Al Gore says ”It is not a good policy to have these massive subsidies for first generation ethanol,” and that he originally advocated them because he was running for president and wanted the support of Tennessee farmers. This article gives more details. Tax credits for ethanol are up for renewal December 31, and Gore...
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Americans who followed George W. Bush’s fractured reasoning in supporting a preemptive invasion of Iraq—a country that hadn’t actually aggressed against the U.S., but he just “knew” was going to—in the process implicitly supported the deprivation of the right to life for an estimated 122,000 Iraq civilians—on top of the up to 1.5 million...
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A Buttonwood column in the new issue of The Economist, “Taking von Mises to pieces: Why is the Austrian explanation for the crisis so little discussed?,” discusses the enormous relevance of the Austrian School of economics, including the work of F.A. Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, and Lawrence White in explaining the current economic crisis....
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Florida Representative John Mica sent letters to 100 airports suggesting they replace TSA screeners with private security guards, which they are already allowed to do, according to this article. I’m in favor. It wouldn’t eliminate the screenings, which are still required by law, but you might have friendlier service if screeners thought that customer...
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In yet another example of the nanny state getting out of hand, there is a recent movement afoot to ban the sale of caffeinated alcoholic beverages, as if this is a new issue. This article reports that Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff calls them “killer cocktails,” and Maryland Comptroller Peter Franchot says they constitute...
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Politicians have been advocating a value added tax (VAT) for decades, and with the huge projected federal deficits interest in a VAT seems to be increasing lately. Last Spring Paul Volker was suggesting one, and David Theroux recently noted in his blog Paul Krugman’s support. Alice Rivlin and Pete Domenici suggest a 6.5% “debt...
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Proposed law: “Be it enacted, etc. etc. that the total personnel count of the Internal Revenue Service may not exceed 80,000 for the fiscal year 2011 and henceforth.” As every American knows, and more importantly, feels, the IRS is big brother. The IRS collects private information on every one of us; the IRS pays...
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Alan Blinder’s defense of QE2 is as feeble as Mankiw’s defense of “emergency measures” more generally. Blinder’s argument is simply that QE2 isn’t all that different from standard Keynesian fine-tuning (true) and that Ben Bernanke is smarter than critics like Sarah Palin (duh).”To create the fearsome inflation rates envisioned by the more extreme critics,...
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In a roundtable discussion on the U.S. National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform (“Deficit Reduction Commission”), Nobel Prize laureate and hyper-Keynesian economist Paul Krugman came clean on his view on ABC’s “This Week with Christiane Amanpour,” regarding how to reduce the gigantic federal deficit that he has been so supportive in seeing created:...
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