Economics
An extended passage from Jim Clifton's The Coming Jobs War. His claim, drawn from years of Gallup data, is that the single most dominant thought on most people's minds is having a good job — and that this should be considered in every policy, every law, every
Economics
This writer has nailed it: personal responsibility is everything, and no one can manufacture an economy or a job. The piece
Economics
Written in reply to a friend bemoaning the move of a GE division to China. By moving manufacturing there, we get a temporary business bump for some US companies — but we share our technology with an economic competitor. They will copy everything and then produce more cheaply and sell to
Climate
A shared column on a House committee vote over whether to formally 'accept' that climate change is occurring. The argument Taranto makes — and that I found compelling — is that science proceeds by forming hypotheses and testing them, and that treating a hypothesis as an ideological doctrine or party
Policy
Why are we in Libya? We don't buy their oil, they export virtually nothing to us, and they're ruled by what appears to be a madman in a third-world nation powerless against cruise missiles. There is no upside, no end game, no obvious reason. Even China
Energy
If you truly want to get real, you must separate the conversion of solar energy into food from the conversion of solar energy into mechanical motion. Plants are indispensable for food, but they are poor at turning sunlight into the motion that moves the bus. To take the inefficient process
Environment
Some back-of-the-envelope math on the Gulf spill: roughly 102 million gallons of oil and about 1.1 million gallons of dispersant, against a Gulf volume on the order of 650 quadrillion gallons. Run the ratio and the spill comes out to a vanishingly small fraction — parts per trillion. No wonder
Policy
An interesting thought: in a way, all tourists are 'illegal immigrants' — the only difference being that they aren't trying to get a job. The demonization of a particular immigrant group is dangerous; history shows that once on that path, it becomes easy to dehumanize, and in
Climate
Bill — you said in your TED talk on TerraPower that there's been no scientific support for the climate skeptics, which may be true, but I have to ask: what is the real science supporting the CO2-forcing issue? My reading of the IPCC reports and papers is that they
Policy
The great American experiment is over — RIP. When junk science can win out over rational thought, and voodoo economics can supplant reality, we are truly lost. There doesn't seem to be anyone who actually cares anymore. Very sad.
Liberty
Does no one see the resemblance of this lawlessness to Prohibition? The drug trade feeds on its illicit nature, and that is a human invention. You cannot legislate morality — it has never worked in thousands of years, and it will not work tomorrow. Why is this so difficult to understand?
Climate
We would be extremely naive or arrogant to assume we have meaningful influence over the climate. We are the pimple on the back of the flea on the elephant. Get over it. The article