Our economic problems worry me much less than our political solutions, which have a far worse track record.
Economics is concerned with what emerges, not what anyone intended.
Racism is not dead, but it is on life support – kept alive by politicians, race hustlers and people who get a sense of superiority by denouncing others as ‘racists’
You need to be empathetic in your own personal life and we help our neighbors and our friends out who are struggling in our neighborhoods. But we don’t make bad decisions based on empathy.
I hate to make predictions, but I think the economy is going to be permanently changed for the worse. I think our foreign policy is going to lead to changes that will be definitely for the worse, particularly if we drift into a nuclear Iran, which I gather that’s what the administration is doing.
What makes it possible for politicians to do so many things that are economically counterproductive is that neither the public nor the media know enough of the basics to understand what’s wrong with what they’re saying.
The law of diminishing returns means that even the most beneficial principle will become harmful if carried far enough.
If you don’t control the borders, it doesn’t matter what immigration laws you have.
Asking liberals where wages and prices come from is like asking six-year-olds where babies come from.
If we become a people who are willing to give up our money and our freedom in exchange for rhetoric and promises, then nothing can save us.
The most politically painless way to hand out goodies, without taking responsibility for their costs, is to pass a law saying that somebody else must provide those goodies at their expense, while the politicians take credit for generosity and compassion.
By the end of the 20th century, “liberals” had again discredited themselves, to the point where they went back to calling themselves “progressives” to escape their past, much as people do when they declare bankruptcy.
How a man who holds the entire population of a country as his prisoners, and punishes the families of those who escape, can be admired by people who call themselves liberals is one of the many wonders of the human mind’s ability to rationalize. Yet such is the case with Fidel Castro.
Riskier mortgage lending practices, imposed by government, were what set the stage for many mortgage payments to stop and thus for the financial disasters that followed. Political rhetoric, echoed in the media, seeks to obscure that painfully plain fact.
One of the most important skills for political success is the ability to make confident assertions of absurdities or lies.
Study after study, not only here but in other countries, show that the most affordable housing is where there has been the least government interference with the market – contrary to rhetoric.
In the wake of the housing debacle in California, more people are buying less expensive homes, making bigger down payments, and staying away from ‘creative’ and risky financing. It is amazing how fast people learn when they are not insulated from the consequences of their decisions.
It is precisely those members of Congress who have had the most to do with creating the risks that led to the current economic crisis who are making the most noise against others, and summoning people before their committee to be browbeaten and humiliated on nationwide television.
Barack Obama’s vision of America is one in which a President of the United States can fire the head of General Motors, tell banks how to bank, control the medical system and take charge of all sorts of other activities for which neither he nor other politicians have any expertise or experience.
Virtually everything that the government does costs more than when the same thing is done in private industry – whether it is building housing, running prisons, collecting garbage, or innumerable other things. Why in the world would we imagine that health care would be the exception?