Why I love Walmart despite never shopping there
Visit This Link →
But my esthetic and aspirational standards are those of a comparatively wealthy person even in U.S. terms, let alone world terms. To the people who use Walmart and belong there, Walmart is a tremendous boon that stretches their purchasing power, enabling them to have things that don’t suck.
An example of private property helping the poor
I finished listening to an old EconTalk podcast, during my commute this morning. Russ Roberts was talking to Karol Boudreaux about her fieldwork on property rights and economic reforms in Rwanda and South Africa. They spent the first half of the conversation talking about Rwandan reforms and the second half talking about South African reforms. …
Diversity in Ratings
Scene Stealer – The Web Is Pouncing on Hollywood’s Ratings – NYTimes.com
The standard Hollywood ratings — G, PG, PG-13, R and NC-17 — must now compete with all manner of Internet-based ratings alternatives, some of which are gaining new traction through social networking tools.
SceneSmoking.org, which monitors tobacco use in …
I'm Glad I Don't Eat Local
With the spring weather that we had this year, eating local doesn’t look like such a great idea:
The floods that damaged farms in southern Wisconsin will likely result in fewer fruits and vegetables at farmers’ markets this summer and help boost already high prices for organic eggs and meat at grocery stores in …
The Blessings of Used Book Sellers
It seems that some people get annoyed when used book sellers visit library book sales.
Book dealers armed with handheld ISBN scanners are threatening to take over the used book sales run by volunteer fundraising groups for the Madison Public Library system, Morris said.
The scanners tell them how many copies …
The Earth Isn't Overpopulated
Dear Rob,
I’m sorry that none of the presidential candidates are addressing your pet issue, overpopulation. There’s a good reason for their avoidance, however. Overpopulation simply isn’t that much of a problem. The entire world population, living with the same population density as New York City, could fit into the state of Texas. If that’s too …
Rush Limbaugh on Conservatism
I don’t always enjoy listening to Rush Limbaugh. He tends to be bombastic and more than a bit over the top. I think that his brash rhetoric probably turns people away, who might otherwise agree with him. Still, when he’s right, he’s right.
One of his monologues today was perfectly on point.
No, no, no. …
Why Are We Rich and They Poor?
Mary Anastasia O’Grady wrote in the Wall Street Journal about the findings of the latest Index of Economic Freedom.
”The evidence is piling up that neither government nor multilateral spending on education and infrastructure are key to development. To move out of poverty, countries instead need fast growth; and to get that they need …
Fear Chinese imports
Well, the Chinese have stopped even pretending concern for the welfare of the foreign peoples to whom they export. As if shipping potentially hazardous tires, dolls, wooden art sets, and even faulty fortune cookies wasn’t enough, now they’re selling people missiles.
But Saudi Arabia, a country so renowned for being concerned with safety that it …
Everyone's Getting Rich
Everywhere I turn in the media, I hear that the economy is horrible. I hear that our parents had it better than we do. I hear that my generation may be the first ever to be poorer than my parents generation.
Hogwash.
First off, my parents never had iPods growing up. In fact, they didn’t even have …