Everyone knows about the class-action lawsuit against Hooters, the restaurant featuring waitresses in shorts and tight t-shirts. In the settlement, Hooters paid $2 million to the men who were denied the opportunity to serve as Hooter Girls, another $1.75 million in lawyer’s fees, and created three new “gender-neutral positions.”
Competition is a process, the Austrian economists have long said, not a moment frozen in time. Today’s dominant company could be tomorrow’s rubble. Whether the winner can stay on top is dependent on its management, its ability to innovate, and, above all, the will of the consuming public.
It’s time to start thinking of the stock market as a giant S&L. Money continues to pour in, despite a bounty of evidence that the extraordinary gains of the last few years cannot be enjoyed in the near future. The perception has never been stronger that the stock market is the right place to be for your long-term investment needs.
Scrooge came in the form of government last year. The company Bill Gates built into the planet’s leading money machine is still the target of a federal probe and a senate inquiry. The charge: anti-competitive behavior.
In recent months, we have been inundated with a pro-Teddy Roosevelt barrage from PBS to the Weekly Standard. He was, writes David Brooks, “a distinctly American kind that married nationalism to individualism.” His bust adorns the desks of Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich, Bob Dole. His profile is carved into Mount Rushmore.
The conventional wisdom on the defeat of Fast Track trade legislation is dead wrong. As the press would have it, the failure of Fast Track reflects the rise of grass-roots protectionism. The vote in Congress to deny Clinton the authority to negotiate trade deals is a response to constituent pressure.
Seen and heard almost everywhere in New York are these four words: “Hey, you never know.” It’s the slogan of the New York State Lottery Commission, and it is used to trick people into a self-imposed form of higher taxation.
A Jewish Batman? A female Robin? The Dynamic Duo battling on behalf of truth, justice, and Austrian economics? Are we in a parallel universe or what? We are indeed if we are reading The Batman Chronicles, the Winter 1998 issue, devoted to “Elseworlds,” in which “heroes are taken from their usual settings and put into strange times and places.”
While American “liberals” tend to view Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, and Bill Clinton as their political and philosophical idols, conservatives at the Weekly Standard magazine and elsewhere have begun touting Henry Clay as their first political icon.
President Bill Clinton called on nine opponents of affirmative action during his manipulative “national dialogue on race,” and asked a reasonable question. “What do you think we should do?”
The right answer is nothing. Do nothing at all.
