Archives: October 2024

Excerpts from Reason's vaults

15 years ago
October 2009

"The Federal Reserve's monetary base statistics show that in the last year the money in circulation has increased far faster than at any other point in American history. Thus, by the dictionary definition, we have inflation. But prices have been relatively stable because downward recessionary pressures are currently counterbalancing the upward pressures of the expanded money supply. The new money has been largely parked in financial institutions. Thanks to government prodding and aggressive stimuli, it will soon be showered on the economy at large. When the tide rolls in, there will be more money chasing fewer goods. (Recessions reduce the supply of things.) 
The result: higher prices."
Peter Schiff
"Inflation Returns!"

"Because technologists have yet to figure out how to break government monopolies on levying taxes and making laws, the nation's elected officials face a much rosier future than the nation's reporters and rhythm guitarists. But that doesn't mean the millions of people who have been dancing on the spasming bodies of newspapers and record companies for the last 10 years wouldn't love to do the same to the country's most autocratic and self-serving institution. Whatever sins the music industry might have committed, buying a CD is still a wholly voluntary act. Whatever biases your most hated nightly news anchor might harbor, he isn't taking 25 percent of your paycheck."
Greg Beato
"Sarah Palin, Maverick at Last"

35 years ago
October 1989

"In China, we come face to face with the deadly contradiction at the heart of U.S. efforts, in this postcommunist era, to wean communist states away from their addiction to Marxist--Leninist extremes. The democratic movement that our example helped inspire has been suppressed by the orthodox Marxists whose economy we helped to strengthen and whose army we helped to modernize. The flames that turned the young freedom fighters into charred bones and ashes also left our China policy a smoldering ruin. We must think long and hard about what we have really been doing in that country and where we must go from here. We must consider whether the unequal conflict between the forces of democracy and despotism in the streets of Beijing could somehow have been averted and how to mitigate the campaign of terror now in full swing."
Steven Mosher
"The China Syndrome"

40 years ago
October 1984

"In at least one instance, local authorities have shut down a computer home worker because telecommuting violates local zoning laws. There is ample precedent for outlawing computer home work under federal labor regulations. And unions are sounding alarms about the prospect of expanding home work. Meanwhile, publications such as the left-liberal Nation magazine are carrying the rhetorical banner against home work. A 1983 Nation article bearing the title 'Home Computer Sweatshops' keyed into people's revulsion at the exploitation of workers attributed to 19th-century low-wage factories. 'A wide expansion of electronic home work,' warned the article, 'will have serious social consequences.'"
David Rubins
"Telecommuting: Will the Plug Be Pulled?"

50 years ago
October 1974

"Although the issue has been the subject of heated controversy, we can see no reason why a criminal should not be prosecuted merely because he has resided in the White House for several years. Because he was President is not an argument for immunity, but for prosecution, to show that no person who commits a crime—not even a former President—should be above the law. The principle of equal justice requires that all the Watergate defendants be prosecuted if the evidence warrants, without singling out the principal co-conspirator for immunization. From the standpoints of general deterrence and retribution, the purpose of criminal punishment would be appropriately served by the Watergate special prosecutor proceeding against Mr. Nixon."
Manuel S. Klausner
"Reflections on Criminal Punishment and Disbarment in the Aftermath of Watergate"