“I never thought it was my style or the words I used that made a difference: it was the content. I wasn’t a great communicator, but I communicated great things.” – Ronald Reagan, in his Jan. 11, 1989 farewell address to the American people (text) “The biggest misunderstanding about Reagan’s political life is that he…
Category: Economics
TX v. CA – Texas Wins Again: Less Taxes and Spending Lead to Economic Growth
The Texas Public Policy Foundation released some great research today by Dr. Art Laffer explaining why Texas is doing so much better than California—or just about anybody else for that matter. In case you didn’t know, it is because we have lower taxes, spend less and regulate the economy less than most other states. No…
ABC Shows Obama Wrong on Tax Cuts!
National Review and the Contract
Why in the world would National Review say that, “Republicans ought to promote new energy technologies in order to reduce the risks of global warming?” I can’t think of a good reason. Yet that is exactly what it does in an article by Ramesh Ponnuru, “Contractual Obligations,” that discusses the need for a new “Contract…
The Real Things Haven’t Changed
I ran across a great quote this morning to help us remember some of the things that really matter for which we can be grateful at this time of Thanksgiving: “The Little House Books are stories of long ago. Today our way of living and our schools are much different; so many things have made…
Computer Prices and Creative Destruction
I ran across a 1989 product comparison of several top-of-the-line computers. Including one from Dell, which featured an 80286 (20 MHz) processor and a 40 MB hard drive, all for the bargain price of $4,099! I remember consistently paying $3,000 for a new computer from Tandy (my first one, with an 8086 processor purchased in 1986)…
Jobs, Jobs, Jobs
There are a lot of ways to measure how the economy is doing. But employment, or jobs, is probably the measure that means the most to us. On a macro level, we understand that it means something good when we read that two million new jobs were created and unemployment fell to 4.2%. On the…
Living Like a King
“Our free market system is usually termed capitalism and by that definition capitalism has hardly been around long enough to deserve all the evil for which it is being held responsible. … Actually, all systems are capitalistic. It is just a matter of who owns and controls the capital—ancient king, dictator, or private individual. We…
At Least One Nobel Prize Make Sense
The recent awarding of the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences shows that at least one of the Nobel prizes is based on common sense. The prize was awarded to Elinor Ostrom at Indiana University and Oliver E. Williamson at the University of California, Berkeley for their work on the “tragedy of the commons.” As John…
Marxism Isn’t Enough
William F. Buckley Jr.’s first book, God and Man at Yale, examined the anti-Christian and anti-capitalist mindset which, even in 1951, was pervasive among the Yale University faculty. The book caused quite a bit of controversy—not because it wasn’t true, but because the radical liberals/socialists/communists in American academia and other institutions (the press, government, etc.)…