At 66 I am more inclined to accepts my flaws than work hard to correct them. Again, tipping to Churchill I would hope to limit my annoying virtues and be less ashamed of my admirable vices.
Read MoreUtopian political movements — and all totalitarian movements are basically utopian — love the world, except for all the people in it.”
Read MoreWilliam Trufant Foster, a former college president, and Waddill Catchings, an industrialist and financier wrote Profits in 1925 and The Road to Plenty in 1928. A decade before Keynes these amateur economists challenged the fundamental principle of Say’s Law that production generates its own supply. They reversed the principle to ‘consumption drives production.’
Read MoreCompetition is both wasteful and efficient. Lots of ideas die, but the new ones that emerge more than make up for the loss. Central planning may restrict competitive ideas, but rarely leads to the emergence of great ideas because central planning is reacting to problems and needs that become obsolete before the ink is dry on the plan.
Read MoreIn a democracy the administrative state will eventually become accountable; much to the dismay of the progressives who thought themselves insulated from the democracy they championed.
Read MoreKeynes suggested the use of government to make more efficient allocations of capital but was often critical of the incompetence of government officials. He seems to unknowingly refute himself. The weak accountability in government action is what distinguishes it from market solutions. The worst solution is the pairing of select firms to partner with government actors. When the results fail capitalism is faulted, bur corporatism is not capitalism.
Read MoreHow much would you bet on the price of oil in 30 years? Or the price of corn or computer chips? Yet we are willing to make an enormously costly bet on the climate, which is subject to far more uncontrollable and unknowable elements? Why? Because we are playing with other people’s money. The cost of virtue signaling is zero.
Read More“Left and Right alike are partly or wholly captive to the fantasies of managerial progressivism and neo-mercantilism, with the Left imagining that Washington can intelligently direct energy and labor markets and much of the Right falling in behind protectionism, “managed trade,” and corporate welfare for everybody from Boeing to Foxconn.”
Read MorePouring money into a problem without fixing the underlying problem accomplishes the political task of surviving an election cycle. The people who voted for this nonsense are long gone and no longer held to account.
Read More“Despite their general affluence, professional women of the Western world have been chronically unhappy for decades, and I conjecture that it is partly because they have been led to expect happiness from a mechanical work environment that doesn’t make men happy either.”
Read More“I am wholeheartedly in favor of women students or employees knowing their rights and speaking up to defend them. However, the #MeToo movement has gone seriously off track in encouraging uncorroborated accusations dating from ten, twenty, or thirty years ago. No democracy can survive in such a paranoid climate of ambush and summary execution. This is Stalinism, a nadir of politics.”
Read More“Simply put, we live in a populist moment when many of the gatekeepers have either abandoned their posts to join the mob or stand lonely vigil at gates that are no longer needed because the walls are crumbling. To borrow a phrase from Julien Benda’s landmark Treason of the Intellectuals, our age is marked by the “political organization of hatreds.” What McCarthy did with letters and telegrams, President Trump does with Twitter.”
Read MoreThe adage that we vote our pocketbooks only applies if the economy sucks. A candidate gets less credit for a strong economy than he gets the blame for a weak economy.
Read More“The “middle way” sounds moderate and un-radical. Its appeal is that it sounds unideological and freethinking. But philosophically the Third Way is not mere difference splitting; it is utopian and authoritarian. ” Liberal Fascism
Read MoreIt is a recurring lesson that most voters care less about policy than subjective perceptions. As big problems are addressed lesser problems become more pronounced. The difference between the right and the left is less about the substance of the policies than the weight allotted to them.
Read MoreHis combative tone is welcomed by his supporters and hated by the opposition. He is solidifying his base and turning his reluctant supporters into committed supporters, but Trump is less effective at getting new supporters.
Read More“Being so focused on Washington, it is natural that the Democrats have allowed the atrophy of their political muscle in the states, leading to diminished power in them. At the same time, the people in the more rural states have not failed to appreciate that the Democrats’ Washington-first approach devalues them and their communities — precisely the problem that our constitutional order was designed to ameliorate.”
Read MoreTrump is puzzling; his errant tone and behavior has energized his base and his opposition. I do not believe that he is racist or the next Hitler, but his thoughtless comments certainly gives fodder to those that require a demon to define themselves. The real question is how it impacts the independents. The uncivil mob behavior of the left concerns many of the independents more than the thoughtless comments of Trump.
Read More“The left sees people primarily as members of groups defined by race, class, sex and sexual orientation. They are therefore confident that demographics are destiny.”
Read More“In a reversal of traditional liberal values, the left now prioritizes social justice over free speech, respect for facts, and the marketplace of ideas. “
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