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.

“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.

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 That's why Obamacare was not repealed, and it explains why Trump has not been very consequential, despite his obvious personal flaws.

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 William Perry talks about the risk of accidental nuclear war and notes that it is not hypothetical. It's happened before.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

"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.

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.

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.