“Debt is an especially insidious form of coercion - one imposed on citizens who haven't even been born.”
Source: Cooperation and Coercion: How Busybodies Became Busybullies and What that Means for Economics and Politics
“Minimum wage proponents argue that the minimum wage prevents businesses from paying workers almost nothing. If that were true, then almost all jobs would pay exactly the minimum wage because there is no law requiring employers to pay more. Yet 99 percent of US jobs pay more than the minimum wage.”
Source: Cooperation and Coercion: How Busybodies Became Busybullies and What that Means for Economics and Politics
“President Lyndon Johnson declared “all-out war on human poverty and unemployment in these United States” in his 1964 State of the Union address. Since then, the United States has spent $22 trillion on the war on poverty. This does not include Social Security and Medicare spending. The curious thing about all of this, though, is that the poverty rate in the United States was already declining prior to the declaration of this particular war. The US poverty rate fell steadily from 22.4 percent in 1959, to 19.5 percent in 1963. By the end of 1964, it was 19 percent. The poverty rate then declined steadily from 1965 until 1973, when it bottomed out at 11.1 percent. Since then, the poverty rate has averaged 13 percent, moving between 11.1 percent and 15.2 percent ever since. What we have been waging war on since about 1973 is unclear. If it is poverty, we will have to admit that we are not winning, as the poverty rate has remained largely unchanged for about 45 years.”
Source: Cooperation and Coercion: How Busybodies Became Busybullies and What that Means for Economics and Politics
“Since President Johnson launched the War on Poverty, the government has spent more than $22 trillion (adjusted for inflation). That’s more than three times what the United States has spent on all the actual wars it has fought in its history - combined.”
Source: Cooperation and Coercion: How Busybodies Became Busybullies and What that Means for Economics and Politics
“Gun control proponents point to Australia’s 1996 gun ban as evidence that gun control does reduce firearm homicides. In Australia’s case, an initial look at the data appears compelling. Gun homicides fell from an average of 71 per year in the 7 years prior to the ban to 55 per year in the 7 years after the ban. That’s a 22 percent decline!
But a closer look reveals two concerning things. First, knife homicides in Australia appear to move in the opposite direction to gun homicides. This suggests that, at least in a portion of the cases, the gun ban didn’t reduce homicides but rather caused the perpetrators to switch weapons. In Australia, knife homicides outnumbered gun homicides by more than 2 to 1 prior to the gun ban, and more than 3 to 1 after. In Australia, knife and gun homicides, combined, fell only 8 percent in the seven-year period following the gun ban compared to the seven-year period preceding the ban. This is a much less impressive story than the reported 22 percent decline in gun homicides.
Second, if we compare the same two seven-year periods in the United States, we find that annual U.S. gun homicides fell from an average of 18,577 to an average of 12,780. That’s a 31 percent decline. The U.S., without a gun ban, experienced a larger relative decline in gun homicides than did Australia with the ban!”
Source: Cooperation and Coercion: How Busybodies Became Busybullies and What that Means for Economics and Politics
“Everything feels utopian at some point or another. The ideas we have accepted today felt utopian in the previous era. If reformers would have given up their 'fight to abolish Sati' as an utopian idea, we would have never gotten rid of the practice. The question is; how far is our generation ready to go against the grain, when we see injustice happening in our day? Are we ready to introspect, why the idea of brotherhood across religious and caste lines feels utopian and radical today?”
Source: Litost: Sliced Stories
“Stupidity goes hand in hand with racism.”
Source: In Limbo
“Courage, man; the hurt cannot be much.
Mercutio: No, 'tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church-door; but 'tis enough, 'twill serve. Ask for me tomorrow, and you shall find me a grave man.”
Source: Romeo and Juliet
“A gifted woman makes herself relevant in society by using her gifts for the right things.”
Source: Woman of Virtue: Power-Filled Quotes for a Powerful Woman
“Society is a revolving body which is apt to be judged according to its place in each man's heaven; and at present it was turning its illuminated face to Lily.”
Source: The House of Mirth