Monthly Archives: April 2012

Archive of posts published in the specified Month

Competition vs Fairness

Amity Shlaes writes in the 4/9/12 Wall Street Journal, Tax Policy is About Competition, Not Fairness, What John F. Kennedy understood that today’s politicians forget. Excerpt: Heller’s successful plan to combat the recession of the early 1960s was the Kennedy-Johnson tax

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Individuals and Utopia

Friedrich Hayek wrote, “Equality of the general rules of law and conduct… is the only kind of equality conducive to liberty and the only equality which we can secure without destroying liberty.  Not only has liberty nothing to do with

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Four Degrees of Faith in Capitalism

In his book comparing the Chicago and Austrian schools of economics, Mark Skousen clarifies the various schools of thought by their faith in Capitalism. Marxists have no faith in capitalism.  In the world of capitalism they are the atheists.  “To

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How Anti-Semitism fails

The ability of Arab and Muslim leaders to dominate the United Nations while celebrating their contempt for everything it stands for seems to confirm anti-Semitism’s success. Yet caveat emptor—early benefits of organizing politics against the Jews are inevitably outweighed by the

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The Inconvenient Truth about Taxing the Rich

Gramm and McMillin: The Real Causes of Income Inequality By Phil Gramm and Steve McMillan, the Wall Street Journal 4/6/12 Excerpts: While income distribution has become a source of protest and political debate, any analysis of taxes paid in high

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The Gold Bubble

Today the world’s gold supply is about 170,000 metric tons.  If all of this gold were melded together, it would form a cube of about 68 feet per side. (Picture it fitting comfortably within a baseball infield.)  At $1,750 per

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The Primary Purpose of the Court

Michael Tanner writes in the National Review, Conservatives and the Courts Striking down Obamacare would not be judicial “activism.”, 4/4/12. Excerpt: But as George Will notes, “Truly conservative conservatives take their bearings from the proposition that government’s primary purpose is

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Readings 2012 04 02

The Worst Economic Recovery in History by Edward Lazear in the Wall Street Journal Are there other factors that may have contributed to the slow recovery that we are experiencing? It would be difficult to argue that government polices over

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The Pathology of Previous Legislation

While the Supreme Court is deciding the future of Obamacare, we should not be distracted by only the constitutional issue.  There are many ways to pass bad laws that do pass constitutional muster. John Cochrane writes in his blog, The Grumpy Economist, Supreme Court

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The Severe Limitation of Health Care Experts

Pamela Hartzband and Jerome Groopman write Rise of the Medical Expertocracy Both Democrats and Republicans want to introduce the paternalism of ‘best practices’ into health care in the Wall Street Journal, 3/31/2012. The crux of the excellent analysis is that

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