“A familiar spectre is haunting the nation: communism. Or so one might conclude from the Republican Party’s increasingly frantic rhetoric. Following a string of wins by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) in congressional primaries from New York to Colorado to Michigan, even reaching as far as Florida, the GOP is dusting off an old refrain. ‘Communism is on the ballot this November,’ warned House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) at a press conference. President Donald Trump has gone further still, calling communism ‘the biggest threat to our nation there is, maybe since our founding.’ At first glance, this reads like little more than election-year theatrics. The candidates provoking such alarm are, on the whole, hardly the revolutionaries their critics imagine. Many of the policies promoted by today’s Democratic Socialists fall comfortably within the lineage of the New Deal …” (09/07/26)
“More than a cartoon prop, the old-fashioned FLIT gun was one of many innovations that gave ordinary households unprecedented power over pests that plagued us for centuries.” (09/07/26)
Source: David Friedman’s Substack
by David Friedman
“If you go to a real estate agent in search of a house, there are two questions you are likely to be asked. One is how much you want to spend. The other is what sort of house you are looking for—how large, how many rooms of what sort, in what location. It is in the agent’s interest to ask the first question; since his commission is a percentage of the sales price, he would like to sell you the most expensive house you are willing to buy. It is not clear that it is in your interest to answer it.” (09/05/26)
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“Remember how we were always hearing that the official death toll in Gaza is an undercount because there are thousands of bodies trapped under the rubble? Well, it looks like Israel has been moving those remains along with the rubble, conveniently destroying evidence of genocide. Last month, a report by Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor estimated that ‘at least 10 million tonnes of rubble have been removed, crushed, or moved from their original sites within the areas under Israel’s unlawful military control.’ ‘In recent weeks, Euro-Med Monitor tracked nearly 100 Israeli trucks daily leaving the Gaza Strip with debris,’ the report reads. ‘These trucks carry rubble to undisclosed sites within Israel and further south of the occupied West Bank. The Israeli authorities have not provided details on the quantities removed, the routes taken, the destination sites, or how the material is utilised.'” (09/07/26)
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)
“Our economic model is plagued with a history of periodic recessions and depressions. That history is recorded by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). Recessions and depressions are clinically presented as normal components of the ‘business cycle’. The NBER does not report the chronic instability and destruction of communities and working people’s lives by this ‘business cycle’. Political democracy demands economic democracy. We have statutes, laws, regulations, and rules to protect the common good. Why not apply the same principles to the relations of production? Many economists, psychologists, and journalists have attempted to rationalize the chronic crisis in our economic model. These fanciful assertions are thoroughly inadequate. As Leo Huberman chronicled in Man’s Worldly Goods, some experts actually attributed the chronic crises to radiation from the sun or the path of the planet Venus.” (09/07/26)
“The US factories that rely on Canadian steel, parts, energy, and expertise want President Trump not to make those inputs more expensive — and American producers less competitive.” (09/04/26)
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)
“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)
