What It Means to Be Pro-Life (Part 1)

Many Americans with some political consciousness tend to group themselves in one or two political categories: the left and the right, the former are usually associated with the Democrat Party and the latter with the Republican Party.  Whenever people assign themselves to one of these two positions, they usually subscribe to the majority of that position’s pre-set policies and beliefs. 

Both the left and the right have their own views on the sanctity of life, yet their contradictory views -- the left being against war and the death penalty but all for the choice of abortion and the right being against abortion but for the death penalty and war -- become a paradox.  Wherever they stand on the issue of life, both the left and the right are in full favor of death to some extent, and any stance they take on preserving life -- whether in the fetal stage or in the electric chair -- is based on fallacious logic and dishonest euphemisms.  Both sides are willing to kill in order to bring about their ideal conditions in society.

Part I: How the Left Justifies Killing

Leftists love to attack war but most of them are hypocrites for doing so, since they also often favor war but simply for different reasons than the right.  Socialists favor labor violence and outright civil wars which they refer to as “wars of liberation.”  If they subscribe to Lenin’s teachings, violence and outright terror in the name of proletarian revolution are justified (see The Black Book of Communism, Chapter 4: The Red Terror).   More moderate leftists, from Woodrow Wilson to Barack Obama, campaign on peace but instead lead the country into wars for various political and economic purposes.  With Wilson it was the First World War  and with Obama it was continuation of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars as well as intervention in the Libyan Civil War as well as those in Somalia, South Sudan, and Central Africa.   Both social democrats enjoyed wide support from their allegedly pacific Democrat Party.

Rand Paul Disappoints

Rand Paul is good on some things, and not so good on others.

Earlier this week, Paul was detained in Nashville for refusing a pat down after an “anomaly” was spotted during his full body scan. The T.S.A. denies that he was detained citing some Orwellian semantics. His refusal was noble and deserves applause, especially when considering his standing as an American Senator.

But just because Rand is good on some issues of the warfare-police state should not give him a free pass from scrutiny. Case in point: Rand Paul voted for the Kirk-Menendez amendment on December 1, 2011. Equally disappointing is that his vote flew straight under the radar. Whether unnoticed or ignored, antiwar vigilantes failed on this one.

The Kirk-Menendez amendment (#1414) seeks “To require the imposition of sanctions with respect to the financial sector of  Iran, including the Central Bank of Iran.” The amendment’s main focus is on Iran’s oil industry: “Sanctions imposed…shall apply with respect to a foreign financial institution owned or controlled by the government of a foreign country including a central bank of a foreign country, only insofar as it engages in transactions for the sale or purchase of petroleum or petroleum products to or from Iran.”

What is money? (Part I)

Oh yes, we’re tackling the big question today. No more subtly alluding to a certain view of money and economics while assuming you “get it” too. I’m going to break it down to the fundamentals here and do so as painlessly and simply as possible.

If you’re an advocate of “sound money” or “honest money” and you want to understand your own views better or find an easier way to explain them to others, read on! If you have a friend who is new to this kind of economic thinking, this might be a good article to share with them.

Economic thinking isn’t hard. In fact, it’s quite natural and intuitive in a lot of ways. People who make it more complicated than it really is are doing so to keep you from thinking about it and to convince you that you can’t really understand it like they can. Knowledge is power. So the less honest stewards of economic thought have decided to keep that power to themselves by making the knowledge seem unattainable to people without advanced degrees or Nobel Prizes. Don’t be intimidated! Finance and economics are for everyone.

McDonald's shows how we're still in a recession

McDonald's reported record profits of $27 billion in 2011.  Hooray, evidence of a global economic comeback, right?  Not so fast.

For most people, McDonald's isn't necessarily their food of choice.  Sure, there are some people who voluntarily eat at McDonald's very often.  But overall, the food at McDonald's is low quality and extremely unhealthy.  In economic terms, it's what we call an inferior good.

Usually when we think of goods and services, we are thinking of normal goods.  Normal goods  are items for which demand increases when income increases, and vice versa.  Sports cars are a normal good.  When people make more money, they are most likely to buy sports cars.

Inferior goods run the opposite way.  When people's income overall decreases, demand for inferior goods increases.  This is because people are substituting the inferior good for something that they would rather have, but cannot afford.  Case in point -- low quality food from McDonald's.  

Food from McDonald's is probably not at the top of most peoples' menu of choice.  However, as real income (not actual money in pockets, mind you, but rather real purchasing power) decreases as it has over the past several years, we should expect demand for inferior goods like McDonald's to increase.  Don't be surprised if at the end of fiscal year 2012, we find that McDonald's profits have increased even more.