Latest Posts

January 29, 2014

Presuming the Best

Kierkegaard once wrote, “The majority of men are subjective toward themselves and objective toward all others, terribly objective sometimes–but the real task is in fact to be objective toward one’s self and subjective toward all others.” Continue Reading...
January 29, 2014

A Challenge to ‘Work-Life Balance’

Upon the recent birth of our third child, I took a brief “vacation” from “work” (quotes intended). The time spent with family was special, joyous, and fulfilling, yet given the extreme lack of sleep, the sudden rush of behavioral backlash from Toddler Siblings 1 and 2, and a host of new scarcities and constraints, it was also a whole heap of work. Continue Reading...
January 28, 2014

Poverty, Development, and the Idealist

In the latest EconTalk podcast, Nina Munk, journalist and author of The Idealist: Jeffrey Sachs and the Quest to End Poverty, talks about how she spent six years following Jeffrey Sachs and the evolution of the Millennium Villages Project — an attempt to jumpstart a set of African villages in hopes of discovering a new template for development. Continue Reading...
January 28, 2014

Pete Seeger, 1919-2014

Pete Seeger performing the Woodie Guthrie song “This Land is Your Land” at President Obama’s “We Are One” Inaugural Concert, January 19, 2009. Environmentalist, agent provocateur, leftist activist, recovering Communist and ardent redistributionist – all apply to the folksinger who died Monday in New York at the age of 94. Continue Reading...
January 28, 2014

Why is the State of the Union Always ‘Strong’?

I have a can’t miss prediction: tonight, when President Obama gives his sixth State of the Union address, he will describe the state of the union as “strong.” Admittedly, predicting that the state of our union will be described as “strong” is about as safe a bet as you can make when it comes to politics. Continue Reading...
January 28, 2014

Economic Facts: More Gut-Wrenching Than ‘Fun’

gives us a list of “fun” facts about the economy. Of course, “fun” is used in an ironic way, which become clear when you look at just how dreary these facts are: $1.8 Trillion: Cost Of ObamaCare’s Coverage Provisions From 2014 To 2023 (CBO, 7/30/13) $1 Trillion: The Total Student Debt Held By Americans. Continue Reading...
January 28, 2014

Actually, We Won the War on Poverty

“Why, if we have made such great strides reducing poverty,” asks Scott Winship, “is there such widespread belief that, to quote Ronald Reagan, ‘We fought a war on poverty, and poverty won’?” Continue Reading...