This Week on the Web (March 17 – March 23)
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NEWS
Iran Is Playing a Growing Role in Iraq Economy
New York Times
While the Bush administration works to stop Iran from meddling in
Some Iraqi cities, including
The economies of
After the two countries fought a devastating war from 1980 to 1988, Saddam Hussein maintained tight control over cross-border trade, but commerce has exploded since the American-led invasion of 2003.
Much of the money is heading in one direction, though:
“What is happening in
Iraqi leaders from the Shiite bloc currently in power say political and economic ties with
Czech leader Klaus fights global warming 'religion'
SignOnSanDiego.com
Czech President Vaclav Klaus said on Wednesday that fighting global warming has turned into a a 'religion' that replaced the ideology of communism and threatens to clip basic freedoms.
The right-wing president, a free-market champion, wrote to the U.S. Congress that adopting tough environmental policies to fight climate change would have destructive impact on national economies.
‘Communism has been replaced by the threat of an ambitious environmentalism,' Klaus wrote in response to questions from the U.S. House of Representatives' Committee on Energy and Commerce.
COMMENTARY
As you've probably heard, there's been an explosion of inequality in the
How can we close the gap? Well, I suppose we could round up a bunch of assembly-line workers and force them to mow the lawns of corporate vice presidents. Because the gap I'm talking about is the gap in leisure time, and it's the least educated who are pulling ahead.
[…]
A certain class of pundits and politicians are quick to see any increase in income inequality as a problem that needs fixing—usually through some form of redistributive taxation. Applying the same philosophy to leisure, you could conclude that something must be done to reverse the trends of the past 40 years—say, by rounding up all those folks with extra time on their hands and putting them to (unpaid) work in the kitchens of their "less fortunate" neighbors. If you think it's OK to redistribute income but repellent to redistribute leisure, you might want to ask yourself what—if anything—is the fundamental difference.
Gus Van Horn
Clarence Page pens an interesting column in which he describes the enormous success of
Consider the following data. Each bullet is quoted directly from Page's column.
- 43.8 percent of African immigrants had earned a college degree, compared with 42.5 of Asian-Americans, 28.9 percent of immigrants from Europe,
- About 8 percent, or about 530, of Harvard's undergraduates were black, ..., but somewhere between one-half and two-thirds of the black students were "West Indian and African immigrants or their children, or to a lesser extent, children of biracial couples."
- Immigrants, who make up 13 percent of the nation's college-age black population, account for more than a fourth of black students at Ivy League and other selective universities, according to the study of 28 colleges and universities published recently in the American Journal of Education. The proportion of immigrants was higher at private institutions, 28.8 percent, than at public colleges, where they made up 23.1 percent of enrollment.
Impressive, no? This is even more so when we compare black immigrants to native-born black Americans.
I am inclined to think that, based on such data, two things stand out. (1) If the America Martin Luther King dreamed of, in which blacks "will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character", is not already here, it is near at hand. (2) American blacks ought to do some serious soul-searching about why they still remain, in so many respects, at the bottom rung of the economic ladder.
George Will, Jewish World Review
In the West, where the deer and the antelope used to play, the spirit of "leave us alone" government used to prevail. But governments of Western states are becoming more like those elsewhere, alas.
Consider the minor — but symptomatic — matter of the government-abetted aggression by "interior designers" against mere "decorators," or against interior designers whom other interior designers wish to demote to the status of decorators. Some designers think decorators should be a lesser breed without the law on its side.
Those categories have blurry borders. Essentially, interior designers design an entire space, sometimes including structural aspects; decorators have less comprehensive and more mundane duties — matching colors, selecting furniture, etc.
In
This is done in the name of "professionalization," but it really amounts to cartelization. Persons in the business limit access by others — competitors — to full participation in the business.
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Other links
Web Logs
Principles in Practice– Principled commentary on cultural matters and current events from “The Objective Standard”
Cox and Forkum – Political cartoons and commentary
The Conspiracy to Keep You Poor and Stupid – Donald Luskin
Dollars and Crosses – CapitalismMagazine.com
Rule of Reason – The Center for the Advancement of Capitalism
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