The 6 killer apps of Western civilization: Part 1: Competition
Check out this great TED talk,
in which British historian Niall Ferguson explains his answer to the
question of why Western civilization achieved such a clear dominance
over the rest of the world.
The presentation is a summary of Ferguson’s book Civilization: The West and the Rest. I highly recommend reading it; it expands on the points from the TED talk and is thoroughly enjoyable. What I’d like to do here is investigate, one at a time, the state of the six “killer apps” in modern America.
Let’s start with Ferguson’s first “killer app”: competition. Here’s a little more background from the book:
The presentation is a summary of Ferguson’s book Civilization: The West and the Rest. I highly recommend reading it; it expands on the points from the TED talk and is thoroughly enjoyable. What I’d like to do here is investigate, one at a time, the state of the six “killer apps” in modern America.
Let’s start with Ferguson’s first “killer app”: competition. Here’s a little more background from the book:
Look at just how progressive the U.S. tax system is
Great, great table from the Tax Foundation
looking at the average real income tax rate for various income groups.
People with adjusted gross incomes of less than $100,000 pay 8 percent
or less. People making $500,000 or more pay no lower than 22 percent on
average. The overall average rate is 11 percent. Looks pretty
progressive to me …
Why the Reagan Recovery was much more impressive than Obama’s
My pal Joe Weisenthal over at Business Insider just wrote a piece—in response to a post I wrote earlier today—with
the delightfully provocative and contrarian headline, “Why The Obama
Recovery Has Been Much More Impressive Than Reagan’s.”
Nope, I’m not making this up. See for yourself:
Let’s be perfectly clear, the Reagan Recovery (RR) has been far stronger than the Obama Recovery (OR). I think that is beyond dispute, really.
Nope, I’m not making this up. See for yourself:
The green-energy climb-down continues
The rain in Spain may stay mainly on the plain, but it won’t be
falling on giant solar panel arrays for very long: Spain is in full
retreat on its ill-advised renewable push. That won’t come as a surprise
to AEI readers, since I’ve been writing about Spain’s failing and corrupt renewables regime (along with the rest of Europe) for a good year now.
As I wrote last year:
As I wrote last year:
Fear and loathing of the Fed
As the GOP primary heats up, it appears that Ron Paul’s “End the Fed” message is catching on. In South Carolina, Gingrich dove head-first
into the Gold Standard fray, promising a “gold commission” modeled
after the double-digit inflation-battling commission built by Ronald
Reagan (that, coincidentally, overwhelmingly rejected returning to a gold standard, and had Ron Paul as a member).
Ron Paul, a subscriber to Austrian Economics, has been advocating a return to gold for years. Part of his argument is that gold’s meteoric rise signals impending doom for the dollar. Between the massive debt overhang and distrust of the Fed, Paul argues that people will lose faith in the U.S. financial and monetary system.
Noteworthy, then, are the returns on asset classes in 2011.
If, as Paul and Gingrich argue, we are facing economic doom,
shouldn’t gold be at the top of the list? And shouldn’t interest rates
be rising? And shouldn’t inflation be going through the roof?
Yet, as AEI economist John Makin notes:
Ron Paul, a subscriber to Austrian Economics, has been advocating a return to gold for years. Part of his argument is that gold’s meteoric rise signals impending doom for the dollar. Between the massive debt overhang and distrust of the Fed, Paul argues that people will lose faith in the U.S. financial and monetary system.
Noteworthy, then, are the returns on asset classes in 2011.
Yet, as AEI economist John Makin notes:
The Obama stimulus: How Big Government screwed up the Big Spend
Recall the original Obama economic team. It consisted of
President Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, Treasury Secretary Timothy
Geithner, and White House economists Lawrence Summers, Christina Romer,
Austan Goolsbee, and Jared Bernstein. It was the Democrats’ Best and
Brightest—but not one with a smidgen of executive experience in either
the private or public sector. And into their hands was entrusted an $800
billion stimulus spending plan, a package whose details were fleshed
out by Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi. What could go wrong?
Fixing Student Loans: Let’s Give Colleges Some ‘Skin in the Game’
What lessons on student loans can be learned from the searing national misadventure with mortgages?
Professor Richard Vedder, considering the question of a student loan bubble, recently concluded that the worst idea ever “was the creation of federally subsidized student loans in the first place.” Can any lessons from the searing national misadventure with mortgages be usefully applied to student loans? I believe so.
Why Growth Matters More than Debt
The proper question is not how
will America pay foreigner creditors back but rather what will maintain
China and Japan’s desire to buy low-interest Treasury securities from
us?
No comments:
Post a Comment