The Wall Street Journal has a good editorial today lauding the new Republicans governors of New Jersey and Virginia, both of whom are reducing spending. But unlike in Washington, where a spending cut is so loosely defined that politicians can increase spending and…
Daily Analysis
Only Mark Steyn Could (Appropriately) Combine Pornography and Healthcare.
Very funny column, but the underlying message is quite depressing: Last Thursday, the California Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board voted to set up a committee to examine whether condoms should be required on all pornographic film shoots. California has…
A Victory Against the Federal Reserve
Kudos to the federal appeals court that just ruled that the Federal Reserve has no right to hide the sordid special handouts it provided to well-connected financial firms. Here’s an excerpt from a report about the decision: The Federal Reserve Board must…
The Joy of Government-Run Healthcare
I don’t think the number of doctors leaving the profession will come anywhere close to this level, but polling data reported by the New England Journal of Medicine is another indication of the dangers of letting politicians get even more power over the health…
Personal Accounts Are Better than Empty Promises from Social Security
My Cato colleague Jose Pinera makes a powerful argument for “privatizing” Social Security, which is something that has happened in about 30 nations. My Ph.D. dissertation was on Australia’s private system, so I’ve always had a soft spot for…
Does a Story about Government-Run Healthcare Have a Happy Ending?
We’ve already addressed this issue, but this story is even more amusng. I’ll resist the need for any (additional) awful puns, and I’ll even admit I don’t know for sure that these…um…services are financed by taxpayers (but that must…
A Confession from the CBO Director
The Congressional Budget Office recently estimated that the so-called stimulus generated jobs and growth. I addressed some of the profound shortcomings in CBO’s Keynesian model in a previous post, pointing out that the model is structured to produce certain…
Keynesian Economics and the Wizard of Oz.
When Dorothy and her friends finally reach Oz, they present themselves to the almighty Wizard, only to eventually discover that he is just an illusion maintained by a charlatan hiding behind a curtain. This seems eerily akin to the state of Keynesian economics. It…
Big Business and Big Government in Bed Together: The Example of Corrupt Pharmaceutical Companies.
This column by Tim Carney in the Washington Examiner should make every honest person nauseous. It explains how the big pharmaceutical companies are Obama’s biggest allies. This is well know inside the beltway, but average Americans don’t understand that…
Thomas Sowell: Obama's Policies Are a Sedative, not a Stimulus.
As usual, Sowell is right on the mark. By expanding the size and burden of government, Obama is making it more difficult for the economy to prosper: President Obama keeps telling us that he is “creating jobs.” But more and more Americans have no jobs. The…