The Martin Hutchinson Place
President Joe Biden, in his State of the Union address last week, scored a moral victory over the Republicans by accusing them of wanting to cut the Social Security and Medicare entitlement programs, thereby forcing them to deny any such intention. However, the actuarial reality is clear: Medicare will become insolvent around 2027 and Social […]
In 2016, this column recommended that Americans choose Robert Banks Jenkinson, 2nd Earl of Liverpool as their President (having been born in 1770, before U.S. independence, he was clearly eligible). Alas, the American people made the mistake of ignoring this recommendation, both in that year and in 2020. This time around, this column has […]
News came last week that Brazil and Argentina were discussing forming a common currency. Since Argentina’s inflation in 2022 was 95% while Brazil’s was only around 6%, this is unlikely to work well. However, so many Latin American countries are now run by market-hating leftists that a full-scale attempt at economic integration, to remove the […]
The Davos leaders last week bemoaned increasing protectionism, attacking opponents of globalization as economic illiterates. Yet there seems no reason a priori why trade should be less subject to tax than any other human activity, and with today’s gigantic governments the need for revenue is very real. Free trade benefits some countries much more than […]
We learned last week that Microsoft (Nasdaq:MSFT) is investing $10 billion in OpenAI for 75% of its profits, a stake that will drop to 49% when Microsoft has recouped its investment. Since OpenAI’s principal asset has become the artificial intelligence writing software ChatGPT, this indicates the perceived value of AI applications. Yet we have also […]
The World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland opens January 16, and that body’s anti-capitalist maunderings will once again be spread all over the media. However, the WEF’s Marxist/Thunbergist “Great Reset” approach is not simply due to its chief Klaus Schwab having the looks and outlook of Ernst Stavro Blofeld; it is structural. The […]
Moving into a new year, we naturally look for interesting anniversaries, from which lessons can be drawn. In 2023, there are no centenaries, bicentenaries or tercentenaries of interest, while I have written extensively recently about the 1970s, in which 1973 of the “Arab Oil Crisis” is the crucial year. However, 2023 is also the 150th […]
When you add constraints to a complex mathematical or engineering system, at first it does not change much. Then it begins to perform less well, but only gradually until suddenly, with the addition of an additional constraint that may itself be unimportant, the system collapses and either fails to produce a solution or produces one […]
The core imperative for the move to fiat money and then to permanent “stimulus” policies was the urge by central banks to play Santa Claus. By lowering interest rates, they raise asset prices and make everyone feel richer. This is dangerous; it produces asset bubbles, kills productivity and increases inequality, making everybody but the very […]
Iconoclasm, whether in 8th century Byzantium or as the Reformation in 16th century Europe, was a response to a religious order that had become dogmatic, corrupt and detached from the real needs of its flock. It was more than mere reform, because it involved breaking the sacred objects of the establishment’s veneration. Economically, socially and […]