Posts tagged David Cameron

Austrian Austerity

606
1 year ago
by Michael Weiss in

As we’ve all heard so often from the Aus­trian School adher­ents, the proper behav­ior for gov­ern­ment in times of eco­nomic down­turns is to reduce spend­ing to match the lower tax rev­enues result­ing from the lower amounts of eco­nomic activity.

Amer­i­can Repub­li­cans, of course, dou­ble down on this by sug­gest­ing that we should not only reduce spend­ing to match the lower tax rev­enues, but that we should also lower tax rates to fur­ther reduce tax rev­enues, and reduce spend­ing even fur­ther to match that lower amount of tax rev­enues. But today let’s look at the Aus­tri­ans. Well, not the Aus­tri­ans, per se, but rather a nation that has opted to hew pretty closely to the Aus­trian School of eco­nom­ics.

Yes, we don’t have to merely the­o­rize about what the results would be in fol­low­ing the Aus­trian model of reduced gov­ern­ment spend­ing dur­ing a reces­sion. We can make a pretty direct com­par­i­son. (more…)

Ozymandias?

15
1 year ago
by filistro in

Rupert at risk?

The British tabloid press, well-​​known for its dis­re­spect for eth­i­cal bound­aries and good taste, has finally gone too far. Tabloid edi­tors and writ­ers are accused of hack­ing into the voice mail accounts of: Milly Dowler, 13-​​year-​​old girl who was miss­ing and found dead; sol­diers killed in Afghanistan; and fam­i­lies of accused ter­ror­ists. The hack­ing may have altered or destroyed vital evi­dence in the mur­der case. The inves­ti­ga­tions and arrests are ongoing.

As a result of the ensu­ing scan­dal, Rupert Murdoch’s flag­ship weekly British pub­li­ca­tion, News of the World, will pub­lish for the last time on July 10, after 168 years. This, in tech­ni­cal jour­nal­is­tic terms, is a BFD. While cyn­ics think Mur­doch will just fold News into his other sleazy tabloid, the Sun, which will go to seven days a week instead of six, there are many oth­ers who believe this could be the crack that top­ples the vast and pow­er­ful empire of right-​​wing trash jour­nal­ism built by Rupert Mur­doch and mar­keted across the world. The paper may close, but the inves­ti­ga­tions will con­tinue. On July 8, the edi­tor (an advi­sor to Prime Min­is­ter David Cameron’s recent cam­paign for the office) was arrested.

Will this mark the begin­ning of a full-​​throated, hounds and horses, bloody FOX hunt in Amer­ica as well? We can only hope.

 

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