One of my favorite organizations is the Institute For Justice. It is an extremely successful organization that fights against the powers of the government in areas where there are little other organizations doing so. For example, there is the licensing fight - an especially discriminatory and arbitrary arm of the government that gets little attention […]
Archive for July, 2011
Jul30th2011
Jul29th2011
The Deregulation Era And Developing Countries
Published by in Capitalism, Economics, Inequality and Poverty. 1 CommentLefties often label the era from the late 1970’s to today as the era of deregulation where wages stagnated, income inequality increased, and overall the rich got richer at the expense of the poor. They argue that we should go back to the economic era from roughly the end of WWII, to the late 1970’s. […]
Jul22nd2011
Republican States Have The Best Public Schools
Published by in Economics, Education and Unions. 6 CommentsMore evidence that teachers unions are an impediment to education reform:
When it come to excellence in education, red states rule—at least according to a panel of experts assembled by Tina Brown’s Newsweek.
Using a set of indicators ranging from graduation rate to college admissions and SAT scores, the panel reviewed data from high schools all […]
Jul20th2011
Harvard economist Edward Glaeser writes:
Americans, and their companies, have long benefited from their freedom to move throughout our country.
In the 19th century, we moved in search of natural resources, exchanging the stony soil of New England for the rich soil of Iowa. In the 20th century, Americans were more likely to migrate in search of better political […]
Jul19th2011
The Progressive Magazine On Ha-Joon Chang’s Book
Published by in Economics, FreeTrade, General and ModernPolitics. 11 CommentsI got back from a five day trip to Chicago yesterday, and as such, was able to catch up on a lot of my magazine reading. A review that caught my attention was Amitabh Pal, of The Progressive Magazine, review of Ha-Joon Chang’s recent book 23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism. For those […]
Jul14th2011
“I’ve written numerous times over the last year about rapidly worsening perceptions of the U.S. in the Muslim world, including a Pew poll from April finding that Egyptians view the U.S. more unfavorably now than they did during the Bush presidency. A new poll released today of six Arab nations — Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the […]
Jul13th2011
Quote Of The Day
Published by in (modern day) Liberalism, Economics, ModernPolitics, Myths and Taxes. 2 Comments“BTW, progressives like Yglesias often point out that no matter what they say, the GOP is devoted single-mindedly to one goal, and one goal only—lower tax rates for the rich. And I have to agree that that is an obsession of many GOP economists. But then why the strange pattern of state […]
Jul12th2011
“In my opinion, mortgage loan modifications are the biggest macroeconomic mistake of the Obama Administration. I could not tell you whether the stimulus bill helped or hurt. I am skeptical that the health care bill or the Dodd-Frank bill had much effect. But I am pretty sure that I […]
Jul11th2011
Setting The Record Straight On Herbert Hoover
Published by in Economics, Fiscal Stimulus and Myths. 0 CommentsMegan McArdle writes:
Hoover did not tighten up on spending. According to the historical tables of the Office of Management and Budget, spending in 1929 was $3.1 billion, up from $2.9 billion the year before. In 1930 it was $3.3 billion. In 1931, Hoover raised spending to $3.6 billion. And in 1932, […]
Jul8th2011
Timothy Taylor explains:
Over the last 2010 years, 55% of total economic output happened in the 20th century, and an additional 23% of the total in just the first 10 years of the 21st century.About 28% of the total years of human life lived in the last 2010 years happened during the 20th century, and about 6% […]
Jul6th2011
“I do get the point that if you are young and idealistic and want your work to have a goal of alleviating poverty, working for a typical business may seem unlikely to relate to your objective. But it’s hard to know. Has poverty in India and China been reduced more […]
Jul5th2011
I found this surprising:
A new study by the Cultural Cognition Project, a team headed up by Yale law professor Dan Kahan, shows that people who are more science- and math-literate tend to be more skeptical about the consequences of climate change. Increased scientific literacy also leads to higher polarization on climate-change issues
More […]
Jul1st2011
“… there is no hard and fast distinction between cyclical and structural unemployment. For instance, if structural unemployment in American has risen closer to European levels, it may be partly due to the decision to extend unemployment insurance from 26 weeks to 99 weeks, and to increase the minimum wage by over 40% right before […]
