It Just Ain’t So
We Have Enough Globalization?
Jude Blanchette is a freelance writer living in Shanghai. The debate over free trade is, and has been for over 200 years, quite contentious. In reading over the historical debates, it often seems as if no ground has been made by the advocates of a global, borderless economy. Indeed, this is what makes reading Adam [...]
1Jun2007 | Jude Blanchette | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Stock Market Is a Swindle?
Jude Blanchette is a freelance writer living in China. Michael Kinsley, founding editor of the online magazine Slate, columnist for the Washington Post, and American editor of the Guardian (UK), is a smart guy. His columns are often witty and incisive. Even where Kinsley is wrong (and he often is) he provides the reader a [...]
1Apr2007 | Jude Blanchette | 0 comments | ContinuedRaising the Minimum Wage Will Do No Harm?
President Bush and the Democratically controlled Congress had all but done it. As this goes to press, they are on the verge of hiking the federal minimum wage, which has not budged since 1997. The minimum wage will have risen by 70 cents, or to $5.85, an hour by the time these words are read. [...]
1Mar2007 | Richard B. McKenzie | 3 comments | ContinuedThe More College Graduates the Better?
Many people assume the country would be better off with more college graduates. It seems reasonable if not completely obvious. Nations where few people have much formal education tend to be poor, while nations where a lot of people have college and postgraduate degrees are generally quite wealthy. And within the United States it is [...]
1Jan2007 | George C. Leef | 26 comments | ContinuedThe Trade Deficit Is Debt? It Just Ain’t So!
Writing in the October 4 New York Times, Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz worries about “global imbalances.” Stiglitz’s concerns are revealed in his opening paragraph: “The International Monetary Fund meeting in Singapore last month came at a time of increasing worry about the sustainability of global financial imbalances: For how long can the global economy [...]
1Dec2006 | Donald J. Boudreaux | 1 comment | ContinuedRaising the Minimum Wage Will Discourage Migration? It Just Aint So!
In “Raise Wages, Not Walls,” an op-ed in the July 25 New York Times, Michael Dukakis and Daniel Mitchell make a proposal that is breathtaking in its misunderstanding of basic economics. After showing problems with the various congressional proposals to limit illegal immigration, they give their own solution: increase the minimum wage. They write, “If [...]
1Nov2006 | David R. Henderson | 2 comments | ContinuedOnly the Rich Are Getting Richer? It Just Ain’t So!
“In an era when the rich are the only income group getting richer,” begins an article in the April 13 Washington Post. (Blaine Harden, “As the Rich Ride In, Many Are Priced Out of Homes on the Range.”) But in this one 13-word statement, versions of which have become so common in conversations and newspaper [...]
1Aug2006 | David R. Henderson | 0 comments | ContinuedNothing to Learn from the Antifederalists? It Just Ain’t So!
Joseph Stromberg is a historian and freelance writer. According to Paul Greenberg, writing in the Washington Times in late January, the dreaded Antifederalists and their Articles of Confederation are making a comeback. In particular, these miscreants dare to question executive power. He writes with patriotic horror—a horror that assumes as self-evident a partisan reading of [...]
1Jun2006 | Joseph R. Stromberg | 22 comments | ContinuedWe Need Medical Rationing?
In a recent op-ed in the Los Angeles Times (“A Health Care Prescription that’s Hard to Swallow,” January 30, 2006), Henry Aaron, a well-known health economist at the Brookings Institution, made the following argument: Spending on health care in the United States is rising as a percent of GDP and could go from its current [...]
1May2006 | David R. Henderson | 0 comments | ContinuedA Higher Gasoline Tax Will “Solve Everything”?
Regrettably, I have to criticize someone who, in the past, I have admired a great deal. John Tierney is an iconoclastic columnist for the New York Times who has been writing on environmental issues for at least a decade. His now-classic 1996 Times Magazine story critical of recycling was a well-researched article that I have [...]
1Apr2006 | Roy Cordato | 0 comments | ContinuedWe Need a Stiff Oil Tax?
In an article last fall in the Washington Post, one of my favorite economic journalists, Robert J. Samuelson, argued for “a stiff oil tax” and “stricter fuel economy standards” (September 14, 2005). His rationale for this increased government intervention is that “we are vulnerable to any major cutoff of oil.” We can reduce our vulnerability, [...]
1Mar2006 | David R. Henderson | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Trade Deficit Lowers Our Living Standard?
If Americans could figure out a way to bottle and export all the nonsense and half-truths that have been written about the U.S. trade deficit, the alleged problem might fix itself.
1Jan2006 | Daniel Griswold | 1 comment | ContinuedHurricane Katrina Shows that Government Is Too Small?
By now everyone is aware of the almost inconceivable
incompetence of the Federal Emergency Management Agencys (FEMA) response to Hurricane Katrina.Those who cherish liberty might think this episode would bolster their cause.However, as usual the states intellectual bodyguards have attempted to use this disaster to justify ever higher budgets and even more dictatorial powers.
Regulations Improve the Free Market?
Despite its remarkable record the free market
remains for many people a tough sell. Even
those who on balance support free enterprise
hesitate to give unregulated market forces their full
endorsement.After all, they argue, the market sometimes
fails, requiring corrective measures at the hands of
wise government authorities.
Global Warming Is a Threat?
Last December Naomi Oreskes, an associate professor
of history at UCLA, published a Washington
Post Outlook piece called Undeniable Global
Warming. She asserted that the planet is warming
(true), that increases in greenhouse gases have something
to do with it (true), that several scientific societies hold
this view (true), that the remainder of the discussion is
quibbling about the details, and that we must respond
to the threats that global warming presents.
No Jobs for Young People?
In “The Young and the Jobless,” New York Times columnist Bob Herbert recently wrote that “American workers, especially younger workers, remain stuck in a gloomy employment landscape. . . . The simple truth is that there are not nearly enough jobs available for the many millions of out-of-work or under-worked men and women who need [...]
1Sep2005 | Alan Reynolds | 0 comments | ContinuedChoice Is Too Burdensome?
It’s pretty well certain that the money taken in Social Security payroll taxes would produce greater returns if invested by your financial adviser than it is likely to produce in the government’s pyramid scheme. But proponents of maintaining the Social Security status quo object that not everyone has a financial adviser, and if people had [...]
1Jul2005 | Aeon J. Skoble | 1 comment | Continued-
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