Scot Wick Blog

  Is Increasing Federal Infrastructure Spending Helpful For The Economy? First, watch this short video, John Stossel – Infrastructure Spending https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmAgSOgJ7NY From the video: “The way the infrastructure projects are picked is the survival of the unfittest. The projects picked by politicians look good on paper, show costs will be very low and demand for use will be very high, but this never happens. Nine out of ten public infrastructure projects have massive cost overruns, most of the time 50% above the promised cost. The government has the worst types of incentives to serve the public well, it’s not their money and if they lose it it’s not their own cost.” … From article: “ Infrastructure Gap? Look at the Facts. We Spend More Than Europe” To convince a wary public to spend more funded with trillion dollar deficits, big federal government advocates gin up a national infrastructure emergency claiming safety, jobs, and well-being ar...

From article Why Elon Musk has rattled them. Tom Slater. April 15, 2022. WE STAND HERE ON THE EDGE OF TYRANNY… ELON MUSK WANTS TO BUY TWITTER. THAT HAS BEEN THE COMMENTARIAT REACTION in recent days as the world’s richest man has launched a takeover attempt of the social-media giant, citing his concerns about its censorious policies as his main motivation. … Musk revealed last week he had become Twitter’s largest shareholder, with a 9.2 per cent stake. Now he’s offered to buy the whole company for a cool $43 billion, a nice premium on its current worth. As it stands, TWITTER’S BOARD IS RESISTING AND AMERICA’S GREAT AND GOOD HAVE GONE BERSERK. … The Washington Post’s Max Boot was swift out of the blocks. ‘I am frightened by the impact on society and politics if Elon Musk acquires Twitter’, Boot tweeted. Musk seems to believe on social media anything goes. BUT FOR DEMOCRACY TO SURVIVE, WE NEED MORE CONTENT MODERATION, NOT LESS.’ … On an even more demented note, Robert Reich, veteran of t...

  Mostly summarized from Gregory Mankiw’s Principles of Economics, 5th Ed. PART 6 The Economics of Labor Markets Chapter 18 of 36 – The Markets for the Factors of Production Section 6 of 26 … Table 1 here … With the goal of maximizing profits, this firm when deciding how many workers to hire to pick apples considers how much profit each worker would bring in. Profit is total revenue minus total cost. The profit gained from an additional worker is the worker's contribution to revenue minus the worker's wage. To find a worker's contribution to revenue, we multiply the marginal (additional) product of labor by the unit price. In the Table 1 example, a bushel of apples sells for $10 · if an additional second worker produces 80 bushels of apples, column 3 · the worker produces $800 of revenue, column 4 … For a competitive firm, where price is constant · the value of marginal product diminishes as number of workers rises · because the marginal product declines with additional wo...

From book Dragonslayers: Six Presidents and Their War with the Swamp. Larry Schweikart. 2022. Kindle online sample. Section 2. By 1980, virtually all authority over the administrative state had been handed over to the courts, who essentially allowed the bureaucracy to write its own performance standards and its own definitions of legality. COURTS GAVE THESE FEDERAL AGENCIES THE WIDEST OF LATITUDES, ENABLING THEM TO WIELD A POWER THE FOUNDERS NEVER INTENDED. As Ronald Reagan quipped, “The closest thing to eternal life I have seen on the earth is a government agency.” … Two and a half decades after Reagan abandoned his war with “big government,” Donald Trump ran on the promise of “draining the Swamp.” His actual program was far less ambitious than many thought at the time. He never promised to eliminate or even downscale the FBI, the CIA, or any government agency. RATHER TRUMP PROMISED TO ATTACK THE LOBBYIST CULTURE FROM A NUMBER OF DIRECTIONS. Left unsaid by Trump was the fact his energ...

Mostly summarized from Gregory Mankiw’s Principles of Economics, 5th Ed. PART 6 The Economics of Labor Markets Chapter 18 of 36 The Markets for the Factors of Production Section 5 of 26 … Table 1 here … Figure 2 here … Restated from Chapter 1, the Ten Principles of Economics: 1: people face trade-offs 2: the cost of something is what you give up to get it 3: rational people think at the margin 4: people respond to incentives 5: trade can make everyone better off 6: markets are usually a good way to organize economic activity 7: governments can sometimes improve market outcomes 8: a country's standard of living depends on its ability to produce goods and services 9: prices rise when the government issues too much money 10: society faces a short-run trade-off between inflation and unemployment … One of the Ten Principles of Economics, #3: rational people think at the margin. This thinking at the margin concept is key to understanding how firms decide what quantity of labor to hire. T...

From article The Only Way To Fight Disinformation Is To Fight Political Censorship. Stella Morabito. April 18, 2022. The surest way to kill a democracy is to practice political censorship under the guise of protecting society from disinformation. If outfits like the Aspen Institute’s “Commission on Information Disorder,” along with Big Tech’s faceless “fact-checkers,” ever get a total monopoly on dictating reality, THE RESULT WILL BE A 24/7 MIX OF FALSEHOODS with the occasional limited hangout to cover up their lies. … The icing on this fake cake is the use of conferences about disinformation, such as the recent stunt at the University of Chicago that served as cover for justifying political censorship. There FORMER PRESIDENT OBAMA PRESENTED THE PERFECT PICTURE OF PSYCHOLOGICAL PROJECTION: A PANEL OF PROPAGANDISTS ACCUSING OTHERS OF WRONGTHINK. … The Atlantic’s Anne Applebaum sought to censor the reality of the Hunter Biden laptop scandal by announcing she didn’t find it “interesting.”...

  Just finished, enjoyed and learned much. Mostly people in areas Rome conquered welcomed Roman rule and wanted to become Roman citizens, increased living standards through trade and end of local tribal warfare. Amazon.com: Pax Romana: War, Peace, and Conquest in the Roman World (Audible Audio Edition): Adrian Goldsworthy, Derek Perkins, Tantor Audio: Books