According to Prof. Steven Horwitz, one contemporary economic myth is that the cost of living has consistently risen for Americans over the past century. In fact, prices are higher today than they were 100 years ago. However, prices today have been heavily influenced by inflation. One way of avoiding inflationary distortions is to look at amount of labor hours required to make a purchase. Using this analysis, Prof. Horwitz finds that most goods and services have never been cheaper.
Freedom for Surrogates. Donald Boudreaux
Extract:
Surrogate mothers are paid to assist infertile couples to have children. Each surrogate mother is compensated for choosing to give her time; for choosing to bear medical risks; and (if she still chooses after giving birth) for parting with her parental rights in the same way that each and every mother who gives her child up for adoption parts with her parental rights.
On the other side of each of these voluntary exchanges is a couple desiring a child so fervently that they willingly pay a large sum of money to a woman who helps them navigate around the curse of infertility. Most of these couples have already paid huge sums of money to infertility clinics in unsuccessful attempts to get pregnant – yet, rightly, no one calls the voluntary exchanges that couples have with infertility clinics “baby selling.”
To label voluntary, mutually advantageous contracts between surrogate mothers and infertile couples “baby selling” is a grotesque mischaracterization, one that masks reality behind a blanket of hysteria.
Children brought into the world through surrogacy contracts are no more “sold” than are children brought into the world through infertility treatments. Why should couples for whom infertility treatments fail be denied the joys of parenthood if they and willing surrogate mothers voluntarily agree to terms that bring new human beings to life?
Read full letter.
The Myth of Socialist Paradise. Lobsang Sangay
Via Francisco Capella.
Extract:
In 1950, when the Chinese Army first came to Tibet, they promised a socialist paradise for Tibetans. After more than 60 years of misrule, Tibet is no socialist paradise. There is not socialism but colonialism; there is no paradise, only tragedy.
Some Tibetans helped build roads to Tibet from China and were paid in silver coins by polite and respectful Chinese soldiers. However, once the roads were built in early 1950s, tanks encircled strategic urban areas, trucks headed straight to the mineral-rich mountains, and Chinese workers arrived later to exploit and mine billions of dollars worth of gold, copper and uranium. Overnight, it seemed, something had changed. The polite Chinese people changed, too, and became overbearing and aggressive. They used their guns. Battles erupted. There was death and destruction.
The continuing political repression, cultural assimilation, economic marginalization and environmental destruction in occupied Tibet are unacceptable. The new railway line from Beijing to Lhasa is bringing more heavy equipment to exploit our natural resources and more Chinese migrants, who are beginning to demographically dominate Tibet. Today, around 70 percent of private-sector firms are owned or run by Chinese, more than 50 percent of government officials are Chinese, and approximately 40 percent of Tibetans with university and high school degrees are unemployed. And this is made worse by Chinese officials who treat Tibet as their personal inheritance, and behave like latter-day feudal lords.
Read full story.
Música 21.08.2011
Festival de Música de Cámara de Rockport. Concierto celebrado en el Centro de Artes Escénicas Shalin Liu de Rockport, el 16 de julio de 2010.
Intérpretes: Cuarteto Brentano. David Deveau, piano.
Programa:
SCHUBERT, F: CUARTETO Nº 15 EN SOL MAYOR D. 887
SCHUMANN, R: QUINTETO EN MI BEMOL MAYOR OP. 44
Festival de Música de Cámara de Rockport. Concierto celebrado en el centro de Artes Escénicas Shalin Liu de Rockport el 11 de julio de 2010
Intérpretes: Marc-André Hamelin, piano
Programa:
BERG, A: SONATA PARA PIANO OP. 1
LISZT, F: SONATA EN SI MENOR
DEBUSSY, C: SELECCIÓN DE PRELUDIOS, LIBRO II
HAMELIN, MA: SELECCIÓN DE 12 ESTUDIOS EN TODAS LAS TONALIDADES MENORES.
Julio Iglesias. Concierto en Ávila 20.08.2011
El concierto empezó dos horas tarde, con muchos problemas, Julio está mayor, empezó con poca fuerza, quizás debido a los problemas de sonido por los que se retrasó el concierto, pero poco a poco Julio Iglesias fue siendo el clásico de siempre, con sus canciones míticas, el estilo único, sentido del humor y muchas tablas. Un maestro.
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