The debates in the class war classifies wealth in the extremes. We hear about Wall Street billionaires and the unemployed but we miss the vast majority in the middle. We sometimes refer to them as the working wealthy. Most small…
Read MoreSupply side economics remains controversial and poorly understood both by its critics who think it is just ‘trickle down’ economics: a thinly veiled rationalization to improve the lives of the wealthy at the expense of the poor, and by many…
Read MoreIn recent news headlines: San Francisco will have a ballot initiative to ban circumcision. While one could make an argument for this on other grounds those who support this initiative have used a comic book format featuring a blond muscled…
Read MoreOver the years of writing this blog there are a few issue that the reading and analysis keeps returning to. At the risk of repetition a few of them are: Political leaders have a natural tendency to promise benefits without…
Read MoreThe free market is not a creed or an ideology that political conservatives, libertarians, and Ayn Rand acolytes want Americans take on faith. The free market is simply a measurement. The free market tells us what people are willing to pay…
Read MoreAccounting has failed us as investors and managers. Accounting should be about generating sufficient statistics to assess the state of a firm. It is more than simply taking numbers and putting them in the appropriate bin based on generally accepted…
Read MoreMore than a proper monetary policy and more than specific fiscal policies the greatest retardant of growth is a simple lack of trust. George W Bush’s tax cuts may have been a proper response to a dot.com crash, Y2K concerns,…
Read MoreIt takes a deliberate effort to be informed in a world of nonstop media. Fear and drama sells much better than a considered deliberation of facts and options. Books in the 1970’s touting an inevitable inflationary spiral had middle class…
Read MoreThe rise of feminine power has tapped into a resource that had been underutilized. Women now make up a large proportion of accountants, lawyers and doctors. It would seem that is this the fulfillment of the wishes of the early…
Read MoreThe CEO of General Motors wants to tax gasoline an additional $1.00 a gallon. Let’s think about that. The higher the price of gasoline the less one drives a car, and the less one drives a car then the less…
Read MoreGeneral William Westmoreland, the U.S. Commander in Vietnam, strongly supported involuntary conscription, and told the [Gates] commission that he didn’t want to command an army of mercenaries. “General,” [Milton] Friedman interrupted, “would you rather command an army of slaves?” Replied…
Read MoreWe want somebody who is smart, but intelligence is not nearly enough. What they believe is more important than how well they think. But I much prefer a candidate who understands the concept and principles they espouse well enough to…
Read MoreThe Supreme Court decision in Kelo v. City of New London upheld the city’s right to use eminent domain to take property from one private citizen and give it to another private citizen under the justification that the use under…
Read MoreIn the June 2011 Commentary Wiliam Voegli writes Why Corporations Love Regulations An excerpt: The heart of the dispute over debit-card fees, for example, is a provision in last year’s Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act ordering the…
Read MoreBruce Thornton writes Corrupt Language Breeds Bad History and Bad Policy, May 24, 2011, as posted at Victor Davis Hanson’s Private Papers. Excerpt: Likewise, just as the Romans named the land after a people that no longer existed, so too…
Read MoreThis conversation between law professor Stephen Carter and a passenger on an airplane as written in Carter: Stagnation Explained, at 30,000 Feet, Bloomberg, May 26, 2011 reflects numerous conversations I have had with fellow business people for the last few…
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Regulating Complexity
In the June 2011 Commentary Wiliam Voegli writes Why Corporations Love Regulations (requires subscription- also in hard copy) The industrial policy of Japan was once heralded as the epitome of the success of central planning, government by the experts. Now…
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