Economic Reporting ( General ) by David Boaz
Notes from the Business section of Tuesday's Washington Post: There's some evidence in the lead story that both politicians and journalists do learn economics. Writing about the award of the Nobel Prize in economics to Edmund Phelps, reporter Nell Henderson writes:
In a series of papers in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Phelps, 73, challenged the prevailing belief that policymakers could lower the nation's long-term unemployment rate by accepting higher inflation. That misguided notion contributed ruinously to Federal Reserve policies of the 1970s, which allowed easy credit to fan inflation to double-digit levels. The result was high inflation and high unemployment, a combination that came to be called stagflation.Free-market economists often bemoan misguided economic assumptions in newspapers, not to mention bad policies promulgated by politicians, and they despair of getting basic economic concepts understood. But here's a reporter who understands the failure of Phillips Curve economics in the 1970s, writing about a Federal Reserve that also came to understand that failure. Inside the section, Vickie Elmer writes that "Some 77 percent of government workers say they're happy at work, compared with 70 percent of those who work in private enterprise." She offers some speculation about why that might be, including the fact that government agencies are hiring (but private-sector employment is also growing). What she doesn't mention is that it could be because federal employees make exactly twice as much money as private-sector workers, as Chris Edwards wrote in the Post recently. Finally, another story by Steven Mufson is headlined "Suspicion Surrounds Retreat in Gas Prices, Poll Finds." It may actually be good news that according to the poll, only 30 percent of Americans think that gas prices are falling because the Bush administration is manipulating them in advance of the election. Last week Jerry Taylor praised Mufson's previous story reviewing and deflating this conspiracy theory. It's too bad that the idea is still alive.
Posted on October 11, 2006 Posted to Cato@Liberty
Who’s the Taliban now?
The religious right is often branded 'the American Taliban', but the left can be just as bad.
Posted on October 9, 2006 Posted to The Guardian
Andrew Sullivan in Multimedia
Andrew Sullivan gave a cogent and provocative speech this week at Cato based on his new book The Conservative Soul: How We Lost It, How to Get It Back. Prodded by a critique from David Brooks, he sharpened and clarified his argument during the question-and-answer session. Together, Sullivan and Brooks ...
Posted on October 8, 2006 Posted to Cato@Liberty
Electing Women
A new study says that women are most likely to be elected to office in New York City, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. "At the other end are Gadsden, Ala., and Paducah and Bowling Green, Ky."
Well, I grew up 25 miles from Paducah, and I wondered about that. Paducah had ...
Posted on October 8, 2006 Posted to Cato@Liberty
Electing Women ( Foreign Policy ) by David Boaz
A new study says that women are most likely to be elected to office in New York City, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. "At the other end are Gadsden, Ala., and Paducah and Bowling Green, Ky."
Well, I grew up 25 miles from Paducah, and I wondered about that. Paducah had a woman mayor — no, Dolly McNutt was not a character in a Donald Duck comic book. That's something that neither Los Angeles nor New York has had. In 1983, Kentucky elected Martha Layne Collins governor, only the third woman in American history to be elected governor without succeeding her husband. Neither New York nor California has yet had a woman governor. Collins carried McCracken County, home of Paducah, by a large margin over baseball star and future senator Jim Bunning. She also heavily carried Warren County, where Bowling Green is the county seat.
It sounds reasonable that, as the Washington Post reports,
Districts that elect women, according to [study coauthor Dennis] Simon, tend to be "upscale — more degrees, more professionals, urban." Those less likely, he added, are "more rural, lower-income and more traditional."But I'm not sure. Aside from the above comparisons of Kentucky, New York, and California, I note that the first woman elected to the U.S. Senate who did not succeed her husband in Congress was Nancy Landon Kassebaum of Kansas. Kansas was also the first state where a woman defeated an incumbent governor, and it was the second state to have two female senators. Simon may be largely right, but it's not a slam-dunk.
Posted on October 8, 2006 Posted to Cato@Liberty
Andrew Sullivan in Multimedia ( General ) by David Boaz
Andrew Sullivan gave a cogent and provocative speech this week at Cato based on his new book The Conservative Soul: How We Lost It, How to Get It Back. Prodded by a critique from David Brooks, he sharpened and clarified his argument during the question-and-answer session. Together, Sullivan and Brooks produced the kind of vigorous and intelligent discussion that think tanks strive for. You can catch the debate in RealAudio, RealVideo, or MP3 here.
Or if you prefer shorter bites on YouTube, you can find the first part of Andrew's opening remarks here, the second part here, a closing back-and-forth with Brooks on conservatism, limited government, and the failure of the 1994 Republican Revolution here, and a short colloquy on same-sex marriage here. Finally, watch for the whole thing to appear on C-SPAN's Book TV soon.
Posted on October 8, 2006 Posted to Cato@Liberty
Enough with the H. W. Already
Through 25 years in public life, George Bush was always just that: George Bush. Rep. George Bush, Amb. George Bush, CIA Director George Bush, President George Bush. His son has always been George W. Bush in public life. But now journalists and others think we're so dumb that we can't ...
Posted on October 7, 2006 Posted to Cato@Liberty
Enough with the H. W. Already ( General ) by David Boaz
Through 25 years in public life, George Bush was always just that: George Bush. Rep. George Bush, Amb. George Bush, CIA Director George Bush, President George Bush. His son has always been George W. Bush in public life. But now journalists and others think we're so dumb that we can't tell them apart unless they add previously unknown initials to George Bush's name. Today the U.S. Navy launched the USS George H. W. Bush. What an unnecessarily complicated name.
Let's put a moratorium on renaming presidents after they retire. We can tell the difference between George Bush and George W. Bush. (Boy, can we tell the difference.) And if "Bill Clinton" was good enough for campaigns and bill-signings and orders to bomb countries that hadn't attacked us, it's good enough for history. Enough with the attempt to give Clinton retrospective gravitas as William Jefferson Clinton.
Posted on October 7, 2006 Posted to Cato@Liberty
Debating Darwin
Michael Shermer, a leading skeptic and bestselling author, will speak at Cato on October 12 on his new book, Why Darwin Matters: The Case against Intelligent Design. Providing highly critical commentary will be Jonathan Wells, author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design. Shermer, once a creationist ...
Posted on October 4, 2006 Posted to Cato@Liberty
Debating Darwin ( General ) by David Boaz
Michael Shermer, a leading skeptic and bestselling author, will speak at Cato on October 12 on his new book, Why Darwin Matters: The Case against Intelligent Design. Providing highly critical commentary will be Jonathan Wells, author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design. Shermer, once a creationist himself, argues that evolutionary theory is the foundation of modern biology. He concludes, "Darwin matters because evolution matters. Evolution matters because science matters. And I liked this line: "Of the three intellectual giants of that epoch--Darwin, Marx, and Freud--only Darwin is still relevant for the simple reason that his theory was right." Join us next Thursday, or watch it on the web.
Posted on October 4, 2006 Posted to Cato@Liberty
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