Stop Wars!! Say Libertarians

 

Libertarian Party of Wisconsin

www.lpwi.org

presslpwi@gmail.com

Press Secretary: Tim Krenz,

April 17, 2024

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Stop Wars!! Say Libertarians

Dresser, WI—Stop killing for politics and profits, said the Libertarian Party of Wisconsin (LPWI) in resolutions passed at its annual convention in Madison, WI, April 13^th.

While the convention had failed to pass a strong-enough foreign policy plank to the state Party platform, two subsequent resolutions from the floor won overwhelming endorsement. Both of the statements called for radical changes in the approach to United States foreign affairs.

The two resolutions combined calls for ending US military and security agency involvement overseas; and the withdrawal of support, financial and otherwise, direct or indirect, from all conflicts between or within other countries. In consequence, the resolutions affirm a sense of the Party that even in foreign policy, the Libertarian principles of “do not harm anyone; do not steal from anybody,” apply universally.

The resolutions came on a particularly critical day, as news reports filtered into the convention of the Iranian drone and missile attacks on Israel, further escalating a dangerous crisis for the world.

One resolution called for ending foreign military alliance commitments; and disposing of US military property and foreign deployments of American military personnel; and ending non-citizen military contracts (with essentially mercenaries) that support US policies. It also called on the United States, as a nation of individual people, to lead a total effort to dismantle and decommission all nuclear weapon arsenals world-wide.

The second resolution, submitted by Jacob VandenPlas, an Iraq War veteran, former Congressional candidate, and former chair of the Libertarian Party of Wisconsin, unequivocally demanded: “That the US stops its policy of using money or other support to individuals or institutions or organizations that cause harm, kill people, or perpetuate murder.”

For more info or to contact the Libertarian Party of Wisconsin and its peace resolutions, visit www.lpwi.org .

Libertarian Presidential Candidate Town Hall Monday

 

Libertarian Party of Wisconsin

www.lpwi.org

presslpwi@gmail.com

April 7, 2024

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Libertarian Presidential Candidate Town Hall Monday

National party politics comes virtually to Wisconsin on Monday, April 8^th . Lars Mapstead, a Libertarian candidate for President, will hold an online meet and greet, in cooperation with the Libertarian Party of Wisconsin.

The meet and greet, which starts on Zoom at 7PM (CDT), and open for the public and press, will cover Mapstead’s assessment of the race for the Libertarian Party nomination, and several issues important to all Wisconsin voters. The topics might include: immigration and border policy; increasing personal freedoms and limiting government; reforming the taxation and monetary systems; and policies based on the Libertarian creeds of non-coercion and non-aggression.

The Libertarian Party of Wisconsin at its in-person Annual Convention, April 12-14^th in Madison, will select delegates to the national Libertarian Party convention that occurs later in the spring. Among other things, delegates will cast ballots to choose the Libertarian Presidential nominee for the November general election.

To participate in Lars Mapstead’s Presidential candidate virtual meet and greet, please use the following link:

https://us06web.zoom.us/j/89888678258?pwd=F3svIpNQFhKew7qV8kRxkCEYMbbGXN.1

For more info on the Libertarian Party of Wisconsin, please visit: www.lpwi.org .

Libertarians to Hold Convention in Madison

 

Libertarian Party of Wisconsin

www.lpwi.org

presslpwi@gmail.com

Press Secretary—Tim Krenz

March 22, 2024

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Libertarians to Hold Convention in Madison

The Libertarian Party of Wisconsin (LPWI) will hold its annual convention from Friday, April 12^th, through Sunday, April 14^th, in Madison, WI.

Offering a platform of “do no harm to anyone; do not steal from anybody,” the LPWI will gather amid the rabid political turmoil splitting the country between the dominant two-party system. During the three day gathering, the LPWI plans to showcase the Libertarian Party’s 2024 candidates and its commitment to personal freedom and local home rule for citizens and communities across Wisconsin.

The convention, at the Double Tree East hotel at 4402 East Washington Avenue, in Madison, will also select delegates to the Libertarian National Convention in Washington DC later in the spring.

The Libertarian Party of Wisconsin renounces the initiation of force to solve political and social differences; supports the right of everyone to protect themselves and their families; and endorses the use of fair and free markets by enterprise and work to secure for everyone their blessings of freedom and liberty, without governmental barriers.

For more on the Libertarian Party of Wisconsin, its convention, or to read its platform, please visit www.lpwi.org .

LPWI Fact Sheet on Minimum Wages

 

Minimum Wages

By Darren Brady Nelson

President Harry S. Truman perhaps made the ultimate economist joke when he famously said:“Give me a one-handed economist! All my economists say, On the one hand on the other.”ⁱ Not all economists will agree on everything. Nor will all people of any profession do so. However, there is more agreement amongst economists on the most likely impacts of minimum wages than for most policy areas.

Highly respected mainstream economist Jack Hirshleifer,ⁱⁱ and political centrist, in the final edition before his death of his widely-used textbook of Price Theory and Applications,ⁱⁱⁱ wrote:

“When a minimum wage is set higher than the market equilibrium wage, therefore, the competitive-market model would clearly predict some disemployment of those previously working and an even larger amount of unemployment – since at the higher wage more workers will be seeking employment.”

“The absence of differentials in the United States leads us to expect that the brunt of the disemployment effects, if any, will be suffered by low-wage areas such as Appalachia and by low-wage demographic groups such as ‘minorities’ and youthful workers.”

Legendary Austrian school economist, and libertarian anarchist, Murray N. Rothbard,^iv in his under-rated treatise of Man, Economy, and State,^v corroborates Hirshleifer’s first point:

“When a minimum wage law is effective, i.e., where it imposes a wage above the market value of a grade of labor (above the laborer’s discounted marginal value product), the supply of labor services exceeds the demand, and the ‘unsold surplus’ of labor services means involuntary mass unemployment.”

Nobel laureate winning Chicago school economist, and libertarian minarchist, Milton Friedman,^vi in his best-seller book of Free To Choose,^vii corroborates Hirshleifer’s second point:

“The minimum wage law requires employers to discriminate against persons with low skills. No one describes it that way, but that is in fact what it is.”

“The high rate of unemployment among teenagers, and especially black teenagers, is both a scandal and a serious source of social unrest. Yet it is largely a result of minimum wage laws.”

In conclusion, “if you raise the cost of doing something (such as hiring workers), you get less of it.”^viii That is not only inefficient and anti-liberty, but also impoverishing and inequitable. Ideas have consequences.^ix Government-imposed minimum wages are a perennial bad idea, with equally perennial bad consequences. Intentionally or not, they harm more than they help.

Endnotes and author’s bio follow on the next page.

Darren Brady Nelson is an independent economist and think-tanker who works in the USA, Australia, and around the world. He is an expert in fiscal, monetary, and regulatory policies, as well as Austrian, Chicago, and Christian economics. He aims, as Aussie maverick politician Don Chipp once did, to “keep the bastards honest.”

i https://www.azquotes.com/quote/604127

ii https://economics.ucla.edu/person/jack-hirshleifer/

iii https://www.cambridge.org/et/universitypress/subjects/economics/microeconomics/price-theory-and-applications-decisions-markets-and-information-7th-edition

iv https://mises.org/profile/murray-n-rothbard

v https://mises.org/library/man-economy-and-state-power-and-market

vi https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/1976/friedman/facts/

vii https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/97820.Free_to_Choose

viii https://www.forbes.com/sites/investor/2013/02/14/minimum-wage-pits-obama-against-keynes/

ix https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5665.Ideas_Have_Consequences

Libertarians Say Reality of Minimum Wage Hikes Hurts the Poor

 

Libertarian Party of Wisconsin

www.lpwi.org

presslpwi@gmail.com

Press Secretary: Tim Krenz

January 16, 2024

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Libertarians Say Reality of Minimum Wage Hikes Hurts the Poor

“In reality, hiking up the legal minimum wage will end up with even more unemployed among poor and low-skilled people,” the Libertarian Party of Wisconsin says after releasing a new fact sheet on the subject this week. “Higher minimum wage laws, above the market price for labor, hurts the struggling people who can least afford it.”

Across the USA, politicians in both the Republican and Democratic parties have made higher minimum wage legislation an agenda priority, in this period of inflation. Yet, as open market and libertarian economists have warned before, minimum wages set too high cause employers to seek new ways to reduce labor costs.

To meet their bottom lines, businesses will usually lay off low-skilled employees, replacing them with increased investment in such things as automated technologies, at a lower long-term cost.

“Basic economics says that the low-skilled and poorer-class workers will lose their jobs with high, arbitrary minimum wages laws; if market forces do not control labor costs. Ill-informed politicians making populist but unwise decisions, like always, hurt the working poor more than helping them.”

The Libertarian Party of Wisconsin believes that individual decisions and personal choices, the meaning of the words “liberty and freedom,” help all classes of people more than the distorting tendency of government to engineer outcomes.

Such political-economic, and social-cultural manipulations by the government benefit the few and elite wealthy at the expense of the whole—particularly those who can afford it the least, the poor and working classes. For more on the Libertarian Party of Wisconsin and its platform, visit www.lpwi.org .