SOME ECONOMICS

Free trade benefits all: "Trade liberalization talks in Hong Kong ended with a deal to further liberalize access for poor countries' exports to rich countries' markets. Urged on by the misguided nongovernmental organizations, poor countries wasted an excellent opportunity to enhance their own prosperity by opening their markets to foreign competition, however. Therefore, benefits of trade liberalization for many poor countries, especially those in Africa, are likely to be severely limited. So it is worthwhile to again restate the case for free trade and to back it with evidence countries open to trade tend to be more prosperous than protectionist countries."

A flat-out winner for tax reform: "The report issued last month by President Bush's Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform landed in no-man's land. The right was disappointed that its proposals were so timid, and the left was critical because the report highlighted the damaging impact of high tax rates on work, saving and investment. Perhaps the panel could have won more hearts and minds if it had examined the real-world experience with tax reform. The flat-tax revolution in Eastern Europe is particularly compelling. Nine nations from the old Soviet bloc have adopted the flat tax -- which taxes income at one rate -- and others are poised to. In an ironic twist, these countries are rejecting the class-warfare politics of yesteryear and building tax systems specifically designed to attract investment, fuel economic growth and treat all citizens fairly."

Minimum wage ACORN roots: "According to a Dec. 25 report in the Boston Globe, the Democratic Party is joining forces with the activist group ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) to place initiatives on state ballots this fall to raise the minimum wage. The idea is to energize the poor to vote for Democratic candidates as well as the initiative. ACORN's involvement in this campaign is amusing because a few years ago the group sued the state of California in order to be exempted from its minimum wage requirement, which was higher than the federal government's. In its appellate brief, ACORN acknowledged that the more it had to pay each worker, the fewer such workers it would be able to hire. Of course, the same thing is true for businesses as well, something minimum wage advocates refuse to admit."

CEOs should mind their own business: "President Coolidge once said the business of America is business. He might have added that the business of business is to pursue profits, for lately some corporate leaders seem to have lost sight of that basic precept. Instead, they have embraced corporate social responsibility (CSR), the political doctrine du jour of the leftist ninnies who seek to further socials goals that they have decided are virtuous. The activist-inspired CSR movement represents the convergence of two seemingly discordant political doctrines: - corporate socialization and the privatization of regulation."

American Marxist economist Harry Magdoff died recently. Was he a Soviet agent?. Good riddance to bad rubbish either way. From his biography, it was clearly emotion, not reason that drove him.

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ELSEWHERE

Dogmatic atheist: "Controversial scientist and evolutionist Richard Dawkins, dubbed "Darwin's Rottweiler," calls religion a "virus" and faith-based education "child abuse" in a two-part series he wrote and appears in that begins airing on the UK's Channel 4, beginning tomorrow evening." [Since the vast majority of the human race is religious, this galoot thinks most people are mentally diseased child abusers. That's the sort of respect for other people that you are always getting from the Left. It does help us to see why they cheerfully wipe people out by the millions when they get unrestricted power -- e.g. Stalin, Mao etc]

Elitist Europe: As authoritarian as ever: "A few years back, after a prolonged immersion in American Protestant fundamentalism (I was writing a book), I moved from the U.S. to Western Europe, ready to bask in an open, secular, liberal culture. Instead I discovered that European social democracy, too, was a kind of fundamentalism, rigid and doctrinaire, yielding what Swedish writer Johan Norberg calls "one-idea states"-nations where an echo chamber of insular elites calls the shots, where monochrome media daily reiterate statist mantras and shut out contrarian views, and where teachers and professors systematically misrepresent the U.S. (millions of Europeans believe that free public schools, unemployment insurance, and pensions are unknown in America). The more I saw of the European elites' chronic distrust of the public, and the public's habitual deference to those elites, the fonder I grew of the nasty, ridiculous rough-and-tumble of American democracy, in which every voice is heard"

Chatting up the TSA: "Next time you go to the airport be sure to put on a happy face, even if you've been informed that your flight has been delayed by an hour and that you'll miss all your connections. You'll need this cheerful facade to make it through the TSA airport security checkpoint. As if being asked to strip off shoes, coats, belts and other clothing before going through a metal detector and getting your personal belongings x-rayed is not enough, the TSA will begin psychoanalyzing air travelers in 40 major airports next year. TSA screeners, who are not even fully trained law enforcement personnel, let alone professional psychologists, will perform behavior analysis screening on all passengers."

Marxist Mexico's busybody president: "The president of Marxist Mexico, Vincente Fox, is a real busybody when it comes to sticking his nose into the affairs of the United States. He has more crust than a loaf of bread. Early in December, 2005, it was announced that a federal judge had lifted the final barrier stopping the United States from completion of a fence along much of its border with Mexico. Fox has been more than critical of the fence plan ever since he heard about it. His problem seems to be that it will keep all the illegals on his side of the border, where most of them belong anyway, instead of letting them sneak across into our Southwestern states so they can get all the free welfare goodies on this side. He called the new fence a violation of 'human and labor rights.' Whose human and labor rights -- why those of the illegal immigrants of course. So if illegals are not allowed to enter this country illegally we are now violating their human rights! To listen to Fox's political posturing you would think that Mexico, almost single-handedly built the United States."

KBJ on a fallacious appeal to authority: "Law professors are expert in law. They are not moral experts. Nobody is a moral expert. So what are we to make of this—a letter signed by several hundred law professors? They say they oppose Judge Samuel Alito's appointment to the United States Supreme Court. But why? Is it because he's incompetent? Is it because his knowledge of the law is inadequate? Is it because he lacks the requisite analytical, argumentative, or critical skills? The answer comes at the end of the letter (before the names): These law professors don't like his values. They think he will make the country "less equal and less free." That these people are experts in law (I give them the benefit of the doubt) has nothing to do with whether anyone should share their values. What a disgraceful document! These law professors are trying to parlay their legal expertise into moral influence. They are trying to fool people into inferring moral authority from legal authority. They are suborning fallacy.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. On Social Security see Dick McDonald and for purely Australian news see Australian Politics (mirrored here).

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Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

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