Current Issues in the News
(See Handbags & Hayek for more economy-related issues.)
Socialized Healthcare is a Severe Threat to Individual Liberty
American Thinker| Consider two hypothetical characters under a socialized healthcare system: Jack and Sam...
How to Stop Socialized Health Care
Karl Rove, WSJ| If Democrats enact a public-option health-insurance program, America is on the way to becoming a European-style welfare state. To prevent this from happening, there are five arguments ...
Ethanol's Grocery Bill
WSJ| Two federal studies add up the corn fuel's exorbitant cost...
How ObamaCare Will Affect Your Doctor
Dr. Scott Gottlieb, WSJ| Modeled on Medicare, this "public option" will soon become the single dominant health plan, which is its political purpose. It will restructure the practice of medicine in the process...
Cramdown Slamdown
WSJ| Three cheers for obstructionism. "Cramdown" bill to allow bankruptcy judges to reduce amount people owe on their morgages defeated in Senate.
Australia Does Due Diligence on Global Warming
American Thinker| Australia's economic stress is causing its politicians to give crisis skeptics a fair open hearing.
Obama Wants to Control the Banks
|Stuart Varney WSJ| There's a reason he refuses to accept repayment of TARP money ...
The Market is Shorting Obama's 'Stimulus'
|RealClearMarkets| In January, when the Obama plan, promising far greater deficits than the two much smaller "emergency stimulus" plans signed by Pres. George W. Bush in 2008, was unveiled, the market tanked - the worst January performance in 113 years...
Stimulus Can Sink Recession Into Depression
|IBD| Government intervention spiraled a 1929 recession into a painful Great Depression that lasted until 1946, while other recessions - with no government intervention - were less painful and ended quickly.
CBO: Obama Stimulus Harmful Over Long Haul
|WashingtonTimes| President Obama's economic recovery package will hurt the economy more than if he were to do nothing, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday.
An $800 Billion Mistake
|Washington Post| In its current form, [the fiscal package before Congress] does too little to raise national spending and employment. It would be better for the Senate to delay legislation for a month, or even two, if that's what it takes to produce a much better bill. We cannot afford an $800 billion mistake.
Beware of the Big-Government Tipping Point
|EPPC| We may be approaching a tipping point for democratic capitalism ... The stakes could hardly be higher for our way of life.
FOX News Poll: 80 Percent Say Debt is Ruining the Economy
|Fox News| Large majorities of Democrats (78 percent), Republicans (82 percent) and Independents (80 percent) think debt is ruining the economy. In addition, 50 percent says the stimulus packages and government aid to major corporations make it feel like the country is drifting toward socialism...
Outcome Tax Cuts
|IBD| [F]or a tax cut to have any real stimulative effect, it must serve to reward productivity ... Cash from Washington for people who don't pay income taxes, and for businesses that don't work, is not tax-cutting. Instead, it's exactly what Obama the candidate promised Joe the Plumber: wealth redistribution.
Arrogant Conceit
|John Stossel, Townhall| So they will "transform our economy" ... this is arrogant conceit. No one can possibly know enough to redesign something as complex as "an economy," which really is people engaging in exchanges to achieve their goals. Planning it means planning them.
The Krugman Recipe for Depression
|WSJ| Amity Shlaes, author of The Forgotten Man writes in the Wall Street Journal: "The New Deal is Mr. Obama's context for the giant infrastructure plan his new team is developing. If he proposes FDR-style recovery programs, then it is useful to establish whether those programs actually brought recovery. The answer is, they didn't. The reality shows most clearly in the data - everyone's data..."
Big Spending and Long Slumps
|NCPA/IBD| "The incoming administration should study [Japan's] lost decade well, because it started with disturbing parallels to our own time and place [...] Japan got into trouble [in the 1990s] with the collapse of a real-estate bubble and a subsequent breakdown of its banking system" and made several mistakes U.S. policymakers should avoid.
Nations Competing with Tax Cuts, Not Increases
|RealClearMarkets| Barack Obama’s election has elicited debate about whether he will drive America toward a European-style economy, one that is heavily regulated and relies on high taxation of the rich to redistribute income and finance generous government programs. How ironic, then, that Europe itself is moving away from European-style taxation as part of a broader trend by developed and developing countries to compete more extensively for capital and talent.
It's Not Taxpayers, But Tax Takers Who Aren't Doing Their Fair Share
|IBD| The top 50% of income tax filers paid 97% of all income taxes. The top 5% paid 60%, and the top 1% paid 40% of all collected federal income taxes. ... 'Sacrifice' is evidently not lacking on the tax side of the federal fiscal equation. The spending side is a different story, however...
The Age of Prosperity is Over
|WSJ| ...unfortunately in this world there is no tooth fairy. And the government doesn't create anything; it just redistributes. ... These issues aren't Republican or Democrat, left or right, liberal or conservative. They are simply economics, and wish as you might, bad economics will sink any economy no matter how much they believe this time things are different. They aren't...
Why the Mortgage Crisis Happened
|IBD| Though IBD has run many articles and editorials on the so-called mortgage meltdown, one of the most complete timelines of the debacle was written by an independent scholar and published this week by the Web magazine American Thinker. Because the issue is so important, we are running this 7,300-word history in its entirety...
(Video) Saving Our Economy: What'$ Next?
|Fox Business News Special| It's the economic crisis of the century; our entire nation is at risk. Who's to blame and how do we fix it?
Five Ways to Wreck a Recovery
|Amity Shlaes, Washington Post| Perverse monetary policy was the greatest cause of the Great Depression. But five non-monetary missteps were important in making the Depression great, and the same missteps damaged the global economy as well. While many are thinking about the Depression, few seem concerned about replicating these Foolish Five today ...
BOOKS ON THE ECONOMY:
The End of Prosperity: How Taxes Will Doom the Economy, if we let it happen
|Arthur B. Laffer, Stephen Moore, & Peter J. Tanous, Threshold Editions, 2008| The U.S. is in an economic crisis, and Americans are worried. This new book explains to the layman which policies have proven to attract capital, expand industry and jobs, and build prosperity - and why other policies have failed miserably. Readers will find it an understandable roadmap for turning the U.S. economy from crisis to recovery, and a timely, useful guide by which to judge elected leaders' handling of the nation's economy.
The Politically Incorrect Guide to Capitalism
|Robert P. Murphy, Regnery Publishing, 2007| The liberal media and propagandists masquerading as educators have filled the world - and deformed public policy - with politically correct errors about capitalism and economics in general. This book cuts through all their nonsense, shattering liberal myths and fashionable socialist cliches to set the record straight.
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Diana Furchtgott-Roth is Director of Employment Policy at the Hudson Institute. She served as chief economist of the U.S. Department of Labor and chief of staff at the President’s Council of Economic Advisors.
Ms. Furchtgott-Roth discussed the incoming Administration’s economic proposals with women at a Luce Institute CWN event in Washington DC on November 7, 2008.
by Karol Boudreaux, Senior Fellow, Mercatus Center, George Mason University
 How do everyday choices of shampoo, shoes, magazines, and electronics make the capitalist free-market economic system work? What are the economics of choice, and why is consumer choice a fundamental indicator of individual liberty and democratic societies?
Author Karol Boudreaux explains in this report. "The endless variety of choices Americans enjoy is extraordinary," says Boudreaux, "and yet so common it can be easily taken for granted."
by Nonie Darwish, author of Now They Call Me Infidel: Why I Renounced Jihad for America, Israel, and the War on Terror.
 Most Americans think of Islam as just a religion. Islam is much more; it is a one party state with a very elaborate legal system, called Sharia law, that can put you to death if you leave it. The lives of women living under Sharia law and those living under democratic law are a world - and centuries - apart.
Ms. Darwish describes the danger America faces from Sharia advocates who claim that Sharia Islamic law is a religious right compatible with democracy and suggests that American women can stand together against the spread of radical Islam and its discrimination against women in the Western world.
by Barry R. Chiswick, Ph.D., Department of Economics, University of Illinois at Chicago
 Current immigration laws and policies are not serving the best economic interests of the United States. What changes in border and interior enforcement policies would help stem the flow of illegal immigrants? What reforms in U.S. immigration law would encourage more highly-skilled legal immigrants and increase the economic benefits of immigration for the American public?
Professor Chiswick addresses these questions and suggests how the tide in immigration can be turned.
by Elizabeth Kantor, Ph.D., author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to English and American Literature.
 Classic Western literature has traditionally played a large role in sustaining "Western culture." If Western culture has, on balance, been a benefactor of the human race, then the abandonment of its great literature by college literature professors is a very great loss, both to students and to the long-term health of Western civilization.
Dr. Kantor argues that universities today should be teaching the classic literature of our culture to their students.
by Miriam Grossman, MD, UCLA psychiatrist and author of Unprotected
 A college freshman - I call her Heather - came to me for help with her mood: every so often she had episodes of feeling down, crying easily, and hating herself. Normally, she was social and outgoing; these days she was spending hours alone in her room. Heather didn't know where this was coming from. Everything seemed to be going so well: she liked school, had plenty of friends, and got along well with her family.
She paused at one question: did you recently begin or end any relationship? Well, yes ... I can think of one thing. I recently got a "friend with benefits," and actually ... I'm confused, because it seems to me like he's getting the benefits, but I'm not getting the friendship. ...
by Ryan Lynch, Deputy Director of Students for Saving Social Security.
 Social Security is the largest investment most of us will make in our entire lives, and it will likely be one of our worst. Some working women are particularly hard hit, and today's young workers can expect a one to two percent rate or return on investment - a deal worse than the local bank.
At what cost will we continue paying into a system that has repeatedly raised taxes and cut benefits since its inception? At what point will we demand that Social Security stop undermining the retirement security of future generations?
by Roy W. Spencer, PhD, Principal Research Scientist at the University of Alabama's Earth System Science Center.
 Global warming is in the news nearly every day now. Calls for action to reduce mankind's greenhouse gas emissions are being made by scientists, environmentalists, politicians, movie stars, and op-ed columnists. Some view the threat to be greater than that from terrorism. But just how real is the threat? And even if global warming becomes dangerous, what can be done about it?
You might have heard that "all reputable scientists" agree on global warming -- that there is a "consensus," and that the science is "settled." But there is only one aspect of the problem that scientists agree on: that global warming has occurred in the last century. What is not agreed upon is the degree to which mankind is responsible for that warming ...
by Grace-Marie Turner, president of the Galen Institute
 American health care stands at a critical crossroad. National policymakers are debating two very different courses: one toward expanded government-directed health care; the other toward free-market, consumer-directed health care.
Americans of all ages have a stake in this public debate, for the policy outcome will shape the cost, care, coverage, and control of their health care services for decades to come.
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