Archive for E.C. Pasour Jr.
U.S. Agricultural Programs: Who Pays?
E. C. Pasour, Jr. is professor emeritus of agricultural and resource economics at North Carolina State University. He is coauthor with Randal R. Rucker of Plowshares and Pork Barrels: The Political Economy of Agriculture (Independent Institute, 2005). The Economist labeled the recently enacted 2008 farm bill “A Harvest of Disgrace” (May 24, 2008). The five-year [...]
1Nov2008 | E.C. Pasour Jr. | 1 comment | ContinuedThe Tobacco-Quota Buyout: More Legal Plunder
E. C. Pasour, Jr., is professor emeritus of agricultural and resource economics, North Carolina State University. Critics of tobacco use (and others) have been calling for an end to all government support to the industry for several decades. Now, under the corporate-tax bill passed by Congress last October, owners of tobacco quotas and farmers who [...]
1Feb2005 | E.C. Pasour Jr. | 2 comments | ContinuedEnding Farm Subsidies Wouldn’t Help the Third World?
Talks by the 146 members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) collapsed last fall over trade-liberalization disputes between rich and poor countries. The biggest bone of contention was the extent to which the “first world”—mainly Europe, the United States, and Japan—were willing to slash their huge farm subsidies. More than 20 developing countries, including Brazil, [...]
1Apr2004 | E.C. Pasour Jr. | 5 comments | ContinuedWe Can Do Better than Government Inspection of Meat
Last year’s news reports of tainted beef focused public attention on the safety of the meat supply. In August 1997, Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman forced Hudson Foods to recall 25 million pounds of hamburger meat produced at the firm’s state-of-the-art plant in Nebraska. The nation’s largest beef recall occurred after several Colorado consumers became [...]
1May1998 | E.C. Pasour Jr. | 1 comment | ContinuedThe Ultimate Resource 2 by Julian Simon
Princeton University Press • 1996 • 734 pages • $35.00 E. C. Pasour is professor of agricultural and resource economics at North Carolina State University, Raleigh. In this powerful and unrestrained challenge to environmental doomsayers, Julian Simon has updated and further substantiated the conclusions of his 1981 book The Ultimate Resource. The standard of living [...]
1Apr1998 | E.C. Pasour Jr. | 0 comments | ContinuedDynamics of the Mixed Economy: Toward a Theory of Interventionism by Sanford Ikeda
Routledge • 1997• xiv+296 pages • $69.95 Dr. Pasour is professor of agricultural and resource economics at North Carolina State University, Raleigh. In Dynamics of the Mixed Economy, a mixed economy is defined as any political-economic system that lies between the extremes of laissez-faire capitalism and pure collectivism. In a critique of interventionism published in [...]
1Nov1997 | E.C. Pasour Jr. | 0 comments | ContinuedBook Review: Travels with a Hungry Bear: A Journey to the Russian Heartland by Mark Kramer
Dr. Pasour is professor of agricultural and resource economics at North Carolina State University, Raleigh. Mark Kramer, on assignment for the New York Times Magazine, visited the Soviet Union several times, beginning in 1987, to explore its well-known agricultural problems. This account of Kramer’s journeys shows why neither perestroika nor privatization efforts following the breakup [...]
1Feb1997 | E.C. Pasour Jr. | 0 comments | ContinuedConsumer Information and the Calculation Debate
Dr. Pasour is professor of agricultural and resource economics at North Carolina State University, Raleigh. Government intervention has been common throughout the world over the past half century, whatever the type of political and economic system. In socialist countries such as the former Soviet Union and its satellites, government assumed primary responsibility for all economic [...]
1Dec1996 | E.C. Pasour Jr. | 0 comments | ContinuedSaving the Planet with Pesticides and Plastic: The Environmental Triumph of High Yield Farming
Dr. Pasour is Professor of Agricultural and Resource Economics at North Carolina State University. The media is all too eager to spread the message of “doom and gloom” environmentalists. Pesticides and chemical fertilizers pose an imminent and growing threat both to human health and to wildlife. Population growth is spiraling upward out of control and [...]
1Jan1996 | E.C. Pasour Jr. | 3 comments | ContinuedThe Government as Robin Hood
Dr. Pasour is Professor of Agricultural and Resource Economics at North Carolina State University. Robin Hood robbed the rich to give to the poor. Although most people are critical of Robin Hood’s actions, relatively few question the legitimacy of governmental coercion to redistribute income. The typical justification for government welfare programs hinges on a highly [...]
1Dec1994 | E.C. Pasour Jr. | 1 comment | ContinuedYour MoneyYour Choice
E. C. Pasour, Jr., is Professor of Agricultural and Resource Economics at North Carolina State University. The segment “Your Money—Your Choice” is a recurring feature on ABC’s nightly world news program hosted by Peter Jennings. It focuses on “pork barrel” spending such as the honey price-support program or military purchases that even the Pentagon doesn’t [...]
1Oct1993 | E.C. Pasour Jr. | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Samaritans Dilemma and the Welfare State
Dr. Pasour is a professor of economics at North Carolina State University at Raleigh. The parable of the Good Samaritan in the biblical story is well known. In traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho, the Samaritan came across and assisted a man who had been robbed and beaten by thieves and “left half dead.” Under the [...]
1Jun1991 | E.C. Pasour Jr. | 4 comments | ContinuedModernization and Central Planning
Dr. Pasour is a professor of economics at North Carolina State University at Raleigh. The failure of collectivism as a productive economic system in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union was fully predictable from the economic calculation debate that occurred more than 50 years ago. Ludwig von Mises and F. A. Hayek demonstrated that the [...]
1Jan1991 | E.C. Pasour Jr. | 0 comments | ContinuedPerestroikas Missing Ingredient
Dr. Pasour is professor of economics at North Carolina State University at Raleigh. Perestroika, Mikhail Gorbachev’s widely discussed restructuring of the Soviet economy, has done little to improve Soviet living standards. Are the heralded perestroika reforms consistent with the increased use of mar ket forces to organize production? Is the proposed restructuring of the Soviet [...]
1Jun1990 | E.C. Pasour Jr. | 0 comments | ContinuedBook Review: The High Cost of Farm Welfare by Clifton B. Luttrell
Cato Institute, 224 Second Street SE, Washington, DC 20003 • 1989 149 pages * $19.95 doth, $9.95 paper Government programs haven’t solved the economic woes plaguing U.S. agriculture. Despite record expenditures on farm programs during the 1980s, financial stress in U.S. agriculture during the Reagan era was at its highest level since the Great Depression [...]
1Sep1989 | E.C. Pasour Jr. | 0 comments | ContinuedBook Review: The High Cost of Farm Welfare by Clifton B. Luttrell
Cato Institute, 224 Second Street SE, Washington, DC 20003 • 1989 149 pages * $19.95 doth, $9.95 paper Government programs haven’t solved the economic woes plaguing U.S. agriculture. Despite record expenditures on farm programs during the 1980s, financial stress in U.S. agriculture during the Reagan era was at its highest level since the Great Depression [...]
1Aug1989 | E.C. Pasour Jr. | 0 comments | ContinuedUndertaxed or Overspent?
Americans and many other members of the world economic community are worried about the U.S. government s budget deficits. The deficit in any year is the amount by which Federal expenditures exceed receipts. Recent turmoil in U.S. and other financial markets has been attributed to uncertainties about whether and how U.S. budget deficits will be [...]
1May1988 | E.C. Pasour Jr. | 10 comments | Continued-
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