Back in the 1980s, a lot of best-selling books were written about how the United States should emulate Japan. Pursuing free market economics based on individual entrepreneurs was passe, so it was often said by Ronald Reagan's critics. Instead, we should follow Japan's...
POLITICS
The basic and crucial political issue of our age is: capitalism versus socialism, or freedom versus statism. For decades, this issue has been silenced, suppressed, evaded, and hidden under the foggy, undefined rubber-terms of “conservatism” and “liberalism” which had lost their original meaning and could be stretched to mean all things to all men. – AYN RAND
The Ideological Reconstruction of Iraq
Estimated to cost as much as $200 billion, the plan for rebuilding post-war Iraq is astounding in its scope--from repairing roads and sewer systems to revamping the Iraqi government payroll system and printing school textbooks. Yet no one is paying attention to the...
Can Individual Investors Beat the Market?
Among financial scholars, it's an article of faith that the vast majority of investors can't beat the stock market regularly. According to the traditional academic literature, if you invest long enough, spread your money around in a diversified portfolio, and hang on...
Capitalism Triumphs at Augusta
Mike Weir became the first Canadian, and first left-hander, to win the Masters. Weir triumphed in a one-hole playoff with American journeyman Len Mattiace after both players finished the tournament 7-under-par. Although the playoff was somewhat anticlimactic--a...
Bad Cuban Medicine
The shelves in the neighbourhood pharmacy, like those in the other neighbourhood pharmacies I had seen in Havana, were half empty and full of dust, the small selection of medicines on display arranged in lonely rows of old-fashioned little bottles. Customers were as...
Iraq is Better off without the International Monetary Fund
Leaders of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund met in Washington over the weekend for their annual spring meeting. They were under great pressure from the United States to step in to Iraq and help get that country's economy back on its feet. However, if the...
Victory Not Enough: We Need Tax Cuts Now!
Three months ago, President Bush proposed reviving the economy with a package that would cut the tax bills of 92 million Americans. The president has had other things on his mind since then, and the opposition of only a few Senators pared the package back in the...
Nine Simple Guidelines for Pro-Growth Tax Policy
Economic growth occurs when people work more, save more, and invest more. These are the behaviors that increase national income and boost the nation's wealth. People do not produce more simply because the government has a balanced budget. Nor do they increase their...
Failure and Denial in the Arab World
It's hard to come off as more bizarre than Madonna (she works at it) but that's how Mohammed Saeed Sahaf, Iraq's information minister, looks on TV as I'm writing this. With U.S. jets controlling the air over his head and American soldiers just 100 yards or so from...
The Caribbean’s Saddam Hussein Still Rules Cuba
One of the first people I met during a week's stay in Havana last year was the economist Oscar Espinosa Chepe, a once-ardent communist who had turned against Fidel Castro's dictatorial system. For daring to criticize Cuba's disastrous policies, Chepe and his wife...
CNN’s Sins of Omission
I was shocked and disgusted by an op-ed piece I read today in the New York Times. No, it wasn't by Paul Krugman. It was far more serious: Eason Jordan, chief news executive at CNN, revealing what the headline called "The News We Kept to Ourselves." The news concerned...
Bush’s Next War to Liberate the American Economy
Last week I sat across a table from President George W. Bush in the Roosevelt Room of the White House. He told me and a dozen fellow economists that "the American economy is a theatre in the war on terrorism." With steely conviction he told us that he intends to win...
Socialism by Agreement
A mixed economy is when Republicans and Democrats reach an unspoken, silent agreement. The silent agreement is as follows. Republicans don't want socialism. At the same time, they're terrified of endorsing principles such as freedom, individual rights and capitalism....
Academia and the War
Those of us whose pessimism about our country's social degeneration sometimes borders on despair have been given a reality check by the dedication, discipline, and decency of our troops in Iraq, as well as by the advanced technology of the military equipment they use....
Tax Day Should Also Be Election Day
April 15 is like a national holiday for conservatives. It is the one day each year when Americans are forced to think about the cost of government. That is why many conservatives have long thought that tax day should also be Election Day. A review of polling data on...
The Liberation of Baghdad
Yesterday, in civilization's cradle, they danced. After Marines knocked one of Saddam Hussein's statues off its pedestal, joyful Iraqi men danced as they dragged its decapitated head through the streets of their capital, while others symbolically beat posters of...
The Media and the War: On the Deaths of Journalists in Baghdad
The recent deaths of journalists in Baghdad are more than just personal tragedies. Both the chances that these journalists have taken and the indignant reactions by the surviving journalists are a sad sign of a growing lack of realism in our times, especially among...
Congress’ Insidious Discrimination: Davis-Bacon Act of 1931
There's a little known law called the Davis-Bacon Act of 1931. It remains on the books today. Before saying what the law is and its effects, let me run by you some of the language used, in the early 1930s, to push the law through Congress. Rep. John Cochran of...
Protecting Americans from Double Taxation
President George W. Bush has proposed that the double taxation of dividends be eliminated. Under his plan, businesses would continue to pay tax on corporate income, but individual stockholders no longer would have to pay a second layer of tax on that income when it is...
Objectivity in Journalism: Real and Imaginary
New York Sun television critic David Blum weighs in with this confused piece on Peter Arnett's firing: This has been a dark week in the history of American television--and all because of a warp-speed rush to judgment by a network more concerned with supporting its...
Columbia VS. America
by Daniel Pipes and Jonathan Calt Harris "U.S. flags are the emblem of the invading war machine in Iraq today. They are the emblem of the occupying power. The only true heroes are those who find ways that help defeat the U.S. military." Those words were spoken last...
Tax Cuts Benefit Economy
"We've never cut taxes in time of war," Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., said last week as he voted to halve President Bush's tax-cut proposal. Even if that were true - the Kennedy tax cut, for example, dropped the top marginal rate to 70% from 91% and took effect during the...
Does Political Power Mean Economic Power?
Much of the '60s and '70s civil rights rhetoric was that black political power was necessary for economic power. In 1967, Clevelanders heeded Malcolm X's infamous "The Ballot or the Bullet" speech with the election of Carl B. Stokes, who became the nation's first...
The Cost of Post War Iraq
Many of those who oppose military action in Iraq cite the cost as a principal reason. Before the war, they often exaggerated the monetary outlay, the loss of American lives, the danger of a long war and other concerns in order to discourage U.S. engagement. They were...
A Flag-waver Forever
After Sept. 11, American flags were widespread, from Ground Zero to jacket lapels in Alaska. I, too, attached the Stars and Stripes to my car antenna. I've always been patriotic, but never a flag-waver. Now, I will forever keep a flag where I can see it daily. While...
No Hall of Fame for Pete Rose
A San Francisco sports writer has joined the chorus of those who argue that Pete Rose should be admitted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, despite being banned from baseball for violating one of its cardinal rules, against betting on ball games. The argument is: What...
New Leadership for Palestine and Iraq: A Double Standard?
In exchange for a withdrawal of US and British troops, Saddam Hussein sends word that he is prepared to share some of his power with a senior member of his Baathist inner circle. Instead of maintaining absolute control over the Iraqi state, Saddam agrees to name Tariq...
Time for the US to Get Out of the United Nations
Here's a suggestion. Let's take the millions in dues we pay to the United Nations and reallocate it to help pay the cost of our war to liberate the Iraqis? We pay more than a quarter of the operating budget for that Epicenter of Bloviation. I don't think we're getting...
The Killing of History: Preface
An excerpt from the second edition of The Killing of History: How Literary Critics and Social Theorists Are Murdering Our Past. History is an intellectual discipline which is more than 2,400 years old. It ranks with philosophy and mathematics as one of the most...
The UN’s Power Path: Restricting Freedom Under the Mantra of “Sustainable Development”
Today as the United Nations appears weakened by its complete failure to be a serious player in the US-Iraq war, many of our nation's leaders dismiss concerns that the organization threatens American sovereignty. However, the major threat from the UN lies between the...
Property Rights by Popular Vote
While the Buckeye case may not serve as a turning point in the battle to restore property rights, it is nonetheless an ominous indicator of just how far we have to go.
The Pro-War Left is Still the Left
FrontPage mag published leftist Nat Hentoff's piece explaining what he did not march to protest the Iraqi war. In his article he quotes himself from a newspaper interview: "There was the disclosure . . . when the prisons were briefly opened of the gouging of eyes of...
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