James Ledbetter, in Slate, makes a point somewhat similar to the one I made the other day in that Pajamas Media piece on the Magma Chart. He writes: "Economics has been surgically removed from the realm of politics and transplanted into a technocratic robot that is run by the Federal Reserve and its acolytes." It's a sweeping over-generalization, but he may be on to something even so.

The Guardian takes a look at Israel's kibbutz movement on its 100th anniversary. The Adam Smith Institute's Tim Worstall comments, "Without a price system no one knew what was the most productive use of labour: without a price system there was no rationing of resources." He goes on:

Now this sort of communal living, if it won't work with an all volunteer starting population, with people entirely raised within this egalitarian ethos, won't work even when motivated by the building of a new country and new way of life, well, I think we can say that it's been tried in the circumstances most favourable to its success and that failure shows the failure of the basic idea, not of the particular circumstances. We're just not going to make this egalitarian communalism work with human beings at any scale larger than the family.

The Wall Street Journal comes in with a strong editorial on Bill Gates Sr. (the Microsoft guy's dad) and his effort to impose a state income tax in Washington state, at a rate that would top out at 9%. From the editorial:

In addition to Washington, the states without an income tax are Alaska, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas and Wyoming. Combined they had an average 18.2% growth rate in jobs over the past decade, more than twice the 8.4% job growth of the nine states with the highest income tax rates, according to a new report based on Commerce Department data by the American Legislative Exchange Council.

We flagged the Gates Sr.-Washington state income tax issue here back in March.

This is a week old but good: How the Kerry Yacht affair is playing in Worcester. From Robert Nemeth's column in the New York Times Company-owned Sunday Telegram:

I reject class warfare and believe in the free enterprise system that rewards people for accomplishment. But I'm sickened by the thought of my senior senator, a public servant, spending $7 million on a boat with "Edwardian-style, glossy varnished teak interior, two VIP main cabins and a pilothouse fitted with a wet bar and cold wine storage."

The arrogant display of such a sybaritic lifestyle in the midst of a historic recession is unforgivable.

The Wall Street Journal has an interesting little blog item about how hostile reaction in Europe has been to the Warren Buffett-Bill Gates Giving Pledge. One German is quoted as saying, "the donors are taking the place of the state. That's unacceptable."

Peter Beinart, the $143,235 a year, one-day-a-week associate professor at the City University of New York, is back in the news. The Vineyard Gazette has a page-one interview with him, reporting, "He would like to see Obama take a stronger stand — giving support for example to a unity government between Fatah and Hamas."

According to the Council on Foreign Relations (hardly a pro-Israel bastion), Hamas's "founding charter commits the group to the destruction of Israel, the replacement of the PA with an Islamist state on the West Bank and Gaza, and to raising 'the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine.'" According to the same source, "Hamas is believed to have killed more than five hundred people in more than 350 separate terrorist attacks since 1993."

Hamas in Gaza bans women from riding motorbikes, and it jails gays, according to this AP dispatch.

A citywide elected official in New York, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, joined with the hard-left MoveOn.org at a protest outside a Brooklyn Target store to complain about the company's political spending, the Village Voice reports.

FutureOfCapitalism reader-participant-watchdog-content co-creator-community member A. forwards an e-mail from Mr. de Blasio's communication's director, Matt Wing:

For a retailer that prides itself on being socially responsible, Target is throwing its money behind some troubling political causes. That makes them our first "Outrage of the Week"—our way of shining a light on the worst cases of companies distorting our political process under the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling.

The Wall Street Journal manages to run two items (here and here) on former Treasury Secretary and Citigroup executive Robert Rubin joining Centerview partners without mentioning in either one the fact that the news appeared in yesterday's New York Times. One item says, "Word is that his role—advising clients and helping Centerview chart its future growth—will take up only about a quarter of his time." Yeah, the "word" comes from yesterday's New York Times, which reported, "He will devote about a quarter of his time to Centerview."

The Wall Street Journal's Greater New York section has a dispatch reporting on a $150 million interior renovation at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York: "Many of the latest changes were made to accommodate the addition of 600 Fed employees, hired after the financial crisis began to work in the markets group helping to stimulate the economy."

Republican congressional candidate Ben Quayle has a commercial out that is worth a look.

Thanks to the reader-participant-community member-content co-creator-watchdog who sent the link.

Read it here first: We've been writing about how you can still get deals to buy New York City residential real estate for 3.5% down (see the March post here and the June 2009 post here). Now Bloomberg News has a story about how, with the magic of backing from the Federal Housing Administration, buyers can now put as little as 3.5% down in a building in Manhattan's Gramercy Park neighborhood "where apartments range from $820,000 to $3 million."

From the Bloomberg article:

"It's not an accident that the FHA is offering this -- not private lenders," said Christopher Mayer, senior vice dean at Columbia Business School's Paul Milstein Center for Real Estate in New York.

Exactly.

Read it here first: We've been covering the campaign against Happy Meal-type toys for children at fast food restaurants (see an item here from May and another here from July).

Now USA Today weighs in with a report: "A serious move is afoot to force fast-food giants to make kids meals more nutritionally viable if they want to sell them with kid-luring toys. In San Francisco, newly proposed legislation would ban toys from most kids meals sold at McDonald's, Burger King and other chains unless the meals meet more stringent calorie and sodium limits. The legislation also would require fruit or veggies in each meal."

Thomas Sowell has a new column responding to a New York Times article that complained that members of minority groups were underrepresented as third-base coaches in baseball. Mr. Sowell writes: "It is part of a more general bean-counting mentality that turns statistical differences into grievances. The time is long overdue to throw this race card out of the deck and start seeing it for the gross fallacy that it is. At the heart of such statistics is the implicit assumption that different races, sexes, and other subdivisions of the human species would be proportionately represented in institutions, occupations, and income brackets if there were not something strange or sinister going on. Although this notion has been repeated by all sorts of people, from local loudmouths on the street to the august chambers of the Supreme Court of the United States, there is not one speck of evidence behind it and a mountain of evidence against it."

Pajamas Media has posted an article I wrote under the headline "Two Trillion and Counting: The Fed and the Magma Chart."

How seriously should Treasury Secretary Geithner, Chairman Bernanke, and co. take Pimco/Bill Gross's threat to stop buying U.S. mortgage-backed securities if the government stops guaranteeing them?