A new Salon.com book review gives us the depressing and infuriating answers to how much the Iraq adventure is costing the citizens of the United States. The book, written by Joseph Stiglitz and Linda J. Bilmes, is titled "The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict." In…
I received this email from a regular reader in response to one of my responses to my Creationism in Florida Schools post:
“The real question that comes to my mind after reading this St. Petersburg Times poll is, should we allow popular demand to decide what is taught in science classes?”
How about for deciding what is taught in science, deciding tax policy, setting social programs, setting foreign policy, etc., etc., etc.? Should we allow popular demand to decide for these as well? I think we currently do, and I think it is with the same disastrous results. The next logical question is how should we pick the deciders? The problem is, we will never move to the next logical question.
What was considered ancient political wisdom at the time of the Caesars was: If the people can vote themselves bread and circuses, they will. Concentration of capital is the primary benefit of a taxation system. It allows big things to be done by a people of whom no individual member can afford. Government social programs (a form of insurance that used to be the province of churches, thus the tradition of tithing) are an example of dilution of capital. As is the Economic Stimulus Package that raced through our government checks and balances without much of either.
The examples of Ancient Greece, the Medici families (practically an empire unto themselves), the California legislature, and the Summerhill project (as described in the book by A.S. Neill) show that, …
Bill Moyers recently interviewed Benjamin Barber, a renowned political theorist and a distinguished senior fellow at Demos — a public policy think tank here in New York City. Barber's most recent book is Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole (2007). What's the focus of this book?…
Advertisement (almost a full page ad) for a huge new casino opening soon in St. Louis, published in the November 30, 2007 St. Louis Post-Dispatch. I didn't know that happiness was so easily achieved. And from this ad, it appears that everyone comes out ahead at the casino.
Adam Smith argued that everyone will ultimately benefit when each person acts out of self interest. For a long time now, economists have now shown that Smith's view was naïve, and that even rational people will act in ways that leave everyone worse off. This dysfunctional process leads to an…