Do crazy licensing rules kill entrepreneurship?
All states—though not the anarchic United Kingdom—require barbers to be licensed, but the specific requirements seem to vary arbitrarily. New York barbers need 884 days of education and apprenticeship. Across the river in New Jersey, it’s 280. But getting one’s hair cut in New Jersey (to say nothing of England) is hardly a life-threatening gamble.
Taxes don’t kill entrepeneurship. Crazy licencing rules do. — Matthew Yglesias, Slate.com
Monopoly power in action
90 Percent of Corn Seeds Are Coated With Bayer’s Bee-Decimating Pesticide
90 Percent of Corn Seeds Are Coated With Bayers Bee-Decimating Pesticide | Mother Jones.
Single-Payer Health Care: $570 Billion Cheaper
Economist Gerald Friedman has what looks to be the silver bullet against the claim that single-payer health care is infeasible on economic grounds, showing how “Medicare for all” could save billions of dollars while improving millions of lives.
via Single-Payer Health Care: $570 Billion Cheaper – Truthdig.
Privatisation’s Worse Case Scenario
“Under the $563 million, 99-year deal that privatized four city-owned parking garages in downtown Chicago, City Hall made a promise” to ensure that the parking garages would not be subject to any competition. Where are the free marketists now?
via Chicago faces $200 million claim over privatized parking garage – Chicago Sun-Times.
“Too Crooked to Fail”: Matt Taibbi Says Bailouts, Fraud are the Secrets to Bank of America’s Success
In his new article, “Bank of America: Too Crooked to Fail,” Rolling Stone reporter Matt Taibbi chronicles the remarkable history of the rise of Bank of America — an institution he says has defrauded “everyone from investors and insurers to homeowners and the unemployed.” Taibbi describes how the Bush and Obama administrations have repeatedly propped up the financial institution, which received a $45 billion taxpayer bailout in 2008. Bank of America has also received billions in what could be described as shadow bailouts. The bank now owns more than 12 percent of the nation’s bank deposits and 17 percent of all home mortgages. Taibbi also recounts how fraudulent practices by Bank of America and other companies ravaged pension funds. “Most people think of [the mortgage crisis] as some airy abstraction — you know, bankers ripping off bankers,” Taibbi says. “That’s not what it is. It’s bankers stealing from old ladies and retirees.”
via “Too Crooked to Fail”: Matt Taibbi Says Bailouts, Fraud are the Secrets to Bank of America’s Success.
Economist Magazine Runs Fact-Challenged Frontal Assault on Regulation
A respected magazines panders to corporations and runs an ideological attack on one of the most critical aspects of a functioning economy.
via Economist Magazine Runs Fact-Challenged Frontal Assault on Regulation | | AlterNet.
Corporations Hate Regulation, Until They Love It
[B]usiness prefer[s] no regulation at all, but they know that’s not in the cards. So in public they bemoan complexity, but in private they fight endlessly for more of it. To their lawyers, every single extra page is an extra opportunity to make more money.
via Corporations Hate Regulation, Until They Love It | Mother Jones.
The Capitalist Network that Runs the World
The work, to be published in PloS One, revealed a core of 1318 companies with interlocking ownerships (see image). Each of the 1318 had ties to two or more other companies, and on average they were connected to 20. What’s more, although they represented 20 per cent of global operating revenues, the 1318 appeared to collectively own through their shares the majority of the world’s large blue chip and manufacturing firms – the “real” economy – representing a further 60 per cent of global revenues.
Inside the Trillion-Dollar Underground Economy Keeping Many Americans Barely Afloat in Desperate Times
The Young Womens Empowerment Project [PDF] describes the “street economy” as “… any way that girls make cash money without paying taxes or having to show identification. Sometimes this means the sex trade. But other times it means braiding hair, babysitting, selling CDs/DVDs, drugs or other skills like sewing and laundry.”
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