Archive for the 'Reactions' Category
Friday, April 28th, 2006
Would those calling now for confiscation of that “excess” through a windfall profits tax be equally willing to to make up the “shortfalls” through a windfall loss subsidy during the next down cycle? That would be “fair”, if perhaps unproductive. But I don’t remember any of them being in favor of that in the past. And I can’t imagine it happening in the future.
Rather, in their lexicon “fairness” seems, at least with regard to business, to mean “responsible for losses but not entitled to profits” — risk without reward.
Posted in Reactions, Politics and Partisanship, Social Responsibility and Social Justice, Economics and Business | No Comments »
Sunday, February 19th, 2006
The only way rising property values lead to rising tax bills is if the government chooses to treat the tax rate as an inevitable force of nature rather than as the financial throttle which matches total valuation to total revenue; that is, if government chooses to use rising valuations as an excuse to collect and spend more than they could otherwise have done.
Posted in Reactions, Budget and Taxes | No Comments »
Tuesday, January 17th, 2006
In advocating for Microsoft to defy the Chinese government’s censorship orders and stand up for free expression in China you are demanding that an American corporation take it upon itself to disregard the local laws of the community in which they operate. You are demanding that they substitute an American standard of civil liberty and an American vision of proper social regulation for the locally determined political and cultural choices.
Posted in Reactions, Law, Liberty, and Responsibility, Social Responsibility and Social Justice, Culture and Society, Economics and Business | No Comments »
Tuesday, November 29th, 2005
We routinely view the problem of illegal immigration effectively as one of importing labor. But it is a much more useful paradigm to view it as exporting work, despite the fact that the work doesn’t actually leave the country … If we view illegal immigration as an illicit export of jobs rather than as in illicit import of people, we see a different set of solutions to the problem.
Posted in Reactions, Foreign Policy, Law, Liberty, and Responsibility, Social Responsibility and Social Justice, Security, Economics and Business | No Comments »
Tuesday, November 15th, 2005
Which way do you want it? Opportunity comes with risk; security impedes opportunity. If you want creditors to give people opportunity you can’t blame them for enabling risk-taking. If you want them to prevent risk-taking you can’t blame them for denying opportunity.
Posted in Reactions, Race, Gender, Ethnicity, and Class, Law, Liberty, and Responsibility, Social Responsibility and Social Justice, Economics and Business | 1 Comment »
Friday, May 27th, 2005
So colleges are supposed to open minds unless it makes them open to this particular brand of religion?
Colleges provide a forum for expression of different opinions and varying religious views — excepting that those particular opinions and religious views are to be silenced?
Proselytizing and recruitment by a Christian group with no university affiliation or endorsement — but not proselytizing and recruitment on behalf of Marxism or Utilitarianism or Feminism or Afro-Centrism or any of the other myriad -isms that contend for the students’ attention and commitment in the classroom and through student organizations with the official imprimatur and blessing of the university — constitutes an appalling imposition of those views?
Posted in Reactions, Politics and Partisanship, Culture and Society, Religion and Spirituality, Public Policy and Public Discourse | No Comments »
Thursday, April 21st, 2005
Jack Connors, Jr. argues (12 Jun) that the current revenue surplus in Massachusetts should be spent on increased Medicare reimbursements rather than being returned to the taxpayers from which it derived…using them to increase reimbursements for Medicare – or to fund benefit increases for any other entitlement program – is the worst possible use for the money.
Posted in Reactions, Health Care, Budget and Taxes, Government and Elections | 2 Comments »
Thursday, April 7th, 2005
I find this indifference to the very real cash-flow obligations with which we are saddling our children and grandchildren dismaying. I wrote this as yet another attempt to convince them – and their equally insouciant readers – to take those obligations seriously
Posted in Reactions, Social Security, Budget and Taxes, Social Responsibility and Social Justice, Government and Elections | No Comments »
Tuesday, March 29th, 2005
In March of 2005 the Colorado Supreme Court voided the death sentence for a murderer on the basis of the fact that a juror during the penalty phase – when the decision of what sentence to impose was being debated – had copied down a verse from the book of Exodus and quoted it during […]
Posted in Reactions, Law, Liberty, and Responsibility, Culture and Society, Religion and Spirituality | No Comments »
Monday, March 7th, 2005
Union representative William Seay (letters, 7 March 2005) hypothetically trades off a $50,000/year wage for Wal-Mart stockers/checkers/baggers/greeters with “a 12 percent discount on Gummy bears and barbecue grills” for Wal-Mart shoppers — implying, of course, that any rational and compassionate society would take the hit on their Gummy bears if it meant a decent standard of living for those poorest of employees.
But Mr. Seay’s analysis is corrupted by the same “all other things being equal” assumption that pervades so much of the economic reasoning in our political debates — the assumption that in coercing a significant change in wages nothing else would change as a result.
Posted in Reactions, Social Responsibility and Social Justice, Economics and Business | 2 Comments »