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As an antidote to yesterday's depressing pessimism about Republican
GOP candidates, Jim Geraghty says some nice things
about John, Mitt, Newt, and Rudy. ("No, wait: the glass is actually
half full!")
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Another must-read today is Tyler Cowan in the New York Times
on the topic of inequality.
Knowledgable, even-handed and non-demagogic. I'll quote the last two
paragraphs:
The broader philosophical question is why we should worry about inequality — of any kind — much at all. Life is not a race against fellow human beings, and we should discourage people from treating it as such. Many of the rich have made the mistake of viewing their lives as a game of relative status. So why should economists promote this same zero-sum worldview? Yes, there are corporate scandals, but it remains the case that most American wealth today is produced rather than taken from other people.
"Inequality" is one of the last rhetorical clubs that one can use to pummel free-market capitalism; it's not too surprising that a lot of politicians and their economist enablers want to grab it.What matters most is how well people are doing in absolute terms. We should continue to improve opportunities for lower-income people, but inequality as a major and chronic American problem has been overstated.
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Not appearing on Cute Overload anytime in the
forseeable future: the prehistoric frilled shark.
Jan
25
2007
URLs du Jour
2007-01-25