It's The Wrong Index, Stupid!

In yesterday's post, I heaped well-deserved abuse on the editors of the Indian Express for the propaganda, lies and deceit emanating form their lead editorial of the day. Later, in a footnote, I wrote about a Times of India editorial of the same day - but the electricity failed (for the nth time) - so, today, I would like to focus on this particular ToI editorial titled "Cause for Cheer" on the latest Human Development Index Report, in which India's position has supposedly improved. 


So what? Read this report from the same newspaper that says India leads the world in diarrhoea deaths.


And, anyway, the "education" we receive from our The State is all-balls. Even the IITs and IIMs suck. What to speak of the Delhi School of (Mathematical & Keynesian) Economics. What do kids learn but State Worship. They study "Indian Economics."


The editorial is "pro-reform." Good. But what is reform but LIBERTY? India has progressed somewhat in the past decade because State Obstruction to economic activity in some sectors has been withdrawn. However, much obstructionism and interventionism remains. This especially impacts the poor. Just try and open a simple beer bar in Nude Elly - and you will land up in jail!


Why don't the editors use the sweet word LIBERTY instead of that stupid word REFORM?


One reason: They have never heard of the Economic Freedom Index. There are now two or three of them - and these have been around for more than ten years. There is one from the Heritage Foundation - and it finds India ranked at 124 out of 179 nations, in the category "mostly unfree." There is another from the Fraser Institute and here India once again fares poorly. These reports show that less freedom means more poverty, more corruption, and lower economic as well as human development. The editors of the ToI are advised to check out these freedom indices, so as not to be misled by the statist Human Development Index, a UN/World Bank publication.


The Human Development Index makes its victim believe that there is a POSITIVE ROLE for the State in poor countries - to educate the people, etc. It makes the victim feel that, for human development, the State must do MORE.


The Economic Freedom Index does the very opposite. It proves that the State should be CUT DOWN if poor nations and people are to develop.


Since the ToI is "pro-reform," it should focus attention on the correct index.


In any case, all this is statistical jugglery - the output of "positive economics," which is Empiricism. This is the "intellectual cover for socialism." This is particularly true of the Human Development Index.


But, for whatever it is worth, whatever the "measurement of freedom" can yield, the Economic Freedom Index persuades in a different direction. It may not be "science" - but it is not evil.


Lastly, there is NO CAUSE FOR CHEER. 


We are not a free people. 


Tyranny rules. 


And the economy is NOT doing well. 


Do read this brief column by Niranjan Rajadhyaksha of Mint, that warns of approaching STAGFLATION.

SIAM - Another Bunch of Selfish Manufacturers: Take #2

The Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM) has petitioned our The State with a prayer: please dear State, scrap cars over 15 years old.


Of course, it is our The State that drives junk - Ambassadors. 

But SIAM's prayer is nothing but the “broken window fallacy” – which I have explained here. Thus, the guy who is FORCED to replace his old car may not be able to replace his old fridge or old TV. One industry’s gain will be another's loss.

Then there is the question of vehicle quality. All cars do not have the same life. German cars live forever, for example. Japanese cars die fast. Why have the same scrapping date for all?

And what about maintenance? Some people maintain their cars well – and these could become prize vintage cars 30 years hence.

Indeed, SIAM ought to have petitioned our The State for better roads – so that our cars, which they make, last longer. In which case, as Say’s Law indicates, we will have money left over for other goods – and people in these industries will have money to buy cars. Say's Law teaches you that you must promote the health of industries that do not compete with you - for they are the source of all your demand. The State is NOT the source of demand - and "funny money" destroys demand by generating inflation.

Thus, Destruction of Property is Never a Good Idea.

I think our The State should also be asked to regulate traffic scientifically – so that pollution is lessened, so that cars don't get smashed, so that people live.

All things considered, SIAM’s demand is anti-people. Cars are a big-budget consumer durable for us poor Indians – and those who manufacture them have NO BUSINESS asking for scrapping of old cars. In poor countries, used cars in reasonably good working condition are what people need. These ought to be imported duty-free. Imported old cars are bound to be in better condition than old Indian cars – because they have been driven on good roads.

Many new Indian vehicles are JUNK – like Bajaj auto-rickshaws. These, like the East German Trabant, are creatures of socialist autarky. It is these that should be junked – as they also spook traffic discipline and slow everyone else down. All Ambassador and Premier taxis should be junked. All pygmy trucks, too - especially since they destroy roads. 

Finally, a nation can have policies designed either for consumers or for producers – but not for both. It is high time our nation had policies for consumers – and consumers alone. Producers – as this example of SIAM shows – are a greedy, selfish lot, hell bent on pursuing their own interests at the public cost. The way out is duty-free used car, bus and truck imports. Let us have old Mercedes and Toyota taxis instead of Ambassador and Fiats (and auto-rickshaws) - as in Kathmandu of old.

• Duty free used car, bus and truck imports are what India needs.

• Local governments must fix the roads and put in place scientific traffic regulation.

• SIAM should be told to go to hell.

Say's Law: A Summing Up

Say's Law of Markets, by making a distinction between those who compete with us and those who do not, tells us that the bulk of the market is made up of those who co-operate with us; that too, in two ways: first, by providing us with our needs, the goods and services we do not and cannot produce ourselves; and second, by providing the vital demand for the goods and services we come to the market to sell. 

The market is NOT "pitiless competition." There is more co-operation than competition - and, anyway, "competition is liberty, while the absence of competition is tyranny." There is no "Social Darwinism" in the market.

This is SOCIETY. 

This is the market society built on the principle of the DIVISION OF LABOUR, which is specialisation. This is the polar opposite of Gandhian "self-sufficiency.


Say's Law of Markets thus proves what Thomas Paine wrote in the very first paragraph of Common Sense - that "society is a patron, while government is a punisher." Society is the vast majority, and they are in the market; government is a small minority, set up to apprehend, try, and punish enemies of this market order, who are an even smaller minority. 

This is the "natural order."

To socialists, Society, State and Party are all ONE: "India is Indira." Say's Law proves this vision dead wrong.


Say's Law also tells us much about taxation - that any tax reduces demand. It suggests a minimalist State; it suggests "political economy." Giving taxes to the State hurts market demand for all. Say's Law proves many genuine experts in public finance right when they write that modern taxation is more expropriation - and that indirect taxation, including customs duties, as well as the income tax, should be outlawed by constitution. Say's Law suggests "user fees" ought to replace taxes, wherever possible.


Say's Law can also be used to analyse the effects of interventionism - the key question being how interventionism in one area will hurt non-competing industries, which is the rest of society, the rest of the market order.


Finally, Say's Law "pours lead into the Keynesian's ear" - as one of my readers put it. It shows that government is a cost, not a source of benefits, not a "stimulus to demand." It points to the real source of market demand - which is the production and sale of goods and services, backed by savings and investment. This is the pathway to civilisation. The Keynesians, with their funny money welfarism, heavy taxation and even heavier borrowing, have unleashed the forces of "de-civilisation" - which is rampant capital consumption. All welfare, it may be pointed out, is consumption; nothing is saved; nothing is invested.


As a wise man put it: "It is good if the people support the government - but all hell breaks loose if the government attempts to support the people."


To conclude: In these five posts on this vital Law of Markets  which is currently mistaught universally (the first post is here), I hope I have shown my reader the correct way to look at markets, at society, and at the State. I hope my reader will realise that Keynesian "macroeconomics" must be jettisoned in toto, and replaced by methodological individualism as the epistemology of the Science of Economics.


Thus, as Sudha Shenoy once put it in an interview with Austrian Economics Newsletter in 2003:

Almost every economics department in the world can be immediately shut down without having any ill-effect on the world of ideas. 

This is the power of Jean Baptiste Say's Law of Markets.

Further Implications Of Say's Law Of Markets: Take #2

Today is the 130th birth anniversary of Ludwig von Mises. This post is written in his honour. He hated the Keynesians and he upheld Say's Law against their vicious attacks. It is Say's Law that proves the truth of Mises' words below, written for the benefit of the working classes who mistakenly support socialism, unionism and Keynesianism:

In the capitalist society there is a place and bread for all. Its ability to expand provides sustenance for every worker. Permanent unemployment is not a feature of free capitalism.

Murali's comment to my previous post - on Jean Baptiste Say's Law of Markets, and its implications on the current economic crisis, has prompted me to write another post on this vital law, this time explaining some of its other practical implications. In the world of classical liberal political economy, if you were not an adept at Say's Law, you were not considered a political economist worth your salt. It is therefore important to know all about this law of markets - a law that John Maynard Keynes thought he had disproved.


First, let me restate the law:

The sale of X gives rise to the demand for all non-X.

If X sells, it creates the demand for all non-competing goods.

Thus, if a bhel-puri wallah sells his stock, he will be possessed of the means to purchase all other, non-competing goods on the market, except bhel-puri, which of course he will not buy. This disproves the deliberately misleading Keynesian formulation of Say's Law as "supply creates its own demand." The supply of bhel-puri does not create the demand for bhel-puri. The supply and sale of all other, non-competing goods and services do.  


Now, the first objection the Keynesian will have to this formulation is that the market tends towards over-production, so without Keynesian monetary boosts, recessions are inevitable. But Say's Law says:

Markets Clear - If Prices Are Not Rigid Downwards 
(due to interventionism).

Thus, ANYTHING PRODUCED will finally be sold - even as junk, if prices are allowed to fall. There is NO OVERPRODUCTION. And there is NO CASE for any monetary boost to "stimulate consumption." 

Indeed, as the Austrian School of economists have proved with theory, and as history has proved today as well, it is this sort of monetary tinkering based on Keynesian "macroeconomics" that is the root cause of all boom-and-bust "business cycles."

Say's Law asserts the obvious: That SAVING and INVESTMENT and INCREASED PRODUCTION lead to INCREASED DEMAND for ALL GOODS AND SERVICES. This is the ONLY WAY to boost demand permanently. 


Keynesian inflationism destroys savings; erodes capital; and thereby reduces production. If at all it boosts consumption, this is during the temporary, heady and short period of the artificial boom, for inevitably the bust must follow, and this is invariably of longer duration than the boom. Further, there have been historical periods of "stagflation," when inflationism failed to boost consumption at all, and economic stagnation combined with high inflation.  

Second: Say's Law proves that all businessmen are best off if they DO NOT COMBINE in protectionist groups. Such groups, if successful, reduce the supply and sales of all non-competing goods - and this reduces demand for all businessmen who do NOT compete with these goods. Thus, whereas Amul Cheese may want protection, it makes no sense for Kingfisher Beer to support this claim, and vice versa. 


Recall that, in our protectionist heydays, there was precious little available in Indian shops - and all businesses suffered. Our markets had zero catallactic energy. 


Thus, Say's Law proves that the business interests of a particular class of traders called "importers" must be supported by all. 


Further, it makes a rock-solid case for "rugged individualism" on the part of all businessmen. It opposes mixing politics - particularly protectionist politics - with business.

The same is true with regard to immigration restrictions. These exist in the West because of a few very powerful trade unions, like the US Automobile Workers' Union. These unions demand visa restrictions because they fear that immigrants will "take away their jobs." 


But the fact remains that all immigrants are NOT competing with autoworkers. Some may come as doctors and nurses. Some may come as dishwashers and construction labourers, restaurant waiters and cooks. And some as software engineers. After all, labour is NOT a homogeneous entity. And there is therefore nothing called "unskilled labour." Further, the demand for labour is always the demand for a particular skill.

If immigration was free, Say's Law proves that overall demand would rise, because as the workers in the non-competing areas managed to sell their services, they would buy whatever they needed from that very same market. I daresay if the USSA had opened up to immigration two years ago, their crisis in the housing market would well nigh be over.

There is more: Because automobile workers' unions are so influential and powerful, the US automobile industry has collapsed. General Motors has been nationalised! Obviously, an important cause of this collapse is the high cost of domestic labour. 

So here is a third and final implication of Say's Law: That all non-competing businessmen gain the most if ALL goods and services are sold at their most competitive price, which is, of course, the LOWEST PRICE.

THIS INCLUDES LABOUR.

Thus, cheap and abundant labour is good for an economy, just as cheap and abundant coal or oil or natural gas or timber is. If labour is cheap, all businesses benefit. All costs are lowered. More goods and services are produced and there is more competition. Thus, workers in all industries gain as consumers - even though their individual wages may be lower. For example: If waiters and cooks can be hired cheap, restaurants will be cheap, there will be more of them - and more workers will be able to eat out.


Cheap labour is beneficial to other, non-competing businesses in another, vital way: consumers have more to spend on the other offerings of the market. Thus, if cars are cheap in the US, the US consumer has money left over to buy beer, jeans, CDs and books. 


This implies that free immigration and cheap labour are GOOD for all American businessmen. Further, there is NO REASON for all workers to join socialist trade unions. Karl Marx's slogan, "Workers of the world - Unite!" makes as little sense as "Businessmen of the World - Unite for Protectionism!"

So, just as Say's Law of Markets suggests RUGGED INDIVIDUALISM as the best policy for businessmen, so also does it suggest the same for workers. Trade unionism and labour market restrictions hurt all workers outside the combination - and thereby hurt all other businesses, and the workers employed in them, too. Workers must compete with each other - just as businessmen must, too. After all, workers in the same factory compete for the next promotion, don't they? As Mises put it: 

Under capitalism everybody is the architect of his own fortune.

Say's "Law of Markets" thus makes a water-tight case for free trade, for free immigration, and for laissez faire. It supports the logic of open borders and the free mobility of capital, goods and labour. It tells us what really boosts demand permanently - which is, increased production of goods and services, based on higher savings and investment. It totally explodes the Keynesian myth that monetary stimulation to boost consumption is good for an economy.

Jean Baptiste Say was known as the "Adam Smith of France." His Law of Markets is as unshakable as the Law of Gravity - despite all the efforts of the evil, lying Keynesians. Truth keeps on working, as Mises said, even if the textbooks contain lies. This law makes a logically indestructible case for free markets and free competition. It makes a solid case for rugged individualism. It opposes politics - which is what the Keynesians, Marxists, protectionists and union bosses have injected overdoses of into our lives, thereby damaging civilisation, even to the point of destroying it.

If you want to learn more about Say's Law, I suggest the late Professor WH Hutt's A Rehabilitation of Say's Law, available from the Mises Institute in PDF, as an e-book, and also as a proper book. Follow this link.


WH Hutt was an outstanding classical liberal; that too, despite being educated at the London School of Economics during the heydays of Fabian Socialism. Hulsmann reports that Hutt, while a student at the LSE, attended a guest lecture by Mises - and then he "broke on through to the other side."


Hutt was born into the British working class - which is why his works against trade unionism are all the more worth studying.


Part 2 of this post can be read here.

On The Pope... And Black Money: Take #2

Pope Benedict XVI's address before the German parliament has attracted wide attention because at the outset he quoted St. Augustine's dictum:

"Without justice – what else is the State 

but a great band of robbers?"

In our own country, all the fuss is about "black money" - or money that has evaded the tax-collector. The matter has now been referred to a specially constituted board of bureaucrats - but the news report says they are "dragging their feet." So, the issue is now before the Chief Justice of India (CJI), says another report.


But, tell you me, is not all the inflation, stock-market crash, the crises over the Euro and the US dollar all about "funny money"? Will inflation be over, will these crises be resolved for our country, if all this "black money" is unearthed and "brought back" to the Exchequer? Certainly not!

We all need Sound Money - Gold.

And St. Augustine wrote, in his City of God:

"Without justice – what else is the State 

but a great band of robbers?"

So, now that black money is before the CJI, think about Ashok Jain, KL Chugh and Rajan Pillai - how they were humiliated over black money and how two of them died. The "positive law" was FERA - the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act.


Now, as any Misesian knows, foreign exchange regulation is meant to "expropriate wealth." There is nothing "just" about such a positive law. In my book, if the central banker cannot convert his note into money desired by the bearer, it is the central banker who ought to be in prison: a debtors' prison. Savvy?


After all, the "promise to pay" on the note, signed by the central banker, is a SOLEMN CONTRACT - a contract the central banker is refusing to abide by.


And St. Augustine wrote, in his City of God:

"Without justice – what else is the State 

but a great band of robbers?"

Of course, FERA was INJUSTICE writ large, so we could rephrase the above as follows:

Without Sound Money -  what else is the State 

but a great band of robbers?

It is at this point that Murray Rothbard must be quoted, for in his Ethics of Liberty he wrote what would happen to the State if this were to be the case:

For if the bulk of the public were really convinced of the illegitimacy of the State, if it were convinced that the State is nothing more nor less than a bandit gang writ large, then the State would soon collapse to take on no more status or breadth of existence than another Mafia gang. Hence the necessity of the State’s employment of ideologists; and hence the necessity of the State’s age-old alliance with the Court Intellectuals who weave the apologia for State rule.

This "black money" nonsense is the work of State-employed ideologists, judges and bureaucrats. We, the people, must focus on the "funny money" that is the root cause of our problems.


The person with black money has only evaded taxation - which is "moral" in a nation where the State "consumes capital" and there are no good roads or highways, and 200,000 people are killed in traffic accidents every year, and many more seriously injured.


On the other hand, the funny money man is an issuer of dud currency - a "counterfeiter," as I have explained in this brief column. Throughout history, counterfeiting always attracted the death penalty.


However, the Pope did a lot more in his address: he actually challenged "legal positivism" and even quoted Hans Kelsen, who was Hayek's professor of law, and a very important German legal positivist. 


Hayek of the Law, Legislation & Liberty volumes was not Hans Kelsen's student; rather, he had been strongly influenced by Bruno Leoni, whose Freedom and the Law is a must read.


After smashing legal positivism (while maintaining that positivism is essential for the natural sciences) the Pope said:

Where positivist reason dominates the field to the exclusion of all else – and that is broadly the case in our public mindset – then the classical sources of knowledge for ethics and law are excluded. This is a dramatic situation which affects everyone, and on which a public debate is necessary. Indeed, an essential goal of this address is to issue an urgent invitation to launch one.

I echo that sentiment. Down with legal positivism. Down with positivism in the sciences of human action - like Economics.

The God That Failed: Take #2

Democracy is also a form of worship. 

It is the worship of Jackals by Jackasses.

—H. L. Mencken

Democracy has been the recipient of many an abuse - perhaps none greater than PJ O'Rourke's Parliament of Whores, though that is an insult to whores, who, unlike parliaments, do not fuck you by force.

Today, this very same parliament has been heaped with abuse in this LRC post by Laurence Vance titled "The US Congress Contains the Biggest Bunch of Buffoons, Idiots and Morons in the World." 

The subject matter pertains to Google, because of whom we all enjoy so many free facilities, and who are now  being accused of being "monopolistic and violating anti-trust laws." Well, if you download Google Chrome, before installation you have a choice of three search engines. Monopolistic?

Anyway, which libertarian believes in busting monopolies by anti-trust legislation and competition commissions? What did MRTPC ever achieve in socialist India? And, as I discussed yesterday, it is State-owned Air India and BSNL that offer the private sector "unfair competition."

What is required is openness to entry by new players - which is how Microsoft's Windows Explorer got busted by Mozilla and Google Chrome.

Yes. The US Congress is nuts. And, incidentally, they are very corrupt as well.

Let us turn our attention to UK. Here is how a post from Andy Duncan's "The God That Failed" blog begins:

It would seem that as we enter the ‘idiot’ season, in which various British government halfwits (a.k.a. politicians) have pontificated on the need for more ‘stimulus’ – because previous attempts at ‘stimulus’ have been so successful – this country is standing at the edge of an abyss of debt collapse.

When will we learn that those who rule us are morons? 

Do read my comment at the bottom - about a moron I saw on BBC, which is "State-owned broadcasting." Like Pravda. Doordarshan. All India Radio. Ha ha. Poor Brits. "Thought Control" writ large.


And there is worse: The very next post says "UK QE to resume in October." Well, Keynes was English, so whaddya expect? Morons.



And now, let us turn to our morons, "socialist planners." Our Great Leader, the socialist-welfarist-democrat, chacha manmohan s gandhi, is concurrently Chairman of the Planning Commission, and this Very Important Department of our The State has got its knickers in a twist over "measuring poverty." Is 26 rupees a day poor, or is 32 rupees? And what about inflation, etc.? 


The fuss is all about welfare - the "right to food," by which this The State will mail parcels of uncooked grain to the well-measured poor, while street vendors who sell cheap cooked food are preyed upon by both policemen as well as municipal functionaries.

The Predatory State pretending to be a Welfare State.

I suggest these people look at the Corruption Perceptions Index of Transparency International. India is ranked 87/178 with Albania, Jamaica, and Liberia, with a score of 3.3 out of 10!


And I suggest my readers read the World Economic Freedom Index, from the Heritage Foundation, which finds India "mostly unfree," ranked 124/179, below Pakistan, Malawi, Tonga and Benin!


Also, read this analysis of the Economic Freedom Index from the Mises Institute. They are also offering an online course on the importance of Economic Freedom.


Democracy: The God That Failed; The Economics and Politics of Monarchy, Democracy, and Natural Order by Hans-Hermann Hoppe is a MUST READ. Buy it in India here.


Unfortunately, Hoppe does not write much about the "Natural Order": for that, read my eponymously titled book available as a free download on the right-hand bar.

Natural Liberty

Natural Order

Natural Justice

The Poor Need Freedom - Not Education, Nor Welfare

I am extremely pleased to see an old post titled "Shah Rukh Kahn and the Truth" top the list of "popular posts" supplied by Google on the right-hand bar. This post makes it obvious that inflationism is bad for the poor - a point I also made the other day, when I discussed the MGNREGS.


But the question remains: What is best for the poor?


Well, for one, SOUND MONEY.


Apart from that - PROPERTY RIGHTS.


And FREE INTERNATIONAL TRADE - so their consumption can improve.


Fourth - LIBERTY!


I gave the example the other day of the NIGHTLIFE INDUSTRY. Think about it: How did black slaves become "superstars" in America? Because of New Orleans - and jazz. In India, when I watch the talent shows on TV (in regional languages, too) the plain fact emerges that millions and millions of Indians are hugely gifted in song and dance, and in playing musical instruments. But they have no place to play - play "live," that is. This hurts the poorest of them all. The better off ones make do publishing music, and appearing in movies and television. The poor ones go broke. I have personally seen hugely gifted rock and jazz artistes in Delhi broke. Broke as hell. 


Now, let us say there is LIBERTY - and a 24-hour economy. Nightlife. Ganja-charas. Casinos. Nightclubs. 


Obviously, many, many poor people will make money.


Then, they will spend this money - and other businesses will make money.


Then, these businessmen will spend - and the cycle will repeat itself endlessly.


This is Jean-Baptiste Say's "Law of Markets." In a nutshell, it says that if X sells, demand is created for all non-X. 


Do read my column on this important economic law under the title "What Pumps Up An Economy" here.  Jean-Baptiste Say was known as the "Adam Smith of France." Great man. Vital law - of markets.


The poor do NOT need (mis)education from our The State. They know lots of things that school can never teach them - from making idlis to playing the guitar. As Jimmy Page said, "The good thing about the guitar is that they do not teach it at school." Freedom is what the poor need.


And as for welfare - it is phoney. It is funded by "funny money" - which erodes the capital of the poor. End this nonsense.


Liberty!

Bastiat Demolishes The MGNREGS: Take #2

To understand why chacha manmohan’s Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) is an extremely screwed-up idea, it is best to begin with Frédéric Bastiat’s “Broken Window Fallacy” – found in his essay “What is Seen and What is Not Seen.” Hayek considered this essay a work of “true genius.”

Even in France of the 1840s, there were socialists who had the idea of running State-owned “National Workshops” with the intention of providing employment to all. In their case, they employed city mobs and used them to beat up dissenters. A dangerous notion, that The State should employ all.

The Broken Window Fallacy runs as follows:

A mischievous boy hurls a brick into a shop-window and smashes it. He runs away. Local people gather and conclude that this is GOOD for their city, as now the glazier has got some business.

Bastiat points out why these bystanders are dead wrong. They see that the glazier has got business. They do not see that the shopkeeper had saved money for a new suit, which he will now have to use for a new window: that is, the tailor has lost business. This is “what is seen and what is not seen.”


As far as the shopkeeper is concerned, if the boy had not smashed his window, he would have possessed a suit and a window; while now, after the repairs, he has just the window, same as he had before, minus his savings, minus his suit. The city has actually LOST.

Thus, reconstruction after a war is NOT good business. Destruction is never good business. Epidemics are not good because doctors make money. Potholes are not good because mechanics gain by them; our cars get destroyed.

Similarly with MGNREGS: We see the district collector – or should we now call him “District Spender”? – spending MGNREGS money. We think the countryside will be better off. But do we do not see where the money came from.

If we look into that, we would see that the money came from us – the taxpayers. And if we had spent the money ourselves, we could have generated “useful employment” (instead of “tax parasitism”). For example, if we had drunk beer with that money instead of paying taxes, brewers and bartenders would have been employed usefully.

Indeed, even if we had saved the money with commercial banks, they would have lent it out – and even better employment would have occurred. Maybe a borrower would have invested in a brewery.

Further: chacha manmohan is also spending freshly printed rupee notes to fund this MGNREGS: “Inflationary Finance.” This erodes the Precious Capital of all citizens. It makes no sense at all. It makes all of us poorer. The value of the currency unit declines. All prices rise.

Lastly: What kind of stupid idea is it that our The State must employ all? Is that a role of the State? Is not our The State already too bloated with employees? Should they not be cutting down on State employment instead of adding yet more tax parasites?  

And is not this same State misusing force to shut down many, many trades – from ganja-charas to dance bars to nightclubs, discos and casinos? Indeed, in India, there is NO nightlife industry.

If all these trades were free, would not “real, useful employment” occur?

Thus, chacha manmohan is NOT an “economist.” He is best called a “diseconomist” – for he is a “dissaver.” He is consuming capital. His State is always in “deficit.”

All this MGNREGS money is best invested in Capital Goods like roads, sewerage, drainage and the like. With MGNREGS, all this money will just be “consumed,” with NOTHING to show for it – except a huge entry in the Union Budget.