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Category: Economics (page 1 of 2)

Britain’s Trillion Pound Horror Story

MartinDurkin WAG TV Britain

Presented with the kind permission of Martin Durkin, Wag TV

Description by Producer:

Cuts? What cuts? Martin Durkin’s explosive feature-length documentary on the British economy attacks George Osborne for bottling it.

Osborne is just Gordon Brown with fingernails. People think he’s making savage cuts. He isn’t. Public spending, which doubled under Labour, will barely change in the next few years. Meanwhile, Britain’s debt (£4.8 trillion), and the interest on that debt, is getting bigger and bigger. And taxes, already crippling, are rising.

Who’s paying for it? You are.

As Durkin points out, in Britain today the public sector is bigger than the private sector. The British government spends more than all private individuals and companies put together. Yet any mention of cuts raises howls of protest. Our bloated, parasitic public sector is the biggest, smuggest, greediest special interest group in British history.

Paying for Britain’s super-sized state has landed us with mind-bending debts (if you sold all the houses and flats in the UK, you still couldn’t pay it off). And for what? They spent all that money, they said, to provide us with world-class healthcare and education, to build wonderful houses for us and end poverty. Oh yes, and to stimulate the economy. Ha.

This film explodes two giant myths – the Santa Claus state, and the Robin Hood state. There ain’t no Santa Claus – it’s our money they’re spending. And forget Robin Hood. There aren’t enough Andrew Lloyd Webbers to bleed. It’s ordinary folk, and the poor, who pay the lion share of taxes. And what do we get for our money? Our state monopoly health service is a national scandal, our schools barely deserve the name and you have to be a millionaire to afford a decent family home in many parts of Britain. Meanwhile the obscene profligacy of the British state has crippled the productive economy and landed our children and grandchildren with an unbelievably huge debt to repay. How much more of their money do we think it’s OK to spend? Britain today is a semi-Communist country, needlessly impoverished, unhealthy, ill-educated and poorly housed.

It’s time for a revolution and that means cutting the size of the state by two thirds (to start with) and introducing low taxes. Sack most public sector workers, get rid of the NHS, privatise all schools. Durkin pulls no punches. He believes Britain can turn itself into a 21st century Tiger economy in less than a year.

The film features interviews with four former chancellors of the exchequer, a surreal clutch of celebrities, and the biggest stack of fifty pound notes you ever did see.

 Britain's Trillion Pound Horror Story by Martin Durkin

The Power of Choice

Milton Friedman, Ronald Reagan, Nancy Reagan

Presented with the kind permission of Free To Choose Network

Summary from the Free to Choose Network

Rising like a phoenix from a troubled past, entrepreneurs have turned Chile’s rich Colchagua Valley into one of the world’s great economic miracles. Chilean wines now compete in the world market. Wine and ingenuity have made Don Melchor a very wealthy man. But if you think Chile is an unlikely locale for entrepreneurial success in the 21st century — consider Estonia, until recently part of the Soviet Union.

Economies all over the world are feeling the impact of free markets.

The world of the 21st century is a world of international markets interconnecting people everywhere — people who have never met, yet inadvertently have become integral to each other’s well being. The genie is out of the bottle. Every minute of every day products from all over the world are moving in perpetual motion.

For over 30 years the United States military has operated as a 100-percent volunteer force. To be successful it must offer attractive choices. The army alone now offers some 300 distinct career paths to attract young men and women to a professional life in the military.

All of these things reflect the economics of choice, the economics of individual freedom that have changed and are continuing to change the world in which we live. Still, individual freedom of choice can spark heated protest in the United States and around the world.

For nearly a century one controversial American has championed the idea that only through economic freedom and the rule of law will lead inevitably to political freedom. His has been a commitment to truth — not as he has imagined it, but as he has found it in the world around him. The rise of a global economy through free markets has underscored the power of his ideas — the power of choice. No one has been a greater proponent of individual freedom and individual choice than Milton Friedman, teacher, scientist and author, revolutionary intellectual, winner of the 1976 Nobel Prize in Economics, and citizen of the world. This is his story, including the impact of his ideas upon people the world over. Included in the program are exclusive appearances by Alan Greenspan, Paul Samuelson, Thomas Sowell, Martin Anderson, Gary Becker and Milton and Rose Friedman.

 

…….

The Conservatives

Presented with the kind permission of Young America’s Foundation

The Heritage Foundation writes

To counter the decades-long pursuit of “fairness” fostered by the nation’s left-leaning educators, producers of a new film believe that the educational process should be a “no-holds-barred” affair of thoughtful exchange, not one-sided dogma that stigmatizes success and prosperity.

The Young America’s Foundation has teamed up with director Stephen K. Bannon to produce a film called “The Conservatives” to combat the flagrant inculcation of class warfare, collectivism and hostility to the principles of individual liberty at America’s places of higher learning.

Bannon and Kate Obenshain, YAF’s vice president, will speak at The Bloggers Briefing at noon ET today to preview the film, which will debut Wednesday.

“The Conservatives” features commentary and analysis from

  • Mark Levin
  • Michelle Malkin
  • Walter Williams
  • Jonah Goldberg
  • Monica Crowley
  • Stephen Moore
  • Peter Schweizer.

They seek to inspire a new generation of conservative activists on the nation’s college campuses by making the moral case for the unexcelled benefits of free enterprise.

“It is the only system that creates wealth for the most people. No other system can. No other system will,” says Levin.

“The American individual entrepreneur, those free-market job creators and wealth creators who give us the future that we have, who are the bedrock of economic success in this country” are the ones to admire argues Malkin in the film. Her words seem especially prescient in light of President Obama’s recent “you didn’t build that” speech …

 The Conservatives - Young America's Foundation

Free or Equal with Johan Norberg


Presented with thanks to Free to Choose Network

In 1980 economist and Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman inspired market reform in the West and revolutions in the East with his celebrated television series “Free To Choose.”

Thirty years later, in this one-hour documentary, the young Swedish writer, analyst and Cato Foundation Fellow Johan Norberg travels in Friedman’s footsteps to see what has actually happened in the places Friedman’s ideas helped transform.

In location after location Norberg examines the contemporary relevance or Friedman’s ideas in the 2011 world of globalization and financial crisis.

Central to his examination are the perennial questions concerning power and prosperity, and the trade-offs between individual liberty and income equality.

 

I Want Your Money

Presented with the kind permission of Ray Griggs

Wikipedia description:

The film examines and contrasts … the differences between “Reaganomics” and “Obamanomics” as American economic and governmental policies, as well as their respective impact on life in the United States of America, as summarized from film’s official web site:

Two versions of the American dream now stand in sharp contrast.

One views the money you earned as yours and best allocated by you. It champions the traditional American dream, which has played out millions of times through generations of Americans, of improving one’s lot in life and the entrepreneurial spirit of daring to dream and to build big.

The other believes that the federal government, using taxpayers’ money, should play a major role in leveling out the nation’s wealth to guarantee outcomes to all, regardless of effort. How America chooses between these two views of the role of government, at this crucial juncture, will have everything to do with the future we and our children and our children’s children will enjoy.

The film uses computer animation, film clips, archival footage, dramatizations, music, graphics, and on-camera interviews with well-known public figures and experts “to tell the story in the plainest terms of the choice between the Obama and the Reagan views of the role of the federal government in our society.”

Individuals interviewed:

  • Mike Huckabee
  • Stephen Moore
  • Michael Reagan
  • William Voegeli
  • Star Parker
  • Kenneth Blackwell
  • Edwin Meese lll
  • Thad McCotter
  • Newt Gingrich
  • Lee Edwards
  • Pete Wilson
  • Steve Forbes
  • Gary Bauer
  • Kate Obenshain
  • Chris Edwards
  • David M. McIntosh
  • Lila Rose
  • John Stossel
  • Allen Icet
  • Rob Schaaf
  • John Stossel
  • Tom McClintock
  • Andrew Breitbart
  • George Runner
  • Alison Fraser

…..

Win-Win: A Trading Game

Thanks to Izzit.org

Win-Win is a DVD-assisted group trading game.

Through the experience of actually trading items, participants study important lessons about the practicalities and principles of economics and trade.

The real life dimension of the game – that participants get to keep traded items – engages them in a way few group exercises can match.

Each session of WIN-WIN involves the group playing a round of the game, then engaging in chaired discussion, another round, further discussion, and so on.  Theoretical principles and issues of interest are drawn directly from personal experience and a process of intelligent discovery.

As well as enjoying the game itself, participants learn how to set up and play the game with others – perhaps with family,  school groups, community groups, parties, etc.

Markets Without Borders with Hernando de Soto

Presented with thanks to Izzit.org

What accounts for the difference between economic activity in the United States and in the developing world?

Economist Hernando de Soto explores the concepts of capitalism and globalization in Tanzania and Peru, where most businesses operate outside the legal system.

The spirit of entrepreneurship is not unique to the Western world; nor is the concept of property. However, globalization involves an abstract system of property rights that allows people to deal in symbols. Visiting the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, Markets Without Borders demonstrates the advantages of the institutions that we take for granted. De Soto shows that in large parts of developing countries, these institutions do not exist.

As people flood to the big cities looking to participate in globalization, he argues, governments need to find ways to give them access to the rule of law and property rights.

Bill Whittle presents: Firewall – What We Believe


Presented with the kind permission of Jeremy Boreing, Declaration Entertainment

These 7 short “video essays”, written and very nicely presented by Bill Whittle explore the foundational beliefs of Tea Party Conservatism. From small government and distrust of elitism, to gun rights and immigration, Bill Whittle reveals the philosophical underpinnings that make America the most exceptional nation in the history of the world.

Topics:

  1. Small Government and Private Enterprise
  2. Elitism
  3. Wealth Creation
  4. Natural Law
  5. Immigration
  6. Gun Rights
  7. American Exceptionalism

The Right, All Along. The Rise, Fall & Future of Conservatism

Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan, William F Buckley Jr

Presented with the kind permission of Fox News Channel.
Special thanks to Brian Gaffney.

The Right, All Along: The Rise, Fall And Future Of Conservatism – hosted by Brit Hume — is the inside story of a political movement that, against all odds, changed the world.

It started 60 years ago with a small group of determined thinkers and activists and grew into the most powerful force in American politics.

This 6-part Fox News Reporting series features rare footage and more than 75 exclusive interviews.

Follow William F. Buckley, Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan, Robert Bork, Pat Robertson, Phyllis Schlafly, Newt Gingrich, George W. Bush and many others who tell the personal stories behind the conservatism’s startling victories and crushing defeats.

The Right, All Along: The Rise Fall And Future Of Conservatism is a unique blend of history, journalism and storytelling that explains how we got to where we are today, and where we may be heading.

Two Trillion with a T: How You Bought Wall Street

Presented with the kind permission of Fox News Channel.
Special thanks to Brian Gaffney.

(In 2008) investment banking titan Bear Stearns, a pillar of Wall Street, collapsed. Hoping to stop a global financial meltdown, the U.S. government brokered a sale of the financial giant and put taxpayers on the hook for billions.

It was the first of many bailouts with price tags escalating from billions to trillions of dollars. But that didn’t stop the crash. In fact, it may have fueled it.

‘Special Report’ host Bret Baier takes you through a behind-the-scenes investigation as FOX News reveals how taxpayers bought up much of Wall Street, while the government took an unprecedented role in the American financial system. This special investigative report has been months in the making.

We’ve tracked the evolution of the bailout in two administrations and have exclusive interviews which include President George W. Bush, his Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, House Banking Chairman Barney Frank, and Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich among others.