Audio Politicians like to blame the loss of manufacturing jobs on the nefarious schemes of foreigners to steal American jobs and lower our standard of living. The real answer lies closer to home. And surprisingly, the shrinking of the manufacturing sector is actually a sign of America’s economic health. Consider…
Read MoreIf all the economists in the world were laid end to end, they still wouldn’t reach a conclusion. So goes the joke. Most of that reputation for wishy-washiness comes from economists trying to predict things like next year’s interest rate. You might as well toss a coin. Yet it was…
Read More[Thanks go to Lenny Alford for making the opening paragraph possible.] The Redbirds are in Beantown. The year is 1967, I’m thirteen. A friend of the family, Lenny Alford, in a kindness that should never be forgotten, has given me his ticket in the bleachers for the sixth game of…
Read MoreFrom Ideas on Liberty A few years back we thought about building a deck or a porch on the back of our house. But we decided against it when the estimates started coming in. They were about double what the architect had told us it would cost. Double! Had the…
Read MoreYou’ve seen the old grainy black and white photos of American cities from the early part of the 20th century-model T’s, streets teeming with people, and streetcars. Milk trucks wend their way to make their deliveries and the iceman cometh, bringing merely ice. We have a nostalgia and romance for…
Read MoreBefore the war in Iraq began, there were two divergent views on how it would go. The optimistic view, predicted a cakewalk. The pessimistic view predicted a quagmire. In the first week of the war, the quagmire view seemed to be vindicated. In Basra and Nasriya, snipers maintained control of…
Read MoreWhat if there really were a toy shop at the North Pole where elves made toys and gave them away? And suppose you were dictator for a day. It’s up to you to decide whether to let those free toys into America. You’re a nice dictator, the kind that inhabits…
Read MoreFrom Ideas on Liberty What does Adam Smith have to do with basketball? You will not find the word in either The Theory of Moral Sentiments or The Wealth of Nations. Yet Smith has much to say about the game played with the round ball on a hardwood court. Consider…
Read MoreFrom Ideas on Liberty What does Adam Smith have to do with basketball? You will not find the word in either The Theory of Moral Sentiments or The Wealth of Nations. Yet Smith has much to say about the game played with the round ball on a hardwood court. Consider…
Read MoreText from National Public Radio, Morning Edition Audio A lot of people seem to think that the Bush stimulus plan is just a way for the President to pay off some of his fat cat friends. Could be. But for those who always assume the worst about this President, I…
Read MoreIf arsenic is unhealthy, then you’d think that the less arsenic the better. Same with radiation, mercury, dioxin and a whole host of environmental toxins. But zero tolerance is expensive. There’s no free lunch. Getting rid of the last molecule of dioxin in the environment means we’ll have less money…
Read MoreFrom Ideas on Liberty I really shouldn’t tell you this, but Cape Cod is a very beautiful place. I shouldn’t mention its beaches with their towering sand dunes. I shouldn’t mention the golden eagle I saw soaring over the marsh near our cottage where we stayed on vacation. I shouldn’t…
Read MoreThe New York Times has conceded that the all-male Augusta National Golf Club has a constitutional right to bar women from membership. Still, women have called on Tiger Woods to use his constitutional right to boycott this year’s Masters golf tournament as a way of pressuring the club. “A tournament…
Read MoreShould the Bush income tax cuts be made permanent? Answering this question is likely to be one of the first orders of business for the new Congress. Opponents complain that the tax cut is a giveaway to the rich. Fat cats are going to get fatter. Defenders of the tax…
Read MoreTake a look at your pay stub and you’ll see separate amounts withheld for income taxes and the payroll tax called FICA. Listing them separately makes people think that the FICA tax must be something different from the income tax. And it is—in the sense that the size of each…
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