ECONOMICS

Why Americans work longer: "It's become a common refrain: American workers are badly overworked, driven to a loss of leisure, sleep and possibly sanity by their material and status obsessions... Most U.S. workers positively still crave getting a shot at overtime hours during a boom period.... people do not want to trade off work for leisure beyond a certain point... A 40-hour week, despite inevitable time preference differences across population groups, seems overall a sensible, natural level. Moreover, it is the weekend that Americans seek to preserve more than the eight-hour workday."

Myths and legends of union accomplishments: "The bottom line is that no union can successfully get a compensation package beyond the market value of their members without resort to force. In a free and competitive market employees who demand more money than the state of the labor market indicates will end up jobless. It is that simple. Attempts to force the market to accept higher than market wages, are generally made by keeping other workers from participating in the artificially high-wage structure. Workers are hurt so others may prosper."

The truth about globalization: Review of Jagdish Bhagwati's In Defense of Globalization: "Globalization in fact reduces poverty and the use of child labor, fosters women's rights, promotes respect for democratic norms, enriches culture, and even sustains the environment. Multinational corporations are not wreaking havoc by leveling wages and labor standards across the globe. In fact, they raise them... Looking more closely at developments within Asia bolsters the point. Who can doubt, Bhagwati asks, that the dramatic reductions in poverty in China and India came about only when these countries began integrating with the world economy, mimicking the tactics of Japan, Korea, and Singapore? Trade and foreign direct investment boost growth, and growth reduces poverty".

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ELSEWHERE

You couldn't make this stuff up: Note this timetable of "The Center for Global Tolerance" and see what is scheduled for 16th. -- a seminar on "Could America Really Be Satan?". That's funny enough but look who is leading the seminar: Keith Crudup! Well-named! I almost think it must be a spoof but I fear it is not. Leftists really are weird enough to think it promotes tolerance to label hundreds of millions of people as being Satan. Hate-speech is just normal for them.

Leftists encourage Muslim terror: "How many lives have left-wing statements cost Israel? In a damning condemnation of the Israeli left, a new book about the battles known as the Oslo War quotes Hamas leaders saying that the behavior of Israel's left-wing encourages them to continue their terrorist attacks."

Gay marriage is good for mental health: " That's what the American Psychological Association (APA) said at its annual conference this summer, when it passed a policy statement that same-sex couples should have the right to marry.... Why would the APA take such a stance in this stormy political climate? Halpern herself acknowledged the riskiness of the move. 'We're going out on a limb', she said. The answer of why they did it, I think, has nothing to do with mental health and everything to do with politics".

Doomed Dems? "The modern Democratic Party cannot survive the reelection of President George W. Bush and another four years of Republican control of both Congress and the White House. No brag. Just fact. The modern Democratic Party is the party of government. Its growth is the health of the state--and vice versa. Over time, all the party's building blocks are dependent on continuous support and reinforcement by the power of the central government...."

Hee! Hee! The Swedes are discovering what their wonderful tolerance, neutrality and political correctness leads to. One excerpt: "Malmo, Sweden. The police now publicly admit what many Scandinavians have known for a long time: They no longer control the situation in the nations's third largest city. It is effectively ruled by violent gangs of Muslim immigrants. Some of the Muslims have lived in the area of Rosengard, Malmo, for twenty years, and still don't know how to read or write Swedish. Ambulance personnel are attacked by stones or weapons, and refuse to help anybody in the area without police escort"

Are women inherently more caring and more "relational" than men? "The chief architect of this essentialist idea is Carol Gilligan.... In the early 1980s, she laid out a new narrative for women's lives that theorized that women have a unique, caring nature not shared by men. Her ideas have revolutionized the psychology of women and revamped curricula to an unprecedented degree.... But how many are aware of the critics of her theories about women's moral development and the relational self? Many scholarly reviews of Gilligan's research contend that it does not back up her claims, that she simply created an intriguing hypothesis that needs testing. But the relational self has become near-sacred writ, cited in textbooks, classrooms, and the news media".

Bias against the South: "Ah, there's nothing like igniting an electronic civil war from coast to coast. My Wednesday column on news media bigotry toward the South got lots of folks worked up. Some critics -- journalists and normal, well-adjusted people -- thought I was claiming the South to be superior. No. But our region does have something to offer this nation besides being a ''people- having-sex-with-farm-animals'' punch line for comedians. Census numbers and a rising Electoral College vote count bear that out. The South is becoming a preferred place to raise families in a strong environment of devout faith and other values Americans want in a post-9/11 age."

Peg Kaplan has found a rant by a devoted Democrat (almost sounds like a soon-to-be former Democrat!) -- and she really nails her party and her party's current candidate for president.

Clayton Cramer has a good sense of humour. Further to the recent accusation that bloggers are just guys in pajamas, Clayton comments: "I don't blog in pajamas. Sometimes, I only blog in underwear. But to avoid causing panic and fear, I never blog naked."

I received a rather interesting email from a reader about Leftist immaturity. See here

I have just put up a revised version of my silly sayings collection -- with a few minor additions and a few long-overdue corrections. See here.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH and EDUCATION WATCH. Mirror sites here, here, here and here

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Anti-Americanism is in epidemic proportions in France and Germany but most people don't realize that it is in epidemic proportions in South Korea too. And what do those three countries have in common? They were liberated by America. And what is probably the most pro-American country in the world? Poland. They liberated themselves. Ego defeats rationality all the time.

The conflict between conservatives and Leftists is not usually a conflict between realists and idealists. Mostly it is a conflict between realists and big egos who will say anything to win applause

Comments? Email me here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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