Free Republic

By Giancarlo SopoAugust 17, 2018 I woke up early one recent morning, scanned the news, and stumbled upon a tweet praising an “informative and fun podcast episode” that promised to set the record straight on Scandinavian socialism. Having read a decent amount about the Nordic model, I was curious to see what kind of wisdom Matt and Elizabeth “Liz” Bruenig, of the People’s Policy Project and Washington Post, respectively, had in store.After a light-hearted intro, Liz began with “Norway is not socialist?” alluding to a recent Forbes article that contradicted claims that Scandinavia is a socialist paradise. This prompted...

About a month ago, I posted in regard to what I called “the euthanasia of the saver.” This comment had to do with the fact that nominal interest rates in the United States for financial investments such as bank certificates of deposit and bank savings accounts—the kinds of investments traditionally employed by retired persons and small savers, who wish to gain income without exposing their funds to great risk of capital loss—now fall considerably below the rate of inflation, and hence the real (or inflation-adjusted) yield on such investments is negative. That is, the nominal payoff is insufficient to offset...