Author: Dave

Finally, someone who actually deserves a Nobel Peace Prize gets it. The Chinese government’s response accentuates the necessity. I have to think there is a causative relationship between the government lying to the people and the people lying to each other. The reasons only liberal democracies become wealthy (aside from windfall wealth) involve a lot…

So, apparently the theory emanating from the left, especially in the person of Paul KKKrugman, is this: we need massive government spending, trillions of dollars, to grow the economy, and then everything will be great. Otherwise, we’re doomed. There’s a very simple, easily-understood reason why Krugman and the other statists are almost certainly wrong: marginal…

His latest column (safe link, goes to HotAir) begins with an offhand premise (not even an assertion, mind you, just an assumption) that the Tea Party wants to re-enact Birth of a Nation, the KKK-celebrating silent film of 1915. Fine, let me respond in kind. Paul, you may think you’re re-enacting Triumph of the Will…

Of all the reviews of Atlas Shrugged I’ve ever seen, this one has the maximum ratio of words to sense, which is quite a feat given the competition. I salute you, sir. Of course, it probably helps to miss the point when you make it a point to skip all the “rants.” (Given recent pronouncements,…

Tom Friedman, champion of central planning: China is doing moon shots. Yes, that’s plural. When I say “moon shots” I mean big, multibillion-dollar, 25-year-horizon, game-changing investments. China has at least four going now: one is building a network of ultramodern airports; another is building a web of high-speed trains connecting major cities; a third is…

Matthew Yglesias, writing about the case of a girl with a tragic medical condition, is typically confused: It’s true that covering Emily will mean slightly higher costs for everyone whose kids don’t get sick. But this is how insurance is supposed to work. No, Matt, that’s not what insurance is for, that’s what socialism is…

Megan McArdle has a good post on “Why Are the Rich So Rich?” though I think she’s missing an important angle: larger markets. If the market for a product is one million people, and I build something everyone wants with a profit margin of a dollar, I can make a million dollars. If my market…

Goverment spending does not help the economy. Here’s how we can cut government spending. That is all. (Please forward this message on to the unenlightened and Paul Krugman.)

Glenn has another post in a continuing series on the higher education bubble, this one asking if bypassing college might be a better deal. My wife, as it happens, is an object example. She is an excellent Java programmer, beloved by IT directors and VPs everywhere she goes. She is also fluent in two languages…

If there was any lingering doubt that Rauf was playing for fools the fringe of Americans who have been shouting “bigotry!” at anyone who thinks building a victory dialogue mosque in the 9/11 debris is offensive, these last tidbits should now put those doubts to rest. First, Rauf enthusiastically endorsed the Iranian Revolution… and hasn’t…

Seriously, are there any benighted semi-despots out there Tom Friedman doesn’t have a bromantic poli-crush on? Some eight years ago, in February 2002, I interviewed then-Crown Prince-now-King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia at his horse farm outside Riyadh. I shared with him a column I had written — suggesting that the Arab League put forth a…

Paul Krugman argues: What’s less well known is the extent to which the public drew the wrong conclusions from the recession that followed: far from calling for a resumption of New Deal programs, voters lost faith in fiscal expansion. Having just finished Amity Shlaes’ The Forgotten Man this weekend, I can say that while their…

Isn’t this more or less an act of war?

Is Krugman-style Keynesianism dead? This sure sounds like a funeral for the kind of massive government spending the left’s premier Nobel prizewinner has been arguing for. (I’ve lately become increasingly skeptical of this quasi-superstitious notion shiny pieces of metal conferred by leftish Swedish officials really grant one particular perspicacity anyways.) Is the administration tuning him…

Meet the unabridged Abdul Rauf: The United States has more Muslim blood on its hands than al-Qaeda has on its hands of innocent non-Muslims. Sure, that sounds like just the kind of guy we want building mosques in the 9/11 debris field. Supporters of the mosque are responding with the detached aplomb and reasonable behavior…

Via Michael Totten (for my money, the best journalist in the world), an absolutely fascinating essay from Yoram Hazony on how Israel is viewed by Europeans, with references to Kuhn. Israelis and friends of Israel can reasonably be divided on the question of whether this withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, or the parallel withdrawal from…

This is possibly the second-biggest climate science news of the past ten years: some statisticians did a full rework of Mann’s infamous hockey stick papers, and he results were… not pretty. We find that the proxies do not predict temperature significantly better than random series generated independently of temperature. … On the one hand, we…

Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser: he could not hate the Ground Zero mosque so, did he not love Muslims more. Mr. President this is not about religious freedom. It is about the importance of the World Trade Center site to the psyche of the American People. It is about a blatant attack on our sovereignty by…

There’s some confusion about how many years of Social Security someone who reaches SS retirement age will actually receive. While life expectancy is only in the high 70s, that includes a lot of people who die in infancy or before reaching retirement age. Life expectancy at 65 in 2005 was about 18 years. It appears…

Paul Krugman has always been a hack on fiscal policy, but at this point, I’m becoming concerned about his mental health. First there was the bizarre exchange with Paul Ryan in which he made numerous factual mistakes, now this: But neither of these potential problems is a clear and present danger. Social Security has been…