My family [Genovese] made a lot of money from gambling and the numbers rackets.  We got money from gambling, but our real power, our real strength, came from the unions [emphasis added].  With the unions behind us, we could shut down the city, or the country for that matter, if we needed to get our way.  Our brugad [crime family] controlled a number of different unions, some of which I personally dealt with, some of which I knew about from other amico nostra.  In some cases, we got money from our dealings with the unions, in some cases we got favors such as jobs for friends and relatives — but most importantly, in all cases, we got power over every businessman in New York.  With the unions behind us, we could make or break the construction industry, the garment business, the docks, to name but a few.

That is mobster Vincent Cafaro, cited in James B. Jacobs’s excellent Mobsters, Unions, and Feds: The Mafia and the American Labor Movement.  This book, which is avowedly left-wing and pro-union, chronicles the grisly and underrecorded history of mob influence over unions.  Today the mob’s presence in the Teamsters, the Laborers, the Hotel and Restaurant workers and the Longshoreman’s union has largely dissipated, but keep in mind why.  Our government has spent the last twenty years busting these unions, using arrests, RICO, and federal monitoring and control.  That should not be forgotten the next time you hear talk of new legal privileges for unions.

The Center for Responsible Lending estimated that in 2005, a
majority of home loans to African-Americans and 40 percent of home
loans to Hispanics were subprime loans. The existence and spread of
subprime lending helps explain the drastic growth of homeownership for
these same groups. Since 1995, for example, the number of
African-American households has risen by about 20 percent, but the
number of African-American homeowners has risen almost twice that rate,
by about 35 percent. For Hispanics, the number of households is up
about 45 percent and the number of homeowning households is up by
almost 70 percent.

And do not forget that the vast majority of
even subprime borrowers have been making their payments. Indeed, fewer
than 15 percent of borrowers in this most risky group have even been
delinquent on a payment, much less defaulted.

Here is more.

Mr. Blinder’s answer is not protectionism…he accepts the economic logic that U.S. trade with large low-wage countries like India and China will make all of them richer — eventually.  He acknowledges that trade can create jobs in the U.S. and bolster productivity growth.  But he says the harm done when some lose jobs and others get them will be far more painful and disruptive than trade advocates acknowledge.  He wants government to do far more for displaced workers than the few months of retraining it offers today.  He thinks the U.S. education system must be revamped so it prepares workers for jobs that can’t easily go overseas, and is contemplating changes to the tax code that would reward companies that produce jobs that stay in the U.S.

Here is the article.  Arnold Kling says technological progress will be more important than trade.  I think that China is due for a crack-up and India will soon bump up against its horrible legal and educational systems.  I saw that economists are listed as among the most threatened groups, but I doubt if the United States can look forward to the liberation of so much talented and witty labor.  I also think that corporate welfare is a bad idea, and that universities should not train everyone to be a small town divorce lawyer.  Teaching reading and writing would be a good start.

When our economists start preaching that we should look to economists and higher educators to predict the new, growing economic sectors, I again think that the Chinese are not the major problem.

Life without socks would be… "undignified," but no one recommends government provision or even sock vouchers.  Relative to income, socks are sufficiently cheap.  There is some inequality of socks, but it seems that just about everybody — even the poor — "has enough."  We don’t even force people to buy socks for their kids.

Might there come a time when health care and education fall under the same rubric?

Yes, I know that, due to rising labor costs, health care and education might continue to eat up an increasing percentage of national income.  But still, can’t "rich enough" people make do?  Living in Aspen might cost half your income, but if you’re a multi-millionaire no one weeps for you.

Of course today’s poor aren’t rich enough for us to remove government aid.  But when will the splendid era of libertarian freedom be possible?  Today’s poor are much richer than the poor fifty years ago, and the poor of the future are likely to be richer yet.  Won’t the welfare state, at some point, simply become unnecessary?

Readers, please tell me in the comments when the time will come for dismantling the welfare state.  Will you sign your name to a pledge:

"I am a left-winger, but only until 2078"?

More elegant would be:

"I’m a 2096 libertarian."

Social democracy is but a mere transitional strategy.

If this were 1890, what Year of Libertarian Freedom would you have named?