younger than 45 will have the burden reduced and will have private accounts/longevity insurance purchased in the private market. This is not a Radical Idea - the Proposition eliminates the majority of the burden within the next 10 years, and turns the private sector lose with the life blood of progress: savings and investment.
TheMacroView Episode 12: Statist Strawman BURNED... The Scrooge Fallacy One of the most effective Statist Strawmen is the “Ebeneezer Scrooge Capitalist”. For those that believe this is the norm throughout civil societies, they have decided the State should be trusted to reallocate private property to the poor. Practically speaking, the implemented solutions basically combine class feudalism, job rationing (through minimum wage and regulations), false hope (through affirmative action and the higher education scam) and a small pittance with many strings attached (welfare). These policies are millennia old and have failed the most vulnerable members of society, low-skill impoverished adults and their children, for just as long. Libertarians (small and big L) have failed in backing up their pitch that while self-interested, rationally, nobody achieves their maximum satisfaction isolated in a tunnel, and happiness, being the end goal, is thwarted by humanitarian crisis and tragedy. It is the reason that politics mobilize so many millions of people – even though cycle after cycle voters get nothing but empty promises and less personal & economic freedoms. Billions of individuals actually genuinely DO care about these things, pursuing happiness is extremely difficult for the vast majority of people if and when suffering is all around them. Its why in 2015, US Citizens donated over $358 Billion to charities, already approximately 35% of the revenues government takes in through social insurance taxes.
TheMacroView Episode 11: What is Behind Ever Rising Health Care Costs The median corporate profit margin in the US is 7.5% - in the Pharmaceutical Industry it’s 16%. There’s a reason for that. In the US there are essentially single company monopolies on specific drugs and the FDA protects them. In other countries around the world, the same companies have to charge a significantly lower price, why you may ask? Because there are 9 to 10 companies producing the exact same drug, competing with each other. In the developed world, the US has among the highest health care costs, and the mainstream media and politicians blame it on the big bad greedy capitalists. Instead of explaining that the health care industry, not just pharmaceuticals, the entire industry is a crony industry built around subsidies and access to Medicare patients, at the federal and state levels. That money comes with a lot of strings. If you check out the links at the bottom of this blog post attached, it goes directly to the federal register search for economically significant rules and regulation for two different federal agencies, FDA and Health & Human Services. The FDA in particular is an atrocious bureaucracy that would rather let people that have diseases with NO Cure die than to allow them to consent to taking risky experimental drugs that, you know what, just might save their life.’ The FDA also as a matter of doing business, doesn’t like to, for whatever reason, approve multiple versions of the same drug if there is no reason to, and just showing an identical chemical compound doesn’t get you throw trials – rather the FDA has taken approach of allowing a single company a monopoly over specific drugs. In some cases, lifesaving drugs. Tonight on TheMacroView Host Andrew N. Smith discusses why this is so dangerous
TheMacroView Episode 7: Real Life Perspective on Minimum Wage There are some devastating effects to the minimum wage, almost none more so than the discouragement of the development of human capital. On tonight's episode we get a look at the real life consequences from a person that has taken the time to develop, through experience, the human capital that it takes to achieve a $12.00 to $13.00 an hour. Lets discuss what the consequence of throughout the world is. The real life disincentive of the development of human capital that this imposes. SPECIAL GUEST Former Chef - Current Ice Artist Extraordinaire Aaron Pencar
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