Fire and Knowledge

Perhaps the most famous inflation of the twentieth century occurred in Germany during the 1920s, when 40 marks were worth one dollar in July 1920 but it took more than 4 trillion marks to be worth one dollar by November 1923. People discovered that their life’s savings were not enough to buy a pack of cigarettes.

The German government had, in effect, stolen virtually everything they owned by the simple process of keeping more than 1,700 printing presses running day and night, printing money. Some have blamed the economic chaos and bitter disillusionment of this era for setting the stage of the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis.

—Thomas Sowell, Basic Economics (3rd Edition, Basic Books, 2007), p. 350.

I learned recently that in 1951 – 1963, the top tax bracket was 91% (and 92% for two years)! That means every $1.00 over $400,000 was reduced to $.09!

So an additional $200,000 of income over $400,000 would be reduced to a measly $18,000.

It seems like that would be a very big incentive not to make money.

Update: As Les points out in the comments, this was a marginal tax bracket, so only the income over a certain level was taxed at that rate. I’ve changed the post to reflect this.

Here’s an animated map of imperial history in the Middle East:

I like Obama’s balance and perspective here.

When Democrats rush up to me at events and insist that we live in the worst of political times, that a creeping fascism is closing its grip around our throats, I may mention the internment of Japanese Americans under FDR, the Alien and Sedition Acts under John Adams, or a hundred years of lynching under several dozen administrations as having been possibly worse, and suggest we all take a deep breath.

—Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope (2006), p. 21

The doctrine of transubstantiation was formally established in 1215 at the Fourth Lateran Council (the same one that sanctioned the use of torture by inquisitors and prohibited Jews from owning land or embarking on civil or military careers)…. After this incredible dogma had been established, by mere reiteration, to the satisfaction of everyone, Christians began to worry that these living wafers might be subjected to all manner of mistreatment, and even physical torture, at the ends of heretics of Jews. (One might wonder why eating the body of Jesus would be any less of a torment to him.) Could there be any doubt that the Jews would seek to harm the Son of God again, knowing that his body was now readily accessible in the form of defenseless crackers? Historical accounts suggest that as many as three thousand Jews were murdered in response to a single allegation of this imaginary crime.

—Sam Harris, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason (W. W. Norton, 2004), pp. 99-100.

When we traded homemaking for careers, we were implicitly promised economic independence and worldly influence. But a devil of a bargain it has turned out to be in terms of daily life. We gave up the aroma of warm bread rising, the measured pace of nurturing routines, we received in exchange the minivan and the Lunchable. (Or worse, convenience-mart hot dogs and latchkey kids.) I consider it the great hoodwink of my generation.

—Barbara Kingsolver, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (HarperCollins: 2007), pp. 126-127.

When my generation of women walked away from the kitchen we were escorted down that path by a profiteering industry that knew a tired, vulnerable marketing target when they saw it. “Hey, ladies,” it said to us, “go ahead, get liberated. We’ll take care of dinner.” They threw open the door and we walked into a nutritional crisis and genuinely toxic food supply.

—Barbara Kingsolver, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (HarperCollins: 2007), p. 126.

History has regularly proven it drastically unwise for a population to depend on just a few varieties for the majority of its sustenance. The Irish once depended on a single potato, until the potato famine rewrote history and truncated many family trees. We now depend similarly on a few corn and soybean strains for the majority of calories (both animal and vegetable) eaten by U.S. citizens. Our addiction to just two crops has made us the fattest people who’ve ever lived, dining just a few pathogens away from famine.

—Barbara Kingsolver, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (HarperCollins: 2007), p. 54.