From a good interview with John Mackey, co-founder and CEO of Whole Foods: “Before I started my business, my political philosophy was that business is evil and government is good. I think I just breathed it in with the culture. Businesses, they’re selfish because they’re trying to make money.” At age 25, John Mackey was […]
The Results on Cash for Clunkers
The Wall Street Journal summarizes the the results of the cash for clunkers program.
The Economic Stimulus Didn't Work
A good article from the Wall Street Journal. It begins: Is the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 working? At the time of the act’s passage last February, this question was hotly debated. Administration economists cited Keynesian models that predicted that the $787 billion stimulus package would increase GDP by enough to create 3.6 […]
Raising Taxes by a Certain Percentage Does Not Mean Tax Revenues Will Rise by the Same Percentage
A good analogy of this fact from the Wall Street Journal: Mr. Rangel and House Democrats are also banking on the idea that raising tax rates by 20% will raise 20% more tax revenue, but that’s like telling Wal-Mart it can raise prices by 20% and get 20% more profit. When taxes on the rich […]
The Housing Boom and Bust
Thomas Sowell’s new book, The Housing Boom and Bust, would be worth a read by those wanting to learn more about the housing bust and its role in the current financial crisis. From the Amazon product description: This is a plain-English explanation of how we got into the current economic disaster that developed out of […]
Spending Does Not Drive the Economy, Part 2
I posted a few weeks ago some thoughts on how spending does not drive the economy. My point is not that spending is unimportant to the economy, but rather that lack of spending is not the core problem. For before you can spend, you need to have something to spend. Therefore, attempts to re-start the […]
Patrick Lencioni on the Two Core Problems with Socialism
Patrick Lencioni is an excellent business thinker. He is known for simple yet powerful management wisdom through books like The Five Dysfunctions of a Team and The Three Signs of a Miserable Job. Recently, he has started The Simple Wisdom Project, which is intended to be “a source of perspective and common sense about topics […]
False Solutions and Real Problems
Thomas Sowell has a great column from the other day on the housing crisis. Here are the first two paragraphs: Someone once said that Senator Hubert Humphrey, liberal icon of an earlier generation, had more solutions than there were problems. Senator Humphrey was not unique in that respect. In fact, our present economic crisis has […]
Free Jay Leno Tickets Provide Lesson on the Free Market
This is an amusing story from Greg Mankiw’s blog that also shows how free markets improve the allocation of resources.
Spending Does Not Drive the Economy, Part 1
The belief that spending drives the economy is pervasive. It manifests itself in two sub-categories: First, the belief that consumer spending drives the economy and, second, the belief that government stimulus spending assists the economy. We’ll look at each of these in turn, and then show how this relates to the topic of productivity.