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 the 'Personal' Category
Jul30th2011
May25th2011
I’ll be in the Phoenix area tomorrow and Tuesday night through Thursday morning of next week…if any bloggers would like to meet up, send me a personal email.
May7th2011
The Leftist View Of The World
Published by in Education, ModernPolitics, Personal and Vouchers. 6 CommentsReaders of my blog, especially those who comment frequently, know my good friend Jon. He’s a recent convert to the left and believes in it passionately. A common theme of his world view, and those on the left in general, is the tug of war between the rich and the poor. The powerful and the non-powerful. […]
Apr21st2011
Years ago, I was given the opportunity to meet Milton Friedman in person. It had always been a dream of mine and a picture with him would have been something I would have cherished forever. There was only one problem: it would have cost me $10,000. Even at that price, I still considered it. When […]
Feb1st2011
The Left vs Right Economic Model (aka Europe vs United States model)
Published by in Discrimination, Economics, Europe, Hispanics (Minority Issues), Inequality, Personal and Taxes. 6 CommentsMy good friend Jon asked an important question: why not prefer the European economic model vs the United States economic model? I didn’t want to bog down his comments section with a long response, so I thought I’d post my longer response here.
Basically, there are two paradigms, two “visions” of an economy. The first, is […]
Nov30th2010
In Defense Of For-Profit Colleges
Published by in (modern day) Liberalism, Academia, Education, General, Hispanics (Minority Issues), ModernPolitics, Personal and University. 2 CommentsOne of the biggest blind spots of policymakers and pundits is the inability to take target market into account. For example, you can’t just compare the wages of employees at Hilton Hotels vs Motel 6’s and conclude that Hilton Hotels are superior because the employees are paid more. You have to take the companies vastly […]
Jul29th2010
Two Arguments In Favor Of Immigration
Published by in General, Hispanics (Minority Issues), Immigration and Personal. 9 CommentsWith the Arizona (anti-)immigration laws coming into affect soon, I have seen a lot of arguments in favor of immigration by those opposed to the Arizona laws. Most of them are either weak on economics, or miss the point completely. As a strong supporter of immigration, I thought I’d give two of my favorite arguments […]
Mar3rd2010
The Effort To Keep Ethnic Studies Professors Employed
Published by in DayToDay, General and Personal. 5 CommentsAs someone who both grew up in Compton and attends UCSD, I feel compelled to comment on the recent race relation issues UCSD is having. As most of you have probably already heard, the whole thing started when UCSD students, outside the campus, had a “Compton Cookout”, where participants were to wear “chains, rapper-style urban […]
Feb10th2010
I admit it, I get uneasy feelings when people congratulate Obama for increasing Pell Grants. I don’t see it as the universal positive that many others do. For three reasons.
First, Pell grants are politically cheap. Increasing funding for Pell grants takes little courage and comes with no political cost. Who disagrees with more funding for […]
Jan8th2010
Marginal Difference
Published by in Chicanoism, Hispanics (Minority Issues) and Personal. 7 CommentsRelated to yesterdays post, I have previously tried to explain the concept of marginal return and why, because of the already overwhelming flow of educated minorities going into social services fields, the hard sciences may be the place to make the biggest impact - if that is your end goal.
I wrote:
Second, it is inefficient. Minorities […]
Jan7th2010
More On Majors And Why Chicano Studies Is Garbage
Published by in Chicanoism, General, Hispanics (Minority Issues) and Personal. 15 CommentsA frequent topic of discussion in my family is what university, what major and the return to investment my sister should pursue after finishing high school. My dad is a man of modest means and is the only bread winner in a family of five - 3 children of which, have yet to pursue a […]
Jul27th2009
Limited Governments Best Friend: The CBO
Published by in (modern day) Liberalism, Economics, Fiscal Stimulus, General, HealthCare, ModernPolitics and Personal. 2 CommentsRemember the Democrats claim that by empowering a new panel (the Independent Medicare Advisory Council) to recommend future spending reductions we could save several billions of dollars in healthcare costs? If this was before the creation of the CBO (1974, according to Wiki), such claims would be nearly impossible to disprove. Democrats could get away […]
Jun5th2009
The Clinton Years vs The Bush Years - A Pet Peeve I have
Published by in (modern day) Liberalism, Economics, General, ModernPolitics, Myths and Personal. 5 CommentsCasey B. Mulligan, professor of economics at the University of Chicago, made a comment that he should know is disingenuous, he wrote:
the “big spending Democrat” stereotype is incorrect — government spending / GDP fell under Clinton and increased under Bush.
This comparison, used to argue that when it comes to spending there is no difference between […]
May26th2009
The Cultural Argument Against Gay Marriage
Published by in Gay Marriage, General and Personal. 13 CommentsOf all the arguments against gay marriage, the religious liberties argument, the reductio absurdum argument, the better safe than sorry argument, and others, the one people have the most difficulty understanding, atleast from my experience in discussing it, is the cultural argument against gay marriage, yet it is one of the ones I find most […]
May23rd2009
Me and my now five month old baby boy:
Picture was taken in front of the Birch Aquarium in La Jolla, California.
More pictures here.
May22nd2009
The Invisible Hand vs Charity
Published by in Capitalism, Chicanoism, Economics, Hispanics (Minority Issues), Personal and Poverty. 3 CommentsOne of the major problems I have with Chicano Studies is its overemphasis on altruistic ventures as opposed to “personal gain”. Becoming a community organizer, for example, is more encouraged than becoming an engineer. This was particularly important to me last year when my sister, being in her junior year of high school, was applying […]
