George Will talks insightfully with Saagar Enjeti and Marshall Kosloff. (HT Arnold Kling) (Listening to the questions these young interviewers ask Will is depressing. They reveal a stunning ignorance of history and of economics mixed with an almost comical gullibility for the bugaboos du jour.)
Richard Ebeling decries the increasing concentration of power in the U.S. presidency.
Mary O’Grady writes wisely about Brazil.
My GMU Econ colleague Walter Williams isn’t impressed by the NYT‘s “1619 Project.” A slice:
In addition to not understanding our Constitution, Hannah-Jones’ article, like in most discussions of black history, fails to acknowledge that black Americans have made the greatest gains, over some of the highest hurdles in the shortest span of time than any other racial group in mankind’s history. The evidence: If black Americans were thought of as a nation with our own gross domestic product, we’d rank among the 20 wealthiest nations. It was a black American, Gen. Colin Powell, who headed the world’s mightiest military. A few black Americans are among the world’s wealthiest. Black Americans are among the world’s most famous personalities.
Doug Rasmussen laments the precariousness of liberty in America today.
Richard Epstein writes brilliantly about the role of private businesses. Here’s his conclusion:
It is therefore all too fashionable today to argue that certain recent events have exposed a fatal weakness in the traditional model of corporate responsibility—a model that has generated so much wealth and economic success over the years. This overwrought charge should be rejected. The key problems run in the opposite direction: government regulations and taxes imposed on corporations attempting to advance certain social improvements. Socialism, heal thyself!
Arthur Diamond explains how work got good. A slice:
Innovative dynamism, sometimes less aptly called creative destruction or entrepreneurial capitalism, has a long history of creating new, better jobs and also of nudging old jobs toward the challenging, meaningful peak of the hierarchy of needs. In much of human history, the powerful have been tempted to force slaves to do the most dangerous, exhausting, and boring work. But then inventors created machines that could do these tasks, reducing the temptation to enslave and hugely bettering the work lives of some of the worst off.
