Free Republic

TownHall.com: Conservative Columnists: Paul Craig RobertsQUICK LINKS: HOME | NEWS | OPINION | RIGHTPAGES | CHAT | WHAT'S NEWtownhall.comPaul Craig Roberts (back to story)November 20, 2001What multiculturalism hath wrought Do you know that there are 15,000 Muslims serving in the U.S. armed forces? Are you aware that the U.S. military has Muslim Imams? Following Sept. 11, Capt. Abd Al-Rasheed Muhammad, Imam of Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., asked the North American Islamic Jurisprudence Council if it is permissible for Muslim troops in the U.S. military to fight other Muslims in the war against terrorism. The council ...

America's Superpower Days are Over by Paul Craig Roberts Posted Jan 11, 2006 President George W. Bush has destroyed America's economy, along with America's reputation as a truthful, compassionate, peace-loving nation that values civil liberties and human rights. Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard University budget expert Linda Bilmes have calculated the cost to Americans of Bush's Iraq war to be between $1 trillion and $2 trillion. This figure is 5 to 10 times higher than the $200 billion that Bush's economic adviser Larry Lindsey estimated. Lindsey was fired by Bush because his estimate was three times higher than...

While enjoying the Christmas season in the comfort of your home, take a minute to say a prayer for the wrongfully convicted. American prisons are full of wrongfully convicted persons. Many were coerced into admitting to crimes they did not commit by prosecutors’ threats to pile on more charges. Others were convicted by false testimony from criminals bribed by prosecutors, who exchanged dropped charges or reduced sentences for false testimony against defendants. Not all the wrongfully convicted are poor. Some are wealthy and prominent people targeted by corrupt prosecutors seeking a celebrity case in order to boost their careers. Until...

Free trade has necessary conditions. Today these conditions are not met. This point has escaped Joe Salerno and George Reisman (both writing on Mises.org), as it has a vast number of other people. The case for free trade is based on David Ricardo’s principle of comparative advantage. Ricardo addressed the question how trade could take place between country A and country B (England and Portugal in his example) if country B was more efficient in the production of tradable goods (cloth and wine in his example) than A. In other words, if Portugal could produce both cloth and wine at lower cost than...

The November payrolls job report was announced Friday with the usual misleading hype. Spinmeisters made the most out of the 215,000 jobs. Looking beyond the glitter at the real facts, this is what we see. Twenty-one thousand of those jobs were government positions supported by taxpayers. There were only 194,000 new jobs in the private sector. Of those, 37,000 are in construction and only 11,000 are in manufacturing. The bulk of the new jobs – 144,000 – are in domestic services. Wholesale and retail trade account for 20,000. Food services and drinking places (waitresses and bartenders) account for 38,000. Health...

The October payroll jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows employment growth for the month essentially at a standstill. The economy created only 46,000 private sector jobs. The bulk of those—33,000—were in construction. The domestic service sector of the economy, which has been the source of net new jobs in the 21st century, experienced no job growth in October. In the 21st century, the U.S. economy has ceased to generate net new jobs in middle- and upper-middle-class professions. This is a serious economic, social and political problem that receives no attention. There is a great deal of meltdown...

MULTICULTURALISM'S NASCENT STRESS POINTS Paul Craig Roberts Do you know that there are 15,000 Muslims serving in the U.S. armed forces? Are you aware that the U.S. military has Muslim imams? Following September 11, Capt. Abd Al-Rasheed Muhammad, Imam of Walter Reed Army Medical Center in D.C., asked the North American Islamic Jurisprudence Council if it is permissible for Muslim troops in the U.S. military to fight other Muslims in the war against terrorism. The council referred the matter to Muslim clerics abroad, who issued a fatwa permitting U.S. Muslims to fight if there was "no alternative." Whew. The chain ...

The raison d'etre of the Bush administration is war in the Middle East in order to protect America from terrorism and to ensure America's oil supply. On both counts, the Bush administration has failed catastrophically. Bush's single-minded focus on the "war against terrorism" has compounded a natural disaster and turned it into the greatest calamity in American history. The United States has lost its largest and most strategic port and thousands of lives, and 80 percent of one of America's most historic cities is underwater. If terrorists had achieved this result, it would rank as the greatest terrorist success in...

The United States continues its descent into the Third World, but you would never know it from news reports of the Bureau of Labor Statistics' July payroll jobs release. The media give a bare-bones jobs report that is misleading. The public heard that 207,000 jobs were created in July. If not a reassuring figure, at least it is not a disturbing one. On the surface, things look to be pretty much OK. It is when you look into the composition of these jobs that the concern arises. Of the new jobs, 26,000 (about 13 percent) are tax-supported government jobs. That...

Watching the Economy Crumble Paul Craig Roberts Wednesday, Aug. 10, 2005 The United States continues its descent into the Third World, but you would never know it from news reports of the Bureau of Labor Statistics' July payroll jobs release. The media give a bare-bones jobs report that is misleading. The public heard that 207,000 jobs were created in July. If not a reassuring figure, at least it is not a disturbing one. On the surface, things look to be pretty much OK. It is when you look into the composition of these jobs that the concern arises. Of the...

The June payroll jobs report did not receive much attention due to the July 4 holiday, but the depressing 21st century job performance of the U.S. economy continues unabated. Only 144,000 private sector jobs were created, each one of which was in domestic services. Fifty-six thousand jobs were created in professional and business services, about half of which are in administrative and waste services. Thirty-eight thousand jobs were created in education and health services, almost all of which are in health care and social assistance. Nineteen thousand jobs were created in leisure and hospitality, almost all of which are waitresses...

WHAT IS BUSH'S AGENDA IN IRAQ? For what purpose has President Bush sent 1,741 U.S. soldiers to be killed in action in Iraq (as of June 19, 2005)? For what purpose have 15,000 to 38,000 U.S. troops been wounded, many so seriously that they are maimed for life? Why has the U.S. government thrown away $300 billion in an illegal and pointless war that cannot be won? These questions are beginning to penetrate the consciousness of Americans, a majority of whom no longer support Bush's war. Bush's Iraq war is the first war for which Americans have not known the...

JUNE 14, 2005, ENABLING EVIL In 1996, Daniel Jonah Goldhagen published "Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust." His thesis is that the mass murder of Jews was not done on the quiet by a few Nazi fanatics. Instead, Goldhagen writes, by their complicity ordinary Germans were willing participants in the slaughter. In other words, the German people as a people were guilty as well, because they accepted and permitted the slaughter of an ethnic group. Goldhagen's thesis has had rough sledding. German newspapers in the Third Reich did not report on the progress of the Holocaust. Few Germans...

In May, the Bush economy eked out a paltry 73,000 private sector jobs: 20,000 jobs in construction (primarily for Mexican immigrants), 21,000 jobs in wholesale and retail trade, and 32,500 jobs in health care and social assistance. Local government added 5,000 for a grand total of 78,000. Not a single one of these jobs produces an exportable good or service. With Americans increasingly divorced from the production of the goods and services that they consume, Americans have no way to pay for their consumption except by handing over to foreigners more of their accumulated stock of wealth. The country continues...

The current episode of "Star Wars" is dynamite for the duplicitous Bush administration. Palpatine, a Sith Lord masquerading as a galactic Republican, becomes Chancellor of the Galactic Republic through deception. Palpatine uses wars that he instigates to elevate security over the power of the Senate and to become dictator. In a moment of triumph, Palpatine tells the Senate, "In order to ensure our security and continuing stability, the Republic will be reorganized into the first Galactic Empire, for a safe and secure society." The senators respond with sustained cheering and applause. Padme says, "So this is how liberty dies, with...

CHRONICLES EXTRA | EVENTS | HOME Wednesday, May 18, 2005 A Reputation in Tatters George W. Bush and his gang of neocon warmongers have destroyed America’s reputation. It is likely to stay destroyed, because at this point the only way to restore America’s reputation would be to impeach and convict President Bush for intentionally deceiving Congress and the American people in order to start a war of aggression against a country that posed no threat to the United States. America can redeem itself only by holding Bush accountable. As intent as Republicans were to impeach President Bill Clinton for lying...

Statement for US-China Commission Hearing May 19-20, 2005 Paul Craig Roberts Offshore outsourcing is misunderstood by economists and policymakers. The phenomenon is misperceived as an extension of the mutual benefits of comparative advantage-based trade. Comparative advantage has two necessary conditions, neither of which is met today. One condition is that capital is immobile internationally relative to traded goods. The other is that the trading countries have different opportunity costs of producing the traded goods. (The economic concept of opportunity cost is an in-kind measure; for example, the quantity of wine that is not produced in order to make a yard...

Careless journalists and commentators are hyping the 274,000 new April payroll jobs as evidence of the health of the U.S. economy. An examination of the details of the new jobs puts a different view on the matter. April’s job growth is consistent with the depressing pattern of U.S. employment growth in the 21st century: The outsourced U.S. economy can create jobs only in domestic nontradable services. Of the 274,000 April jobs, 256,000 were in the private or nongovernment sector, and 211,000 of these were in the service sector as follows: 58,000 in leisure and hospitality (primarily restaurants and bars), 47,000...

During the income-tax debates of the late 1970s, Congressional Budget Office head Alice Rivlin argued that workers had a set idea in mind of what their take-home pay should be. If offered tax cuts, Rivlin said they would have more money in their pockets and would reduce the number of hours they worked to meet existing income goals. By Rivlin’s estimation, marginal rate cuts would have no economic impact. Replying in a Wall Street Journal editorial, Paul Craig Roberts showed the flaw in Rivlin’s argument, pointing out that if the majority of workers responded in the way she predicted, economic...

Is offshore outsourcing good or harmful for America? To convince Americans of outsourcing's benefits, corporate outsourcers sponsor misleading one-sided "studies." But very few people have looked objectively at the issue. These and the large number of Americans whose careers were destroyed by outsourcing have a different view of outsourcing's effect. But so far there has been no debate, just the shouting down of skeptics as "protectionists." Now comes an important new book, "Outsourcing America," published by the American Management Association. Authors and brothers Ron and Anil Hira, are experts on the subject. One is a professor at the Rochester Institute...