Chicago has just expanded their 20-year-old "amusement tax" law -- yes they have a tax on amusement -- to apply to streaming services like Netflix and Spotify, but according to the mayor's spokeswoman, this expansion of the law is not an expansion of the law, it's just a clarification of the law in the name of "fairness."
While the White House again is smiling through its teeth and claiming, “the strongest two-year job growth since 2000,” a record-setting 93,626,000 Americans did not even participate in the nation's labor force at all in June 2015.
That means that 93.6 million Americans age 16 or older who were not in the military or institutionalized did not hold down a job and didn&rsquo... (more)
Barack Obama says that we shouldn’t be alarmed by what is happening over in Greece. On Tuesday, he told reporters that this “is an issue primarily of concern to Europe” and that “I think the markets have properly factored in the risks involved“. And apparently Obama is not too concerned about the debt crisis in Puerto Rico either. In fact, the... (more)
Oregon — While marijuana legalization activists are cheering on the states end to pot prohibition this Wednesday, the way the law is set up has many shaking their heads.
Thanks to the 56 percent of Oregon residents voting in favor of Measure 91 last November, come this Wednesday, all residents 21 and older will legally be allowed to possess and use recreational reefer. There is, however, a catch, no one can sell it or buy it.
Greece cannot pay its debts…ever. Nor can several other members of the European Union. That’s why Europe’s elite are loath to place Greece in default. If Greece is allowed to abrogate its debts, why should any of the other debtor members of the EU pay up? The financial consequences of massive default by most of the EU members is hard to predict, but it won’t be pretty. Europe has built a financial house of cards, and the slightest loss of confidence will bring it crashin... (more)
Prankster Mark Dice’s latest video proves that Americans have absolutely no idea about the value of precious metals. Asked if they would like to purchase a 10oz silver bar worth $160 for just ten bucks, every single one refused.
What makes the footage even more jaw-dropping is that Dice was stood feet away from a coin shop, where anyone c... (more)
Since it's inception, recycling has always been a scam. With the exception of aluminum, all recycled products require more energy to be "recycled" than to be made fresh. Nonetheless, governments and environmentalists have profited off such schemes as recycling plants serve as both a handout to politically connected corporations and a jobs scheme for opportunist politicians. The scam is finally now coming to an end as the economic reality is setting in.
... (more)
A survey conducted by the Pew Research Center gauges the opinion among citizens of various countries of the free market. They were asked if they agreed that under such a system the majority is better off even though some are rich and some are poor. The results invite interesting conclusions.
People in emerging countries have more faith in the market than those in developed societies. Among the latter, between... (more)
Even though Kanchan Singh is a born optimist, there were moments when she thought her dream of starting Washington, DC's first cat cafe would never get its paws off the ground.
Singh, 24, got the idea for her first business venture while backpacking in Thailand. Walking among the temples and medieval city walls in the city of Chiang Mai, Singh s... (more)
With the temperature in Washington, D.C. in the mid-90s, it is perhaps worthwhile to recall what life was like before the arrival of air-conditioning. Below are a few excerpts from a New Yorker essay about air conditioning penned by the great Arthur Miller in 1998:
Exactly what year it was I can no longer recall--probably 1927 or '28--there was an extraordinarily hot September, w
The job-threatening rise of the machines is an economically illiterate meme that refuses to die. We’re actually probably in the early stages of it, a bull-market in neo-luddism, if you will. Bastiat’s “Candlemakers Petititon” answered this one long ago, but today I’ll run a little thought experiment that owes it all to good old Bastiat.
Let’s say Weird Al Yankovic invents a machine ca... (more)
Most Americans are deathly afraid to go to the hospital these days – and it is because of the immense pain that it will cause to their wallets. If you want to get on a path that will lead you to bankruptcy, just start going to the hospital a lot. In America today, hospitals and doctors are blatantly ripping us off and they aren’t making any apologies for it. As you will read about below, some hospitals mark up treatments by 1,000 percent. In o... (more)
With Ross Ulbricht sentenced to life in prison to make an example of him in the new online version of our nation's drug wars, it raises a similar question to the one in the offline world: does this kind of thing have any impact at all? The Economist has a chart suggesting that nothing at all is changing and demand creates supply, as the number of drug listing... (more)
