Happy 4th, y’all.
Today I read this in an email from Americans For Prosperity. (I got in a heated argument with some hyper-Republicans at their national event last year. I tried to explain to someone how all flags are gangster symbols.)
The issue is the Cap and Trade bill, some notes on the House’s vote:
* Just two [...]
For starters Steve Margolis (former prof of mine – and friend) has a piece at Newmark’s Door on the cap and trade bill.
Ironically, an outright tax would have been better than the cap and trade plan. What the current bill does is assign a privilege to pollute, and then allow this privilege to [...]
this is the proper spelling of the plural.
Virginia’s DOT recently changed the rules for developers building new neighborhoods.
They don’t want any more culs de sac.
They say culs de sac generate traffic bottlenecks and make it difficult for the state to maintain roads, and for emergency vehicles to access neighborhoods.
Maybe they do.
But traffic bottlenecks can be [...]
In conversations about difficult topics it is important to share definitions. Capitalism is a word of many meanings.
In this conversation I lay out a defense of what I consider pure Capitalism and how Christians ought to behave among themselves, and what positions they ought to advocate – if any – in public policy debates. I [...]
Kids often fight over things which were gifts from their parents.
Suppose I slice a cake into several (unequal) pieces, and distribute them to my children. Now, this is cake mind you, not bread, not water. It is a pure bonus. Dessert. So I dole out the cake. It is quite likely that an argument will [...]
The web is tangled.
My former professor at NC State, Craig Newmark, linked to a book report by Philip Greenspun at Harvard Law on Macur Olsen’s The Rise and Decline of Nations.
I shared this with my friends over at Common Root.
Mark has some good thoughts, and I reply:
The question of how to subvert becomes strategic.
Do we [...]
As (future) economists, we are asked for advice about shaping policy. Not every profession gets that opportunity. Clergy have a much different way of speaking “truth to power” than a Christian economist might. And the advice a Christian economist might give to a policy maker is quite likely to be different than the [...]
There is no right side in the Israeli – Palestinian conflict. What gives any government legitimacy to exist? There is no standard for answering this question in Scripture (if you find one, please email it to me at ndsnow@gmail – those who quote Rom 13 need not apply) because there is no support for the [...]
Gary North warns us:
If, on the Graduate Records Exam in economics, you are asked to write on essay on microeconomics and macroeconomics, you would be [...]
Some citizens of my little suburb are concerned about a new mixed-use development set to go in three blocks from my house. I think they need to quit whining. The following is a letter I sent to the town managers, and the whiners:
I’m sure you get plenty of letters from folks who are against the [...]