A 2024 Mid-Priced Automobile Sells for the Same $300 Price Paid for a Model T Ford in 1924

It really does, if you can pay for it in Gold dollars. Based on the present price of gold bullion, of approximately $2,000 per ounce, a twenty-dollar US gold coin, which contains not quite an ounce of gold, sells for just about $2,000. Put together 15 of these $20 gold coins and you have 300 gold dollars, which represents $30,000 paper dollars, which is the price of a new mid-range automobile.

Who says prices have gone up? The truth is that the price of our paper money has plunged. When we had a gold standard, the price of a paper dollar was a gold dollar. Today, the price of a paper dollar is just one gold cent. So it takes correspondingly more of this cheap money to buy anything.

Here’s how to stop this process. Just repeal whatever laws are in the way of merchants accepting gold and silver coins at their actual market bullion value, not their face value. Consider, for example, that the price of silver is now about $24 per ounce. An old pre-1964 dime contains .0715 ounces of silver, a quarter contains 2.5 times as much, and a half dollar contains 5 times as much. (A silver dollar contains more than 10 times as much.) The silver content of a dime, times its current price per ounce, gives it a market value on the order of $1.70, which means, for example, that a $10 meal in a fast-food restaurant costs less than 60 cents in silver coin.

If precious-metal coins could be used at their market value, Gresham’s so-called “Law” that “bad money drives out good money,” would be totally reversed. Good money, i.e., gold and silver, would drive out bad money, i.e., irredeemable paper money. People would see every day, when they went shopping, that prices were rising only in paper money, not in the precious-metal money (or paper money redeemable on demand in precious metal). They would turn against the paper, unless and until they could have confidence that it could easily be redeemed for precious metal.

For further discussion of gold versus inflation see Chapter 19 of my book Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics, whose title is those very words. My book can is available at Amazon.com, at http://amazon.com/author/george-reisman

Will Biden’s “Humanitarian” Aid to Gaza Cost Israel the War?

 Biden, Blinken, Bugs Bunny, and the other cartoon characters running our government either don’t know what the word “war” means, which is possible, since they don’t seem to know what “man” and “woman” mean, or they want Hamas to win the war it has started with Israel.

Imagine that Biden had been President in World War II. Would he have sent “humanitarian” aid to Germany and Japan, to be sure that “innocent” civilians had food and medical supplies? Would he have believed that those supplies would actually get to any innocent civilians and not be appropriated by the Axis governments, to aid their continuing war effort? In World War II, we bombed the hell out of Germany and Japan, day after day, night after night. Our goal was to destroy their war-making ability, and not to worry about the effect on their civilians, most of whom supported their governments, just as most Gazans today support Hamas. Wouldn’t it have been wonderful if the United States and Britain had controlled the water and electricity supplies in Germany and Japan, like Israel controls them in Gaza? We could have shut off those supplies and just waited for thirst and paralysis to compel the Axis to surrender. We could have demanded Hitler’s and Tojo’s heads, and before long, they would probably have been delivered on a pike. Not only would it not have been necessary to drop atomic bombs on Japan to end the war, but all the lives subsequently lost in combat and conventional bombing, on both sides, would have been spared. Giving “humanitarian” aid to Gaza and strong-arming Israel not to cut off water and electricity to Gaza forces Israel into a war in which it must suffer large casualties, because then it can only root out the Hamas terrorists by going door to door, building by building, subject to booby traps and sniper fire at each step of the way. No! Israel must be free not only to shut off the water and electricity going to Gaza but also to prevent supplies of any kind from entering Gaza and to demand not only surrender by Hamas, but unconditional surrender. Only that will make it possible to secure Israel’s military occupation of Gaza with minimal casualties and the subsequent roundup and execution of the Hamas terrorists, as promised by Prime Minister Netanyahu, who, in his speech following the Hamas attack, referred to Hamas members as “dead men.” If the Biden policy of aid to the Hamas enemy is continued, Israel may be forced to call off its invasion of Gaza, to avoid the loss of a good portion of its army. In that case, Hamas will have won the war it started, and Israel will be subject to further horrific attacks by Hamas, and every other gang of terrorists that may care to make one.

Reisman on Amazon and YouTube:

http://amazon.com/author/george-reisman

https://youtube.com/@georgereismancapitalism

 capitalism

Slavery Under Socialism

Socialists/communists have pulled down, and in the case of New York City’s government, are contemplating pulling down, the statues of such great historical figures as Washington, Jefferson, and Columbus, on the grounds that during their lifetimes these men owned one or more slaves. The outrageousness of this is all the greater when one realizes that socialism/communism is both a system of universal enslavement and leads to mass murder.

A socialist/communist state is a universal monopoly employer, the only employer in the economic system. As such, it can pay its workers as little as minimum subsistence, because they have nowhere else to go. Indeed, in today’s environment, it can pay them nothing at all, and let them starve to death. That’s one way to reduce a nation’s “carbon footprint.” Slavery under socialism/communism is far worse than the conditions that exist when the slaves are privately owned. As I wrote in my book Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics (p. 290 ): "There is a further consequence of forced labor under socialism that must be considered, namely, its potential for developing into mass murder. To understand how this can happen, we must contrast forced labor under socialism with forced labor under different conditions. "Slavery existed in ancient Greece and Rome and in the Southern United States before the Civil War, and was, of course, a moral abomination. Nevertheless, abominable as slavery was, there was an important factor in these cases which restrained the slave owners and the overseers in their treatment of the slaves. That was the fact that the slaves were private property. A private slave owner was restrained in his treatment of his slaves by his own material self-interest. If he injured or killed his slave, he destroyed his own property. Of course, out of ignorance or irrationality, this sometimes happened; but it was the exception rather than the rule. Private slave owners were motivated to treat their slaves with at least the same consideration they gave to their livestock, and to see to it that their overseers acted with the same consideration. "But under socialism, the slaves are 'public property'—the property of the state. Those who have charge of the slaves, therefore, have no personal economic interest in their lives or well-being. Since they are not owners of the slaves, they will not derive any personal material benefit if the slaves are alive to work in the future, nor suffer any personal material loss if the slaves are not alive to work in the future. In such conditions, slave labor results in mass murder. The officials in charge of the slaves are given orders to complete certain projects as of a certain time. Quite possibly, they are threatened with being reduced to the status of slaves themselves, if they fail. In these circumstances, the slaves are treated as valueless natural resources. Brutal punishments are inflicted on them for trifling reasons, and they are worked to the point of exhaustion and death. The slaves of socialism are slaves, but they are no one’s property and therefore no one’s loss. "In this way, slave labor under socialism results in mass murder. In just this way, tens of millions of people have been murdered. "Of course, the economics of slavery under socialism is not a sufficient explanation of mass murder. Those who participate in the system must be utterly depraved. But observe how socialism creates the conditions in which depravity flourishes—the conditions in which depravity can express itself, is freed of the restraints of better motives, and is positively nurtured and encouraged. For it is socialism that delivers men into slavery. It is socialism that removes the restraint of self-interest from those in charge of the use of any form of property. And it is socialism that creates an environment of hatred and sadism. In such conditions, the most depraved and vicious element of the population finds a place for its depravity and viciousness and steps forward to run the labor camps and the whole socialist society." Reisman on Amazon and YouTube: http://amazon.com/author/george-reisman… https://youtube.com/@georgereismancapitalism

Why It’s Vital to Keep the Traditional Pronouns

 Men and women fill each other’s lives.

Each is the source of the greatest and most intense pleasure that can be experienced by the other. And because of this, the human race is perpetuated.

But there is much more:

Every man has a mother.

Every woman has a father.

Many men have one or more sisters.

Many women have one or more brothers.

Most men have a wife.

Most women have a husband.

Many men have one or more daughters.

Many women have one or more sons.

And then, of course, there are also grandfathers and grandmothers, grandsons and granddaughters, and uncles, aunts, nephews, and nieces.

These relationships add up to an enormous part of the lives of most people, requiring an amount of time and providing a level of satisfaction comparable to and often surpassing that connected with work.

If anyone with a strongly held fantasy of belonging to the opposite sex is to be regarded as an actual member of the opposite sex, then the very concept of the opposite sex is destroyed. Opposite to what? Opposite to a feeling that one belongs to the opposite sex, a feeling that allegedly then determines the reality of one’s sex?

On this basis, the opposite sex to a man who “identifies” as a woman, i.e., feels, that he is a woman, and is thereby regarded as an actual woman, is, violà, another man. So a man becomes the opposite sex of a man. Thus, the very concept of opposite sex is destroyed.

If feelings and fantasies are to replace biological reality as the standard for determining membership in a sex, then all of the above relationships between the sexes are rendered null and void. There is then no difference between men and women, between mother and father, between sister and brother, between husband and wife, between daughter and son. For on the basis of mere fantasy, any of the instances of any of these concepts can be transformed into its opposite.

If one’s father can be one’s mother and one’s mother can be one’s father, then the concepts “father” and “mother” have no basis for existing. And, likewise, none of the other concepts of familial relationships can have any basis for existing.

In seeking to abolish recognition of the biological basis of the distinction between the sexes, the pronoun movement reveals hatred of sex and a desire to obliterate it. It seeks to remove sex from our vocabulary not only with respect to pronouns, but also all other distinctions between the sexes. Thus, for example, we are no longer to speak of waiters and waitresses and of policemen and policewomen, but of “servers” and “policepersons”—anything to get sex out of the picture, anything to find a substitute for any reference to the distinction between men and women.

Acceptance of fantasies concerning membership in the opposite sex as a standard, and their imposition on those who do not share them but who are nevertheless to be compelled to participate in them, by having to use special pronouns to refer to those who are consumed by them, is certainly one of the leading mass insanities of our time, or any other time. It is proof of the intellectual and moral bankruptcy of the greater part of today’s academia and media, of our so-called “intelligentsia.” As Ayn Rand saw decades ago, the world needs “New Intellectuals”—a new intelligentsia—to replace today’s clutch of amoral ignoramuses that have misappropriated such once dignified names as “professor,” “teacher,” and “journalist.”

 

 

There Is No Room for a Self-Made Imbecile on the US Supreme Court

In her confirmation hearing, Supreme Court Justice Ketanji-Brown Jackson was asked to define a woman. She said she could not because she wasn’t a biologist. (See and hear her at https://youtu.be/BWtGzJxiONU.)

Justice Jackson’s principle seems to be that before you can know the most elementary fundamentals of a subject, you need to be an expert in it. By that standard, since she is not a mathematician, she does not know that one plus one equals two.

Justice Jackson has chosen a philosophical idea that makes her an imbecile. She should never have been confirmed and now that she has been, she should be removed. She has made herself absolutely unfit to render judgements of any kind about anyone. Her presence on the Supreme Court of the United States is a major threat to the lives and liberties of the American people.

George Soros, Not an Intellectual Heavyweight

George Soros may have tons of money, but he's definitely not a heavyweight intellectually, as my article "Is Laissez-Faire a Threat to Freedom? An Answer to George Soros" shows. (https://mises.org/library/laissez-faire-threat-freedom-answer-george-soros) 

My answer to Clay Jensen: Soros has an outstanding record for making money through speculation. Economics does not teach how to make money. What it teaches is that those who know how to make money should be free to do so and that their activity will benefit the general public through the offer of new and additional goods and the more efficient production of goods that already exist.

Reply to Clay Jensen tweet 3.

Everyone has a vital interest in fighting socialism. Socialism causes economic chaos, enslavement, terror, and mass murder. For a short proof, see my essay "Marxism/Socialism . . . " available on Amazon in Kindle and paperback formats. For a full proof, see my Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics available on Amazon in Kindle, hardcopy, and 2-volume paperback formats. Both titles can be found at http://amazon.com/author/george-reisman

I Got This Today as a Google Alert

From Relativism to Wokism: A Path of Confusion, Fallacy and Self-Destruction | C2C Journal https://c2cjournal.ca/2023/08/from-relativism-to-wokism-a-path-of-confusion-fallacy-and-self-destruction/…

According to George Reisman, Professor Emeritus of Economics at Pepperdine University, the ongoing trend towards undermining Western and ...

c2cjournal.ca

From Relativism to Wokism: A Path of Confusion, Fallacy and Self-Destruction

Moral and cultural relativism have rejected objective truth, denigrated accomplishment and knowledge, and debase

The Ninth Amendment

The 9th Amendment to the US Constitution states, “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” The people certainly have the right to the pursuit of happiness., which right includes such narrower rights as the right to buy automobiles with internal combustion engines and the gasoline and other petroleum products necessary to operate those automobiles. And similarly with all the various commonly used electrical appliances, such as air conditioners, refrigerators, washing machines, and so on. And yet today, these rights are being denied by public officials who, by their own admission, cannot tell a man from a woman nor, therefore, the sum of 1+1, nor, to put it in the vernacular, the difference between their ass and their elbow. These self-made morons, apparently led by a common criminal, if not a traitor in the pay of foreign governments, believe they are immune to the wrath of the people. Let us hope that they do not drive matters to the point of the people proving just how wrong they are.

How Newsom’s Nerve Sidelined Hannity’s Facts

A few weeks ago, California’s governor Gavin Newsom appeared as a guest on Sean Hannity’s TV show. The two engaged in an extensive back-and-forth concerning the current state of the US. When their discussion started, I expected Hannity to wipe the floor with Newsom But by the end of it, I had to conclude that Newsom had won the debate. Not that he deserved to, but just that he had.

How did he do it? His technique was the use of boundless, staggering audacity, audacity so great as to leave Hannity (and me) speechless, at least temporarily.

I recall three examples of this. The first was Newsom’s denial that the economic policies of the Red States were better, more pro-prosperity, than those of the blue states. In fact, he ridiculed this claim by taking Mississippi as his example of a Red State. I think that this unexpected denial of something so obvious was so shocking that it intellectually paralyzed Hannity. If there is a next-time, Hannity should immediately replace Mississippi with red states like Texas and Florida, a comparison that Newsom totally avoided. It would also be helpful to explain what distinguishes Mississippi from the other Red states and explains its poor performance.

A second such example was Newsom’s denial of the significance of the fact that hundreds of thousands of people have left California to live in other states, and at the same time Florida has gained hundreds of thousands of people from other states. Indeed, Newsom claimed, without providing any evidence, that more people had moved from Florida to California than had moved from California to Florida, as though the facts were the opposite of the facts. Next time, Newsom must be asked for his evidence.

Finally, Newsom brushed off the significance of California’s 13.3 percent maximum rate in its state income-tax, compared with the total absence of a state income tax in Texas and Florida. Indeed, he appeared to claim that California’s tax system enabled middle-class Californians to pay lower taxes than middle-class people paid in Texas. It was unclear whether he was claiming that middle-class Californians pay lower actual taxes in terms of dollars per person or just a lower percentage of overall income taxes because of the very high percentage paid by high income Californians. My guess is that they pay substantially more in actual taxes per person but possibly less as a percentage of overall income tax payments. Hannity should check this and let the world know.

A Couple of Questions About Transgenderism.

Please explain why the transgender movement’s efforts to get the general public to refer to transgender people by special pronouns is not an attempt to get everyone, willingly or unwillingly, to participate in its members’ sexual fantasies and thereby to reinforce those fantasies.

Please explain why in using hormone therapy in cases of gender dysphoria, the hormone chosen always appears to be that of the opposite sex rather than that of one’s own, biological sex? Wouldn’t success be more likely working with one’s biology rather than against it?

Isn't it easier to change thoughts than to change biology?

Isn't it easier to change thoughts than to change biology?

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