Economics
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Since Obama just won (congrats btw), we have some time to accept that America just made a resounding endorsement of Keynesianism. This is not a good thing. I can only assume that most Americans don’t understand the danger of government spending, or that Mitt Romney was an exceptionally bad messenger for liberalization. The latter is…
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I am a little late to the party, but I read Adam Gopnik’s piece on Obama’s “you didn’t build that” comment, and I am a little disappointed that he fails to understand Adam Smith’s message, or if he does, he has failed to represent his position correctly. Gopnik should know this, having reviewed Nicholas Phillipson’s…
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I was at Budapest-Keleti this morning for one of my weekend trips out of town, and I had a couple minutes to kill before boarding so I pulled out my current book, Catch-22 (I know, I haven’t read it yet). Reading about Yossarian and his zany flight squadron while waiting for a train, I had…
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Sunday mornings are silent in Vienna, punctuated only by the dull hum of a tram or the chirping of birds in the hundreds of parks in the city. The wind coming out of the Danube valley rushes down the wide boulevards, amplifying their desolateness. I am in Burgengarten, looking at the backside of the Hofburg…
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Recently I was having a spirited debate with a friend whom I suspect to be a libertarian sympathizer. His big criticism of libertarianism–a very fair one–was that libertarians tend to value Freedom as an end in itself, not more tangible and perhaps more measurable goals such as social mobility, humanitarianism, or even wealth creation. What…
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I had an interesting conversation today. I was waiting for a friend to meet me in Wrigleyville, and not wanting to pay for a seat in a restaurant I sat down outside on a public ledge next to the sidewalk and started to answer some work emails. I struck up a conversation with a man…
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So being in Mongolia has been a bit of an affirmation of Friedman economics for me, not that I had such a problem with them before but Mongolia takes the models to such an extreme that it provides a willing test subject and performs very well. We pulled into Ulaanbaatar (UB) by train at about…
brian mayer 