Government is a Lousy Investor

Jim DiPeso is right to draw attention to the Colony Shale disaster and the disastrous  Synfuels government supported enterprise that helped make it happen. But there's a broader point to be made: the government is utterly clueless when it comes to developing consumer products. Aside from …

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Written by Eli Lehrer on Friday September 30, 2011

GOP Govt Transparency Bill Flunks Reality Test

GOP Rep. Blake Farenthold's bill to force federal agencies to post their expenditures every two weeks on the web is a neat idea, and completely unworkable. Before he sat on the Supreme Court, Louis Brandeis penned a collection of essays that was published as a book called Other People’s Money . …

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Written by Zac Morgan on Friday March 25, 2011

The Elderly Say "No"

People on Medicare are often suspicious of expanded government involvement in healthcare, because they see it as competing with Medicare for scarce dollars. Tom Schaller asks : "Why are senior citizens crying "socialism" at town halls?" As we like to say in academia:  I don't know the answer, …

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Written by Andrew Gelman on Tuesday August 25, 2009