Forbes
A Guide To Talking Politics At The Thanksgiving Table
“And remember, no talking politics. Most of the people there will be liberals and you know how badly they react to opinions different from their…
Forbes
Chronicling The Decline And Fall Of Entitlement Democracy
It’s been a week of sober reflection, accompanied by a self-imposed news fast, during which I’ve struggled to understand the deeper meaning of our recent…
Forbes
American Voters Choose Obama To Lead Us – Down The Road To Ruin
Despite a good look at the bankruptcy of entitlement democracy playing out across the euro zone, Americans have gone to the polls demanding to join…
Forbes
Paul Krugman’s Stimulus Batters The East Coast, Fueling Economic Growth
Mainstream economists, corporate executives, politicians, and pundits are still totaling up the windfall boost to the nation’s GDP, but most agree that the benefits from…
Forbes
Distorted Government Statistics Endanger Our Economic Health
What is the real inflation rate, calculated using an accurate technique that doesn’t change with time? What is the real unemployment rate, one that counts…
Bio-IT World
Can Private Jets For The Poor Save Health Care Dollars?
Few perks of wealth are more widely demonized than the private jet. Yet these very symbols of power and luxury could save health care dollars…
Forbes
To Finally Abolish Affirmative Action, All Americans Should Check The Minority Box
As the Supreme Court makes another foray into the mess of confusing and contradictory rulings over the constitutionality of race-based college admissions, one has to…
Forbes
Hey Romney, Here’s A Comeback To Obama’s $5 Trillion Tax Cut Canard
Framing a debate is half of winning it—especially when neither facts nor reason are on your side. The Obama campaign’s repeated claims that, if elected…
Forbes
Atlas Shrugged Part II: Ideas That Tower Above Any Movie
Forbes
What Do The War On Cancer And Climate Modeling Have In Common?
The reverential treatment accorded to climate modelers by the media, policymakers, and the public is one of the great mysteries of modern life. But it…
Forbes
Promoting Libertarianism, John Ramsey Plays The Long Game
Ron Paul’s presidential campaign was unique in the history of the libertarian movement, attracting more serious attention than those of any of his libertarian predecessors. Campaigning as…
Forbes
History’s Witness: Prague, Communism, And The Socialist Ideal
What is it about the “noble ideals” of socialism that makes people forget the lessons of their actual practice? If you need yet another reminder,…
Forbes
Polaroid, Kodak, Apple: No One Escapes the Winds of Creative Destruction
Hundreds of companies are born every day. Most don’t survive the Darwinian struggle to attract customers, achieve profitably, and reach adolescence. The fittest claw their…
Forbes
Moral Hazard: Corrosively Dissolving Democracy From The Inside
“I know the Alt-A mortgages we’ve been shoveling at Fannie Mae are a disaster waiting to happen, but a few more bonus checks like…
Forbes
It’s Futile Rep. Ryan, In Politics Feelings And Emotion Always Trump Simple Math
Well, at least the blue tribe and the red tribe are in violent agreement about something. Both think Mitt Romney made a definitive choice in…
Forbes
As Liberty Fades, Contemplate The Wisdom Of The Olive Tree
It’s easy to despair watching the flame of liberty flicker and die. To accept the sad fact that our Founders’ vision of limited government could…
Forbes
Sen. Al Franken Voter Fraud Revelations Call For Ways To Reduce It
Forbes
California Cities Go Bankrupt, But Bullet Train Barrels On
If we didn’t have California as a case study of fiscal insanity, someone would have to invent it. Nowhere else better illustrates what happens when…
Real Clear Markets
The Lean Forward Campaign: A Recipe for Economic Stagnation
It's hard to miss the MSNBC motto's comfy similarity to President Obama's reelection slogan. Widely mocked since its debut, the "Lean Forward" campaign celebrates the…
Forbes
Lamenting the Lost Legacy of Independence Day
Why do we still celebrate Independence Day? Is it a lingering habit, a mindless bit of nostalgia, a time to indulge in fireworks and barbecues,…
Forbes
The New York Times’ Impotent Whining About Apple Inc.
They're at it again, and this time it's not about the evils of outsourcing or the un-Western factory conditions in Asia. It's not about workplace…
Real Clear Markets
Global Governments’ Growing Embrace of Big Pharma
As the pharmaceutical industry wrestles with multiple existential threats-from price controls to patent cliffs to dwindling pipelines-calls are growing for deeper government-industry cooperation. As private…
Bio-IT World
Does Thimerosal Prevent Autism? Epidemiology Gone Wild
Human beings are born pattern recognizers, part of the repertoire of survival skills that separates us from the beasts. We are programmed to spot relationships…
Real Clear Markets
Newspapers Must Die: Long Live The News
Fear not the future. The long anticipated demise of the conventional newspaper business is a cause for celebration, not anguish. Freed from the shackles of…
Real Clear Markets
Immigration Policy is an Economic Meltdown Trifecta
Three seemingly unrelated news stories have converged to create a disturbing picture. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) recently unleashed another wave of intimidation against…
Real Clear Markets
The Off-Label Drug War of Words
If knowledge is power and ignorance is bliss, what is power used to prevent knowledge from eliminating ignorance? I don’t know; ask the FDA (U.S.
Real Clear Markets
Flight Attendant Unionists Tell Customer To Drop Dead
Nerves are fraying as attempts to restructure American Airlines into a viable, freestanding company through the bankruptcy process drag on. Last week in Forbes, I…
Real Clear Markets
If I Wanted America to fail: Free Market Agitprop With a Lesson
A powerful YouTube video essay that premiered on Earth Day has since gone viral. I first saw it when it cracked 100,000 views. At last…
Real Clear Markets
US Airways And American Airlines Seek A Deadly Embrace
As the legacy airlines limp toward oblivion crippled by expensive labor contracts, efficiency-killing work rules, and massive unfunded pension liabilities, word comes that the pilots,…
Real Clear Markets
Supply-Side Critics Offer Only Trickle-Down Inflation
Economics is not called the dismal science for nothing. Many professional economists go to great lengths to obscure simple truths inconvenient to their political masters.
Real Clear Markets
President Obama Pledges To Recycle His Campaign Pledges
In a bold move aimed at reviving a renewable energy program struggling to bounce back from a string of bankruptcies (investing in the future isn’t…
Real Clear Markets
The Occupy, MoveOn.org, SEIU, AFL-CIO, DNC Street Mobs Start Spring Training
Rejoice, those of you who believe that democracy is about making clear and honest choices. Clear steps toward transparency and accountability may have begun. All…
Real Clear Markets
The Orphan Drug Conundrum
It’s not a crisis. Yet. Bigger health care issues loom. Right now. There are still fortunes to be made. While it lasts. But one could…
Real Clear Markets
The Real Reasons You Should Shun Goldman Sachs
By now, Greg Smith’s resignation letter heard around the worldwide Web has moved through its arc of infamy-passing from titillating revelation to corporate damage control…
Real Clear Markets
Can California’s Economic Self-Immolation Be Exported?
What is it about California that make its elected leaders work so hard to earn their place in the dunce’s corner alongside Greece? With all…
Real Clear Markets
Is Your Company Ready to Meet its New Disability Hiring Quota?
Has the economy got you worried about reelection? Looking for clever ways to showcase your bona fides as a promoter of “fairness,” champion of the…
Real Clear Markets
Too Fat? Too Thin? Progressive Policies Can Fix That!
Political projects that seek the perfectibility of man by using the coercive powers of the state have a long and checkered history – perhaps the…
Real Clear Markets
Is Drug War Driven Mass Incarceration the New Jim Crow?
Once in a great while a writer at the opposite end of the political spectrum gets you to look at a familiar set of facts…
Real Clear Markets
Give Greece a Going Away Present, But Go It Must
The rate at which things are deteriorating in Greece now officially exceeds the rate at which desperate Eurocrats weave new fantasies as they try to…
Real Clear Markets
Making Sure Corruption Remains “Made in America”
In the annals of American legislation, few laws are as futile in their impact, capricious in their enforcement, and hypocritical in their content as the…
Real Clear Markets
Orwellian Doublespeak Dominates Economic Policy
While taking in my morning helping of news and commentary, I was struck by a certain similarity in every article touching on economic policy. It…
Real Clear Markets
Why Can’t Mainstream Media Connect the Economic Dots?
Politicians and journalists sure seem to believe that voters have the attention span and reasoning ability of a two-year old. Convinced that we are unable…
Real Clear Markets
Cuba, Where Sheep Are Trained to Venerate Wolves
With the death of Cuban dissident Wilman Villar Mendoza, Cuba has lost one of its precious remaining brave souls. While a sputtering dissident movement…
Real Clear Markets
‘Fly Me To the Moon’: You Go First, Newt
Today we consider the political economics of establishing a permanent colony on the moon, the price offered by disgraced former Congressman and rehabilitated presidential candidate…
Real Clear Markets
The Ability to Fire People Creates More and Better Jobs
“I like being able to fire people who provide services to me.” By speaking the truth, presumptive Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney committed the cardinal…
Real Clear Markets
Thinking Fast, Slow and Not at All
Reading Daniel Kahneman’s fantastic new book, Thinking Fast and Slow, on the eve of a presidential election can only lead to despair. Yet his careful…
Real Clear Markets
In the Battle of Man Vs. Nature, Give Me Man
Welcoming the new year contemplating the sunset comfortably ensconced on a cliffside balcony high above the manicured banks of the Miami River, it’s hard not…
Real Clear Markets
Occupy Wall Street Movement Ignites The Nation
Real Clear Markets
Exactly What Is Crony Capitalism, Anyway?
President Obama, progressive politicians, Occupy protestors, and leftist intellectuals are having a field day attacking what they call the failures and excesses of capitalism. They…
Real Clear Markets
Let’s Not Be Bamboozled By Robert Reich’s Stuff
Today we pick a fight with Robert Reich. You remember him, Bill Clinton’s outspoken Labor Secretary, Berkeley professor, political commentator, and, most recently, Occupy protest…
Real Clear Markets
The Financially Driven Erosion of Scientific Integrity
Real Clear Markets
Watching The Wheels Come Off The Green Machine
The body count continues to rise as the Green Jobs Revolution sputters its way to the end of a disastrous 2011. Few seemed to notice…
Real Clear Markets
The Root Cause of Market Failure In Higher Education
A little noticed Associated Press news story last week reported that China now plans to phase out college majors that consistently produce unemployable graduates. Any…
Real Clear Markets
Alternative Energy’s Alternate Reality
Creating a “green energy” economy may be the most daunting central planning task ever attempted. It entails nothing less than the reengineering of our…
Real Clear Markets
The Price We Pay For Investment Apartheid
The federal government protects two different classes of investors very differently against losses they might incur as a result of making poor investment choices. Both…
Real Clear Markets
Crony Capitalism: The Inevitable Outcome Of Overreaching Government
Would a farmer who put out a trough of slop be surprised if it attracted a bunch of pigs? Then why are activists who promote…
Real Clear Markets
Will Western Civilization Rediscover The Moral Foundations Of Sound Money?
What is money, and from where does it draw its value? This is a question Greece is facing as its people stare into the abyss.
Real Clear Markets
Putting Herman Cain’s Sexual Harassment Accusations In Context
A media storm has broken out over allegations made by the inside-the-Beltway publication Politico that two women in the employ of the National Restaurant…
Real Clear Markets
Squeezing Every Last Dollar Out Of Democracy
Have you ever wondered why Congress is so spectacularly bad at solving problems? Do you marvel at the parade of so-called unintended consequences that flow…
Real Clear Markets
The Fundamental Fallacies Of Macroeconomics
Do you sometimes wonder why economists are accorded such respect and influence given the fact that they claim knowledge over the unknowable, promote theories that…
Real Clear Markets
Long Live the Limited Liability Corporation
What does it mean when angry mobs take to the streets not to protest against the specific corporations and politicians that teamed up to loot…
Real Clear Markets
Occupy Wall Street: America’s Road to Greece
The chattering classes are peddling a new meme designed to control the narrative surrounding the arrested adolescents who’ve been camping out in lower Manhattan, raging…
Real Clear Markets
How To Create Shortages In An Abundant World
An old cold war joke asks a Russian, a Pole, an Israeli, and an American the following man-on-the-street question. “Excuse me, what is your opinion…
Real Clear Markets
Rising China: The Seen and Unseen
I just got back from a biotech conference in Changsha via Shanghai, the jewel of the new China. It was my first visit to the…
Real Clear Markets
After The Greek Default, Could Civil War Be Next?
As a Eurozone crackup becomes more and more certain, it is no longer a question of whether Greece defaults but when. While most commentators have…
Real Clear Markets
Putting the Jobs Cart Before the Growth Horse
Among the colossal fallacies that keep our economy mired in unemployment, few loom as large as the notion that “creating” jobs leads to growth and…
Real Clear Markets