To be precise, back to 1956.
Lately, I’ve encountered with unusual frequency claims that the 1950s were a glorious economic time for America’s middle-class – a time so glorious, what with strong labor unions and high (above 90%!) marginal income-tax rates and all, that we middle-class Americans of today should look back with longing and envy on those marvelous years of six decades ago.

So on Saturday I bought on eBay this Fall/Winter 1956 Sears catalog.   I spent an extra $8-and-change to have it shipped to me overnight – a service that I could not have purchased in 1956.  My catalog arrived on my doorstep today. Â I’m eager to explore it and to report my findings with some thoroughness.

But to give you a taste now, below is a sample of what I plan to do.

Having on hand information on the nominal average hourly earnings of non-supervisory non-farm private production workers in the U.S. in 2012 – that figure being $19.79 (as of October 2012) – I searched for the same earnings figure for 1956.   Thus far I’ve had no luck finding that number.  (Please feel free, I beg of you, to help me find this figure, if you so desire.)   So, for 1956 I instead use average hourly manufacturing earnings of production workers, as reported in Table 1 here.   That figure is $1.89.

This nominal wage figure for 1956 isn’t exactly comparable to the nominal wage figure that I use for 2012, but it’s close enough, at least for this first-pass analysis. If the claim of many “Progressives” is true that manufacturing is the most princely sort of work that middle-class Americans can do, then presumably this figure of $1.89 is higher than the hourly earnings of all private, non-farm non-supervisory workers in 1956.  Anyway….

So let’s ask: how long did a typical American worker have to toil in 1956 to buy a particular sort of good compared to how long a similarly typical American worker today must toil to buy that same (or similar) sort of good?   Here are four familiar items: refrigerator-freezers; kitchen ranges; televisions; and automatic washers.

Refrigerator-freezers
Sears’s lowest-priced no-frost refrigerator-freezer in 1956 had 9.6 cubic feet, in total, of space.  It sold for $219.95 (in 1956-dollar prices).  (You can find a lovely black-and-white photograph of this mid-’50s fridge on page 1036 of the 1956 Sears catalog.)  Home Depot today sells a 10 cubic-foot no-frost refrigerator-freezer for $298.00 (in 2012-dollar prices).  (You can find it in color on line here.)
Therefore, the typical American worker in 1956 had to work a total of 219.95/1.89 hours to buy that 9.6 cubic-foot fridge – or a total of 116 hours.  (I round to the nearest whole number.)  Today, to buy a similar no-frost refrigerator-freezer, the typical American worker must work a total of 298.00/19.79 hours – or 15 hours.  That is, to buy basic household refrigeration and freezing, today’s worker must spend only 13 percent of the time that his counterpart in 1956 had to spend.

Kitchen ranges
Sears’s lowest-priced 30″ four-burner electric range, with bottom oven, was priced, in 1956, at $129.95.  (You can find this range on page 1049 of the 1956 Sears catalog.)   Home Depot sells a 30″ four-burner electric range, with bottom oven, today for $348.00.

The typical American manufacturing worker in 1956, therefore, had to work 129.95/1.89 – or 69 hours – to buy an ordinary kitchen range. His or her counterpart today must work 348.00/19.79 – or 18 – hours to buy the same sized ordinary range.

Television sets
Sears’s lowest-priced television in 1956 was a black-and-white (of course) 17″ model.  (You can find it on page 1018 of the 1956 catalog.)  That t.v. set was priced at $114.95.  Sears today sells no 17″ t.v. sets.  The closest set I could find at Sears was this 19″ color (of course) model, which is priced at $194.00.

The typical American manufacturing worker in 1956, therefore, had to work 114.95/1.89 – or 61 hours – to buy this tiny black-and-white (with no remote!) television set.  His or her counterpart today must work 194.00/19.79 – or 10 – hours to buy a slightly larger, high-def, color (with remote!) television set.

Automatic Washing Machines
Sears’s lowest-priced automatic washer – it could handle loads up to a maximum of 8 lbs. – sold in 1956 for $149.95.  (You can find it on page 1029 of Sears’s 1956 catalog.)   Today, Sears’s lowest-priced washer sells for $299.99.   (It’s got 3.4 cubic feet of wash-bin space; I can’t find a maximum “pound-load” for it.   Presumably, this 2012 washer isn’t significantly smaller than – and might well be significantly larger than – the low-priced 1956 model.)

The typical American manufacturing worker in 1956, therefore, had to work 149.95/1.89 – or 79 hours – to buy an ‘inexpensive’ new washing machine.  His or her counterpart today must work 299.99/19.79 – or 15 – hours to buy an inexpensive new washing machine.
(Bonus point: Because the lowest marginal personal-income-tax rate imposed by Uncle Sam in the 1950s was significantly higher than it is today, hourly middle-class earnings today go even farther, for individual earners, than they did six decades ago.)
In the above I don’t adjust for quality – yet it is certainly true what they say: “They don’t make ‘em like they used to.”   They make ‘em better.  So the real-price reductions for these above four items are even larger than indicated above.
….
In follow-up posts I’ll go into more detail, using my lovely Fall/Winter 1956 Sears catalog, to gain further insight to how middle-class Americans’ economic fortunes today compare to what those fortunes were in 1956.   I am well-aware that no such ‘catalog’ analysis covers all fronts or can possibly tell a complete picture.  Yet I also firmly believe that such analysis does convey very useful information.

Professor Donald Boudreaux
George Mason University

This is from pages 144-145 of the Timbro edition of Roger Tanner’s translation of Johan Norberg’s powerful 2001 book, In Defense of Global Capitalism (original emphasis):

It is not the countries with abundant raw materials that have grown fastest, and often they are held back, because natural assets give rise to internal conflicts.  No, the main reason for the 20 per cent [of the world's population] consuming 80 per cent of resources is that they produce 80 per cent of resources.  The 80 per cent consume only 20 per cent because they only produce 20 per cent of resources.  It is this latter problem we ought to tackle, the inadequate creative and productive capacity of the poor countries of the world, instead of waxing indignant over the affluent world producing so much.  The problem is that many people are poor, and not that certain people are rich.

It bears repeating – and repeatedly repeating – that there is no such thing as a truly natural resource.   All resources that have market value possess that value only because of human creativity and effort.  Nothing that we today regard as valuable “natural resources” – not land, not forests, not petroleum, not iron ore, not magnesium, not fish, not New York harbor, nothing – would be a resource had not human creativity devised ways to make that thing into something so very useful to the achievement of human purposes that that thing becomes scarce.

And one happy consequence is that, having made some raw materials scarce by discovering previously unknown and economically viable uses for these materials, human creativity – in economies that are at least reasonably free – is set to work, by the very incentives that are ‘natural’ to free markets, at the task of making these resources less and less scarce over time.

As Julian Simon so insightfully taught, the ultimate resource is the human mind.

The Latest from Cafe Hayek
Professor Donald Boudreaux

Mark Levin: Tea Party Only Thing That Stands ‘Between Liberty And Tyranny’.

Conservative scholar, talk radio host, and former Reagan administration official Mark Levin said conservatives need to first overthrow the Republican establishment to more successfully take on President Barack Obama and the institutional left.

“We cannot get through Obama and the left until we get through the Republican Establishment,” Levin said, railing against establishment consultants who attack the base and politicians who know nothing of “Burkean reform” because they have spent their whole careers “clawing their way to the top.”

In a talk at the Heritage Foundation on Wednesday with his mentor, former Reagan Attorney General Ed Meese, for whom Levin served as Chief of Staff, Levin said the Republican Party is, “devouring the conservative movement,” and the old bulls need to step aside in favor of a new generation of conservatives who are fluent in conservatism.

“It’s time for the old bulls to get out of the way and for the fresh faces who believe in conservatism and liberty and originalist principles to step up,” Levin said, criticizing those like House Speaker John Boehner for “yielding territory” to the left in negotiations.

Levin said the Tea Party consists of constitutionalists, libertarians, Evangelicals, and those who are against the rigged establishment, beltway culture that for too long has not embraced conservatism and, as a consequence, lost national elections (George H.W. Bush, Bob Dole, John McCain, Mitt Romney).

“The Tea Party is the only thing that stands between liberty and tyranny,” Levin said. “We have to defeat the Republican establishment mush in Washington, D.C.”

Levin also named the establishment media organizations and institutions on the right that he said were not helping advance the conservative cause.

He said, “in a lot of our media outlets,” there are “a lot of old, dreary people who are just around all the time” who “reject” Reaganism.

Levin named Bill Kristol at the Weekly Standard, who recently called for more tax increases; and the National Review, the Washington establishment publication that vigorously supported Mitt Romney in the primaries, Levin said, in many ways, has “become a mouthpiece for the Republican party.”

Levin said the Republican Party will go the way of the Whig Party if they do not put out more “cutting-edge intellectuals and artistic” spokespeople for the conservative cause that transcends race or class.

Shortly after President Barack Obama was elected in 2008, Levin wrote Liberty and Tyranny, which sold over a million copies despite not being reviewed and being completely ignored by mainstream media outlets and programs.

The prescient book not only clearly articulated what would eventually turn out to be the Tea Party’s opposition to Obama’s statism (Levin knew what Obama was going to do before even Obama) but was also symbolic of how, in the new media age, books and ideas could commercially succeed without the legacy media institutions of yesterday that no longer act as gatekeepers.

To appeal to young people and minorities with conservatism, Levin said Republicans needed to call on parents and grandparents to have an impact on young people and appeal to their sense of liberty and anti-authoritarianism.

He said this “bottom up federalism” can appeal not only to young people but to minorities.

Levin noted that capitalism is the plan and the strategy is the constitution, and that was the foundation of Reaganism.

He said after Reagan, George H.W. Bush lurched to the left rather than “build up Reaganism” and the party and the conservative movement has not been the same since.

Levin also said ethnic front groups who want more balkanization instead of assimilation are also threats and need to be called out.

In talking about Republican institutions, Levin said the Republican National Committee needs to be managed better because, simply put, “when you lose, you gotta bring some other people here.”

“Backbenchers need to go to the front,” Levin said, noting that the frontbencher establishment class has been trying to “clean out” conservatives who do not toe the moderate, establishment line.

Levin said Obama would inevitably overreach on many fronts during his second term. For instance, Levin predicted Obama would try to break down America’s sovereignty by working with the United Nations on a global tax and committing America to more international military arrangements.

“The people are going to rise up,” Levin said.

When discussing the future of conservatism, Levin highlighted in particular Texas Senator-elect Ted Cruz and former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, among others.

“I love Sarah Palin,” Levin said.

“You see how intelligent she is?,” Levin asked, noting that Palin is nothing like the caricature of her on the left and in the mainstream media.

Levin said Palin should be given credit for effectively and enthusiastically articulating the conservative cause, even though she has been attacked by the mainstream media and the Republican establishment.

“Yet, she still rallies the base a hundred times more than these people telling us what we are supposed to do,” Levin said.

Sacramento, CA; November 7, 2012: After this week’s election results, the costly, burdensome and intrusive Affordable Care Act (ACA) — “Obamacare” — is less likely than ever to be reformed, let alone repealed, by elected officials.

But a promising, powerful legal challenge is still going forward — litigated by attorneys with Pacific Legal Foundation, a watchdog organization that defends limited government, free enterprise, and individual rights, in courtrooms nationwide.

“Especially after the election of 2012, PLF is now on the front line in defending the rights of Americans against Obamacare’s violations of core constitutional principles,” said PLF Principal Attorney Paul J. Beard II. “Our commitment is strengthened, and our fight goes on.”

PLF’s client, Iowa City small business owner Matt Sissel, agreed. “I am in this lawsuit to defend liberty and the Constitution,” he said. “That purpose and that promise continue today. My lawsuit is more important than ever, and we’ll move ahead with it, all the way up the judicial system, if necessary.

“Quitting is never an option,” said Sissel, a member of the Iowa National Guard who was awarded the Bronze Star for service as a combat medic in the Iraq War. “In the military we learned you don’t stop halfway up the hill. The same goes with our courtroom challenge to Obamacare. I’m grateful to PLF for sharing my determination to move forward.”

Obamacare is a tax that started unconstitutionally — in the wrong house of Congress

In its ruling on Obamacare this past June, the U.S. Supreme Court characterized the ACA’s charge for people who don’t buy health insurance as an exercise of the federal taxing authority.

That holding opened the way for PLF’s legal assault: PLF’s lawsuit argues the ACA was introduced in the wrong house of Congress. It started in the Senate even though the Constitution’s “Origination Clause” (Article I, Section 7) requires that taxes start in the House.

PLF’s case is before Judge Beryl Howell of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Judge Howell recently ruled that PLF’s Origination Clause argument may go forward.

“With Obamacare, the legislative process was backwards — and that makes it unconstitutional,” said Beard. “If it’s a tax, as the Supreme Court called it, then it started in the wrong house.”

The Origination Clause says that “all bills for raising revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with amendments as on other bills.”

What became the ACA, however, was unveiled by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. In a so-called “shelf bill” ploy, Reid took a totally unrelated House measure on veterans’ issues, struck out all its text, and substituted the voluminous language creating the ACA, with its heavy taxes, including the charge for people who don’t buy insurance.

The Supreme Court has never ruled on whether such a gut and switch ploy is constitutional. Georgetown University Law School Professor Randy Barnett, a leading constitutional critic of Obamacare, sees the importance of getting an answer from the Judiciary. “If any act violates the Origination Clause, it would seem to be the Affordable Care Act,” he wrote recently, in an article on PLF’s lawsuit.

“When we focus on the Origination Clause, we’re not talking about dry formalities and this isn’t an academic issue,” said Beard. “The Founders understood that the power to tax, if misused, involves the power to destroy, as Chief Justice John Marshall put it. Therefore, they viewed the Origination Clause as a safeguard for liberty. They insisted that the power to initiate new taxes should be left with the lawmakers who are most directly accountable to voters — members of the House, who are elected every two years by local districts.”

Obamacare’s prescription — taxes, taxes, and more taxes

The ACA represents one of the largest tax increases in American history. According to Congress’s Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT), more than a dozen revenue-related planks, including the charge for not buying insurance, will impose hundreds of billions of dollars in new taxes over the next 10 years.

Because the charge for those who don’t buy insurance is so central to the structure of the ACA, PLF’s lawsuit asks that the entire law be struck down.

PLF isn’t political — but we are partisan: for freedom and the Constitution

“PLF’s lawsuit would have gone forward in any case, but the need is now clearer than ever,” said PLF President Rob Rivett. “PLF is a pro-freedom legal watchdog — not a political organization. With the support of liberty-loving donors nationwide, PLF defends the Constitution in court, no matter who holds office in Congress, the state houses, or the White House.

“Obamacare, with its massive, illegally enacted tax hikes, violates the Constitution. That’s why PLF is in this fight — and that’s why we’re staying in this fight!”

The case is Sissel v. U.S. Department of Health & Human Services.

About Pacific Legal Foundation
Donor-supported Pacific Legal Foundation (www.pacificlegal.org) is a watchdog organization that litigates for limited government, property rights, individual rights, and free enterprise, in courts nationwide.

GLENN BECK TO REPUBLICANS: The Tea Party Is ‘Doubling Down’ – Business Insider.

Since his departure from Fox News almost a year and half ago, conservative media icon Glenn Beck has been markedly absent from the political landscape.

But in the wake of last week’s Republican defeat, the Tea Party leader has message for those in the political Establishment who are already writing his movement’s obituary:  We’re not going anywhere. 

In a remarkably sedate address to viewers of his daily online talk show last week, Beck offered a candid apology for wrongly predicted a Romney victory, and urged conservatives not to despair at the loss:

“We’re not going to sit and wallow in it, we’re not going to point fingers, we’re not going to yell at anything,” Beck said. “What we’re going to do is what Americans always do is pick ourselves up by the boot straps, take stock of what happened and move on.”

And later, he added this warning to the party:

“I have to tell you, I think the only one that is in real trouble is the GOP,” he said. “It’s Karl Rove and the Establishment Republicans that spent half a billion dollars and look where they got. We were making signs, and showing up at rallies and calling our neighbors and friends — which one really wasted their treasure? We didn’t waste our time because we connected with people and we know what we are.”

“I believe we have to double down on what we’ve started.” 

Watch the whole monologue below, courtesy of The Blaze:

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/glenn-beck-to-republicans-the-tea-party-is-doubling-down-2012-11#ixzz2C3uRa2DD

Or stay at home and do nothing.

Your choice……………

We are getting more organized.

Standby for details.

Tea Party Declares #WAR on GOP Establishment.

by TONY LEE

The Tea Party Patriots declared war on the Republican establishment after moderate establishment Republican Mitt Romney’s loss to President Barack Obama on Tuesday.

Jenny Beth Martin, National Coordinator of Tea Party Patriots, criticized the Republican Party for hand-picking a Beltway elite candidate who did not campaign forcefully on America’s founding principles and said the “presidential loss is unequivocally on them.”

“For those of us who believe that America, as founded, is the greatest country in the history of the world – a ‘Shining city upon a hill’ – we wanted someone who would fight for us,” Martin said. “We wanted a fighter like Ronald Reagan who boldly championed America’s founding principles, who inspired millions of independents and ‘Reagan Democrats’ to join us, and who fought his leftist opponents on the idea that America, as founded, was a ‘Shining city upon a hill.’

Instead, Martin lamented, “what we got was a weak moderate candidate, hand-picked by the Beltway elites and country-club establishment wing of the Republican Party.”

“While it might take longer to restore America’s founding principles with President Obama back in office, we are not going away,” Martin said. “With the catastrophic loss of the Republican elite’s hand-picked candidate – the tea party is the last best hope America has to restore America’s founding principles.”

Martin said the Tea Party’s “work begins again today” and “we will turn our attention back to Congress, to fight the battles that lie ahead including balancing the budget, repealing Obamacare, cutting the debt, holding the line on the debt ceiling, and the many other issues that will arise to threaten America.”

Establishment Republicans insisted to the conservative base that Romney — a moderate more in line with their sensibilities than those of the cloth-coat base’s — gave the party the best chance to win a general election.

They were wrong.

Timothy Sandefur, Attorney
Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF)

OBAMACARE: Not a Done Deal!
Learn what is being done to protect your rights.
Mr. Sandefur will enlighten us on the "behind-the-scenes" progress
to declare Obamacare unconstitutional.