Daniel Altman, Foreign Policy

The Self Driving Economy - 11/30/12

Will we even need central bankers in a few more years?

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Diana Furchgott-Roth, MarketWatch

Silence on Spending Cuts Deafening - 11/29/12

House Republicans, both in the budget committee and in the Republican Study Committee, have outlined potential cuts that will bring spending back down to 2008 pre-recession levels. However, all Washington negotiators can do is talk about raising taxes, or not, and how much revenue can come from limiting deductions on one hand and economic growth on the other. It appears that discussion of spending cuts is so poisonous,... More

Henry Grabar, The Atlantic

Buy A Home, Get A Visa? - 11/29/12

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Stephen Eide, City Journal

Cities and Fiscal Cliff - 11/29/12

Localities should worry less about Washington’s spending cuts than about how their own state governments handle them.

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Richard Vedder, Minding The Campus.com

College: Different Fees for Different Majors? - 11/27/12

In the first couple weeks of any survey course in the principles of economics, students are taught that prices are determined by the interactions of consumers (demand) and producers (supply). Prices for many things, such as oil, or of common stocks, constantly change with the frequent shifts... More

Fiscal Times

States Teeter at Cliff - 11/26/12

According to a new study by the Pew Center on the States released on Thursday, the general economic slowdown that would result from an estimated $600 billion of tax increases and spending cuts taking hold next Jan. 2 would significantly affect state economic activity and indirectly undercut many state budgets.

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Nicole Gelinas, City Journal

Mortgaged to Hilt At Ground Zero - 11/26/12

The Port Authority of NY & NJ has mortgaged itself to the hilt to rebuild the World Trade Center, leaving few resources for its real mission.
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Steve Malanga, Washington Examiner

Fiscal Death by Arbitration - 11/26/12

About 20 states require some form of binding arbitration during contract negotiations on their local governments, despite studies showing that the system is often biased against taxpayers and frequently results in much bigger pay awards than government workers earn in places without arbitration. Even as reformers seek ways to cut local-government costs during the ongoing fiscal crisis, binding... More

Arnold Kling, The American

Lenders and Spenders - 11/23/12

Is federal debt really nothing more than money ‘we owe to ourselves’? No. It frays the political fabric, and we are feeling its effects already.

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John M. Bernard, Governing Magazine

Can Government Get Lean? - 11/23/12

 The root cause of most failures to make government lean is actually a lack of commitment from the top. Lean is a different way of thinking about and managing work.

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Michael Spence, Project Syndicate

Underinvesting in Resilence - 11/22/12

The United States consistently neglects investments designed to control the extent of damage from extreme weather events.

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Christopher Matthews, Time Magazine

2013's Many Tax Increases - 11/22/12

Federal law, as it stands now, is chock full of tax increases for earners both rich and poor. President Obama and Republicans in Congress have stressed their desire not to raise taxes on the middle class, but unless they can find a compromise on a broad range of issues, you should prepare to see your take-home pay drop in the new year.



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Avik Roy, Forbes

Free Market Health Exchanges - 11/20/12

What states should build instead of ObamaCare.

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Tim Cavanaugh, Reason

Unions Vs. Democratic Mayors - 11/20/12

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel is one of many recent Democratic chief executives who have, with varying levels of enthusiasm and success, tried to confront government employee unions in an effort to control costs.

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Steve Malanga, City Journal

Government's Airfields of Dreams - 11/19/12

Despite a bleak decade for air travel—the result of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the post-2008 economic downturn—local governments, aided by Washington, have been pouring billions of dollars into airport development and expansion. They claim that these expensive, debt-laden facilities will spur growth in economically precarious locales by attracting businesses that want more air connections. But from St. Louis to... More

Randal O'Toole, Cato Policy Review

Runaway Subsidy Train - 11/19/12

In 1959 Jim Morgan of Time magazine argued that “simple justice” demanded a leveling of the playing field between the passenger train and its competitors. Today, after four decades of per-passenger-mile subsidies to Amtrak that are many times greater than subsidies to airlines or highways, simple justice to Amtrak’s competitors and to taxpayers demands an end to those subsidies.

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Nicole Gelinas, New York Post

FEMA and NY's Cash Grab - 11/16/12

Gov. Cuomo kicked off the third week of Sandy by getting everyone fixated on a number: $30 billion. That’s what the governor figures New York has lost — and what he thinks would be “fair” for Congress and President Obama to give it. But if Sandy is supposed to make us re-think everything, maybe we should rethink the post-9/11, post-Katrina approach to disaster funding.

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David J. Armor and Sonia Sousa, National Affairs

Restoring A True Safety Net - 11/16/12

Our poverty programs — once justified and defended as a safety net for Americans truly in need — exist, increasingly, to make life more comfortable for the middle class.

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Reuters

Bankruptcy: One City's Story - 11/15/12

San Bernardino's decades-long journey from prosperous, middle-class community to bankrupt, crime-ridden, foreclosure-blighted basket case is straightforward — and alarmingly similar to the path traveled by many municipalities around America's largest state. San Bernardino succumbed to a vicious circle of self-interests among city workers, local politicians and state pension overseers

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Veronique de Rugy, Reason

Gas Industry's Crony Capitalism - 11/15/12

The latest energy boondoggle on the table involves the natural gas industry which is looking for nearly $4 billion in subsidies from Washington.

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Julian Morris and Katie Furtick, reason

Storms Can Bankrupt States - 11/13/12

Nicole Gelinas, New York Post

NY's Power Vacuum - 11/13/12

More than anything, the humanitarian crisis left in Superstorm Sandy’s wake can be traced to one major headache: a widespread lack of electricity. And what paved the way, in large part, for that ? Decades of politics-as-usual cravenness. As Andrew Cuomo said of the Long Island Power Authority, “I believe they were unprepared.”But LIPA is a state authority, with the governor in charge of naming 9 of 15... More

Dianne Feinstein, San Francisco Chronicle

California and the Fiscal Cliff - 11/12/12

California would be hit especially hard if America goes over the fiscal cliff, losing some 230,000 jobs.

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Steven Horwitz, Freeman

Should We Be Less Productive? - 11/12/12

The combination of productivity gains, which produce higher wages, and declining costs of food and manufactured goods means that people have a great deal more disposable income. Some of it goes to buying more food and physical stuff, but much of it goes to buying services and enjoying culture, which people couldn’t afford before.

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Donald Boudreaux, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

Hurricane Sandy Speculators - 11/12/12

The moment it became clear that Hurricane Sandy would likely batter the Northeast, swarms of speculators descended into markets there. They stormed into supermarkets, hardware stores and gasoline stations. You’d think that the politicians and pundits who reliably and boisterously criticize speculators would have condemned this pre-Sandy speculation. But oddly, they did not. In fact, they actively encouraged it! I heard... More

Russ Roberts, Cafe Hayek

Road to Serfdom? - 11/09/12

What’s the big deal with the last four years or the four years to come. Is it really so bad? Why are those of us who claim to love liberty so concerned about the path of the country? Most of us have a good life here and that is another reason to be pretty cheerful. Or do we?

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Steven Malanga, City Journal

Will Obama Bail Out States? - 11/08/12

Only a powerful economic recovery can save indebted states and localities from “the new normal.”

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Jessica Lovering, Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger , Foreign Policy Journal

Out of Nuclear Closet - 11/08/12

The reaction to the Fukishima reactor accident by anti-nuclear campaigners and many Western publics put a fine point on the gross misperception of risk that informs so much anti-nuclear fear. Nuclear remains the only proven technology capable of reliably generating zero-carbon energy at a scale that can have any impact on global warming, writes three environmentalists.

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Michael A. Fletcher, Washington Post

Bleaker Retirement Hopes - 11/08/12

The economic downturn is pressing more employers to reduce pension benefits and significantly delaying when people launch their careers, darkening the already bleak picture that young workers face in saving for retirement.

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J.D. Kleinke, The American

End of the Turnaround - 11/06/12

The road back for a broken company has always been long and hard. But today it is longer and harder than ever. What’s needed is serious regulatory relief and some very big, very long overdue tort reform.

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Alberto Alesina, City Journal

The Kindest Cuts - 11/05/12

Shrinking spending reduces deficits without harming the economy—unlike tax hikes.

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Robert H. Bork and Gregory Sidak, The American

Internet Search and Free Markets - 11/03/12

Antitrust law protects consumers by protecting the competitive process — not individual competitors.

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Amity Shlaes, Bloomberg

Disasters Create Big Government - 11/03/12

Once government spending rises, often to address an emergency at home or abroad, the spending doesn’t recede. High water becomes the new normal, until the next emergency, when a second rise comes, as an economist named M. Slade Kendrick noticed as far back as 1955.

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E.J. McMahon, New York Post

NY's Rebuilding Bill - 11/03/12

As the focus shifts from emergency response to long-term recovery after Hurricane Sandy, state and local officials in New York will find themselves grappling with budgetary challenges in some ways even more daunting and complex than those created by the destruction of the World Trade Center.

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Nicole Gelinas, Boston Globe

End of Housing Crisis - 11/03/12

Although Hurricane Sandy is considered this election’s October surprise, there is another one: The national housing crisis, which has defined the national economy for the past half-decade, is over. That’s not an automatic boon for President Obama, though. Instead, it’s an illustration that politicians can’t fix everything. Some problems need time — and free-market... More