Proud to Serve the Dismal Science

Courtesy Robert Dixon:

Carlyle puts the view that 'work' is morally good and that if a "Black man" will not voluntarily work for the wages then prevailing he should be compelled to work. He writes of those who argued that the forces of supply and demand rather than physical coercion should regulate the labour market that: "the Social Science ... which finds the secret of this Universe in supply and demand and reduces the duty of human governors to that of letting men alone ... is a dreary, desolate, and indeed quite abject and distressing one; what we might call ... the dismal science"

In short, economics became the dismal science because everyone is treated as equally important and defends the right to pursue happiness regardless of the manner in which society views them. Slaves, CEO's, and Mexican immigrants all receive equal treatment for their role in society from the economist.

NAFTA + Ohio = Good Economy

Though you wouldn't know it if you listened to the politicians stumping in Ohio for the primaries, Ohio has benefited enormously from free trade, especially from the NAFTA agreement. If we stopped all international trade, it would not bring back those manufacturing jobs (jobs which were created by trade in the first place). Consider the unemployment rate in Ohio and Cleveland since January 1993 (Month 0), the start of NAFTA (other Ohio cities do not go back that far):
Since the start of NAFTA, Ohio and Cleveland have never experienced more unemployment than the month it began, which was not a historically high level anyway. Even during the recession, unemployment only got as high as 6.5 percent, which is still low by historical standards. Unemployment rate is by no means the only important statistic on labor force activity, but it is reflective and probably a surprise to those who listen to wanna-be presidents.

More China Fantasy

This is from Economist Greg Mankiw's Blog:

From a recent Gallop Poll:

"Which one of the following do you think is the leading economic power in the world today?"
China: 40 percent
The United States: 33 percent
Japan: 13 percent
The European Union: 7 percent
India: 2 percent
Russia: 2 percent

Here is the reality, as I have said before, we are economic giants:

Venezuela Declares Economic War on the US

Venezuela has cut-off Exxon Mobil from access to its oil as a result of a legal stand-off. Unfortunate for Exxon Mobil, sometimes business deals go badly, but Chavez flies off the handle accordingly by making it some kind of larger issue. Incredibly, he threatens an "economic war" on the U.S. by cutting off supplies of his oil. Apparently he does not realize 2 important points.
1. Who "we" (U.S. firms) buy oil from is not particularly important. Unless they are selling it to us below market price, we would pay largely the same price regardless of who actually delivers the oil. Even as large suppliers, it will be a tiny supply shock at most, as there will be a rearranging of contracts among the different firms.
2. The U.S. economy is massive, the rest of the world is just a bunch of ants compared to us. We are a market economy, we practice relatively free trade internationally and very free trade among our own states. Both the size of our pie and the size each person receives in our country makes us giants in a land of ants, and Venezuela is a small ant. The last country to enter into an economic war on the U.S. was the largest and most powerful socialist regime the world had ever seen and it barely reached our knee-caps before crashing into non-existence. That was almost 20 years ago. We're even bigger and stronger than before with more economic freedom. Meanwhile Chavez is no Stalin, and Venezuela is no USSR.