Beyond Bankruptcy

"This paper assesses the extent to which the U.S. bankruptcy system is effective in providing small businesses a “fresh start” after a bankruptcy filing."

AEI - Papers

Stossel Awards Heritage An “Emmy"

"It’s not every day that a think tank wins an Emmy. But last week on John Stossel’s Fox Business program, The Heritage Foundation brought home the award for its “Saving the American Dream” plan to fix the debt, cut spending and reward prosperity."

Stossel Awards Heritage An “Emmy” for Best Budget Plan | The Foundry

Balkan Free Markets Flower

"Fortunately, these countries have not made the mistake of increasing their debt/gross domestic product ratios to unsustainable levels, unlike the major European countries. The additional good news is that the Balkan countries (i.e., old Yugoslavia plus Bulgaria and Albania) appear to be well on their way to no longer being synonyms for political and economic instability."

RAHN: Free markets flower as war memories fade - Washington Times

The Laziest Generation(s)

"When the economy is bad, older Americans are often quick to blame young people when they can’t find jobs. Somehow when the economy is good, however, young people don’t seem to get nearly the same degree of credit for their professional successes."

The Laziest Generation(s) - NYTimes.com

When Government Picks “Winners"

"The government isn’t very good at picking technologies to invest in."

When Government Picks “Winners,” They Sometimes Turn Out to Be Losers | The Foundry

Oprah, American Girls and Binge Dreamers

"I certainly intend to be the richest black woman in America. I intend to be a mogul."

Postrel: Oprah, American Girls and Binge Dreamers - Bloomberg

Understand Profit

"When trades are voluntary, the profit of one person is the benefit of another. Taking this lesson to heart would be a worthy New Year’s Resolution for the world’s political leaders."

A New Year's Resolution for Politicians: Understand Profit: Newsroom: The Independent Institute

Is Environmentalism Dead?

"Environmentalism might be dead. At least that’s a possibility Steven Hayward is exploring."

Friday Interview: Is Environmentalism Dead?

Why Cities Grow and Corporations Die

"The question is, as a scientist, can we take these ideas and do what we did in biology, at least based on networks and other ideas, and put this into a quantitative, mathematizable, predictive theory, so that we can understand the birth and death of companies, how that stimulates the economy?"

Why Cities Keep Growing, Corporations And People Always Die, And Life Gets Faster | Conversation | Edge

David Mamet's Coming Out Party

"Hear him take on the left's sacred cows. Diversity is a 'commodity.' College is nothing more than 'Socialist Camp.' Liberalism is like roulette addiction. Toyota's Prius, he tells me, is an 'anti-chick magnet' and 'ugly as a dogcatcher's butt.' Hollywood liberals—his former crowd—once embraced Communism 'because they hadn't invented Pilates yet.' Oh, and good radio isn't NPR ('National Palestinian Radio') but Dennis Prager, Michael Medved and Hugh Hewitt."

Bari Weiss: David Mamet's Coming Out Party - WSJ.com

Top Tax Rate of 62%

Economic Nonsense

"If Bernie Lange had taken to the airwaves to promote therapeutic magnetic underwear or report alien anal probes, he rightly would have been laughed off the station. But apparently peddling economic nonsense fits perfectly well with the editorial policies over at Channel 11 News, the local NBC affiliate."

Channel 11 piece peddles economic nonsense | GJFreePress.com

Bastiat?

Christopher Buckley writes of Ronald Reagan's personal notes: "In between is a lot of Jefferson, Lincoln, FDR, and a French politician of the 1840s whom I'd never heard of named Claude-Frédéric Bastiat."

Book Review: The Notes: Ronald Reagan's Private Collection of Stories and Wisdom - BusinessWeek

America's War on Raw Milk?

Forget drugs, terrorism, poverty and illiteracy, apparently we have a new threat to our national security - raw milk! At the request of the International Dairy Foods Association and the National Milk Producers Association, the FDA has begun conducting armed raids in an effort to crack down on radical Amish farmers who insist on producing unpasteurized milk (...yes, I used the words "radical" and "Amish" in the same sentence).

You can find the STORY HERE.
You can view the video of the ARMED RAID BELOW.

State Corporate Income Tax Rates

"Today's Monday Map shows the top marginal state corporate income tax rate in each state."

The Tax Foundation - Monday Map: State Corporate Income Tax Rates

More People, Please

"Go out and campaign against urban sprawl, Hummers, coal power plants, and whaling -- but leave people alone."

More People, Please | Foreign Policy

Both Parties Wrong on Tax Breaks for Big Oil

by: Caroline Baum
for: Bloomberg

Senate Democrats want to eliminate a tax break for the five biggest multinational oil companies. Republicans oppose the idea on the grounds that rescinding a tax break qualifies as a tax increase.

Both parties are missing the boat. By confining their disagreement to select deductions for a few oil producers, lawmakers are squandering an opportunity to examine all forms of tax breaks and make a real dent in the deficit.

The tax deduction in question was enacted in 2004 and applies to all domestic manufacturers, not just oil and gas companies. It was designed to increase competitiveness in the face of the U.S.’s 35 percent corporate tax rate, among the highest in the developed world.

Read the entire story HERE.

Judge, Jury, And Economist

"Both Keynes and Galbraith are thought by their admirers to have offered correctives to capitalism. But it is difficult to separate their ideas about capitalism, which were economic ideas, from their ideas about capitalists, which were largely moral and aesthetic."

Judge, Jury, And Economist - Kevin D. Williamson - National Review Online

Moralizing Against McDonald's

"Now that Osama bin Laden is dead, we can turn our attention to another remorseless enemy who for years has sown death and destruction among blameless innocents. I refer, of course, to Ronald McDonald."

RealClearPolitics - Moralizing Against McDonald's

It's The End of the World As We Know It

"The green prophets want to run our lives; they'll start with light bulbs and toilets, but it won't end there."

Power Line - It's The End of the World As We Know It

The Opinions of Gene Simmons

Not sure where this fits, but for the generation like mine who first knew Kiss, Gene Simmons is surprisingly well-informed. I'm impressed...and a little shocked.

Battling over Boeing

"The Obama administration has launched a battle in South Carolina that is both a strike at Texas and an attack upon America's free enterprise system."

Battling over Boeing: Jobs in Texas threatened | Viewpoints, Outlook | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle

Don't Bully Boeing

"Want to prove you are “pro-business”? Condemn a loony-left complaint against America’s biggest exporter"

The White House and American business: Don't bully Boeing, Barack | The Economist

Economic Freedom and the Constitution

"Imagine a country in which the right to a welfare check is vigorously protected — but where the government can destroy legitimate businesses and professions with impunity."

Economic Freedom and the Constitution - Clint Bolick - National Review Online

Capitalists Never Liked Capitalism

"Consumers like capitalism, not business people."

Capitalists never liked capitalism

College Becoming a Rip-Off

"Amid all the uplifting clichés at their commencement ceremonies, graduating col lege students won't hear a line applicable to some of them -- you got ripped off."

College becoming a rip-off--Rich Lowry - NYPOST.com

Gold: The 4,000-Year-Old Bubble

"It's worth something because people have always thought it's worth something. And that's really weird, because what it tells you is gold is in a 4,000-year-old bubble. And if it's lasted 4,000 years, maybe it will last another 4,000 years. Who am I to say?"

Gold: The 4,000-Year-Old Bubble : Planet Money : NPR

Communist Cuba's War on Entrepreneurship

"The criminalization of free enterprise means the criminalization of freedom itself. And only under freedom can life-enhancing wealth be created."

American Thinker Blog: Communist Cuba's War on Entrepreneurship

Is There a Higher Education Bubble?

"Tell us what you think in our poll!"

Is There a Higher Education Bubble? | The John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy

Small Businesses Need Less Regulation

"Making it easier for small business owners to thrive and create jobs should be a priority for government today."

Small Businesses Need Less Regulation | The Foundry

Better to Be Potent Than Not

"Is humanity's ascent to global potency is a bad thing? No, especially if the alternative is returning to relative impotence."

Better to Be Potent Than Not - Room for Debate - NYTimes.com

Do the TSA Pokey Pokey

"The Transportation Security Administration - with a little help from Reason.tv and international web sensation Remy - have produced an instructional video outlining proper airport screening measures. "

Reason.tv Replay: Remy-Do the TSA Pokey Pokey - Hit & Run : Reason Magazine

Small Business Failure Rates

"When it comes to small business success, California is the not-so-Golden state -- at least that's what a recent report from Dun & Bradstreet suggests."

Small business failure rates: California's is worst - May. 20, 2011

Waiver Corruption

"I will repeat the same question I’ve been asking since the first health care waiver was granted: If Obamacare is such a great law, why does the White House keep exempting its best friends from it?"

WOLF: Obamacare waiver corruption must stop - Washington Times

The Catalan Kings

"What is the right balance between stars and the rest of mankind? Should you buy talent or grow your own? How can you harness the enthusiasm of consumers to promote your brand? And how do you combine the advantages of local roots and global reach?"

Schumpeter: The Catalan kings | The Economist

Drunken Sailors to Sober Up or Walk the Plank

"The black day – with the red ink – arrived this week: America reached the limits of what it can borrow. But the world didn’t end, the economy didn’t grind to a halt, and the dollar didn’t collapse."

Drunken Sailors to Sober Up or Walk the Plank | The Weekly Standard

Oil Subsidies or Tax Breaks?

By: Randall Hoven
For: American Thinker

Everyone wants to end subsidies to oil companies, from President Obama to John Boehner and Paul Ryan. My question was "What subsidies?" Remarkably enough, CNN Money provided the answer.

It turns out that they are all tax "breaks." I even hesitate to call them "breaks" because some of them amount to little more than Congress defining accounting terms such as "capital equipment." And the total amount of earnings not collected in taxes (which liberals define as a "subsidy") is about $4 billion per year. Here is how that breaks down.

Read the entire story here.

A Long Way from Reaching Our Peak

"The most pressing of our problems are not climatological or ecological, certainly not geological, but political and we will find no answers to these by dreaming wet dreams of a multi-billion genocide so the blessed residuum can potter about building composting toilets, permanently at danger of seasonal starvation, death by tooth decay, and high childbirth mortality in a cod Iron Age village (as half the Greens do), or of instituting a globally-monitored, strictly-rationed, top-down, totalitarian tyranny (what the other half get off on)."

A Long Way from Reaching Our Peak » The Cobden Centre

Misguided Philanthropy

"Nothing grates on me more than hearing that Bill Gates or some other successful person needs to “give back” to society. I would say that building a company that employs tens of thousands and creates products that underpin millions more jobs around the world qualifies as one heck of a contribution to society."

Gates, Buffett, and Misguided Philanthropy - Jim Lacey - National Review Online

"Unlearning" Liberty

"Reviewing the charges of sexual harassment underlying the Title IX complaint by a group of Yale students and alumnae, I can’t find feminism – at least, not if feminism includes independence, liberty and power for women. Instead I find femininity: the assumption that women are incapable of fending for themselves in the marketplace of epithets or ideas, the belief that women are rendered helpless by misogynist speech and the sexist tantrums of their male peers."

How feminists helped students to ‘unlearn’ liberty | Wendy Kaminer | spiked

Stimulus Cost 595,000 Jobs

"New economics research suggests that President Obama's stimulus plan may have destroyed or forestalled employment, including more than 1 million private-sector jobs."

Study: Obama's Stimulus Cost 595,000 Jobs - Investors.com

Cities With Most Billionaires

"Today Moscow is the city with the most billionaire residents in the world."

Moscow Leads Cities With Most Billionaires - Forbes.com

Habit of the Lip

"As difficult as it is for us to imagine, entrepreneurs and merchants indeed were, until very recently, spoken of in ways much more akin to the way we today speak of porn actors and pimps rather than the way we speak of, say, plumbers and pediatricians."

Habit of the lip - Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

Cigarette-Tax Crime Wave

"Frederic Bastiat said that all economic policy has two sides, one seen and one unseen. Taxes don't only raise revenue (California's cigarette tax raised $839 million in fiscal year 2009-10); they also change consumers' behavior; for better, and for worse."

Michelle Steel: The unseen cigarette-tax crime wave | tax, taxes, cigarette - Opinion - The Orange County Register

"The Blind Spot: Science and the Crisis of Uncertainty"

"William Byers of Canada's Concordia University and author of The Blind Spot talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the nature of knowledge, science and mathematics. Byers argues that there is an inherent uncertainty about science and our knowledge that is frequently ignored. Byers contrasts a science of wonder with a science of certainty. He suggests that our knowledge of the physical world will always be incomplete because of the imperfection of models and human modes of thought relative to the complexity of the physical world. The conversation also looks at the implications of these ideas for teaching science and social science."

EconTalk | Library of Economics and Liberty

Driving Wealth Away

"Today, the behavior that the advocates would tax out of existence is . . . earning six figures and higher while living in New York."

Driving wealth from New York--Nicole Gelinas - NYPOST.com

Review: "Why Marx Was Right"

"Marx and Lenin imagined a scientific system oriented toward the common good but created a system in which less knowledge is available to economic decision-makers and the narrow self-interest of the ruling class is elevated to commanding heights. And so, the “scientific system” will always lose."

Why Eagleton Is Wrong « Commentary Magazine

Why Don't We Love Our Intellectuals?

"To the man-in-the-street, who, I'm sorry to say,
Is a keen observer of life,
The word 'Intellectual' suggests right away
A man who's untrue to his wife.'"

Why don't we love our intellectuals? | Books | The Observer

Botox and Beancounting

"COSMETIC surgery is more popular in America than in Europe. Statistics, too, may be making things there look less saggy."

Economics focus: Botox and beancounting | The Economist

Is Inflation Making a Comeback?

"The claim has a surface plausibility. If the money supply is growing and prices are rising, what more evidence do we need? But first impressions, in this case, are badly misleading."

Is Inflation Making a Comeback? - Reason Magazine

The Secrets of Job Creation

"Andy Puzder knows a thing or two about job creation. As the chief executive of CKE Restaurants, he’s at the helm of 3,150 Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s restaurants across the country and around the world."

In The Green Room: Carl’s Jr., Hardee’s CEO Shares the Secrets of Job Creation | The Foundry

Let the Housing Bubble Burst

"If governments were removed – most importantly, the planning system that depresses supply and the artificially cheap credit that inflates demand – the supply of houses that people want to live in would rise and house prices would fall. Homeowners should not be able to use government to protect their investments at everybody else’s expense. With a looming housing crisis and house prices at an all-time high, it's time to let the bubble burst."

Time to let the housing bubble burst

Zimbabwe's 100-Trillion-Dollar Bill

"The notes are a hot commodity among currency collectors and novelty buyers, fetching 15 times what they were officially worth in circulation."

Zimbabwe's 100-Trillion-Dollar Bill Is a Hot Collectible - WSJ.com

Ideological Underpinnings of the "Great Society"

By: Robert Higgs
From: Mises Daily

The surge of federal economic interventions that occurred during Lyndon B. Johnson's presidency — the much-ballyhooed Great Society, whose centerpiece was the War on Poverty — differed from the four preceding surges, each of which had been sparked by war or economic depression. No national emergency prevailed when Johnson took office following John F. Kennedy's assassination on November 22, 1963. The nation was not engaged in a major shooting war, and the economy was on the mend after the mild recession of 1960-61. For the most part, the Great Society represented simply the culmination of economic, political, and intellectual developments stretching back as far as the 19th century.

Read the entire article HERE.

When Capital Is Nowhere in View

By: Jeffrey A. Tucker
From: Mises Daily

A Travel Channel episode of No Reservations, a cooking-focused show narrated by Anthony Bourdain, took viewers to Port-au-Prince, Haiti. I had heard that the show offered unique insight into the country and its troubles. I couldn't imagine how. But it turns out to be true. Through the lens of food, we can gain an insight into culture, and from culture to economy, and from economy to politics and finally to what's wrong in this country and what can be done about it.

Read the entire article HERE.

"Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids"

"Bryan Caplan of George Mason University and EconLog talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the ideas in Caplan's new book, Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids. Caplan argues that parents spend too much time trying to influence how their kids will turn out as adults. Using research on twins and adopted children, Caplan argues that nature dominates nurture and that parents have little lasting influence on many aspects of their children's lives. He concludes that parents should spend less time and energy trying to influence their children. If parenting takes less time, then have more kids, says Caplan. The conversation concludes with a discussion of whether a larger population is bad for the planet."

EconTalk | Library of Economics and Liberty

“No Nation Was Ever Ruined By Trade”

"Our politicians get it backwards: Trade creates jobs for Americans and everyone else."

“No Nation Was Ever Ruined By Trade” - Reason Magazine

Fiscal Fight

"In 1850, French economist Frederic Bastiat defined legalized plunder as forcibly taking the property of another through legislation so beneficiaries could live at the expense of others. Since mans nature is to avoid pain - and it is in the nature of some men to avoid labor by resorting to plunder - government should use its collective force to stop this fatal tendency. But Bastiat failed to see that it is man who runs government and it is mans nature to want to expand his power."

Fiscal fight could change Beltway culture - Washington Times

Wealth Creation Explained in 32 Seconds

Mission Accomplished! Right?

Now that Osama Bin Laden is dead, can we please bring our troops home?

Not so fast! Bin Laden's body had yet to sink to the bottom of the sea before our 'leaders' began re-justifying their "War on Terror."

The "War on Terror," the "War on Drugs," and the "War on Poverty" are all un-winnable wars with unclear objectives. However, they do allow the Federal government to destroy personal liberty, ignore habeas corpus, torture, invade foreign countries, increase taxes, and pit one class against the other. Instead of "Just say no to drugs", let's "Just say no to unconstitutional wars."

Photo Credit: here

Bad Education

"The nearly axiomatic good of a university degree in American society has allowed a higher education bubble to expand to the point of bursting."

n+1: Bad Education

Climate Science Kit

Via Bishop Hill.

The Destruction of Economic Facts

"Renowned Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto argues that the financial crisis wasn't just about finance—it was about a staggering lack of knowledge."

The Destruction of Economic Facts - BusinessWeek:

Victims of Communism Day

"Today is May Day. For the past several years, I have advocated that this date be transformed into Victims of Communism Day."

The Volokh Conspiracy » Victims of Communism Day

Fight of the Century: Keynes vs Hayek Round Two

Who Was Really at Fault for the Toyota Recalls?

"Did corporate hubris, an overzealous media or vindictive regulators turn a small safety problem into a massive scandal for the automaker?"


Who Was Really at Fault for the Toyota Recalls? - Robert E. Cole - Business - The Atlantic