Economics

Center on Wealth & Poverty

Why We Overregulate

Assume you are a mid-level bureaucrat in a government regulatory agency, and you know your pay and title depend on how many regulations you are responsible for administering, and the number of people who work for you. Do you think you would push for more or fewer regulations? Assume you are a corporate regulatory compliance officer, and again you know Read More ›

Adviser Soapbox: Michael Milkenomics

GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass. – Perhaps people are just spooked by debt. Inspired by Warren Buffett’s memorable dismissal of spendthrift America as “Squanderville,” doomster pundits point portentously to the “twin towers” of debt: record trade deficits ($900 billion) and budget deficits (a projected $448 billion). The Squanderville chorus prophesies the same debt doom they predicted last year and the year before Read More ›

Taxing Questions

Do you think your taxes are too high or too low? Though I expect that well over 90 percent of you are thinking “too high,” many in the media and political class keep telling us taxes are too low. The left-leaning intelligentsia, in their arrogant smugness, claim we just don’t know what is good for us. Yet, they are the Read More ›

Biggest Foreign Aid Recepient

Which country receives the most in total foreign aid from all donors? The official numbers show Iraq at the top with $3 to $18 billion in aid (depending on how you define “aid”) and all the other recipient nations of the world at less than $3 billion per year. However, if you look at which nation benefits most from foreign Read More ›

US Tech Economy Continues Unheralded Boom

This article, published by E-Commerce Times, mentions Discovery Institute Senior Fellow George Gilder: Contrary to what many technology gurus of the 1990s, including George Gilder, had predicted, turning computers into a commodity has boosted the technology business — and sales of computers across the economy. The rest of the article can be found here.

No More Excuses for Mexico

Why do Mexicans only have one-third the per capita income (on a purchasing power parity basis) of Canadians and only one-fourth that of Americans? The answer is that Mexicans are relatively poor because have been plagued by semidespotic regimes that have ignored the rule of law and often engaged in destructive economic policies. Mexicans have been free of their Spanish Read More ›

Cost-Effective Warfare?

Do you think too much or too little is spent on defense? The U.S. government now spends a half-trillion dollars a year on its military, or about $1,700 for every man, woman and child in America.  I asked the opening question in the way many members of the media and political class pose it. The correct question is: What does Read More ›

Is the Blogosphere the Death of the Mainstream Media?

The world that George Gilder envisioned in his provocative book Life After Television (Norton, 1990) has nearly arrived — more than a decade and a half behind schedule. Nowhere is that more evident than in the growth of the ‘blogosphere’ which threatens to overthrow the influence of the mass media by providing consumers with an endless supply of unfiltered news Read More ›

Dumb and Dangerous

It is no secret that politicians frequently put all of us at risk because of their real or willful ignorance. Most wars are a result of political miscalculations, but so are many recessions, depressions and other economic calamities. What follows are three examples where the political class is putting us in danger because of economic ignorance or worse. U.S. Sens. Read More ›

Testing Oscar Arias

SAN JOSE, Costa Rica — Oscar Arias, while serving his first term as president of Costa Rica, won the Nobel Peace prize in 1987 for helping to negotiate the peace that ended the civil wars in Central America. Last month, after a long absence, he was elected to a second term as president by the narrowest of margins. This time Read More ›