America, the Law-crazed

John Stossel

Over the past few decades, America has locked up more and more people. Our prison population has tripled. Now we jail a higher percentage of people than even the most repressive countries: China locks up 121 out of every 100,000 people; Russia 511. In America? 730.
"Never in the civilized world have so many been locked up for so little," The Economist says.
Yet we keep adding more laws and longer jail terms.

Illustration by Brendan Monroe

By Steven Greenhut

San Francisco officials routinely lecture the rest of the U.S. about public health and the environment as they enact laws that, for example, ban McDonald’s (MCD) Happy Meals and require businesses to compost their trash.
But when it comes to doing something that would advance a noble public goal -- the conservation of California’s most valuable natural resources -- these same moralizers can be shockingly conventional in their attitudes.

By Robert Samuelson

It ranks among the biggest forecasting errors ever. Back in 2001, the Congressional Budget Office projected federal budget surpluses of $5.6 trillion for 2002-2011. Instead we got $6.1 trillion of deficits - a swing of $11.7 trillion. Naturally, political recriminations followed. Who or what caused the change? President Bush's tax cuts for "the rich"? The Iraq and Afghanistan wars? The Medicare drug benefit? The financial crisis? President Obama's "stimulus"?

Michael Boskin

Michael Boskin is Professor of Economics at Stanford University and Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He was Chairman of George H.W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers from 1989-93, and hea…
Full profile

California Bad Dreami

STANFORD – While central governments’ fiscal problems plague many economies, a parallel crisis is enveloping many subnational governments around the world. From Spain to China to the United States to Italy, these governments – regions, states, provinces, cities, and towns – face immense fiscal challenges. Higher levels of government are “on the hook” to bail out local insolvent governments, and may even suffer bond downgrades as a result; in Spain, Italy, and China, that role falls to the national government, and for US cities and towns, to their states.

This illustration is by Tim Brinton and comes from <a href="http://www.newsart.com">NewsArt.com</a>, and is the property of the NewsArt organization and of its artist. Reproducing this image is a violation of copyright law. — Illustration by Tim Brinton

There are many similarities within and among countries in terms of the nature and causes of these local fiscal calamities. Local officials used growing revenues during the boom to fund pet projects or boost pay and benefits, with little regard to future costs. In the downturn, revenues and subsidies from the central government collapsed and the bills came due. Creative accounting gimmicks masked the full extent of the problem. Now comes the reckoning.

The Rise of The 1099 Economy: More Americans Are Becoming Their Own Bosses

The Big Cities Where Self-Employment Is Growing The Fastest

Editor’s Note: This post is part of a new special section called “Reinventing America.” As part of this effort, demographer Joel Kotkin and more than a dozen other Forbes contributors and staff writers will focus attention on the challenges facing towns, cities and traditional industries across the nation–and highlight the growing number of surprising success stories we’re seeing, too. Over the coming months we’ll have stories, rankings of who’s doing it right (and wrong), and, we hope, great conversations with readers, so please join in.
While the economy has been miserable for small business, and many larger ones as well, the ranks of the self-employed have been growing. According to research by Economic Modeling Specialists International, the number of people who primarily work on their own has swelled by 1.3 million since 2001 to 10.6 million, a 14% increase.
This rise is partially reflective of hard times, and many of the self-employed earn only modest livings in fields such as childcare and construction. However the shift to self-employment is likely to accelerate in the future, and into higher-paying professions, for reasons including the ubiquity of the Internet, which makes it easier for some types of business to use independent contractors, as well as the reluctance of large firms to hire full-time employees with benefits.

Mitt Romney

Veterans of Foreign Wars Convention
Reno, Nevada
I want to start today with a few words about the unimaginable tragedy in Colorado last week. We've since learned that among the victims were four people who had served - or were serving - our country in uniform. Today, our hearts go out to the families of John Larimer of the U.S. Navy; Rebecca Wingo, an Air Force veteran; Jesse Childress, an Army veteran and member of the Air Force reserve; and Jonathan Blunk, a Navy veteran who died shielding his girlfriend from the spray of bullets. The loss of four Americans who served our country only adds to the profound tragedy of that day. All Americans are grateful for their service and deeply saddened by their deaths. We mourn them and we will remember them.

Vote for a Change

By Gov. Bobby Jindal

President Obama is in New Orleans today. One wonders if, during his visit to the Crescent City, he will repeat the now infamous claim that “If you have a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.” Given the firestorm that erupted after that claim, it’s doubtful he will do so.

But we should not forget his words. President Obama’s comments were not a one-off gaffe. Instead, they define his administration.

By Edward Tenner

How should artists respond originally to changing technology and fashion?

Can entrepreneurs learn from artists? I have suggested in THE AMERICAN that Arthur Fellig, the photographer known as Weegee, is an inspiring example of creative response to the economic hardship of the Depression era, rising from unknown technician to author of one of the best-selling photography books of all time. Now an exhibition at the Society of Illustrators in New York sheds light on a master of the following generation—the painter and art historian Stanley Meltzoff (1917-2006)—and on artists’ challenge to respond originally to changing technology and fashion.

By Tarun Wadhwa

The historic Aadhaar identity program puts India at the forefront of a technological revolution that is quietly reshaping the world.

For most Americans, nowhere are the repercussions of their nation’s increasingly insecure and outdated national identity systems more apparent than when they pass through security at the airport. In contrast to America’s struggles to adapt its decades-old systems to handle modern challenges, India is undertaking one of the grandest technology experiments ever attempted. In a massive, nationwide project, the government is attempting to collect the demographic information, fingerprints, and iris scans of all 1.2 billion residents.
With this information, the government hopes to issue a unique 12-digit “Aadhaar” (which means “foundation”) identity number to every man, woman, and child. If successful, India will build a major new piece of technological infrastructure for a modern economy, while fundamentally transforming the way residents interact with their government.

By Nick Schulz

Enrico Moretti explains why policymakers should concentrate on mobility inequality, why there is no Great Stagnation, and why economist Paul Romer has a tough road ahead.

Editor’s note: Enrico Moretti is professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of an important new book ‘The New Geography of Jobs.’ He recently answered questions from THE AMERICAN Editor-in-Chief Nick Schulz about why mobility inequality matters more than income inequality, and why there is no Great Stagnation.
Nick Schulz: Your book highlights how high concentrations of skilled workers can generate wealth and economic growth in metropolitan areas and how this redounds to the benefit of the unskilled in those areas. Obviously policymakers are interested in developing these kinds of clusters, but you point out that most explicit efforts to do so fail or are not worth the cost and that plain-old luck plays a big part in cluster success. Is there anything policymakers can or should do to improve their metros and push them toward innovation?

INTERMEX POWER

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

America, the Law-crazed

America, the Law-crazed

San Francisco Needs a Free Market, Not Free Water

Who Caused the $12 Trillion Budget Blunder?

By Robert Samuelson