I recently recorded a short video on “jobs” programs. Here it is:

Thomas Mayer is the chief economist of Deutsche Bank Group and head of Deutsche Bank Research. He has an impressive background as a highly placed analyst in major private and public financial institutions. Which is to say, when he speaks, people are much more likely to pay attention and to give weight to what he says than...
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Here’s a story about TSA agents accepting bribes to allow passengers to carry large quantities of the prescription narcotic oxycodone onto airline flights. I have two comments. First, people are allowed to carry prescription drugs on airline flights. These drugs were pills, and there is no security threat to carrying them, nor are there...
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Data recently released by the Census Bureau shows the poverty rate in the United States at the highest rate it has been in more than a quarter of a century. (You can find the historical statistics by downloading Table 5 on this page.) Poverty is sometimes blamed on laissez faire policies that favor the...
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I live near Covington, Louisiana, a charming, peaceful town of about 9,000 people located in the generally peaceful parish of St. Tammany on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain. Not much serious crime occurs here. The rampant violence that characterizes much of New Orleans, forty miles to the south, seems a world away. Yet Covington has seen fit...
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Professor Brad Birzer, a man of unbounded energy, asked several of us to contribute a “top ten” list of books that make us human. Quite a challenge: limited to ten books, what would you (dear reader) choose and why? See my list at The Imaginative Conservative web site. It starts with a book by...
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If both sides in Washington agree on something, it is almost surely a bad deal for taxpayers and a disaster for freedom. A common theme in the media is on Obama’s jobs proposal and the GOP reaction. While the president is being assertive, pushing hard for a huge spending spree aimed at expanding employment,...
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It is fortuitous that the 10th anniversary of 9/11 has fallen on a Sunday, and I hope pulpits everywhere resonated with Jesus’s message in the Sermon on the Mount: Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. Earlier this summer, we spent an unforgettable 10 days participating in the C.S....
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My country, ’tis of thee, Sweet land of liberty, Of thee I sing; Land where my fathers died, Land of the pilgrims’ pride, From ev’ry mountainside Let freedom ring!               My native country, thee, Land of the noble free Thy name I love; I love thy rocks and...
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Commentators and pundits, some of whom ought to know better, continue to harp on the idea that the recession persists because consumers are not spending. Every Keynesian seems to believe that because consumers are in a dreadful funk, only government stimulus spending can rescue the moribund economy, given (to them, at least) that investors...
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