Urban vanity projects such as sports teams and convention centers add little to permanent employment or overall regional economic well-being.
Joel Kotkin, Contributor
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Sally Pipes, Contributor
Capital Flows, Contributor
Charles Kadlec, Contributor
It's not the most in-depth analysis of Russian drinking patterns I've ever seen, but I did want to briefly flag this post from the Financial Times' always excellent Beyond BRICS because it shows that Russian alcohol consumption is not some mythical entity that is totally immune to amelioration or modification. The government is raising taxes on beer and making efforts to limit where and when it can be sold and the effect is...a rise in prices and a mild decrease in sales, or exactly what you would[...] read »
Chelsea Clinton didn’t announce she was running for office last night at the New York Historical Society, but she did an impressive job interviewing her father about the ideas in his just-published book, Back to Work: Why we Need Smart Government for a Strong Economy. The former president was making the publicity rounds yesterday, including appearances on NPR, “The Today Show” and “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.” read »
President Obama should know better. Our constitutional-law-professor-in-chief has, once again, taken the government to unprecedented levels of secrecy while institutionalizing the perversions of our seemingly never-ending war-on-terror. On October 30th, the administration, without seeking Congressional authorization, proposed an executive rule that will license governmental agencies to issue bald-faced lies to the citizenry, making a mockery not only of the Freedom of Information Act, but of the[...] read »
The banks are going to find a way to take our money. I'd rather be able to see what I am spending than hunt for the pony. read »
America is an ownership culture. We don’t rent appliances like the Europeans. We have a national policy pushing home ownership – which many believe led to the 2008 financial crisis. We prefer the suburbs to the city, where we need cars and other luxuries of life that can only be owned. read »
Earlier this year, the Cato Institute published a study of mine titled "Economic Self-Flagellation: How U.S. Antidumping Policy Subverts the National Export Initiative." The thrust of the paper is that most U.S. antidumping measures restrict and tax the importation of crucial raw materials and intermediate goods used by U.S. producers to make their own final goods. Accordingly, these antidumping measures -- imposed for the benefit of one or two or a few firms in less competitive upstream industries[...] read »
