I’ve been tracking the economic recovery with charts and commentaries on this blog since it began in 2009. The simplest but most revealing charts compared and contrasted this recovery with the recovery of the 1980s. Here’s an update of two of those charts.
Let us start our grand tour of an increasingly out-of-control world in Russia. Putin plays a two-bit Hitler in trying to gobble up his neighbors. The West responds with a one-bit imitation of 1930s Britain and France. ISIS reminds us that beheading and human incineration are contemporary, not premodern, practices.
Opponents of charter schools have claimed that these schools are "cherry-picking" the students they admit, and that this explains why many charter schools get better educational results with less money than public schools do.
As many know, the White House held a summit on cybersecurity and consumer protection at Stanford University today. In addition to President Obama, a number of CEOs also spoke on privacy and security issues in the context of consumer protection, and of course the backdrop for much of the summit was the Snowden revelations and the public and industry reaction to them.
When Alfred E. Neuman said "What me worry?" on the cover of Mad magazine, it was funny. But this message was not nearly as funny coming from President Barack Obama and his National Security Advisor, Susan Rice.
Last November, the Obama Administration announced that it will cease enforcement of the immigration laws with respect to some four million undocumented persons. Instead it will award them legal status and work authorizations. Quite apart from whether this is good policy, it is almost certainly bad law.
On November 20, 2014, President Obama issued a series of memoranda to the cabinet secretaries responsible for overseeing the nation’s immigration system. The actions were expressly not changes in law, although the president proclaimed he had taken actions affecting naturalization, deferred action, parole-in-place, and border security.
The year 2015 will carry special significance throughout much of the country — including Nevada — as schools complete the transition to the Common Core standards.
Legal scholar Eric Posner has written a piece on Slate defending various restrictions on students' speech. Robby Soave, at Reason's Hit and Run blog, has a good critique of much of Posner's article. But I want to point out a huge problem with Posner's piece that Soave did not comment on.
Vladimir Putin was the winner of the Minsk II peace accords. Territory gained by the rebels in violation of Minsk I appears to be conceded; there is no deadline for the pulling out of Russian regular troops and mercenary forces; Kiev must pay the costs of occupied territory; and the self-appointed stooges of the Kremlin, who call themselves the leaders of the self-proclaimed “people’s republics,” have gained recognition and a say in constitutional change.
For both structural and cultural reasons, it seems likely that China’s rise as a global great power will provoke conflict with neighboring states and even farther abroad. Rising powers throughout history have sought to reshape the international balance of power to their liking, and the particular East Asian order that China wishes to restructure–led by the United States but with a hub-and-spoke design that is problematic for collective deterrence and defense –is inherently vulnerable and made more so by the seeming weakness of current US policy.
Do the rich pay their fair share of taxes? That’s the very question that Lee Ohanian, an economics professor at UCLA, tackled in a new course for Prager University, revealing some fascinating statistics that he says dispel the myth that the wealthy aren’t paying enough into the tax system.
Benn Steil of the Council on Foreign Relations and author of The Battle of Bretton Woods: John Maynard Keynes, Harry Dexter White, and the Making of a New World Order talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about Bretton Woods, the conference that resulted in the IMF, the World Bank, and the post-war international monetary system. Topics discussed include America and Britain's conflicting interests during and after World War II, the relative instability of the post-war system, and the personalities and egos of the individuals at Bretton Woods, including John Maynard Keynes and Harry Dexter White.
The Hoover Institution announced today the release of Senior Fellow Shelby Steele’s latest book, Shame: How America’s Past Sins Polarized Our Country, on race in America.
I approached "How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life" -- a new book by Russ Roberts -- a little gloomily. It presents itself as an introduction to Adam Smith's lesser-known masterpiece, "The Theory of Moral Sentiments," in the guise of a self-help book for the morally perplexed. Oh dear. I didn’t like the sound of that.
If the murders in Paris and now Copenhagen frighten us into silence they will have achieved their goal. That is why it is so vital that we continue to talk, and to listen.
Cyberspace is the new "Wild West," President Barack Obama said Friday, with everyone looking to the government to be the sheriff. But he told the private sector it must do more to stop cyber attacks aimed at the U.S. every day.
On the eve of the White House Summit on Cybersecurity and Consumer Protection, Stanford hosted two events related to privacy technologies and future research and education. The discussions addressed current and future challenges.
