The passion for equality and social justice often obscures the best way to achieve it. This is the epitome of virtue signaling; policies and results matter more than intent,
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Clarity in words and thoughts decay over time. When opposing views retain respect for the same words and principles, those ideas become ripe for interpretation, transposed to meet our current personal and political objectives as much as we may profess fidelity to its conception.
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“Nature smiles at the union of freedom and equality in our utopias. For freedom and equality are sworn and everlasting enemies, and when one prevails the other dies. “
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from Jonah Goldberg at National Review The Idiot Boys of Antifa and the Alt-Right First of all, Stalinism was genocidal (so were Leninism, Maoism, Jacobinism, Pol Potism, etc.). The only legitimate retort to this is immorally legalistic. The Soviets successfully lobbied
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from Deirdre McCloskey at The New York Times, Equality, Liberty, Justice and Wealth: You may object that ideas are a dime a dozen and that to make them fruitful we must start with adequate physical and human capital and good institutions.
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Progressivism can be viewed as socialism lite, paying homage to the great progress of capitalism while acknowledging some of the limitations of a free market. Social and economic theories develop, mature and evolve as they face the hard tests of
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From Michael Barone at National Review- Equality at the Expense of Prosperity: Economist Tyler Cowen takes issue with another of Piketty’s assumptions, that the rich can earn 4 to 5 percent on their wealth “automatically, with the mere passage of time,
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“What makes an outlook “conservative’ is that it is rooted in an attitude about the past rather than in expectations of the future. The first principles of conservatism are propositions about human nature and the way human beings behave in
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from Sarah Hoyt, Tiddlywinks — Threat or Menace? Look, guys, yes, some societies have been more egalitarian than others – mostly very poor societies are egalitarian because everyone is poor. – pioneer societies tend to be more “equal” because everyone
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I attended my first shareholders’ meeting of Berkshire Hathaway in Omaha this weekend. My investment manager, Gary Watkins (Banyan Capital), has been a shareholder and regular attendee of these meetings for some time. I had heard of these meetings as
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From Michael Barone at National Review- Equality at the Expense of Prosperity: But is his picture of current trends complete? The Manhattan Institute’s Scott Winship points out that relying, as Piketty does, on tax returns for the U.S. statistics means
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From Daniel Greenfield’s excellent blog, Sultan Knish, The Inequality of Access: Excerpts: When government is big, then true inequality is not of wealth, but of political access. Money can buy you access, or as the recently released Orlando Findlayter discovered,
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Bret Stephens writes in the Wall Street Journal Obama’s Envy Problem. Excerpts: The moral greatness of capitalism rests in the fact that it is the only economic system where one person’s gain can be another’s also—where Steve Jobs‘s billions are his shareholders’
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Bret Stephens writes in the Wall Street Journal Obama’s Envy Problem. Excerpts: Now about inequality. In 1835 Alexis de Tocqueville noticed what might be called the paradox of equality: As social conditions become more equal, the more people resent the
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Christina Hoff Sommers writes Lessons from a Feminist Paradise on Equal Pay Day in The American, 4/9/13. Excerpts: Generous parental leave policies and readily available part-time options have unintended consequences: instead of strengthening women’s attachment to the workplace, they appear
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Jeff Jacoby adds to the class warfare debate in ‘The defining issue of our time’? Hardly, in The Boston Globe, 5/6/12. Excerpts: But what Americans honor is equality in the eyes of the law, political equality — not equality of
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Daniel Hannan hits a home run in the UK The Telegraph with Memo to the Occupy Protesters: here are ten things we evil capitalists really think. Hannan item number 5: We are not against equality. We generally recognize the benefits in
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Daniel Hannan writes in the UK The Telegraph with Memo to the Occupy Protesters: here are ten things we evil capitalists really think. Point 6: Nor, by the way, does state intervention seem to be an effective way to promote
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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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The bitter and partisan debate on extending the Bush tax rates was another manifestation of the debate on the inequality in the distribution of income and wealth in our country. There are those who contend that our inequality is making
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