It is ironic that the greenest president presides over the demise of the green industries while a new oil boom is making us more energy independent in spite of policies intended to stunt the growth and development of fossil fuels. The jobs
Read More
The Arab Spring may throw off the yoke of dictators, but unless they also dispose of the foolish beliefs that these dictators used to hold on to power for decades their societies will continue to decline. At Bloomberg.com Jeffrey Golberg
Read More
Steve Landsberg, author of The Armchair Economist (a worthy read) writes in The Wall Street Journal How the Death Tax Hurts the Poor – It encourages the rich to pick extra fruit, leaving the trees a little barer for the rest
Read More
There is much not to like about Obama Care (Patient Protection and Health Care Affordability Act) , but this post will focus on just one. HSAs or Health Savings Accounts are actually a part of a health insurance option that
Read More
… the elite have responsibility to use their largess wisely and not turn into the Kardashians. But that a fifth of one percent of the taxpayers are finding ways not to pay at the income tax rate on their large incomes
Read More
I do not remember a vetting of political candidates as tough as the what have seen. This is a good thing. Romney is like the prom date that was second choice. You dance and smile at him, but secretly glance
Read More
Economic truths might be less permanent than mathematical truths, but economic theory was essential for learning what worked, what didn’t, what mattered, what did not. Inflation could lift output in the short run but not the long run. Gains in
Read More
I have long contended that what makes America unique is the way that we assimilate unlimited diverse cultures without losing what makes them unique. We may be Irish, Italian, Muslim, Jewish, Asian, or Hispanic, Hindu or Catholic, but we shop
Read More
Mises and Hayek had developed a theory blaming depressions on excessive money creation and overly low interest rates in the preceding boom that led to massive misallocation of capital- or, as Robins put it, “inappropriate investments fostered by wrong expectations.”
Read More
Several conservative candidates have stressed the need for a balanced budget amendment. I fear that it is a simplistic notion to a complex problem. By forcing such a solution we strive to restrict the ability to make bad choices by
Read More
In contrast to Marx’s automaton capitalist or (Alfred) Marshall’s owner-engineer, the entrepreneur distinguished himself by a willingness to “destroy old patterns of thought and action” and redeploy existing resources in new ways. Innovation meant overcoming obstacles, inertia, and resistance. Exceptional
Read More
Some commentators have expressed a nostalgia for aspects of the economic world of the 1950s, as Paul Krugman suggested in his book The Conscience of a Liberal. I can understand the sentiment, since the 1950s brught a lot of growth,
Read More
Peggy Noonan writes an interesting view in the Wall Street Journal- A Caveman Won’t Beat a Salesman, 11/18/11 She begins with an excerpt from the Walter Isaacson biography of Steve Jobs where Jobs noted that many companies fail when they
Read More
The recent exposure of how Congressmen benefit from inside trading information that is illegal for anyone else should be a common theme for everyone who is upset with the current state of affairs. It should be a common thread that
Read More
Bloodlust by Russell Jacoby is a tour of the roots of violence from biblical through modern times. The essence of the book is that it is not those that are different that pose the greatest threat, but those that are
Read More
My biggest criticism of the OWS protests is the lack of any clear reasonable objective other than to claim that greed is bad; and then ask for a bunch of free stuff, like tuition loan forgiveness. ( I wonder how
Read More
Walter Williams writes in Investor Business Daily Who Pays for Corporate Taxes 11/9/11. Excerpt: The largest burden of corporate taxes is borne by workers. We discover that by asking a simple question, such as: Which workers on a road construction
Read More
Money is the barometer of society’s virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion- when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing- when you
Read More
A few gems from Thomas Sowell from the last chapter of the Thomas Sowell Reader. “There is no greater indictment of judges than the fact that honest people are afraid to go into court, while criminals swagger out its revolving
Read More
While our students perform poorly on standardized tests relative to other countries, we have the most desirable institutions of higher education in the world and have a disproportionate share of Nobel Prize winners. How is this so and do we
Read More
Recent Comments