News of the Day: Households in the United States feel vulnerable despite hardly recovering from the economic collapse.
According to a new report from the Federal Reserve released Wednesday, households said they were “doing OK” or “living comfortably, while one-third of non-retired Americans admitted they had no retirement savings at all, which is the same from 2014. The findings also suggest that households are cynical about the future.
Meanwhile, the educated are getting by, but those with exorbitant student loans are struggling.
The priorities are also different. Those without a bachelor’s degree allude to rent and bills as their biggest challenges, while those who are educated cite retirement savings and education as their largest problems.
It’s a very interesting contrast.
Chart of the Day: the money-printing phenomenon isn’t just relegated to the United States. The inflationary process, which then leads to price inflation, can be found all over the world. The price inflation seeps into an array of sectors, including housing. Over in London, it’s been revealed that first-time home buyers need record deposit savings. In fact, potential homeowners in London need a record 131 percent of their annual income to pay for a down payment! Here is a chart courtesy of Bloomberg News:
Illustration of the Day: it seems professional protesters are a lot more ubiquitous these days than ever before. It seems protesters spend their entire days protesting about everything: transgendered washrooms, Donald Trump, the minimum wage and so on. There’s a reason why these protesters have been given the moniker “Professional Protester.” Whenever you attend a protest in your city, you’re guaranteed to see the same people over and over again. Here is a funny illustration:
Quote of the Day: Hulk Hogan is in the news again, but it’s not necessarily bad. It was revealed that supposed libertarian billionaire Peter Thiel contributed $10 million to Hogan’s legal team in his libel case with the blog Gawker. The issue of libel has become an important one. Walter Block wrote that no one can file a lawsuit against someone for libel, while Murray Rothbard opined the same thing. Here is Rothbard on libel:
“… how can they be? Smith has a property right to the ideas or opinions in his own head; he also has a property right to print anything he wants and disseminate it. He has a property right to say that Jones is a ‘thief’ even if he knows it to be false, and to print and sell that statement. The counter-view, and the current basis for holding libel and slander (especially of false statements) to be illegal is that every man has a ‘property right’ in his own reputation, that Smith’s falsehoods damage that reputation, and that therefore Smith’s libels are invasions of Jones’s property right in his reputation and should be illegal. Yet, again, on closer analysis this is a fallacious view. For everyone, as we have stated, owns his own body; he has a property right in his own head and person. But since every man owns his own mind, he cannot therefore own the minds of anyone else. And yet Jones’s ‘reputation’ is neither a physical entity nor is it something contained within or on his own person. Jones’s ‘reputation’ is purely a function of the subjective attitudes and beliefs about him contained in the minds of other people. But since these are beliefs in the minds of others, Jones can in no way legitimately own or control them. Jones can have no property right in the beliefs and minds of other people.”
Video of the Day: Stefan Molyneux of Free Domain Radio is out with a new video talking about Venezuela’s economic collapse. He doesn’t tell you anything you don’t know, but it’s still to get his perspective.
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