Just months ago, the world held its breath over the possibility of a war with North Korea. Now, surprisingly sweetness and light seem to have replaced war talk. North and South Korean delegations recently met at Panmunjom, the village on the border of the two states.
Sometimes it is not good to get to the right answer for the wrong reasons. This thought comes to mind reading to recent WSJ articles, Walmart raises wages and Tax reform releases the bulls.
[Subscription Required] In his latest book, ‘The Square and the Tower,’ Niall Ferguson shows his distrust for the classical liberal assumption that unplanned activity is often beneficent. Anything not ordered consciously he views as dangerous disorder.
“This is not a drill,” announced the emergency alert, and for 37 minutes hundreds of thousands of Hawaiians and tourists were left to contemplate the possibility that an incoming missile might soon end their lives.
Niall Ferguson says getting mad is part of the job as the presidency can be inherently infuriating, noting that US President Donald Trump’s tumultuous start has much in common with Clinton’s dramatic first year in office. Clinton, of course, went on to be re-elected
Baseball stats guru and author Bill James talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the challenges of understanding complexity in baseball and elsewhere. James reflects on the lessons he has learned as a long-time student of data and the role it plays in understanding the underlying reality that exists between different variables in sports and outside of sports.
One needn’t support the recently-enacted tax legislation to be disturbed by the tenor of much criticism of it. Many opponents, and indeed some press reporting, took for granted that if one voted for a significant tax cut after having expressed longstanding concerns about federal deficits, one must be an irredeemable hypocrite. But lower taxes and smaller deficits can coexist.
2018 is an election year, which means there are long odds against comprehensive entitlement spending reforms being enacted anytime soon. After all, there is a long, regrettable history of irresponsible campaign rhetoric on this subject, and it’s simply too easy to misattribute any near-term initiative to causes ranging from mean-spiritedness to ideological fervor to tax cuts.
Over at his other blog, TheMoneyIllusion, fellow EconLog blogger Scott Sumner writes: I've often suggested that Presidents have far less power than people assume, and that events tend to follow the "zeitgeist", or the prevailing mood in the country. That's why Obamacare was not repealed, and it explains why Trump has not been very consequential, despite his obvious personal flaws.
I don't believe in intellectual cooties. Reason: This year there has been a lot of discussion about whether there's a pipeline between libertarians and the alt-right.
Hoover Institution fellow Niall Ferguson discusses the extent in which Facebook and Google have altered our political system as well as the disinformation campaigns, networks, and Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the president.
Hoover Institution fellow Michael McFaul and Gerhard Casper discuss how well the US Constitution has been holding up during President Trump's presidency.
Hoover Institution fellow Niall Ferguson says the Chinese have evolved a completely different relationship between giant tech and government and it’s going to be fascinating to see how the two co-exist.
Hoover Institution fellow Toomas Hendrik Ilves notes that democratic nations around the world -- including and building out from the NATO partners -- should forge a global partnership on cybersecurity, starting with an informal forum for collaboration and growing into an alliance with legal structures and responsibilities.
interview with Michael J. Petrillivia Education Gadfly (Thomas B. Fordham Institute)
Wednesday, January 10, 2018
Hoover Institution fellow Michael Petrilli joins Benjamin Boer, deputy director at Advance Illinois, and Alyssa Schwenk to discuss how a coalition of advocates succeeded in getting the Land of Lincoln to overhaul its inequitable school funding formula.
Thursday, on the 263rd birthday of Alexander Hamilton, the Oval Office descended into a deep brown sinkhole of anti-immigrant rhetoric. But in San Francisco at the Old Mint, the California Historical Society celebrated foreign-born Hamilton, the first U.S. treasury secretary, by honoring another great American, George P. Shultz.
More than a year after the 2016 election, people are still left wondering, what the heck happened? The professional pundit class has been obsessing over this question since the race was called. Hillary Clinton herself even offered an explanation-cum-defense of her failed campaign.
Neo Capital Management Group Co., Ltd. ("Neo Capital" or the "Group") recently held its 2018 Finance Summit with the theme of "New Era & New Wealth." Present at the summit were many famous economists, scholars and entrepreneurs from China and abroad, including Thomas Sargent, the winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, Fan Gang, a famous research fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Shen Minggao, Shao Bingren, Yu Yongding and Dan Bin, as well as the top executives of Neo Capital and Neo New Wealth, who shared the economic trends of 2018 and investment insights with several hundred investors.
Stanford University announced it will host speakers with controversial and opposing views in order to expose the campus to diverse perspectives and to foster open exchange on campus.
The public needs to be “careful” about how it responds to the #MeToo movement because it could turn women into “snowflakes” and make men resentful of them, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Saturday.
featuring Thomas Sowellvia American Enterprise Institute
Monday, January 15, 2018
Today (January 15) is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and this year marks the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination in 1968. It’s also the 88th anniversary today of MLK’s birthday in 1929 (because the federal holiday is observed on third Monday of January, it usually doesn’t fall exactly on his birthday — the last time it did was 2007 and the next time will be 2024).
Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Saturday that President Donald Trump, with his strong rhetoric toward dictator Kim Jong Un, is trying "in his own way" to let North Korea know that he takes their nuclear ambitions seriously.
Social commentator Shelby Steele recently wrote an editorial for the Wall Street Journal wondering if the protests by black NFL players during the playing of the national anthem, signals the end of any weight being placed on public protests by blacks in America today.
The rush to prepay 2018 property taxes in Colorado and elsewhere, so amply documented in recent news reports, is the most visible sign that Republicans got at least something right last month in their tax bill. Those pre-paying taxpayers were only trying to save money, of course, but the underlying mechanism for their savings — shifting local taxes to people who live in other states — is indefensible by any standard of fairness.
Two op-eds in this weekend’s Wall Street Journal and one on this website brilliantly call attention to aspects of the vast political and cultural change, still in its early stages, that is gathering force in this country as inexorably as the spring thaw breaks up a frozen river, first as a trickle and then a torrent. Donald Trump figures in all three stories.
Democrats are focused on the Dreamers, less than 10 percent of the undocumented, “because they’re politically photogenic” and are routinely portrayed as “model youth, fulfilling their proverbial ‘dreams’ of finishing college and achieving upward mobility,” contends Victor Davis Hanson at the LA Times.
Guess which state has the highest poverty rate in the country? Not Mississippi, New Mexico, or West Virginia, but California, where nearly one out of five residents is poor. That’s according to the Census Bureau’s Supplemental Poverty Measure, which factors in the cost of housing, food, utilities and clothing, and which includes noncash government assistance as a form of income.
What, exactly, did the NFL "take-a-knee" protests by wealthy black football players protesting racial injustice accomplish? Based on what most people could see, pretty much nothing, other than lost ticket sales. People go to football games to be entertained, not to be lectured by their supposed betters in another dreary virtue-signaling game.
“Make China Great Again” is officially now the agenda of President Xi Jinping. Can “Make the Han Great Again” be far behind? In this interesting if somewhat academic work, Australian China scholar Carrico has examined the rising influence of traditionalist, racially based sentiments within modern China, particularly through study of the Han Clothing Movement (Hanfu yundong) and associated ideas.
"Money matters. If you don't have it, you cannot spend it." That might be the most head-scratching comment of the week. And if you look at the words coming out of certain Washington, D.C., offices these days, that's saying something. The comment above was buried deep in an AP story that appeared in Arkansas' Newspaper yesterday. The story was about a report on the nation's schools.
Voter fraud is real, pervasive, and purposed. But don’t take it from me. Listen to Alabama Democratic Rep. Artur Davis. Davis is a unique Democrat who acknowledges voter fraud is a reality that his party deliberately ignores, and pushed back against progressives claiming that worries over voter fraud are rooted in prejudice toward minorities.
Last year tested Africa’s emerging democracies to the limits, but revealed their resilience. But democracy is everywhere haemorrhaging from two forms of violent extremism — one linked to international terrorism and the other to rising opposition authoritarianism — now turning Africa’s rapidly growing young generation into cannon-fodder in post-election disputes.
An early-morning emergency alert mistakenly warning of an incoming ballistic missile attack was dispatched to cellphones across Hawaii on Saturday, setting off widespread panic in a state that was already on edge because of escalating tensions between the United States and North Korea.
The headlines involving North Korea, Russia and Iran have been alarming, including even the threat of nuclear war. But fraught relations involving these countries go back decades. We examine that geopolitical history -- and try to untangle recent developments.
Are you a young economist or other professor, and would you like to spend a year at Stanford with no teaching? The Hoover National Fellows program may be for you. Information and application instructions here. It's ideal for someone from a few years after PhD to a few years after tenure who wants a break to bring a research project to fruition.
German Social Democratic (SPD) leaders appealed to party members on Friday to swallow their doubts and endorse an overnight deal to renew a “grand coalition” with Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives for another four years.