Don’t Let Government Define Marriage (Or Optimal Child-Rearing Environments)
George and Martha Washington never had a marriage license, writes Gardner Goldsmith, and most Americans didn’t need them until the mid-1800s.
Chinese Innovation
It’s a commonplace that Americans and Westerners are the technical and business innovators, and that Chinese are good at imitation. But sometimes it’s the reverse. I recently learned of a Chinese tax policy that I fear the IRS may want to emulate someday (if they are not already--I’m not a tax expert).
Something to Cheer at The New York Times
Earlier today I would not have believed it possible that I would write something in praise of an Op-Ed piece in The New York Times.
But Nicolas D. Kristof has written an article that demonstrates some serious understanding of a highly charged subject and has had the courage to express it in his column. The title of his article conveys its nature. It’s called “In Praise of the Maligned Sweatshop.”
Clogging Capital Markets
Gregory Bresiger says that Regulation National Market System’s June 29th trade-through rule mandate had become a dead letter. But the regulatory state — massive, expensive, and Byzantine — survives.
Teaching Basic Economics to Fifth Graders
Arthur Foulkes’s goal was not just to introduce them to the basics of economic science, but to inoculate them against future attempts to teach them bad economics.
The First Truly Literate Generation
Remember those silly days in the 1990s, when Clinton, Gore, and their friends cobbled together our money to put computers in every classroom and community center? The hope was that the computer would at last do what the government has so far been unable to do after a century of work: make every child literate and high-minded. It turned out that most of the new computers gathered dust and became obsolete.
Bernanke-Hawk or Black Hawk?
Before he became Fed Chairman, Ben Bernanke became infamous as a crazy inflationist willing to go as far as dropping dollar bills from a helicopter if necessary to safeguard the existence of price inflation, earning him nick names like Ben “Printing Press” Bernanke, Ben “Helicopter” Bernanke and Ben “Black Hawk” Bernanke. This was troublesome for Bernanke, because a reputation as a inflationist is -whether fair or not- not good for any central banker.
Science Has Part of the Answer
How to Destroy Mongolian Mining
The Mongolian state imposed what it has termed a “windfall profits” tax on mining carried out in that country. As Morgan J. Poliquin explains, this tax is so punitive that its imposition is tantamount to nationalization.
The Muddied Waters of Adam Smith’s Life
James Buchan’s new book provides further evidence to support Murray Rothbard’s thesis that Adam Smith was a somewhat brilliant man without direction and significant insight. And yet, Smith’s views were embraced by many, including both Margaret Thatcher and Karl Marx.
He was the supposed “champion of laissez-faire” economics without ever using the phrase. The supposed “free-thinker” who argued that people should “respect the established powers and privileges.”
