On his weekly podcast, libertarian magician and skeptic Penn Jillette gave an incisive take on Hillary and Bill Clinton. We have Hillary Clinton — while you were alive, while you were sexually active, three years ago — saying marriage is just between a man and a woman. … And yet many people in [the gay community] are […]
Government work is pretty sweet, if you can get it. If you have to pay for it… not so much. The government has one of the highest paid workforces in the country. Federal bureaucrats make 78% more in total compensation than people in the private sector. State and local employees make on average 25% more. Combined with laws that […]
Reflecting on the recent Democratic debate, Dan Henninger reports that Bernie Sanders said that he would fund his plan to make college free for students “through a tax on Wall Street speculation” (“Bernie Loves Hillary,” Oct. 15). This statement reveals the frivolousness of Mr. Sanders’s economics. If such speculation is as economically destructive as Mr. […]
Many college students are eager to upgrade to Apple’s new iPhone 6s — or so my daughter tells me. But she’s not. The battery life of her $100 Android phone is at least 48 hours on one charge; her friends can’t get through the day without charging their iPhones. She’s okay with her smaller screen […]
Playboy has finally found a new way to shock and titillate America. The magazine has announced that it will no longer feature full nudity. Instead, it will be moving toward a partially clad, cheesecake pin-up style. When I heard the news, I immediately wondered what the great economist Joseph Schumpeter would have made of it. Schumpeter, […]
For those of you who did not watch the Democratic Party presidential debate last night, Senator Bernie Sanders says he wants America to be more like Denmark. In some ways, that is an excellent idea. Denmark, it turns out, has freer trade and better business environment than the United States. Its overall economic freedom is almost identical to that of the […]
It came up again at last night’s Democratic debate, so it’s worth repeating: Bernie Sanders and more than 60 other Democrats in Congress were right to support the 2005 Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA), and Hillary Clinton was wrong to oppose it. Congress had both good practical reason and Constitutional authority to enact PLCAA. Its […]
Debating why the economy is so sluggish is an American pastime. It fills the op-eds, burns up the blogosphere, consumes the TV pundits, and dominates the political debates. It’s a hugely important question because many people are seriously frustrated about the problem. The recent popularity of political cranks and crazies from the left and right […]
On the campaign trail recently, Bernie Sanders, a candidate running for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, said that America’s leaders shouldn’t worry so much about economic growth if that growth serves to enrich only the wealthiest Americans. And that our economic goals have to be redistributing a significant amount of wealth back from those in […]
Assessing the consequences of NAFTA, Mark Thoma says, “For the U.S. – where the Bill Clinton administration sold the agreement as a job-creating policy because U.S. exports would grow by more than its imports – the agreement has not lived up to its promise” (“Is Donald Trump right to call NAFTA a ‘disaster’?” Oct. 5). Disappointingly, Prof. […]
New data show that worker compensation is rising faster in the federal government than in the private sector. After rapid growth in federal pay during the George W. Bush years, growth slowed from 2011 to 2013 after policymakers enacted a partial freeze on federal wages. That era of restraint is now over. The latest data […]
We all know the scene. The urbane starship captain steps up to the console and requests, “Tea. Earl Grey. Hot.” He waits a second or two until a steaming, perfectly brewed cup shimmers into existence. From medieval dreams of the Land of Cockaigne, where roofs are shingled with pastries and roasted chickens fly into our […]
A commenter on a recent thread asked — seemingly from a pro-gun-control perspective — “Why can’t guns be treated like cars, regulated and available, only to those who demonstrate competence and compliance with laws?” That is a perfect excuse for me to reprise my analysis of the guns-cars analogy. Cars are basically regulated as follows (I rely […]
The precautionary principle (“better safe than sorry”) is a maxim embraced by government planners and regulators the world over, from GMOs to pharmaceuticals to the environment. The argument is that it’s better to act on fears preemptively than it is to “do nothing” and wait until there’s a problem. But often, overreaction can be more costly than the […]
I never thought I would encounter a book titled The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels. After all, in this day and age, it is the politically correct and fashionable trend for activists, media, politicians, and even the Pope to call upon each and every one of us to break our “addiction” to oil. For as long as I […]