With Friends Like These….

Three recent instances of anti- Israeli stances have come from administration officials in a very short period of time. First Hillary Clinton overreacted to an orthodox effort to separate the seating of men and women on Israeli buses. The effort

Scientific Agnosticism

Dec. 05, 2011

Science was not a strong subject for me and I am certainly not qualified to pass judgment on the hard data and the cases for or against anthropomorphic (man-made) global warming. Yet I also realize that most of the pundits

Deregulation vs Misregulation

Dec. 03, 2011

Deregulation was often blamed for the financial collapse, but the greater problem was the regulations themselves. This is not to say that we should be free of regulations but that they should be carefully considered. Good regulation should promote free markets with requirements for

Beyond Left and Right- Really?

Dec. 03, 2011

Occasionally I get soundly rebuked from a reader who calls BS on my moniker ‘ Beyond Left and Right’. Clearly, some readers insist, I am most often conservative and why don’t I just fess up and admit it. I thought

Outsourcing Morality

Dec. 02, 2011

The outsourcing of private morality to the state is a particularly modern affliction, but equally as pernicious. We witness the startling paradox that today’s private society is crasser, less honest, and more uncouth even as its government’s official morality stresses

A Fading Shade of Green

Nov. 30, 2011

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

The Socialism of Fools

Nov. 29, 2011

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

Collateral Damage to the Poor

Nov. 29, 2011

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

HSAs and Obama Care

Nov. 28, 2011

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

A Foundation of Leeches

Nov. 27, 2011

… 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

The Proper Political Narrative

Nov. 26, 2011

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

The Master of Our Circumstances

Nov. 26, 2011

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

The Core of American Exceptionalism

Nov. 24, 2011

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

The Misallocation of Capital

Nov. 22, 2011

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.”

Restricting Judgment is a Poor Solution

Nov. 22, 2011

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

The Entrepreneur And Credit Markets

Nov. 21, 2011

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

Economic Nostalgia

Nov. 20, 2011

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,

What Government Is Not

Nov. 18, 2011

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

The Tea Party Meets Zuccotti Park

Nov. 18, 2011

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

The Narcissism of Minor Differences

Nov. 15, 2011

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

Yearly Archives: 2011

With Friends Like These….

Scientific Agnosticism

Deregulation vs Misregulation

Beyond Left and Right- Really?

Outsourcing Morality

A Fading Shade of Green

The Socialism of Fools

Collateral Damage to the Poor

HSAs and Obama Care

A Foundation of Leeches

The Proper Political Narrative

The Master of Our Circumstances

The Core of American Exceptionalism

The Misallocation of Capital

Restricting Judgment is a Poor Solution

The Entrepreneur And Credit Markets

Economic Nostalgia

What Government Is Not

The Tea Party Meets Zuccotti Park

The Narcissism of Minor Differences

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