Essay
This posting continues a discussion about General Motors and the UAW union covered in three previous postings: If You Won’t Deal With Economic Reality, Then It Will Deal With You (includes heavy dose of United Airlines information, too) Outrageous Employee Compensation Liabilities Continue to Haunt General Motors; Will American Taxpayers End Up Paying the Bill?…
Good economic outcomes typically happen when the government does not directly meddle in the marketplace but, instead, acts only to ensure the existence of the rule of law and property rights so third parties can enter into viable contracts as well as count on a level playing field for all participants in the market. Bad…
In the June 13 edition of the Wall Street Journal, Stephen Moore wrote an editorial entitled Real Tax Cuts Have Curves (available for a fee): …The Laffer Curve helped launch the Reaganomics Revolution here at home and a frenzy of tax rate cutting around the globe that continues to this day. The theory is really…
In celebration of America’s birthday, here are excerpted gems from previous postings about our beloved country – brought together in one posting: President Calvin Coolidge gave a powerful speech in 1926 on the 150th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. If you want to rediscover some of the majesty of the principles underlying our Founding,…
William Kristol, in an article entitled Reversing the Bork Defeat, makes this observation: On October 23, 1987–a day that lives in conservative infamy–Robert Bork’s nomination to the Supreme Court was rejected by a Democratic Senate. Now, 18 years later, George W. Bush has the chance to reverse this defeat, and to begin to fulfill what…
In the book entitled Government Failure: A Primer in Public Choice, Arthur Seldon writes: Many economics writers and teachers still present economic systems of exchange between private individuals or firms as “imperfect” and requiring “correction” by government. Most teachers of politics, politicians, and political journalists still present government as well-meaning and able to remove such…
Kimberley Strassel wrote an editorial last week in the Wall Street Journal entitled Another Reason to Love Wal-Mart (available for a fee). In that editorial, she provides another example of how misguided government behavior is forcing many working families and retirees across America to pay unnecessarily higher gasoline prices: The Senate passed its energy bill…
I recently read Michael Barone’s book entitled Hard America, Soft America: Competition vs. Coddling and the Battle for the Nation’s Future. It is well worth reading. Here is an excerpt from the Introduction to the book: For many years I have thought it one of the peculiar features of our country that we seem to…
Here is a troubling story: …Senator Jay Rockefeller, a Democrat from West Virginia…has over the past two years repeatedly accused the Bush administration of deliberately deceiving the American public to take the nation to war. It’s hard to imagine a more serious charge. And Rockefeller makes it perhaps more credibly than most Iraq War critics–as…