About that Reported Economic Growth

So GDP is growing at about 2 percent. (That's not the same as "the economy.") The rub is that it's driven by consumer and government spending. Real economic growth requires investment, and investment has not recovered. But private (real) investment requires savings--that is, deferred consumption. So increased consumption is not a path to economic growth. Increased sustainable consumer spending is an effect not a cause of economic growth.

Government of course tries to stimulate consumer spending, since policymakers are stuck in the Keynesian mindset (that is, uninterested in the time structure of production). One way it does this is by keeping interests abysmally low. Why save if you get so little for your money, perhaps less than the increase in the CPI? You're just losing purchasing power.

Recent Scribblings

"Americans Should Reject Obama-Romney Foreign Policy" -- Future of Freedom Foundation

"Contraception and the English Language" -- Project to Restore America

Markets Not Capitalism: The Audio Book

Markets Not Capitalism is available as a free audio book, ably read by the Stephanie Murphy, who is simply excellent. Check it out!

Carson on Romney

Here's an excellent article by Kevin Carson on corporatists (i.e., Mitt Romney) in free-enterprise clothing. Do conservatives know that the Keystone pipeline relies on eminent domain?

Market, State, and Autonomy

This is the topic of my lecture tomorrow night at Hanover College in Hanover, Indiana, Horner Center 102. I'll also be lecturing at a political science class in the afternoon. If you're in the area, come to the evening lecture.

Update: Here is my essay "Market, State, and Autonomy."

Latest Op-Ed

America's Drone Terrorism by Sheldon Richman

What Took Them So Long?

Church Appeal on Israel Angers Jewish Groups - NYTimes.com

Churches finally get around to condemning the abuse of Palestinians.

Patents Stifle Prosperity

My latest article at The Project to Restore America is "Patents Stifle Prosperity."

Op-ed: The Glaring Contradiction in Anti-Iran Policy

President Barack Obama, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have at least one thing in common when it comes to Iran. All are guilty of flagrant self-contradiction.

Read the full op-ed at The Future of Freedom Foundation website.

Inside Iran

Watch this video and remember it the next time Obama or Romney says "all options are on the table" against Iran.

Who Threatens Internet Freedom?

Two months from now the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) will convene in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, sponsored by the UN’s International Telecommunication Union (ITU). Depending on whom you believe, this is either the gravest threat to the Internet to date or a justifiable effort to free the Internet from U.S. domination.

Read the full article at The Project to Restore America. My first article at the site was "What’s Next for the Audit-the-Fed Bill?"

My Case for Socializing the Means of Production

From Cato Unbound:

In a sweeping essay, Sheldon Richman explains why private property and free competition are superior to state-provided goods and services. He warns against granting "private" corporate monopolies, which are not true privatizations, but act as arms of the state. He adds that for many state activities, the best way to privatize is not to provide the service at all — as in the case of punishing victimless crimes, which no one should do. For legitimate services, he recommends a "homesteading" approach, in which stakeholders in a public service, such as a school, would receive shares in a new, independent corporation.

See the full article.

Just Another Day Under Israeli Rule

From Ynetnews
'Turning Bedouin village into Jewish settlement is racist'

Government's decision to convert Umm al-Hiran into Jewish settlement enrages Bedouin residents; 'You can’t just take an Arab and put a Jew in his place. This is Nakba of 2012,' they say

by Ilana Curiel

The continuous struggle of the Bedouin community in southern Israel has once caused a stir in a move Bedouins are calling "racist."

"We will continue fighting. We will not leave our land," residents of Umm al-Hiran, an unrecognized Bedouin village in the Negev slated for demolition, said. The government intends to build a new Jewish settlement called Hiran in place of the village.

"They say they want to evict us because of illegal construction," Salim Abu Al-Kian, 53, told Ynet. "We are ready to reach a settlement on the matter. We're willing to issue permits for homes that have yet to receive them. Unfortunately, the state does not want to help us. They want to expel us from our land. We have no value to them," he said.

After a stretched out legal battle, the National Council for Planning and Construction rejected the motion submitted by the Bimkom organization and Adala, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, and approved the government's plans to establish a new Jewish village in northern Negev.


 

Umm al-Hiran village in the Negev (Photo: Hertzel Yosef)

The new village will be built in place of the Bedouin village which currently houses 500 people.

Amna Abu Al-Kian said that she would be willing to die before leaving her home. "I have six children and we have nowhere else to go to."

"Instead of the state helping us, we are thrown out to the street like animals," she exclaimed.

'We can live alongside Jews'

Other residents of the Bedouin village could not understand the council's decision and offered an alternative solution. "We wouldn't mind living alongside Jews. I wouldn't object to us being neighbors," said Salim Abu Al-Kian.

"You can’t just take an Arab and put a Jew in his place. This is racism. This is the Nakba of 2012," he added.

Another Bedouin resident said "we're citizens of the state of Israel. Israel claims to be a democratic country but it has neglected its citizens for decades. Why not recognize our rights? We have been the most loyal to Israel since its establishment. They can't keep pushing us into a corner."

Attorney Suhad Bshara from the Adala Center said that the "government's decision coincides with Israel's policy to expel the Bedouin residents from their lands and destroy their homes in order to clear the land for Jewish settlements."

The authority charged with regulating Bedouin towns in the Negev said that many of the residents have already found a solution – they are to move to the nearby newly-constructed Bedouin village of Horah.

Hassan Shaalan contributed to this report

Jon Stewart on the General Assembly Speeches

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Richman's Law

No matter how much the government controls the economic system, any problem will be blamed on whatever small zone of freedom that remains.

Looney Tunes Comes to the UN

Op-ed: The Hubris of Romney and Obama

Mitt Romney, whose bid to unseat Barack Obama looks more desperate every day, senses he’s found a weakness in his rival. In a foreign-policy speech the other day, he blasted Obama over the upheaval in the Arab world, saying, “This is a time for a president who will shape events in the Middle East.”

Romney is making two claims: that Obama has failed to shape events in the Middle East and that he, Romney, will succeed.

Could the hubris of a man seeking power be plainer? Does anyone with even a minimum ability to think clearly believe that Romney could “shape events” there?

Read "The Hubris of Romney and Obama."

Day of Atonement?

In Judaism, today is the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur. Despite all that's happened over the decades, it's not too late for those responsible to atone for the continuing crimes committed against the Palestinians.

My Interview with Thomas Szasz

In the summer of 2005 I traveled to Thomas Szasz's home in Manlius, New York, and videoed an interview with the great critic of coercive psychiatry and the "therapeutic state."

Iraqi Jews Tell Israel to Stop "Tampering with Our History"

A group of Iraqi Jews living in Israel have demanded that the Israeli government stop "tampering with, exploiting, and deleting our history" as a way to negate the rights of Palestinians. "The way the Israeli establishment uses our history from the 1950s, is not in order to give us our rights back, but in order to get rid of the rights of the Palestinians, and avoiding a peace agreement with them,” Almog Behar, founder of Committee of Baghdadi Jews in Ramat-Gan, wrote to the website The Electronic Intifada.

The Iraqi Jews are trying to recover the property they left behind in Iraq, but they object to the Israeli government's attempt to have that property cancel out Palestinian claims to the property they lost during the Nakba, or catastrophe associated with the founding of the state of Israel. The Committee states:

We are seeking to demand compensation for our lost property and assets from the Iraqi government--NOT from the Palestinian Authority--and we will not agree with the option that compensation for our property be offset by compensation for the lost property of others (meaning, Palestinian refugees) or that said compensation be transferred to bodies that do not represent us (meaning, the Israeli government).

The article at the site also discusses long-disclosed information that Jews left Iraq not because of pressure from the Iraqi government but because of false-flag operations by the Israeli Mossad. The Committee stated:

We demand the establishment of an investigative committee to examine:

1) If and by what means negotiations were carried out in 1950 between Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion and Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri as-Said, and if Ben-Gurion informed as-Said that he is authorized to take possession of the property and assets of Iraqi Jewry if he agreed to send them to Israel;

2) who ordered the bombing of the Masouda Shem-Tov synagogue in Baghdad, and if the Israeli Mossad and/or its operatives were involved. If it is determined that Ben-Gurion did, in fact, carry out negotiations over the fate of Iraqi Jewish property and assets in 1950, and directed the Mossad to bomb the community’s synagogue in order to hasten our flight from Iraq, we will file a suit in an international court demanding half of the sum total of compensation for our refugee status from the Iraqi government and half from the Israeli government.

The Electronic Intifada site features a video interview with the late Naeim Giladi, "an Iraqi Jew who joined the Zionist underground as a young man in Iraq and later came to regret his role in fostering the departure of some 125,000 Jews from Iraq."