Archives

Don’t Bash the ‘Burbs, Improve the City

I love the phrase ‘urban sprawl.’ Can you think of another phrase for a social issue that reminds you of someone lounging around the house? Vaguely judgmental, it also conjures up an image of haphazardness, a lack of control, an attitude of let-things-fall-where-they-may. The Sierra Club’s against sprawl. So are…

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On This Labor Day, the Glass Is Half-Full

(The original ran under a different title.) What proportion of the U.S. labor force earns the minimum wage or less? It’s a good question for Labor Day and one measure of how you think the U.S. economy treats people. Some people see the glass as half-empty. Others see it as…

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Deficit Spending and the U.S. Economy

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Curing What Ails Corporate America

(The title has been changed to protect the author.) When the prizes get bigger, people run a little faster, jump a little higher, try a little harder, rest a little less often and do all the things competitors do to get an edge. They also cheat. Over the past 25…

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More money hasn’t made public schools better

So education vouchers are constitutional after all. At least that’s what the Supreme Court says, and they’re the only ones that count. So forget about the legal issues for now and focus on the educational impact of voucher programs. Are they going to be good or bad for students? Voucher…

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What Do Farmers Want From Me?

From Ideas on Liberty You’d think in a democracy that the greater the number of people on your side of an issue, the more likely it will be that you’ll get your way. But it ain’t necessarily so. As Mancur Olson, Gary Becker, and others have pointed out, in politics,…

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Napsternomics: What’s the Most Effective Way to Protect Intellectual Property?

In the heyday of Napster, you could steer virtually any song onto your computer desktop. Without much additional effort, you could then download it onto an MP3 player or burn a CD. Both methods allowed the listener to enjoy high quality music akin to a purchased CD but without having…

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Savings vs. Debts

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Farm Aid

Text from National Public Radio, Morning Edition Audio I suspect the irony was lost on the President. On the same week he signed the farm bill, he was in the midwest advocating tougher workfare requirements for welfare moms. Six years ago, Congress passed the Freedom to Farm Act promising to…

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No Picnic on the Prairie

You’re stuck in traffic en route to that soccer practice, the radio blaring, cell phone ringing. You’ve had it. You’re tired of the frantic pace of your life. You need to simplify. Live a more grounded, elemental way of life. Five thousand families had similar thoughts. They wanted to be…

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No Fat Tax

I wish I weighed a little bit less. Or a lot less. And I often fear, to paraphrase Kingsley Amis, that I’m heading in the wrong direction, that inside of me is an even fatter me waiting to get out. I’m not alone. A recent study found that 80% of…

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Take My Used Book, Please!

From the Wall Street Journal The Author’s Guild is mad at Amazon—the online bookseller. Getting mad at the river might have been more productive. It seems that Amazon is helping its customers sell—kids, cover your ears—used books. With increasing frequency, when shopping for a book at Amazon, you’ll find that…

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In Praise of That Ugly Box On the Edge of Town

Wal-Mart has become the biggest corporation in the world, measured in annual sales. To some, Wal-Mart’s success is the ultimate symbol of the hollowing out of the U.S. economy. We were once the workshop of the world. Now we’re nothing but a service economy of minimum wage jobs. When did…

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We Can’t Get Rich Doing Each Other’s Laundry

From Ideas on Liberty Since World War II, manufacturing employment as a fraction of total employment has declined steadily. In the middle of the war, it was over 40 percent of the work force. By 1966 it dipped below 30 percent for the first time. By 1985, it dropped below…

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If They Hawk It, You Will Come

Oprah and Martha appear as different as night and day. One is African-American. The other is whiter than white. One is chatty and informal. She seems like one of us. She has weight problems. The other one seems almost too perfect. Everything is handmade, homemade, crafted with love and matches…

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