Month: June 2022

Authored by Jason Ditz via AntiWar.com,

The most enduring US ally in the Syrian War, the Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) are very publicly interested in resisting the latest round of planned Turkish invasions of northern Syria, saying they are open to coordination with the Syrian government’s troops to do so.

Turkey has repeatedly invaded northern Syria and northern Iraq to have a run at Kurdish factions, declaring them “terrorists” in both. The operations in Syria aim at the SDF’s parent organization, the YPG.

The most recent threatened Turkish operation seeks to establish a 30 km “security zone” within Syria. This is roughly in line with past plans threatened, mostly with an eye toward propping up Turkish-backed rebels in the area.

Syria opposes such raids because that “zone” becomes rebel territory, and the SDF oppose it because it’s carved out of their territory. SDF leaders suggest the Syrians would particularly help if they used air defenses against the Turkish warplanes. According to Middle East Eye:

The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) would be “open” to coordinating with Syrian government troops to fend off any Turkish invasion of the north, the head of the US-backed militia has said. 

Mazloum Abdi also told Reuters on Sunday that Damascus should use its air defense systems against Turkish planes. 

The US-armed SDF are a formidable on the ground force, but were an auxiliary of the US in fighting ISIS, and envision the same role with Syria in resisting Turkey.

Turkey backed the rebels in Syria almost immediately at the beginning, envisioning the Sunni Arab-dominated rebels being more hostile to Kurdish autonomy, and leaving the YPG in a weakened position.

Ironically, Turkey’s pro-rebel position set Islamists up in north Syria, and when the US got involved, they backed the YPG in resisting those groups, leaving the YPG and the SDF as a stronger group than they likely were before the war began. Now, they may find themselves natural allies to Syria, and even further entrenched as an autonomous faction in northeast Syria.

“We hope that Ankara will refrain from actions that could lead to a dangerous deterioration of the already difficult situation in Syria,” Russia’s Foreign Affairs Ministry said.https://t.co/UwVHuirCXZ

— Wladimir (@vvanwilgenburg) June 2, 2022

Turkey, by contrast, has found its border far less stable for its involvement in the war, and its relationship with Syria broken. The rebels plainly aren’t going to win the war, and Turkey will have to deal with the Assad government they worked to undermine.

“Top Gun: Maverick” has raked in a whopping $548.6 million since it premiered in theaters ten days ago. The Tom Cruise sequel to 1986’s Top Gun has shattered multiple box-office records and is one of the most popular movies on multiple streaming platforms. The patriotic action film has served as a call to action for some Americans as internet search trends for becoming a fighter pilot soar to new heights.

Shortly after Top Gun: Maverick was released on May 27, the internet search trend “how to become a fighter pilot” went absolutely parabolic, hitting a new record high. The movie, or perhaps US military propaganda, produced by Hollywood, has spurred patriotic fervor, something the military has desperately needed as recruiting in the last several years has been dismal. 

Last week, we pointed out that recruiting tables for the Navy were popping up in the lobbies of movie theaters showing the patriotic film, a move certainly made by the service to boost enlisting numbers by playing off the emotions of moviegoers. 

Maj. Gen. Edward W. Thomas, commander of Air Force Recruiting Service, told Fox News the military would use Top Gun: Maverick to boost recruitment. A similar phenomenon was seen during the first release of Top Gun during the Cold War.  

“We did get a good recruiting bump from ‘Top Gun’ in 1986 when I went to the theaters and saw ‘Top Gun’ with my friends in ’86,” Thomas said. “I was already excited about military aviation, but I got even more excited. 

“We expect ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ to do the same,” he added. “You know, whether people want to aim high or fly Navy, we just want them to get excited about serving the nation in some capacity.”

The release of the film and soaring search trends of how to become a fighter pilot (remember, most enlisted don’t earn their wings but rather become maintenance crews or security forces or logistics) come as War in Ukraine crosses the 100-day mark and risks mount of further escalation. 

The question remains if the movie will spur a new wave of enlistments as the US and NATO allies continue to resupply Ukraine with weapons and show no signs of backing down. 

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

Below is my column in The Hill on the subpoena war raging in Washington as the Jan. 6th Committee prepares for its first public hearings this week. This weekend, the Justice Department announced that it would not be prosecuting former chief of staff Mark Meadows and social media director Dan Scavino. As noted below, they took a wiser course of limited cooperation.

The refusal to prosecute triggered a backlash from Rep. Adam Schiff who wanted to see more criminal charges out of the Biden Administration.

Here is the column:

In an initial court appearance following his arrest on Friday for contempt of Congress, former Trump adviser Peter Navarro stood before an obviously concerned federal magistrate. “Every time that you’re speaking,” Judge Zia Faruqui tried to explain, “it could mean potentially putting yourself at risk.”

It was entirely sensible advice about self-protection — and it was promptly ignored. Navarro, 72, went directly outside and blasted the charge against him, the Democrats, and the FBI.

Judge Faruqui’s concern was almost charmingly naive. We live in an age of the sensational, not the sensible. The Navarro case is just one skirmish in a subpoena war engulfing Washington. No one seems to be thinking much beyond the next election.

In the buildup to next week’s start of public hearings by the House of Representatives’ Jan. 6 investigative committee, Democrats have subpoenaed Republican colleagues and held former Trump officials in contempt. Then, instead of simply arranging for Navarro to voluntarily surrender, the Justice Department made a dramatic public arrest of him at an airport and dragged him off to jail in handcuffs.

These subpoena fights seem to be unfolding with little consideration given to the potential costs, either for Washington institutions or the individuals involved.

Democrats circle the firing squad

A variety of polls show, according to the political site FiveThirtyEight, that “Americans are moving on from Jan. 6th — even if Congress hasn’t.” With waning interest in the investigation, congressional Democrats and some in the media have pushed “blockbuster” new disclosures. However, many of their disclosures simply confirm what is already known: Then-President Trump and close associates wanted to challenge Congress’ certification of the 2020 presidential election and, instead, force Congress to select the next president. I wrote about that likely strategy just a couple weeks after the election, but that fruitless effort turned into a full-fledged riot in the Capitol.

The House hearings are likely to add details that damn Trump for fueling the riot and failing to immediately call on the rioters to pull back. Yet many of us reached the condemnation stage years ago; I reached that point while Trump was still speaking on Jan. 6, 2020, and opposed his efforts to challenge the certification.

The problem is not that the committee will move forward with hearings or a report. Despite its partisan composition and agenda, there is always a value to greater transparency about what occurred on that tragic day. The problem is the effort to ratchet up interest through conflict. The committee has taken the rare step of subpoenaing GOP colleagues, including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, and threatening to hold them in contempt like Navarro and other former Trump officials.

Despite years of bitter political divisions, the two parties have long avoided using subpoenas against each other. It was viewed as a step toward mutually assured destruction if House members unleashed inherent investigatory powers on each other. House Democratic leaders, however, shattered that long tradition of restraint despite the fact that they may gain little from the effort. What they will lose is a long-standing detente on the use of subpoenas against colleagues — and they are creating a new precedent for such internal subpoenas just months before they could find themselves in the minority. Today’s hunters then could become the hunted, if Republicans claim the same license after November’s elections.

The House already is a dysfunctional body that allows for little compromise or dialogue between parties. The targeting of fellow members now will remove one of the few remaining restraints on unbridled partisan rage.

Justice delayed or justice denied?

Attorney General Merrick Garland is well on his way to setting a record for the prosecution of congressional contempt. The Justice Department has consistently refused to submit congressional contempt cases to grand juries, including a flagrant act of contempt by Obama-era Attorney General Eric Holder. There is ample basis for this charge as well. It is not the substance but the selectivity and speed of the charges that is notable. Navarro was only held in contempt in April and is now being prosecuted by a department long known as the place where  contempt sanctions go to die. Yet, the Navarro case could quickly take a wild turn.

Navarro claims he offered to compromise with the committee but that he was asserting his right to remain silent. Putting aside such mitigating circumstances, the problem for the Justice Department could be the calendar: Despite moving at an uncharacteristically fast pace, the Navarro case likely will extend beyond November’s midterms. If Republicans retake the House, they could seek to retroactively rescind the House’s contempt vote on Navarro.

Technically, the Justice Department could insist that the act of contempt and the referral vote occurred under the prior Congress. Given the issuance of an indictment, the Biden administration could insist on pursuing the prosecution even if the alleged victim is no longer claiming to be harmed. And some Democrats likely would file to support his continued prosecution, even if a new majority of the House filed to seek dismissal of the case.

This prosecution and any appeal is likely to extend beyond the duration of the House committee. Last November, the Justice Department indicted former Trump adviser Steve Bannon on the same grounds; his trial will not occur until July. That will be the first such prosecution since 1982, when Rita Lavelle, a former Reagan-era EPA official, was indicted for failing to answer congressional questions. (Lavelle was acquitted of that but then later convicted of lying to Congress.)

The Biden administration did not have to act on this before the November elections. The statute of limitations for contempt of Congress is five years. If it hoped to get a quick plea and cooperation from Navarro, his defiant courthouse colloquy makes that less likely. The question is whether it will pursue these two misdemeanors — which could result in as little as 30 days and no more than a year in jail — if the next House seeks to rescind the contempt referral.

Self-defense or self-immolation?

That brings us back to Navarro. Judge Faruqui encouraged Navarro to consider the basis of his self-defense when Navarro seemed intent on self-immolation. In addition to announcing that he would represent himself, Navarro made an extended statement on the steps of the courthouse in his defense. He then incongruously said he could not discuss “legal matters” before plunging again into his legal defense points.

Navarro is known as someone who tends toward the path of greatest resistance. In a city known for highly managed criminal defendants with legions of lawyers and PR advisers, Navarro was a captivating figure as he held forth outside the courthouse. Yet for all that he has in terms of personal guts, he lacks legal authority. The problem is that even as he claimed executive privilege to avoid answering any of the House committee’s questions, he was publishing a book and giving interviews on the very subject matter of the subpoenas. It was an ill-considered course that may make him an icon on the right but could also make him a convicted defendant. As he repeatedly pitched his book outside the court, it seemed clear that his priority was not acquittal.

Navarro at one point asked, “Who are these people?” I have found myself asking the same question about all of the players in this subpoena war. Institutions and individuals alike seem to be in a crazed fit with little concern for how their actions may play out beyond the next election. But the greatest costs will be borne by the public, if our legal proceedings become as performative and shallow as our politics.

On Monday the US moved to seize two luxury private jets from Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich. It marks one of the greatest single attempted seizures of a Russian oligarch’s personal assets in the wake of the Putin-ordered military invasion of Ukraine, at a total value north of $400 million.

“U.S. authorities moved Monday to seize two luxury jets — a $60 million Gulfstream and a $350 million aircraft believed to be one of the world’s most expensive private airplanes — after linking both to Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich,” The Associated Press reports. One of the planes reportedly has an elaborate paper trail which attempted to shield and obscure Abramovich’s ownership, the DOJ investigators uncovered.

Before it underwent lavish upgrades and customizations, the initial value of his giant Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner, currently believed to be parked in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, was less than $100 million. While it perhaps could be easier for the much smaller Gulfstream to evade the long arm of US law, the Boeing Dreamliner is without doubt too big to hide, unless it makes its way to Russia.

The warrant, signed by a federal magistrate judge Monday, indicates the aircraft are in violation of US sanctions given they were moved within a designated time period after sanctions took effect but without a US exemption license.

“In explaining the move to seize the planes, an FBI agent wrote in an affidavit that the Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner aircraft and the Gulfstream G650ER plane are subject to seizure because they have been moved between March 4 and March 15 without licenses being obtained in violation of sanctions placed against Russia,” AP explains.

“According to the affidavit, Abramovich controlled the Gulfstream through a series of shell companies. The plane, it said, is believed to have been in Moscow since March 15,” the report added.

Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich has treated himself to the world’s most expensive private jet – A 248 seater, $300 million #Boeing 787 Dreamliner that has been customized to a lavish 50 seater. – https://t.co/Mx0mvoevkq pic.twitter.com/yLXOpyqquK

— Luxurylaunches (@luxurylaunches) December 24, 2021

And according to a profile last year of Abramovich’s huge Dreamliner in Forbes Russia, “For personal needs, such huge aircraft are used very rarely” and often the aviation industries of entire countries don’t have one.

The Dec.2021 profile detailed:

The Dreamliner, which Abramovich bought, was built in June 2015 for private Swiss airline Privateair but was never handed over to him. In 2019, its equipment began in accordance with the requests of the Russian billionaire. The plane reportedly can to carry up to 50 passengers: 10 seats are provided for security, 10 for staff and 30 for guests, says a Forbes source in the aviation market.

The flight range of the “dreamliner” is 18,418 km (with 25 passengers on board), the cabin area is 224.4 sq.m. The operator of the new vessel is the same as the previous one, owned by Abramovich – Global Jet Concept. At the same time, unlike its previous Boeing 767 aircraft, which received the code name “Bandit” due to the black “mask” on the cockpit windows, the new vessel is painted with extreme restraint. “It’s fashionable now – it helps to attract less attention,” the source explains.

Given his high visibility in the West, it’s perhaps not a surprise that Abramovich’s assets (which, until very recently, included Chelsea Football Club, the popular English Premier League team which he recently placed in the hands of a trust ahead of a sale) have been the focus of particular attention.

According to a recent FT report, he has at least five mega-yachts worth a combined total of about $1 billion. Two of the most expensive ones ended up in Turkey after fleeing European sanctions. At least one is believed to be in Montenegro.

Authored by ‘Freedom Money’ via BitcoinMagazine.com,

Love, violence and money are interrelated through their connection to energy. As the digital representation of energy, Bitcoin offers a better store of energy.

“’But how is [Bitcoin] digital energy; how do you get it back to being energy?’ The answer is, I send a billion-dollar block of it to Tokyo, I run it through an exchange … I convert it back into yen and I take the yen and I buy electricity from the Tokyo Power Company.” 

– Michael Saylor (WBD431)

While I think most Bitcoiners generally agree with the concept of bitcoin as digital energy, I have seen some pushback that this is not consistent with physics, is just a metaphor or is just plain false. I started writing this paper with the intention to argue that all money actually represents a store of energy and bitcoin is simply the best money available. However, I started finding interesting parallels with both love and violence as alternate methods of channeling energy, so I expanded the scope of this paper to offer my thoughts on these areas as well.

First, let’s start with energy. What is energy? According to Britannica:

“Energy, in physics: the capacity for doing work. It may exist in potential, kinetic, thermal, electrical, chemical, nuclear, or other various forms. All forms of energy are associated with motion. For example, any given body has kinetic energy if it is in motion. A tensioned device such as a bow or spring, though at rest, has the potential for creating motion; it contains potential energy because of its configuration.”

When it comes to what things humans typically think of as energy, there is certainly something to say for our ability to control or direct that energy. Before electrical applications were invented, electricity was probably not commonly thought of as a form of energy. Thus, the energy conversion device is perhaps just as important as the energy itself.

Modern humans have invented devices that allow us to use and scale all sorts of different types of energy. However, our original energy conversion device was, of course, the ability of the human body to convert the chemical energy in our food into kinetic energy that we inherently control. Today, despite having access to other sources of energy that have scaled immensely, human energy remains extremely valuable.

Despite our rather limited energy output, humans have evolved to be wildly efficient. With the assumption that an adult human worker uses 2,000 calories (food) per day, we can calculate the rate at which we can control our own energy:

Human energy calculation

At a rate of 98.5W, a human who works 40 hours per week, performs approximately 200 kWh of work for their employer in one year. In comparison to electrical energy conversion devices, this is an exceedingly minuscule amount of work. However, if this human has an annual salary of $50,000, the value of their energy output would be $250/kWh. The extremely high value of human energy is largely due to our ability to learn, adapt, engineer solutions and harness other forms of energy to provide valuable solutions to society.

Note, however, that the energy delivered by each human is exclusively controlled by the individual. I am the only person who can choose to raise or lower my arm; therefore, I am the only person who has control over the actions of my chemical energy conversion device (body). Because of this, humanity is continuously looking for answers to the question: “How do we convince other humans to channel their energy to a specific application?”

Our species has discovered many ways to motivate humans to channel their energy toward a specific task. In this article I will be discussing the following three broad categories:

• Love (family, friends, God)

• Violence (force, threats, war)

• Money (barter, metals, fiat, bitcoin)

LOVE

Love has evolved as part of human society and is the reason that parents choose to use their energy to meet the needs of their children. Love generally maximizes the efficiency of human energy because people who are motivated to cooperate via love genuinely want their work to achieve the best possible outcome. Love is a voluntary, decentralized means of channeling human energy. Each member of society can choose to love or not love another human; love cannot be forced.

However, love is very challenging to scale. One possible reason for this could be related to Dunbar’s number, which is a suggested cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships. Personally, I believe that connection to God allows humans to scale love beyond Dunbar’s number, however, I will reserve my thoughts on this topic for another time.

VIOLENCE

Violence, or the threat of violence, can also be used to channel human energy. Controlling energy through violence has its roots in the evolution of life on this planet. One attribute of violence that has made it such an effective means of forcing human cooperation is that violence scales. Specifically, violence can be scaled by engineering weapons that leverage human energy or incorporate more powerful forms of energy, i.e., gun powder, fission, fusion, etc. In addition, unlike love, violence can be stored and stockpiled for future use, offering the ability to scale the threat of violence as a means of channeling human energy.

However, violence is a non-voluntary, centralized solution to scale cooperation. Violence centralizes power because it favors those with the most powerful weapons, which grants them access to the most human energy and innovation, which enhances their ability to engineer even more powerful weapons. This centralization has led to non-optimal outcomes for humanity as a whole and is generally an inefficient means of directing human energy. Forced labor will never be as efficient as voluntary labor, and centralized decision making will never be better than decentralized decision making.

MONEY

Which brings us to money. The invention of money allowed humans to scale cooperation beyond Dunbar’s number without the need for love or violence. Money motivates humans to use their energy toward someone else’s goals by promising them that the money they were paid for their work can be used in the future to deploy the energy of other humans. Similar to violence, money can also be stored and stockpiled for future use. Money is a battery for human energy; the battery is charged as you work for someone else, and is discharged as someone else works for you. Money, therefore, represents stored human energy.

Unlike violence, money allowed for systems of decentralized decision-making to develop. Money enabled economies to emerge where humans all voluntarily participate in determining the value of different forms of labor. Decisions about what a society needs could therefore be set by the market, where each human decides what they are willing to pay for a good or service. In comparison to violence, money is a significantly more efficient scaling solution for motivating humans to channel their work toward a specific goal.

However, all forms of money can be corrupted through violence. Money, like life, can be stolen using violence. Decentralized markets can become centralized when violence, or the threat of violence, is used to control human actions. In earlier societies, when governments wanted to use violence to accumulate wealth, they needed to physically take the money from their citizens or from other external entities. Largely after the invention of nuclear weapons, when the threat of violence and the cost of war started reaching unimaginably enormous magnitudes, governments started relying on money printing more heavily to continue acquiring wealth. Paper money that can be printed radically changed the scale at which governments could acquire and deploy money. Increasing the number of monetary units devalues all of the existing money in a given economy and transfers that value to the entity in control of the money supply.

Note, however, that the amount of work that can be done with this stolen value will decay over time due to price inflation. As the newly printed money enters an economy, the decentralized market pricing mechanisms will take the new supply of money into account and raise all prices relative to how much individuals value their own human energy. Forcing the participants in an economy to reprice goods and services on a continuous basis also offers the opportunity to influence the value each human places on their own labor. Depressing a population, for example, may lead to participants ascribing less value to their own work and will result in lower relative repricing of goods and services after an inflationary event. When wages don’t keep up with price inflation, this can be viewed as a signal that market participants are attributing less value to the deployment of their own energy.

Although governments may earn money through taxation by providing services determined to be valuable by their citizens, i.e., protecting physical property rights, the majority of monetary energy controlled by modern governments is stolen primarily using the threat of violence to maintain their control over the money printer.

ENTER BITCOIN

Users of bitcoin — like users of all other forms of money — can be subjected to violence, or the threat of violence, as a means of forcibly acquiring their wealth. However, the violence needed to forcibly acquire bitcoin from an individual who controls their own private keys must be applied with extreme precision. Neither bullets nor weapons of mass destruction are effective methods of violence for stealing bitcoin. I would argue that the forms of violence required to forcibly acquire bitcoin don’t scale at all in comparison to traditional violence. Therefore, bitcoin is strongly resistant to theft via violence.

It is also not possible for bitcoin’s value to be stolen via supply inflation. Although the supply of bitcoin in circulation is increasing over time (albeit at an exponentially decreasing rate), the inflation rate is public knowledge and can be accounted for when pricing goods and services. Further, there is 100% market consensus on what bitcoin’s supply inflation will be used for. Newly-minted units of bitcoin are exclusively used to subsidize payments to bitcoin miners for the security and transaction processing services they provide.

During the early stages of bitcoin’s existence as money, all bitcoin holders contribute to Bitcoin’s security and transaction processing budget via an exponentially decreasing inflation tax. Currently, about 98% of miner revenue is supplied by Bitcoin’s 1.74% annual inflation rate, i.e., block reward, which will be cut in half approximately every four years. In the future, Bitcoin’s security budget will be paid for entirely by market participants who transact over the Bitcoin network, i.e., transaction fees. The block reward is therefore a temporary measure designed to subsidize security while Bitcoin is still in its youth; it would be more accurate to view this form of taxation as a collective payment for a valuable service, rather than theft.

In conclusion, humans have invented all sorts of energy conversion devices to accomplish our goals. However, humans remain one of the most efficient, flexible and valuable sources of energy conversion available. Therefore, controlling the flow of human-supplied energy remains a fixture of human civilization. Although each human controls their own energy, we can be motivated using methods such as love, violence and money to work together.

Historically, love has failed to scale in comparison to violence and money. Although violence has proven to scale, it is inefficient and does not optimally orient human progress due to centralization of power and decision-making. Although money offers a more efficient scaling solution for channeling human energy, it has historically been susceptible to violence at scale and fiat based monetary units can be stolen via inflation. Bitcoin is a new form of money that cannot be forcibly acquired using violence at scale and cannot be stolen through inflation.

Bitcoin represents an opportunity to protect money from the influence of violence, abolish inflation without consensus and restore high quality decentralized market signals. It will take time for society to realize these benefits as bitcoin is still young in comparison to other forms of money and is not currently widely adopted across humanity. If more people start to understand that money represents human energy, I believe humanity will start to demand better money, and when they do, bitcoin will be here for them.

Congressional Democrats on the January 6th Committee have hired former ABC News President James Goldston to “produce” this month’s slate of hearings on the Capitol riot, according to Fox News‘ Chad Pergram, who added that Goldston will “have a hand in all of the hearings this month.”

Goldman will be “particularly involved” in efforts by the committee to make the prime-time hearings – both this Thursday and another later this month – “TV friendly.”

C) However, the committee will intersperse various portions of taped depositions, new audio/videotape and never-before-seen footage from inside the Capitol on the day of the riot.

— Chad Pergram (@ChadPergram) June 6, 2022

On Sunday, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) said that the Democrats would present a “comprehensive narrative” at the J6 Committee’s first public hearing this week.

“Our goal is to present the narrative of what happened in this country, how close we came to losing our democracy, what led to the violence,” he told Margaret Brennan on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” adding: “Americans I think know a great deal already — they have seen a number of bombshells already [and] there’s a great deal they haven’t seen. But perhaps the most important is the public has not seen it woven together, how one thing led to another.”

January 6 was the violent culmination of an extensive effort to overturn a presidential election.

The American people know a lot about those events, but soon they will learn more, and see how close we came to losing our democracy.

On Thursday, we will begin to tell that story. pic.twitter.com/hX6RAS9GFR

— Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) June 5, 2022

It’s all part of the show, folks!

Submitted by Walter E. Block, Harold E. Wirth Eminent Scholar Endowed Chair and Professor of Economics at Loyola University

In his 1993 introductory economic textbook, Economics, Columbia University economics professor Joseph Stiglitz gives the usual dismal science analysis of minimum wage legislation: it creates unemployment for those least likely to be able to bear it: unskilled workers whose productivity is below the level stipulated by law. It hurts the very people who, ostensibly, this enactment was meant to help.

In his own words, from this textbook:

“Price floors have predictable effects too…. If government attempts to raise the minimum wage higher than the equilibrium wage, the demand for workers will be reduced and the supply increased. There will be an excess supply of labor. Of course, those who are lucky enough to get a job will be better off at the higher wage than at the market equilibrium wage; but there are others, who might have been employed at the lower market equilibrium wage, who cannot find employment and are worse off.”

All well and good you say? Not so, very much not so. For this 2001 Nobel Prize winning economist has also come out in favor not for the elimination of this pernicious legislation, nor, even, to leave it alone and hope that inflation can reduce its real value (thus unemploying fewer unskilled workers), but for an increase in the level mandated.

Specifically, he called for a boost in the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10 per hour.

Talk about cognitive dissonance.

If there were a Nobel Prize for that, Stiglitz would surely win it. You can’t get too much further apart from what this world-famous economist wrote in his textbook and what he calls for in the real world.

How does Stiglitz reconcile his support of the minimum wage law with his textbook’s denigration of this enactment? That, indeed, is the $64,000 question.

One possibility is that various economists such as David Card and Alan Krueger have failed to discern any unemployment effects for low wage employees upon an increase in the minimum wage. But that hardly supports Professor Stiglitz’s textbook treatment of this law. What can we say in behalf of the wisdom his textbook seeks to impart to undergraduate students? The answer would be that Card and Krueger and their ilk should dig deeper; and/or not confine themselves to slight increases in this legislation.  Rather they should compare states of the world where it exists at something like $7.25 per hours at today’s prices with its utter and total absence.

Another ploy sometimes used by supposed economic sophisticates is the argument from monopsony. No, that is not a mis-spelling of monopoly, sometimes characterized as a single seller of a good or service. Monopsony, in sharp contrast, is a single buyer of an item, for example, in this case, labor. The argument from monopsony is the answer to this attempted reductio ad absurdum against the minimum wage law: if it is so great, why not raise it to $1,000,000 per hour, and then we would all be rich? To the extent there is monopsony in the economy, there are strict limits as to how high the minimum may go, before negatively and heavily impacting the labor force via unemployment. Yes to $15 per hour, and, maybe, even $25 per hour, but certainly not to anything very much higher than that; certainly not to anything like millions of dollars hourly.

But the big problem with this argument is that monopsony, if it exists at all, must necessarily be limited to cases where one or at most a very few firms (oligopsony) hire a certain type of laborer. Possible examples include professional baseball, football, basketball and hockey stars, engineers, chemists, physicists, computer nerds, movie stars, rock musicians, etc. Does this sound like workers who earn in the realm of the minimum wage? Of course not. Thus, this argument too, fails.

We are left with a big mystery: how can a public figure like Joseph Stiglitz get away with the public embarrassment of blatantly contradicting himself? At the very least, he ought to repudiate what he wrote in his textbook, if he keeps on supporting the minimum wage law. Or, far better yet, he should cease and desist from his present advocacy of this pernicious legislation

(On a personal note, the value of my Ph.D. degree from Columbia University in 1972 has taken a hit thanks to this man occupying a prominent professorial role there).