Jan
25
2007

URLs du Jour

2007-01-25

  • 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!")

  • 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.

    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.

    "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.

  • Not appearing on Cute Overload anytime in the forseeable future: the prehistoric frilled shark.


Last Modified 2007-01-28 8:05 AM EDT