SOME ECONOMICS

The Third Way to happiness: "So-called 'happiness research' has been discussed at length recently with economist and TCS contributing editor Arnold Kling writing and blogging about it, and economist Tyler Cowen responding at his blog. That exchange, and the mention of a new book on the subject piqued my interest and some further research led me to the answer: 60% marginal tax rates, that's what will make society happy."

Some reasons businesses outsource to India: "Thanks to the public education system liberals have defended for the past forty years, many high school graduates are nearly functionally illiterate. Not so in India. Thanks to lobbyists and pro-union immigration laws, foreigners aren't allowed to stay in the country after they finish their Ph.D.s. So they're starting companies overseas instead of here. Thanks to our liberal tax system, employers have to pay extra for American workers to fund Social Security- which no one believes will be solvent in a few decades. Thanks to a legal system that favors the plaintiff, employers in the United States must worry about lawsuits over spilled hot coffee, trumped up sexual harassment charges, and other frivolous cases".

Recalling the 1998 tumble: "What was so terrible about 1998? It seemed a pretty good year to me. It was, after all, the sixth year after recession, so you would expect it to be better than 2003, merely the third year after a recession. As it happens, 1998 was also the fifth year of the Clinton administration. Yet I don't recall any rabid Republicans claiming 1998 was the worst economy in 50 years or the worst since Herbert Hoover."

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