Michelle Dion, writing in her blog, details the troubling circumstances Mexico is in:
As the time nears for the swearing in of Mexico’s new President, the PAN’s Felipe Calderon, the situation is not looking good. Earlier this month, the PRD’s Lopez Obrador had himself sworn in as President in an unofficial ceremony. Yesterday, a small fight […]
Archive for November, 2006
Nov30th2006
Right Vs Left View Of The World
Published by in (modern day) Liberalism, General, Hispanics (Minority Issues), LatinAmerica and ModernPolitics. 17 CommentsNov30th2006
“But even if Pelosi delivers the particulars of what she has so far pledged, it’s not exactly a revolution she’s offering. The gifts, free meals and travel she proposes to ban are largely symbolic perks to lawmakers….And Pelosi’s promised transparency on earmarks is a step down from Democratic campaign vows to ban earmarks sponsored by […]
Nov29th2006
Charles Murray, in a somewhat dated paper, writes:
Here I summarize one of the main results of that inquiry, half hopeful and half disturbing. The hopeful half is that poverty in America is seldom the result of uncontrollable events involving the economic system. I will argue that the old wisdom—that anyone who is willing to […]
Nov29th2006
“Galbraith was a very, very good writer, but he was not a very good economist. His economic history is entertaining, but it is not theoretically sound, and his major theories, captured in The New Industrial State, were almost comically wrong. The book was being proven incorrect by history virtually as he wrote it. His tirades […]
Nov28th2006
The Power Of Economics - Reducing AIDS In Africa
Published by in Economics, General and Poverty. 0 CommentsEsquire magazine on economist Emily Oster solution to reducing AIDS in Africa:
Now a Becker Fellow at the University of Chicago, Oster continues to blur academic boundaries with further work on AIDS and a volatile new interest: the reported wave of female infanticide in Asia.
When I began studying the HIV epidemic in Africa a few years […]
Nov28th2006
“An increase in the minimum wage has several distinctive negative effects on the economy. While the wages of some low skilled workers would improve, it would reduce employment opportunities for teenagers and other lower skilled workers. They are pushed either into unemployment or the underground economy. A bigger minimum also raises prices of fast foods […]
Nov27th2006
The New York Times has a good overview of just who Milton Friedman was and how important he was to world economics:
Milton Friedman, Free Markets Theorist, Dies at 94
Milton Friedman, the grandmaster of free-market economic theory in the postwar era and a prime force in the movement of nations toward less government and greater reliance […]
Nov27th2006
“Language is the keystone to politics. This past week I gave some lectures about illegal immigration. I noticed how the supporters of open borders so often prefer to demonize their opponents as “anti-immigrant”, hoping to reframe the debate into Americans’ supposed animosity against individual arrivals, legal and illegal. And why not when a rational defense […]
Nov25th2006
The Other Milton Friedman: A Conservative With a Social Welfare Program
Published by in DayToDay, Economics, General and Welfare. 0 CommentsRobert Frank, an economist at the Johnson School of Cornell University, writes in the New York Times:
The Other Milton Friedman: A Conservative With a Social Welfare Program
By ROBERT H. FRANK
Published: November 23, 2006
Milton Friedman, who died last week at 94, was the patron saint of small-government conservatism. Conservatives who invoke his name in defense of […]
Nov24th2006
Larry Summers, former president of Harvard, and Treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, writes on Milton Friedman:
The Great Liberator
By LAWRENCE H. SUMMERS
Published: November 19, 2006
Brookline, Mass.
IF John Maynard Keynes was the most influential economist of the first half of the 20th century, then Milton Friedman was the most influential economist of the second half.
Not so […]
Nov23rd2006
The Economist blog gives us all some advice:
TODAY is Thanksgiving in America, one of the few countries that has an entire holiday at least ostensibly devoted to, well, giving thanks….
If you want to live a happier life, start a gratitude journal and spend a few minutes every day writing down the many things you have […]
Nov22nd2006
Real Hourly Compensation Is Up ALOT
Published by in Economics, General, ModernPolitics and Taxes. 0 Comments Dr. Mark J. Perry, professor of finance and economics at the University of Michigan-Flint in the School of Management sets the record straight on real hourly wages:
One issue is that compensation includes both wages AND benefits, and we should really look at TOTAL COMPENSATION over time, and not just monetary wages.
1. The data in […]
Nov22nd2006
“A cultural factor that reduces the social tensions that might otherwise arise from a sharp and rising inequality of Americans’ incomes is that the United States, unlike the countries of Europe, has no aristocratic tradition. There is no suite of tastes, accent, bearing, etc., that distinguishes the rich in America from the nonrich. The rich […]
Nov21st2006
Lowering Capital Gains Taxes Helps The Poor
Published by in Economics, General and Taxes. 2 CommentsMIT economist Arnold Kling writes:
Here’s what the data show: cuts in capital gains tax rates tend to coincide with DECREASES in the poverty rate for the time periods for which data are available. For instance, Ronald Reagan cut the capital gains tax rate as part of his tax reform act of 1986.
Bill Clinton cut the […]
Nov21st2006
“Without subsidies, it would not pay for Americans to produce much cotton; with them, the US is the world’s largest cotton exporter. Some 25,000 rich American cotton farmers divide $3 to $4 billion in subsidies among themselves – with most of the money going to a small fraction of the recipients. The increased supply depresses […]
Nov20th2006
This time a much shorter tribute to a great economist:
The World Turner
Milton Friedman died at the age of 94. Over his long life, he had the satisfaction of seeing the world turn in his direction.
Friedman was born in New York in 1912, at the end of a long period of peace and prosperity. The […]
