SOME ECONOMIC ISSUES

Massachusetts: State eyes tougher welfare rules: "About 10,000 additional Massachusetts welfare recipients, including many people with disabilities, would have to work, and thousands who already have jobs would have to labor for longer hours under new rules recommended yesterday by a special state panel. The proposed changes, which would have to be implemented by October of next year to put Massachusetts in compliance with federal welfare rules, would force as many as 5,600 disabled people to meet work requirements and compel some recipients to work for as many as 34 hours a week, up from the current maximum of 30 hours. Overall, the recommendations would increase the number of Massachusetts welfare recipients who have to work from roughly 12,700 to about 22,000. A total of 49,000 families are currently on the state's welfare rolls."

Why Personal Retirement Accounts? "There is little risk in personal retirement accounts. A recent study done by the CATO Institute has shown that there has been no 20 year period where that has been a loss in the market. In fact, the 3.36% rate of return on investments in the period between 1929-1948 is still much greater than the rate of return retirees receive currently on Social Security. And with future retirees facing a negative rate of return, the current Social Security system is much riskier than market investments. Besides, money will not simply disappear from the Social Security Trust Fund during the transition to private accounts."

Globalization takes off: "We're in the 11th month of the most prosperous year in human history. Last week, the World Bank released a report showing that global growth "accelerated sharply" this year to a rate of about 4 percent. Best of all, the poorer nations are leading the way. Some rich countries, like the U.S. and Japan, are doing well, but the developing world is leading this economic surge. Developing countries are seeing their economies expand by 6.1 percent this year - an unprecedented rate - and, even if you take China, India and Russia out of the equation, developing world growth is still around 5 percent... This is having a wonderful effect on world poverty, because when regions grow, that growth is shared up and down the income ladder. In its report, the World Bank notes that economic growth is producing a "spectacular" decline in poverty in East and South Asia..... What explains all this good news? The short answer is this thing we call globalization. Over the past decades, many nations have undertaken structural reforms to lower trade barriers, shore up property rights and free economic activity. International trade is surging.

Really free enterprise: "Slugging is a term used to describe a unique form of commuting found in the Washington, DC area sometimes referred to as "Instant Carpooling" or "Casual Carpooling". It's unique because people commuting into the city stop to pickup other passengers even though they are total strangers! However, slugging is a very organized system with its own set of rules, proper etiquette, and specific pickup and drop-off locations. It has thousands of vehicles at its disposal, moves thousands of commuters daily, and the best part, it's FREE! Not only is it free, but it gets people to and from work faster than the typical bus, metro, or train. I think you'll find that it is the most efficient, cost-effective form of commuting in the nation"

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ELSEWHERE

Why Bush is misrepresented as a religious fanatic: "Fleischer says that the critics "believe their policies are so correct that no reasonable person could see things differently - unless people like President Bush are blinded by an extreme faith that prevents them from seeing the facts." To him, this is the same narrow-mindedness that critics claim to find in conservative Christians".

Britain to deny young women private sector jobs (As has already happened in Sweden): "Mothers will win the right to a year's paid leave after having a baby as part of a massive overhaul of childcare" [What employer in his right mind would hire a young woman under those circumstances?].

Amusing: The one thing that Leftists will normally allow as genetically-inherited is homosexuality. Yet it is also one characteristic for which the evidence of genetic inheritance is quite equivocal. On my reading of the matter, homosexuality can be caused by several things -- one of which could be in utero damage. Ruling out environmental causes (which Leftists do) is certainly sheer dogmatism.

Primitive party animals: "Since the 1976 presidential election, the Democrats have not received more than 50 percent of the popular vote. Most organisms, except for very primitive ones, usually modify their behavior after repeated failure in order to survive. Much has been written about why the Democrats continue to fail in the polls. But as an economist, I have been particularly struck by how they have failed to learn sound economics, despite all the empirical economic and political evidence of what works and what doesn't. Let's start with taxes. There is overwhelming evidence our present maximum tax rates on both labor and capital are so high they reduce economic growth, job creation and the general level of wellbeing for Americans. Despite this, Democrat candidates from Walter Mondale to John Kerry keep proposing higher marginal tax rates on labor and capital. ... Higher tax rates are not only an economic loser but are also a political loser."

Is it the government's business if you lose money gambling? "As legalized gambling spreads across the states, a branch of the federal government that deals with drug and alcohol addicts is studying ways to help compulsive gamers -- and looking to Louisiana, especially, for inspiration....Louisiana Association on Compulsive Gambling Executive Director Reece Middleton, who took part in a meeting this summer with representatives from other state programs, says the federal government may be close to taking action. "You've got a proliferation of legalized gambling across the country, and you've got an increase, I believe, of people getting in trouble," he said. "I just think it's gotten to the point where all of a sudden it's real hard for the federal government to ignore the question anymore." .... "It's absolutely urgent that a national initiative for gambling treatment be forthcoming, and that it be forthcoming from a federal government," Middleton said".

Nazis were normal Leftists -- not insane: "Now the book the Florida State University professor fine-tuned - "The Nuremberg Interviews" - is being heralded for giving the world new insights into the chilling thoughts of Nazi leaders responsible for the Holocaust, the systematic extermination of more than 6 million Jews during World War II.... "There is this kind of inner logic behind the outer madness," Gellately said of the book's 33 interviews. "That's the horror of the thing." That's because, Gellately said, for the most part, these Nazi rulers were as normal as next-door neighbors. "I think we all have an idea about what makes the Nazis tick. Some of us think they were demonic or crazy ... Really, two people in the book are like that, but they are not the interesting ones," Gellately said. "Most of the other ones are like you and me. They are well-educated, rational, sensible." They pour out their thoughts to Dr. Leon Goldensohn, a U.S. Army psychiatrist, who kept detailed notes of his interviews with the war criminals and witnesses awaiting trial in Nuremberg, Germany, in 1946..... "They had a sense of duty, perverted, but they were rational, kind of cold, calculating killers," he said, "not this emotional, go-out-and-shoot-their-friend-in-the-woods kind of thing. You can't prove these were guys that actually hated the Jews or actually ever hit anyone".

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

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That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftists are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions

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