Monthly Archives: April 2011

Archive of posts published in the specified Month

The Origin of the Intellectual

The trial of Alfred Dreyfus in France in 1895 was a pivotal event.  Dreyfus was a Jewish captain in the French military, accused of selling military secrets to the Germans. He was tried and convicted. Rumors that he had been

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Perpetuating Economic Ignornance

Conrad Black writes in the National Review online edition April 28, 2011 The Media Don’t Get Economics And this illiteracy has a high price. excerpt: In the 27 months of the Obama administration, there have been spectacular rises in the

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Jumping a Fiscal Grand Canyon

There is an axiom that if you have to jump a canyon you don’t want to do it in small steps.  If you have to lose a leg to cancer or gangrene, you do not make the task any less

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Fried Politics

Politics can’t save us.  Politics is the idea that society’s ills can be cured politically.  This is a cookbook where the recipe for everything is to fry it. The fruit cocktail is fried. The salad is fried. So is the

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A Strong Economy is a Free Economy

We have seen before how the separation of economic and political aims is an essential guarantee of individual freedom and how it is consequentially attacked by all collectivists.  To this we must now add that the “substitution of political for

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Voting for Mom

Whether we think politics is a bother or whether we are full of great expectations about all the good things politics tries to do, we have to scale back the scope of politics.  Otherwise no good things will be accomplished.

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A Blueprint for a Free City- Sandy Springs, GA

Reason shows how a city got it right. Sandy Springs had a great opportunity and did not waste it.  They broke from the bloated Atlanta government bureaucracy and set up their own city, privatizing most of its services, avoiding public unions

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Try Leadership Over Demonization

Victor Davis Hanson writes in the National Review 4/21/11 Make the Rich Pay Or how about the Cabinet? Excerpts: the now-demonized top 5 percent account for almost 60 percent of all federal income-tax revenue — a higher percentage than anywhere else

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The Gold Trap

Gold is high and could be headed higher, but that does not make it a great investment. Gold is priced well above the cost of production, so its value is more determined as an alternative to traditional investments in an

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The Other Debt

Mark Steyn writes in National Review April 16, 2011 Losing the Future excerpt Government is not alone in “investing” in “the future.” The New York Times reported last week that in 2010, for the first time, student-loan debt topped credit-card debt.

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Categories vs. Flesh and Blood People

“Perhaps the most fertile source of misunderstandings about incomes has been the widespread practice of confusing statistical categories with flesh-and-blood human beings. Many statements have been made in the media and in academia, claiming that the rich are gaining not

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A Nation of Potholes

Mark Steyn writes in National Review April 16, 2011 Losing the Future excerpt That’s the choice, is it? Multi-trillion-dollar government “investment” or a nation of potholes? America “invests” a lot in roads. It has more highway signs than almost any other

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Why Not Trump?

Donald Trump is ahead in the pool of Republican contenders, but I recommend caution in considering this man for president.  He is smart, brash, confident, and successful, but there are shortcomings that are serious for a man seeking our highest

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A History of Flawed Intelligence

Though the intelligence failures surrounding Iraq are now well known, recent history is abundant with examples of flawed intelligence that have affected key national security decisions and contingency planning.  They include, for example: the poor quality of the intelligence gathered

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Lets Punish the Rich and Make them Richer

The Revenue Reconciliation Act of 1993 denied public companies any tax deduction for the cost of regular compensation in excess of $1 million dollars a year. It also raised the top tax rate to 39.6%. This caused companies to direct

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Misconceived Philanthropy

It is not considered enough that law should be just, it must be philanthropic.  It is not sufficient that it should guarantee to every citizen the free and inoffensive exercise of his faculties, applied to his physical, intellectual, and moral

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The Regulation Trap

The natural reaction to market breakdown is to add layers of protection and regulation.  But trying to regulate a market entangled by complexity can lead to unintended consequences, compounding crisis rather than extinguishing them because the safeguards add even more

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The Economic Tooth Fairy

There are three rules often missing in economic analysis. What works in one quantity does not necessarily work in another quantity. What worked in one time period may not work in another time period. What works in the short term

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Our Economic Problem in One Chart

Read more in Mark Perry’s Carpe Diem Two Americas: Public vs. Private Employees

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