“The failures of socialism and welfare statism clearly show that those who demand equality at the expense of prosperity will get neither equality nor prosperity.”—Richard W. Rahn, Senior Fellow, Discovery Institute. It is axiomatic in economics that increasing the cost of capital (by taxing it) is destructive to capital formation and, conversely, decreasing it is […]
Voting With Their Feet
One of Houston’s larger companies and the world’s largest onshore drilling company, Nabors Industries, recently became the latest in a series of incorporating relocations of U. S. companies to offshore tax havens, Bermuda in this case. I have been struck by the responses to this trend from labor unions and public officials who seem to […]
Election Year Sell-Out
My disappointment with Congressional Republicans and the Bush administration in domestic policy and appropriations has reached epic proportions with the complete election year sell-out on agriculture subsidies. This bloated embarrassment is enough to make the most cynical Washington political hack blush and makes the French look like agricultural free trade champions by comparison. Gone is […]
Enron Follow Up
A letter from Bud Shivers in response to my January “Lessons From Enron” posed some good thoughts for follow up. There is a lot more to be learned about the true culpability as this story plays out, and much of the substance is presently being obscured by political demagoguery, but further lessons are surfacing. Enron […]
Thoughts On Economic Policy
The debate over the economic “stimulus” bill reached silliness pretty quickly and I for one am pleased it went down. To split hairs over relative degrees of Keynesianism is not my idea of enlightened policy discussion. The whole idea was misguided from the outset. The Wall Street Journal sees the “ghost” of Dick Darman’s 1990 […]
Lessons From Enron
Clearly, there are critical lessons to be learned from the Enron debacle—about transparency in reporting, improper capital structures for derivative and commodity trading, and management hubris—all of which, and more, will be paraded before us as the regulatory and judicial process unfolds. From my perspective, one very significant lesson, or reminder, may be that there […]
Economic Choices
There is, of course, growing evidence of a difficult period ahead for the U. S. economy, compounding the new administration’s already challenging task of developing a consensus on tax and budget issues. In this environment, it is important to consider the longer-term implications of policy in the light of the new realities of the post-industrial […]
Let’s Be Honest About Ag Policy
A friend who is knowledgeable in Federal agriculture policy recently sent me an article from The New York Times which reminded me of the failures of policy in this area and the political difficulties in dealing with them. Since the passage of the acclaimed Freedom To Farm Act in the mid-1990’s, which was supposed to […]
Moyers’ Politics of Justice
Journalist and former LBJ aide Bill Moyers delivered the spring commencement address at my alma mater, The University of Texas at Austin. I wasn’t there, but I read the speech and it struck me as something out of The Great Society dustbin. Here’s an excerpt: “You would think a rich, dynamic nation with the […]
The Inevitability of Marketization
A couple of months ago, I was struck by a notice in the Wall Street Journal that fourteen leaders of industrialized countries signed The Berlin Conference communiqué titled “Progressive Governance in the 21st Century”. Among other center-left aphorisms, it states that globalization “should not just be allowed to happen” and that there should be a […]
- « Previous Page
- 1
- …
- 6
- 7
- 8