Paul F. Cwik is currently an Associate Professor of Economics in the department of management and human resources at Mount Olive College. He earned a B.A. from Hillsdale College, Michigan, an M.A. from Tulane University in Louisiana, and a Ph.D. from Auburn University in Alabama. He has taught classes at several colleges and universities such as Auburn University, Campbell University and Walsh College.

David Leonhardt speaks as the wise one from on high, assuring readers that opposition to Obamacare is part of the American tradition of individualism and laissez-faire. This is one tradition, he says, while another is centralist and collectivist. It’s true enough, I suppose, just as you can say that society has a long tradition of peaceful people and war-like people just as the natural world has a long tradition of parasites and hosts.

I’ve got some ideas about what would happen after the end of Atlas Shrugged. I could just describe the basic plot here for you. I could say, “I think that after the world economy crashes and the governments collapse, the heroes emerge and help to rebuild. Dagny and Galt have a child, who ends up being a Randian Kwisatz Haderach, named Sarah. Then they get divorced when Dagny cheats on Galt with Eddie Willers. Sarah ends up running for President of a scaled back federal government.

Hans Rosling is at it again

Back in May I posted about the exploits of Detroit Mayor David Bing’s right-sizing of the motor city.

Mish has provided a comprehensive update including Bing’s latest plan: “to cutoff city services including road repairs, police patrols, street lights, and garbage collection in 20% of Detroit.”

As I’ve noted before, there are no good arguments for intellectual property.1 It’s really astonishing.

The folks at CoreLogic report that the number of homeowners who owe more on their homes than the homes are worth fell for the 3rd straight quarter.

In the 3rd quarter only 10.8 million homeowners were underwater as opposed to 11 million the previous quarter. In percentage terms 27.5% of American homeowners upside down or nearly so.

A friend sent me a circulating email (see below) that reads as a veiled promotion of neomercantalism. I accused my friend of promoting ideas opposed to liberty, as he had forwarded the email to many under his name. I replied, “Hmmm. So you are a neomercantalist – desiring closed borders as a means to promote war?”

He responded, “How do closed borders promote war? I thought you were the perennial isolationist.”