May 13, 2014
Progressives Politics after Piketty: Making the Case for Managed Markets
It is very rare for the Left to have a best-seller but we have one now. The French economist Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century is currently being both widely read and even more widely discussed. That is great news. The question it leaves us with is how to put all that reading and […] read more »
February 23, 2012
Taking the Republicans to Task: (2) On the Regulation of Business and Labor
In the standard trilogy of core commitments currently being made by Republican presidential candidates, the cutting of taxes and the pruning of government is invariably accompanied by the promise to deregulate business – and indeed to re-regulate labor. The Obama administration stands condemned, not simply for its tax-and-spend propensities, but also for its subordination […] read more »
July 29, 2011
Washington Woes and the Problem of the Parrot
In the famous Monty Python parrot sketch, John Cleese’s understandable outrage at being sold a Norwegian Blue that was actually “stone dead” as he put it, does not get him a new bird. What it does get him – from the Michael Palin character who originally sold it to him – is a barrage of […] read more »
February 4, 2011
Making the Case for Regulated Markets
(Chapter outline) THE CASE FOR UNREGULATED MARKETS Capitalist markets are the great drivers of human progress Unregulated markets are optimal allocators of resources Unregulated markets guarantee freedom in ways that even democratic politics cannot Markets and morality go together The regulation of markets by governments necessarily impairs their performance Free markets are the American way: […] read more »