Author: Thomas L. Knapp

Stop Preparing Kids for Jobs. Teach Them to Build a Livelihood.

Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Jennie Jones

“‘Dance won’t pay well. You should choose a real job.’ ‘There aren’t many jobs in the dance world, and it’s really hard to get into. You should have a backup plan.’ And my personal favorite: after I shared with my high school counselor that I planned to dance as long as I could and then go to law school, she jokingly replied, ‘That’s just what the world needs—more dancing lawyers.’ This was the well-meaning advice I got from most of the adults in my life during my final years of high school. I was recently reflecting on that advice, now with the hindsight of more than 20 years of making a living doing things I love, and I realized where it fell short for me.” (09/04/26)

https://fee.org/articles/stop-preparing-kids-for-jobs-teach-them-to-build-a-livelihood/

Thomas L. Knapp

Nepal holds a day of mourning after floods kill at least 1,300 people

Source: Associated Press

“Nepal held a day of mourning Monday to remember those killed in the Aug. 26 floods, with flags lowered at government offices and families concluding mourning rituals. Monday was the 13th day since the flooding which killed more than 1,300 people in Nepal and Tibet and left some 5,000 missing, including foreigners, according to Nepal’s disaster management agency. In predominantly Hindu Nepal, mourning periods last 13 days, during which close family members stay home and relatives visit to pay their respects. Rituals are held on the final day to pray for the souls of the departed. Several people whose relatives remain missing performed symbolic funerals. Cremation is an important final rite in Hindu tradition, and performing the ceremony even without the bodies of their loved ones provided some families a sense of spiritual release.” (09/07/26)

https://apnews.com/article/nepal-tibet-floods-mourning-f5477d09ca1c56541450828302818d73

Thomas L. Knapp

MMT and the Price Controls That Never Happened

Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by Joshua Mawhorter

“A unit of account allows us to evaluate and compare the exchange-values of heterogeneous goods by expressing those values in a common monetary unit. But for that common denominator to be meaningful, the monetary unit must itself be grounded in determinate exchange-ratios and purchasing power. Otherwise, we are attempting to express the values of other goods in terms of a unit whose own exchange-value is undefined. These realities bolster the Menger-Mises monetary theory and reveal a profound problem with chartalism, the state theory of money, and Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). This article examines a problem that would arise on the theoretical first day of chartalism: What is the referent of a newly-created fiat monetary unit? Is it market-given or politically-determined? How can a definition-less fiat-token acquire determinate exchange-value and function as a meaningful unit of account in the first place?” (09/04/26)

https://mises.org/mises-wire/mmt-and-price-controls-never-happened

Thomas L. Knapp

SpaceX rival launches rocket in historic first, says industry is “desperate” for more

Source: CNBC

“German rocket maker Isar Aerospace successfully reached orbit for the first time over the weekend, marking a milestone for Europe’s commercial space industry as the company looks to ramp up launches to meet what it says is booming demand. The Munich-based company’s Spectrum rocket reached orbit on Saturday and successfully deployed its payloads in low Earth orbit, an achievement that came on only its second test flight. Chief Commercial Officer Stella Guillen told CNBC on Monday that the company was now focused on scaling production, saying the space industry was ‘desperate’ for additional launch capacity and that Isar had a pipeline worth more than 10 billion euros ($11.6 billion).” (09/07/26)

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/07/isar-aerospace-spacex-rival-rocket-launch.html

Thomas L. Knapp

Oligarchy and Redistribution: A Reply to Paul Krugman

Source: CounterPunch
by David S D’Amato

“Krugman admits that where he once saw the absurd inequalities of the present day as primarily the consequences of technological change and the market economy, ‘looking into the math’ changed his mind, and it became clear to him that ‘much of the rise of the modern American oligarchy has been driven by deliberate policy.’ The math Krugman is focused on is the tax gap and thus the effective tax rate. The problem for Krugman’s hypothesis is that the United States was already firmly an oligarchy when the tax gap was much smaller and the effective tax rate much higher. Oligarchy is not first and foremost a product of the system of taxation, and it never has been. It is rather a product of the pre-distribution of wealth through state-created special economic privileges.” (09/04/26)

https://www.counterpunch.org/2026/09/04/oligarchy-and-redistribution-a-reply-to-paul-krugman/

Thomas L. Knapp