There’s Something Rotten in Academia

The deterioration of American higher education is a national tragedy. Regarding the current admissions cheating scandal, Alan Dershowitz, who was a Harvard Law School professor for over forty years, said, “It is the tip of a very, very deep iceberg.” Too true. A vital societal institution has become deeply corrupted and obscenely overpriced.

Increased price, decreased value

College tuition has increased at rates far beyond prices in general. Since 1980 tuition has increased 260 percent vs. 120 percent for the general price level, according to the Department of Education. That discrepancy is not an accident. It has been deliberate and devious.

Like sellers in general, colleges “charge what the traffic will bear.” In a number of ways they have increased what the traffic will bear. One such way is selling the idea that everyone needs a college education. That, of course, is absolutely wrong and a huge misallocation of resources has resulted from making everyone believe it’s true.

There is, of course, method to this madness. The Democrat Party is the most enthusiastic proponent of the “everyone ought to go to college” mantra. It is typical of the Party’s “one-size-fits-all” mind-set. Bernie Sanders’ campaign issue of “free college for everyone” is another big step in that direction. The Democrat habit of calling everything a “right” is one of their favorite government-growing deceptions. The last thing we need, however, are more taxpayer subsidies going to higher education.

Since almost everyone in academia is a Democrat or a leftist, it’s an effective way to transfer wealth to their friends and supporters. It is as big a “conflict of interest” as you could ever find.

Academic/government loan sharks

Another way what the traffic will bear has increased is the enticement and easy availability of student loans. Total student debt is now nearly one and half trillion dollars and climbing. Students leave their college days long on debt and short on knowledge. It often takes them decades to repay and causes major life distortions — delayed marriage, child bearing, home purchases, etc. Having those loans forgiven by way of bankruptcy is virtually impossible. Higher education and its big government enablers have become the world’s biggest loan sharks.

Perverse redistribution of income

The unnecessarily high cost of college has caused an enormous transfer of wealth from productive members of society to bloated administrations and overpaid professors. Professors and administrators have incomes far above the mean. Inequality, of course, is one of the Democrats favorite obsessions which they remind us about ad nauseam.

Grade inflation and grade elimination

Besides tuition inflation, grade inflation has lessened the value of what students pay the higher price for. At most universities it’s now almost impossible to receive a grade lower than a “C.” Many universities have abandoned grading altogether. It’s akin to all participants receiving a trophy or not keeping score. That is a huge mistake. Entire universities have become “safe spaces” from the trauma of a bad grade. Grades used to be important sources of incentives and information. No longer. A college transcript provides less and less real information.

Mission creep

As is true in many parts of our culture higher education has been corrupted by “mission creep.” Rather than focusing on its age-old and traditional goal of transferring knowledge from one generation to the next, universities now consider themselves crusaders in charge of saving the world from every imagined kind of catastrophe. Professors and administrators have grossly exaggerated senses of self-importance. The media, of course, suffer from the same affliction.

A more appropriate description of what’s happening in academia is “mission inversion.” Campuses used to be known for freedom of thought, intellectual diversity and open-mindedness. They’ve flipped. They’ve become repressive and intolerant, and even violent against opposing ideas.

College campuses have become bland, monotonous intellectual dead zones. There is total intellectual conformity and a deep fear of and hostility toward differing points of view. They’ve become mini-North Koreas.

The obsession with multiculturalism has resulted in English majors graduating without ever having read anything written by Shakespeare. The very term “Western Civilization” is scorned. “Western civ” used to be a standard requirement of “general education” and still should be.

The proliferation of the so-called “studies” curricula is another way higher education has been diluted. “Gender Studies” departments have no discernable purpose or definition beyond victimology and offering a catalog of reasons for resenting men. What, precisely, is the definition of and mission statement of “ethnic studies?” After graduation what’s been “learned” is of no real value to potential employers and another impediment to repaying student loans. Seeing Gender Studies as a major on an applicant’s résumé is probably a “stay away” sign to most employers.

Abandonment of merit-based standards

The admission-buying scandal has correctly been described as a zero-sum game. The students who were admitted dishonestly resulted in legitimately qualified students being denied admission. However, the population of wronged applicants victimized in that context is dwarfed by the same kind of injustice created by affirmative action and academia’s’ diversity obsession. Affirmative action and diversity goals are race-based selection systems. That is racism pure and simple.

Student snowflakes

Another tragic error committed by spineless college administrators is the coddling of their students. The students are treated, not like adults, but as delicate and fragile orchids. The students’ demands for “safe spaces” and “trigger warnings” ought to be ridiculed and ignored, not catered to. Universities are busy creating a generation of thin-skinned, emotional weaklings.

That is a serious disservice to those students. It is no way to prepare them for the harsh and unsympathetic world they will enter after graduation. “Safe spaces” are few and far between in the real world.

Why I left academia

Upon finishing graduate school in 1969 I taught economics for ten years at Humboldt State University in Arcata, California where I still live. There was a combination of reasons why I decided to leave teaching, but the one foremost in my mind was this — I came to the conclusion that about a fourth of the students in my classes were in the wrong place. They were wasting their time, my time, and theirs’ or their parents’ money.

The issue, as I saw it, was their lack of intellectual curiosity. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that. We all have different interests. Some were there as a way of delaying adulthood for four more years. (Many of them managed to do that for five, six, or seven years.) There’s nothing essentially wrong with that either, but it ought not be subsidized with taxpayers’ money.

The inevitable result was a decline in the content of the course. A fourth or more of the class cannot be ignored. Even back then the administration would not allow that many students receiving failing grades. It was necessary to simplify the course material.

That lower course quality was a cost borne by the rest of the class. It’s one of the primary results of telling everyone they should attend college. I found it to be an extremely frustrating situation. I decided to switch from teaching economics to doing economics and went into private practice as a wealth manager. That’s what I still do.

I loved my time as a student and as a professor. It pains me to witness what higher education has descended to. I fervently hope that sooner or later it will return to its former heights. In the meantime you can help by ignoring your alma maters’ fund-raising requests.

If you happen to be thinking about going to college, explore your alternatives. Your time and resources might be better spent elsewhere. If you’ve been rejected by the college of your choice it could well be a blessing in disguise. Life is full of those.

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◼ There’s Something Rotten in Academia March 29, 2019,

Ron Ross Ph.D. is a former economics professor and author of The Unbeatable Market. Ron resides in Arcata, California and is a founder of Premier Financial Group, a wealth management firm located in Eureka, California. He is a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma and can be reached at rossecon@gmail.com.

The Anatomy of a Self-Annihilating Political Party

The Democrat Party has lost its mind. What’s happening there, however, is not happening in isolation. In society and in life nothing happens in isolation.

There’s a word that describes the Party’s behavior: nihilism: “a viewpoint that traditional values and beliefs are unfounded and that existence is senseless and useless, a doctrine that denies any objective ground of truth and especially moral truths.”

That definition fits the current Democrat Party. The Party and the left place little or no value on tradition, the Constitution, the sanctity of life, borders, private property rights, voting-law enforcement, election outcomes, standards of behavior, or free speech. These are all fundamentally different kinds of rules or systems of rules. The left does not like rules (at least not for themselves).

If you do not like rules, you do not like order, and the alternative to order is chaos. The Democrat Party is attempting to lead the country into chaos. Once you recognize that the Democrat Party is nihilistic it becomes easier to understand why they think and act as they do.

Jordan Peterson’s profoundly brilliant and important book is titled 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote for Chaos. In it he writes “Chaos and order make up the eternal, transcendent environment of the living.” Chaos and order also define one of the important differences between liberals and conservatives.

As President Trump has said, “If you don’t have borders you don’t have a country.” That’s actually fine with the Democrats and the left. For example, Democrats want to abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE). They not only want to prevent more border wall being built, some of them want to tear down the wall already in place.

The messes that San Francisco, Chicago, and New York City have become are stark evidence of what happens when laws are no longer enforced. The left has more sympathy for law breakers than law enforcers. “Sanctuary cities” create immigration chaos. Virtually every belief and policy of the Democrat Party is fundamentally a war against order.

Democrat politicians and their enablers in the media believe “the end justifies the means.” They see nothing wrong with lying, distorting, making things up, or the violent termination of the essence of innocent life.

It isn’t just that the end justifies the means, it’s that if you reject “moral truths,” you don’t need to justify lying. It also explains why they have no shame.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is the unofficial leader of the Democrat Party. AOC is the perfect standard bearer for how the Party is evolving. She has zero real-world experience (beyond making martinis and margaritas). She hasn’t the slightest idea what’s she’s talking about. Her Green New Deal is little more than a utopian hallucination. Nevertheless, she is the most popular Democrat. More than anyone else, she defines the party.

Democrats’ fascination with AOC shows that they place no value on experience, maturity, or judgment. She did not invent chaos, but she embodies it, particularly mental chaos.

Beyond nihilism the Democrat Party is motivated by hate and the negativity. Their decision rule is, “If Donald Trump is for it, we’re against it.” If his goal is to “make America great again,” they’ll do everything they can to prevent that from happening.

They hate Donald Trump first and foremost because he won. They hate him because he is the exact opposite of who they are. He is positive, they are negative. They hate his supporters because they caused him to win.

A Chinese proverb says, “Hate destroys the container in which it is stored.” And Martin Luther King said “Hate destroys the hater.” No political party can sustain itself on hate. They apparently have little else.

College campuses provide much of the raw material for negativity and nihilism. There it comes under the name “postmodernism.”

Postmodernism is “post because it denies the existence of ultimate principles, and it lacks the optimism of there being a scientific, philosophical, or religious truth which will explain everything to everybody, a characteristic of the so-called modern mind.” It denies the existence of any universal truths and even denies that logic exists.

Postmodernism is as dangerous and destructive philosophy as has ever been conceived. It is as direct a route to evil as you could ever find.

If there aren’t such things as facts and no objective reality, there’s no point in learning anything or needing to think clearly. There’s no difference between a lie and the truth. That explains the media’s comfort with fake news. They simply see no distinction between fake and real. It explains how Democrats can still advocate socialism despite its perfect record of disasters and why they never bother explaining how their trillion dollar ideas will be financed. Nothing they say needs to make any sense.

The mission for conservatives is to make people aware of the danger of what is happening. The Democrat Party is doing well in that regard on its own. But this will be a long-lived war. Conservatives have a champion in the White House but he needs all the support he can get. He has many enemies, he’s going to need lots of friends.

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◼ The Anatomy of a Self-Annihilating Political Party March 7, 2019,

Ron Ross Ph.D. is a former economics professor and author of The Unbeatable Market. Ron resides in Arcata, California and is a founder of Premier Financial Group, a wealth management firm located in Eureka, California. He is a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma and can be reached at rossecon@gmail.com.

Donald Trump Is an Underappreciated Comic Genius

Last week after Elizabeth Warren announced that she had formed an “exploratory committee” for a 2020 campaign for the presidency, President Trump was asked, “Do you really think she believes she can win?” His answer was both hilarious and brilliant: “Well, that I don’t know. You’d have to ask her psychiatrist.”

Every time I think about that response I start laughing. If you’ve ever had any sales training you might have been told about “talking past the sale.” That occurs, for example, when you’re talking to a car salesman about buying a new vehicle. If she thinks you’re on the verge of buying, she might ask, “Do you think you’ll be wanting all-wheel-drive?” It’s a persuasion technique that makes you feel you’ve already decided to buy and makes it harder to resist the vision of driving home in a new car.

Trump’s response to the question about Elizabeth Warren makes the assumption that she has a psychiatrist (not that there’s anything wrong with that). It helps that he says it very matter-of-factly. In a courtroom he would be reprimanded for “leading the witness.” In this instance, it’s not the witness he’s leading, it’s the listener or viewer.

Also in his response Trump first modestly admits that he’s not qualified to read Senator Warren’s mind. That’s a job for the professionals, i.e. her shrink.

Can you imagine anyone else coming up so quickly with such a clever response to a question? No one I’ve ever known thinks that fast.

More than is the case with most humorists, Trump’s humor is multi-purposed. His primary purpose is combating his opponents and achieving his goals. His supporters get the dual benefits of laughing and seeing their political opponents flummoxed. That’s one of the reasons why, according to Gallup, Trump’s approval percentage has been the most consistent of any president’s first two years in office.

Something that no doubt drives Trump’s opponents crazy (all of whom need their own psychiatrists) is that he is having the time of his life. He doesn’t often laugh out loud, but he has to be laughing on the inside.

Trump’s supporters are having far more fun than his opponents. To conservatives the Democrat Party looks like a clown show. How can the Democrats possibly want Nancy Pelosi as their leader? It’s probably because she’s the best they’ve got.

In 2016 Donald Trump dispatched sixteen relatively normal Republican primary opponents. Imagine what fun he’s going to have between now and the election with the Star Wars’ bar scene of Democrat candidates.

An interesting aspect of Trump’s putdowns of his opponents is that they tend to be sticky. His targets can’t seem to just let them go or just walk away. A good example is calling Senator Warren “Pocahontas.” (At least he didn’t use Mark Steyn’s suggestion: Fauxcahontas Crockajawea).

At an Iowa campaign rally over the weekend Warren admitted, “I am not a person of color. I am not a citizen of a tribe.… I grew up out in Oklahoma. And like a lot of folks in Oklahoma we heard the family stories of our ancestry.” Well, I grew up “out in Oklahoma” too and I don’t remember hearing many stories about ancestry, at least not with a native American reference.

An interesting aspect of Trump’s humor is that his supporters get virtually all the benefit. The ill-tempered Democrats are constitutionally incapable of recognizing humor even when it’s right in front of them. Trump’s humor goes right over their heads. They take Trump and themselves far too seriously. They’re missing out on all the fun. What a shame.

I’m 77 years old, only a month older than Bernie Sanders. I’m having as much fun as I’ve ever had in my life, partly because of Donald Trump’s wit and never-ending supply of tweets. God bless you Donald Trump. Keep it up.

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◼ Donald Trump Is an Underappreciated Comic Genius January 10, 2019

Ron Ross Ph.D. is a former economics professor and author of The Unbeatable Market. Ron resides in Arcata, California and is a founder of Premier Financial Group, a wealth management firm located in Eureka, California. He is a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma and can be reached at rossecon@gmail.com.

Give Thanks for Being a Conservative

Maybe you do not need another reason to be thankful, but here’s one that you may not have considered — you’re a conservative. (If you’re not, my condolences.) There are numerous blessings that result from conservatism.

For example, being a conservative means you love your country. You take pride in being an American. Love and pride are two things that contribute to happiness. If you’re ashamed of your country, as many on the left are, if you feel the need to “take a knee,” you’re at a big disadvantage, happiness-wise.

As the Lee Greenwood song that’s played at the start of all of President Trump’s rallies says:

And I’m proud to be an American Where at least I know I’m free And I won’t forget the men who died Who gave that right to me And I’d gladly stand up next to you And defend Her still today ‘Cause there ain’t no doubt I love this land God Bless the U.S.A.

Conservatives love and appreciate police officers and all other first responders. Conservatives know that such people voluntarily and on an almost daily basis go towards ugly and dangerous situations. We do not recklessly and erroneously accuse these brave people of racism. Conservatives are the ones most likely to say, “Thank you for your service.”

In one of his typically brilliant Prager University five-minute lectures, Dennis Prager explains “The Key to Unhappiness”:

You can’t be a happy person if you aren’t grateful, and you can’t be a good person if you aren’t grateful. Almost everything good flows from gratitude, and almost everything bad flows from ingratitude. Here’s a rule of life: ingratitude guarantees unhappiness. It is as simple as that.

So, be thankful you’re thankful.

If you’re a conservative you also are happy with the kind of economic system we have, i.e. free market capitalism. You’re not frustrated that we do not have socialism. The free market is the economy that allows for the massive wealth creation that we enjoy. It is the kind of economy that provides important parts of the freedom we have. Conservatives don’t begrudge businesses for making profits.

Self-loathing is an all too common attitude among progressives. I don’t think I’ve ever met a self-loathing conservative. Give thanks for not hating yourself.

Conservatives are by and large optimistic. At the very least they are not profoundly pessimistic. They do not believe they are their fellow humans are destroying the planet or causing mass extinctions.

Conservative women do not accuse their husbands, fathers, brothers, and sons of “toxic masculinity.”

Hillary Clinton is not president.

Conservatives do not waste their valuable time “checking their privilege,” whatever that means.

As a conservative you subscribe to individual responsibility, not societal or government responsibility. Personal responsibility is much more empowering than the alternative. It makes you the “master of your fate and the captain of your soul.” Conservatives spurn anything resembling an “entitlement mentality.”

Conservatives do not classify themselves as victims. It’s hard to be happy when you’re feeling victimized.

As a conservative you think it’s perfectly ok to be happy. They love to laugh and don’t feel guilty for doing so. Liberals think there’s too much suffering in the world to be happy. Their so-called comedians have ceased being funny.

Liberals absolutely despise President Trump. They hallucinate about his impeachment. Conservatives, for the most part, like and admire him. Judging from his over-flow, enthusiastic campaign rallies, many conservatives love him. They look forward to his reelection. They love his tweets. Love is far more conducive to happiness than hate.

Recently liberals have become extremely intolerant, especially of opinions different from their own. This is partly reflected in their enthusiasm for political correctness. Intolerance is another happiness killer.

Virtue signaling is a widespread preoccupation on the left. A need to virtue signal indicates that you doubt your own virtue, or at least doubt that your virtue is apparent.

If you’re a conservative who believes in God you will know who to thank on Thanksgiving. That can’t be better said than George Washington’s 1789 “Thanksgiving Proclamation,” the first sentence of which is the following:

Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor, and whereas both Houses of Congress have by their joint Committee requested me to recommend to the People of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness.

Happy Thanksgiving!

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◼ Give Thanks for Being a Conservative November 20, 2018

Ron Ross Ph.D. is a former economics professor and author of The Unbeatable Market. Ron resides in Arcata, California and is a founder of Premier Financial Group, a wealth management firm located in Eureka, California. He is a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma and can be reached at rossecon@gmail.com.

The Ironic Curse of the Free Market

For about the millionth time the siren song of socialism is alluring the gullible. Even though socialism has a perfect record of disasters it continues to rise from the grave. Today it’s manifested in the young socialist challengers in Democrat primaries who are prevailing over the entrenched old-guard incumbents, as well as the popularity among liberals of Senator Bernie Sanders, an avowed socialist.

The embrace of socialism is a two-sided coin. The other side of the coin is the rejection of the free market. There are only two alternatives for organizing an economy: coercion or voluntary exchange, i.e. socialism or the free market, a centralized or decentralized system.

The free-market, voluntary exchange economy that spontaneously developed roughly 250 years ago has generated wealth far beyond what anyone could have imagined previously. That miraculous achievement, however, is mostly unappreciated by so many of its beneficiaries. That’s a rather astonishing fact. An important question is why?

The free market economy is like Rodney Dangerfield — it gets no respect. The main reason is that its biggest advantage is also, ironically, its curse. A free-market economy is simultaneously blessed and cursed by this reality — it works automatically and organically. The elements that allow it to work so efficiently are below the surface. A free market economy is guided by what Adam Smith famously described as “an invisible hand.” In regard to appreciation and understanding, invisibility is a disadvantage.

Furthermore, when something works automatically there is no inherent need to know how it works. When something functions with no apparent need for intervention or guidance it will be taken for granted. There will be little or no appreciation for its value.

Socialism, in contrast, does not operate automatically or organically. It requires deliberate conscience guidance and control. A fundamental characteristic of socialism is centralized control. That, in fact, is why dictators prefer communism rather than a free market. For dictators and liberals that is an incredibly desirable feature.

Liberal policy goals cannot be achieved in a decentralized system because liberal goals are usually not the goals of free individuals. What liberals want to happen cannot be achieved voluntarily. They do not like the free market because they’re not in charge.

The subtleties of how a free market works are over the heads of liberals. That’s not true of conservatives. You won’t find conservatives advocating socialism or voting for socialists.

A free-market economy is decentralized. Decisions are made at the outer edges of the economy. Decisions are based on the information imbedded in prices and the incentives inherent in voluntary exchange. Producers profit by providing consumers with what they are willing to pay for.

But a modern massively complex economy cannot be a hodgepodge interaction of participants. What makes possible the coordination and cooperation of millions of players?

The price system, private property rights, the profit system, competition, and freedom are all vital to the functioning of a free-market economy. Most people, however, are unaware of their crucial importance. Socialism fails because it has none of these devices and no substitutes for them. Socialism has no internal guidance system. The free market does.

An advanced, modern economy is far too complex to be consciously managed and coordinated by a centralized authority. The complexity makes centralized, conscious control an impossibility.

As Friedrich Hayek explained so well, the issue is primarily one of information. The amount of information necessary for a complex economy to function is millions of times greater than what could be collected and processed by a central authority. In a free market economy that information is possessed by millions of decision makers throughout the economy. That is where the information, as well as the proper incentives, reside. It can be thought of as the logistics of information.

One of the main depositories of information is the price system. Supply and demand determined prices absorb and then broadcast information. Prices are the language and the DNA of the economy.

In free-market economies there’s an automatic, internal process that’s been proven to work. All external, alternatives have never been successful. In fact, they’ve all been disasters.

The market economy has contributed more to human welfare than any other breakthrough since the dawn of civilization. In his book The World Economy: A Millennial Perspective, Angus Maddison documents the details of the economic explosion set off by the free market and the related industrial revolution.

Until the year 1000 per capita income in Western Europe, inflation adjusted, was about $450 a year. Throughout most of human history there was virtually no economic growth. Beginning in 1820 economic growth in Western Europe went from .15 percent per year to 1.5 percent per year. That’s been roughly the average rate of growth since then.

There is no way the significance of that achievement can be exaggerated. Economic growth does far more for human welfare than any government “welfare” program possibly could. Economic growth is a creature of the free market.

For a number of reasons increased wealth is closely connected to health and life expectancy. Until 1820 life expectancy was increasing at .05 percent per year. Since then it’s increased by more than .5 percent per year. In 1820 life expectancy in Western Europe was 36 years. Today it’s approaching 80 years.

Thanks to President Trump and his administration, we are once again experiencing robust economic growth. Economic growth is the only thing that “creates jobs,” especially net jobs. That’s why we are now experiencing a labor shortage.

President Trump understands that the less an economy is constricted the faster it will grow. That’s why he’s doing his best to cut regulations.

Socialist countries such as Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea, and Zimbabwe not only are not growing, they are shrinking. Per capita income in each of these countries is less than it was a hundred years ago. Socialism is a growth killer. South Korea is an economic powerhouse. In North Korea people are starving.

Barack Obama had not the earthliest idea how a market economy operates, but that did not slow him down in his desire to control it, especially with regulations and tax increases. In his opinion robust economic growth was no longer possible. Obama is an economic pessimist; Donald Trump is an economic optimist.

Although Adam Smith did not invent the market economy, he dissected its interworking and inherent structure. He was the first to argue for a free market and explain why regulations and protectionism are counterproductive. He was the first and most persuasive free trade proponent.

Smith made it much easier for people to believe in the blessings of the free market. Smith’s magnum opus is usually referred to simply as The Wealth of Nations. However, its full title is An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations.

Smith both asked and answered the most important economic question of all time. He was the first person to even think about that monumentally important question. His answer in so many words was the free market and voluntary exchange. It was true when he wrote it and it is true today.

Smith was the first to see and appreciate how voluntary exchange and economic freedom result in growing wealth for all. He made it possible for readers to understand and appreciate market economies.

The Wealth of Nations was published in 1776, not coincidentally the same year as our Declaration of Independence. They reflected the temper of times. Our founding fathers laid the foundation for political freedom. Smith identified the foundation for economic freedom. Voluntary exchange is the essence of freedom.

It’s been said that that in the 19th century invention was invented. The major reason for the explosion of inventions was the presence of powerful incentives for being an inventor. Thomas Edison and numerous others became wealthy as a result of their many inventions. Even more importantly their inventions benefited their customers. Electric lights are vastly superior to lanterns and candles. We are no longer “a world lit only by fire.”

Today we continue to be beneficiaries of the accumulated inventions since then — electric lighting, automobiles, airplanes, air conditioning, hot water heaters, just to name a few.

Combating the underserved but resilient popularity of the socialist dream is one of the requirements for continued economic growth. That will remain a challenge for conservatives for decades to come.

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◼ The Ironic Curse of the Free Market October 11, 2018

Ron Ross Ph.D. is a former economics professor and author of The Unbeatable Market. Ron resides in Arcata, California and is a founder of Premier Financial Group, a wealth management firm located in Eureka, California. He is a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma and can be reached at rossecon@gmail.com.

Donald Trump’s Real Crime: Obstruction of Liberalism

As Democrats, the media, and the rest of the left flail from one Trump accusation to another, they have not yet admitted what their real problem with him actually is. The particulars of their complaints are not what bothers them most about the president. For example, it’s not obstruction of justice that offends them — what actually bothers them most is obstruction of liberalism. On that, he is guilty as charged.

Donald Trump poses a real and imminent threat to virtually everything liberals hold dear and much of everything that defines them. By doing so he has made their lives miserable.

It’s not just that Trump is obstructing liberalism, it’s that he’s doing it so efficiently and unconventionally. The list of Trump’s offenses is long and growing. Near the top is the near obliteration of Barack Obama’s legacy. Obama, his policies, and his administration were all cookie-cutter liberalism.

Fortunately, for conservatives, Obama was incompetent and lazy. He frittered away most of his eight years in office. His achievements were not robust. Most of them have not withstood Trump’s onslaught and that onslaught is not over. Erasing the Obama legacy is an enormous step backward for liberalism. It will be very difficult for liberalism to regain its momentum.

Liberal policies and goals are, in their minds, a birthright. Resistance to those policies is blasphemous and sacrilegious. They know that this is a fight for survival. Their fear and panic are understandable. Even their hate is understandable, but it is not excusable.

Liberals have never encountered anything like Trump. They can’t knock him off course. Countless times the Trump despisers have believed he was a goner for sure. We got him this time! It’s almost comical to watch. Nothing they do to stop him works as it’s supposed to. He doesn’t play by their rules. He makes liberals feel impotent. He is relentless; he has no reverse gear. His counter punches pack twice the wallop as the first punch. When criticized, he doubles down. No wonder they’re depressed.

Trump baits his opponents and they always take the bait. They’re obviously not the sharpest knives in the drawer. The left has no sense of humor, which is another way he makes them look foolish.

An amazing thing about Trump is that his behavior is not dictated by other people’s opinions. The importance of that can hardly be exaggerated. That attitude is extremely rare and incredibly empowering. One of the keys to understanding the over-the-top hatred of Trump is this: people who have no backbones hate people who do have backbones.

A column by Wayne Allen Root was titled, “Trump Proves the Torture Works.” Specifically, it works to force confessions. His words and deeds have smoked them out and they can no longer contain themselves. They are showing their true colors.

They are controlled by their hatred. They hate every fiber of his being and everything about him — his personality, his attitude, his appointees, and his supporters. The same things liberals hate about him are the things his supporters love about him.

Because of their hatred, they cannot think straight. They can barely think at all. They can only react; they’ve become reptilian. They are still in a state of shock that he won and that he is president.

Trump totally dominates Democrats thoughts and actions. They are completely obsessed with “resistance.” They have no energy or time left to define or advance their own objectives. He has cast a spell on them and taken control of their brains.

An example is his signature motto, “Make America Great Again.” His opponents cannot get those four words out of their minds. They don’t know how to deal them. They have said, “[America] was never that great” (Andrew Cuomo), and “America was always great” (Meghan McCain).

Another example is Trump’s use of tweets to communicate with his base. The media and the rest of the Trump haters despise his tweets. However, they absolutely cannot ignore them. They read them all and report on many of them. In a very real sense, they act as his publicists. Ironically, it’s one of the reasons he got elected. They are drawn like a moth to a flame.

Tweets have provided Trump with a direct and unfiltered connection with friends and foes alike. That is an incredibly valuable asset and it’s one of the ways he has neutered the media. They are no longer the gatekeepers of his message.

For conservatives this is a fun time to be alive. For the others I would only ask, “Hey, Trump haters, how’s that working for you?”

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◼ Donald Trump’s Real Crime: Obstruction of Liberalism September 6, 2018

Ron Ross Ph.D. is a former economics professor and author of The Unbeatable Market. Ron resides in Arcata, California and is a founder of Premier Financial Group, a wealth management firm located in Eureka, California. He is a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma and can be reached at rossecon@gmail.com.

The Growing Popularity of Foot Shooting

These are strange times. One of the behaviors that makes things strange is the growing popularity of foot shooting. Foot shooting, of course, involves shooting yourself in the foot. It’s another way of describing self-destructive behavior. Unfortunately for the rest of us, the damage done is not confined to the shooter.

Foot shooting is quite popular among entertainers, especially actors and comedians. Drama is a deliberate creation of fantasy, of an imaginary world. In order to enjoy a movie or play it is necessary to “suspend disbelief.” For the moment you have to forget that what you’re watching isn’t real and that the actors are acting and “playing” a part. The actors aren’t who they’re pretending to be. Knowing too much about them makes it much harder to suspend disbelief.

Robert De Niro is a great actor who has played many great roles. His profane and overwrought public utterances over the past several months will make it hard for many of his fans to ever watch him again without remembering who he is as a real-life person. In effect, he has blown his cover and that cover is necessary for making what he does work.

Presumably De Niro and other actor-activists got into acting to entertain people. That’s why they earn the big bucks. Now, rather than entertaining, they’re making many of their fans angry and disgusted. As everyone else does in this country, actors have freedom of speech. However, because of the nature of their craft there are good reasons for them to preserve their anonymity. Until recently, I was unaware of the extent of De Niro’s ignorance. I had nothing to base an opinion on.

De Niro, Sean Penn, and Morgan Freeman are extremely good at their crafts. More often than not, however, their acting skills in no way carry over to politics, economics, or science. In regard to acting skill, De Niro scores a ten. In regard to political or cultural acumen, he is a zero.

Comedians have also fallen prey to foot shooting. The purpose of a comedian is to make people laugh. That ceases when humor becomes politicized.

Politicized comedians have not only shot themselves in the foot, they have lost track of their reason for being comedians. Politics kills humor and there’s nothing funny about hate. Johnny Carson, Jonathan Winters, Sid Caesar knew that instinctively.

Actors and comedians need to make a decision — do they want to entertain people or proselytize? For them, it is essentially impossible to serve two masters. One of the masters is incompatible with the other.

I used to be an NFL fan, especially of the San Francisco 49ers in the Joe Montana, Steve Young, Jerry Rice era. So far as I know none of them ever publicly expressed their political opinions.

I have not watched five minutes of a 49er’s game in over a year. The only NFL game I’ve watched in the past year was the Super Bowl. I’ve heard numerous people say essentially the same thing. They say they’re done with the NFL.

Former fans are angry at the players for disrespecting their country, but the greater anger is directed toward the teams’ owners and the NFL hierarchy.

The NFL has unfortunately revealed who and what they are. Although they’re good people in most ways, in this instance they’ve behaved like spineless, clueless cowards. They should have nipped the protests in the bud before they became overblown and out of control.

The owners have demonstrated a disrespect for their fans as well as their country and demonstrated that they are afraid of their own employees. Their brains have been addled by political correctness and virtue signaling. Their self-preservation instincts have gone dormant.

The owners have insulted a large portion of their fan base. It’s hard to forget and forgive being insulted and disrespected. For many of us, the NFL owners and management have managed to take the fun out of watching a football game. Thanks a lot. Pro football was an innocent distraction from the stresses and strains of everyday life.

Many of us are sad that we can no longer watch a game without thinking about what we now know. I loved watching pro football. The only partial upside is that my fall Sunday afternoons have been liberated. That’s only a partial upside, however, because many of my Saturday afternoons have now been commandeered by college football.

Perhaps the greatest practitioners of foot shooting are the media. As have entertainers, the media have elevated their political goals above their reason for being. Because a large fraction of their customers do not agree with those goals, their customer base is now far smaller than it used to be. Much of the media has given up any pretense of objectivity. “Fake news” is a reality. Credibility is their currency. Without it what are they? They certainly aren’t reporters or journalists.

The most pathetic and confused group of foot shooters are the Never-Trumpers, Bill Kristol, Jonah Goldberg, and George Will, for example. Donald Trump so offends their delicate sensitivities that they totally ignore how much he has accomplished for the conservative cause. They have made themselves irrelevant, fortunately. They have actually proclaimed that they wish Hillary Clinton were president. As John McEnroe used to say to the umpires, “You can’t be serious!” Can you imagine the kinds of Supreme Court picks Hillary would be making?

Actors, comedians, athletes, and the media have lost focus. What is transpiring shows too well the ugly results of politicizing every aspect of life. Politics is like a cancer destroying from within whatever it infests.

In a 2013 American Spectator column, “The Politicization Crusade,” I listed “language, science, health care, food, climate, cars, sports, education, the military, and sexual orientation” as examples of some of things that have been politicized. Since then, the list could be expanded and would include humor and children. Let’s hope that at some point the politicization crusade will go too far and end up consuming itself.

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◼ The Growing Popularity of Foot Shooting July 12, 2018

Ron Ross Ph.D. is a former economics professor and author of The Unbeatable Market. Ron resides in Arcata, California and is a founder of Premier Financial Group, a wealth management firm located in Eureka, California. He is a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma and can be reached at rossecon@gmail.com.