Today’s Links: October 27, 2011

OPINION

NICHOLAS KRISTOF: “Crony Capitalism Comes Home
“Whenever I write about Occupy Wall Street, some readers ask me if the protesters really are half-naked Communists aiming to bring down the American economic system when they’re not doing drugs or having sex in public. The answer is no. […] [W]hile alarmists seem to think that the movement is a ‘mob’ trying to overthrow capitalism, one can make a case that, on the contrary, it highlights the need to restore basic capitalist principles like accountability. To put it another way, this is a chance to save capitalism from crony capitalists.”

JAMES PETHOKOUKIS: “Seven Reasons Why Obama is Wrong on Income Inequality
“As if ordered up directly by the Obama White House and Occupy Wall Street, the Congressional Budget Office has produced a timely report looking at income inequality. The CBO found that between between 1979 and 2007, average real after-tax household income grew by 275 percent for the top 1 percent of households, 65 percent for the next 19 percent, just under 40 percent for the next 60 percent, and 18 percent for the bottom 20 percent.”

RUSS ROBERTS: “My Response to Paul Krugman
“When I say that Paul Krugman and I are ideologues, what I am really saying is that we are stuck in our ways. Not completely stuck of course. It is imaginable that Krugman might eventually after some natural experiment concede that his view of government’s effect on the economy might change. But it is highly unlikely. That is the nature of human nature in a field where there really isn’t a natural experiment that can be decisive. So the post-WW II test of Keynesianism that Keynesianism totally failed–a 60% drop in government spending when the war ended that was followed not by the worst depression in American history but by good times, did not cause Keynesians to give up their faith.”

NEWS

ORGANS – Inside Bangladesh’s Organ Market
“Mehdi Hasan’s scar runs in a wide arc from his waist to a point just beneath his rib-cage. The jagged pink laceration still aches, the 23-year-old says, a daily reminder of the operation he underwent in the capital Dhaka five months ago, in the hopes of raising some quick cash.”

WORKPLACE DISCRIMINATION – Women Launch New Legal Salvo Against Walmart
“Women pursuing discrimination claims against Wal-Mart Stores Inc filed a reformulated lawsuit against the world’s largest retailer, their first since a massive nationwide class action collapsed earlier this year.”