Tag Archives: Economics

News

Socialists defeated by free-market conservative in Chile election

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Story from Investors Business Daily.

Excerpt:

Amazingly, Concertacion’s center-left candidate, Eduardo Frei, lost the election… to pro-free-market Sebastian Pinera, a self-made billionaire who vows to expand free markets even more. Following his exuberant 52%-48% victory Sunday, Pinera vowed to make Chile “the best country in the world.”

Saying he meant to be an “entrepreneurial president,” Pinera promised to cut red tape, improve investment, make it easier to hire and fire workers, make bureaucrats accountable and improve the climate for Chileans to start businesses.

He wants to partially privatize state copper giant Codelco to attract investment. He also wants to get tough on crime. Because he’ll have to work with the Concertacion congress, he may not achieve all of it. But given the political winds, he’s sure to achieve some of it.

[…]So instead of the 3%-range economic growth seen lately, Pinera vows to grow in the vicinity of the 7.2% pace Chile racked up in the first heady years after Pinochet’s dictatorship, when economist Milton Friedman’s Chilean Chicago Boys were in charge.

Instead of producing just wine, fruit and fish, Pinera wants new measures to encourage new industries to enrich Chile and its buyers around the world.

Can a billionaire like Pinera lead Chile? His past suggests he won’t rest on his laurels. As a businessman, he liked introducing new things to Chile; during the ’80s he introduced credit cards when these were barely known and made them a fact of life.

He also has a knack for rescuing failing industries and transforming them. In the 1990s he bought Chile’s battered state airline and turned it into LAN Airlines, now South America’s biggest carrier.

Chile’s markets are optimistic. The stock market rose 1% to its highest level ever on news of Pinera’s election.

Although Chile was being run by socialists, they were actually really good on fiscal issues.

I blogged before about how a pro-free-trade economic policy had produced so much economic growth that Chile received an invitation to join the prestigious OECD, an organization of 30 economic super-powers! Well, Chile accepted the invitation – they are the first South American nation to ever be in the OECD!

The Wall Street Journal has the new rankings for the freest economies in the world. Chile is #10! Talk about punching above your weight!

Rank Country Year Score Change
1 Hong Kong 2010 89.7 -0.3
2 Singapore 2010 86.1 -1
3 Australia 2010 82.6 0
4 New Zealand 2010 82.1 0.1
5 Ireland 2010 81.3 -0.9
6 Switzerland 2010 81.1 1.7
7 Canada 2010 80.4 -0.1
8 United States 2010 78 -2.7
9 Denmark 2010 77.9 -1.7
10 Chile 2010 77.2 -1.1

Chile is the number one place I would like to live if I could choose to live anywhere. But they have these terrible earthquakes! I don’t know what to do about that. I have this crazy idea to live in an earth-sheltered house, just to save money on utilities and to lower maintenance costs, so that I have more time for pets and friends. I wonder if they have those in Chile?

I also like Honduras (#99) and Colombia (#58). I was showing off my Honduras-made shirts today at work to one of the atheist-Democrat guys who is suspicious of free trade. I explained the difference between between foreign investment and foreign aid. I prefer foreign investment. The clothes are well-made, and I like to help poorer nations to grow their economy by trading with them – so that they have jobs they can be proud of. Today, clothes, tomorrow, LCD monitors! My parents were born in a poor country, just like Honduras or Colombia.

Commentary

Are women underpaid for doing the same work as a man?

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Here is a neat article from TotallyHer.com on this issue.

Excerpt:

Over the years there’s been much debate surrounding the concern for women receiving inequitable pay, relative to the same work men do. This continues to be an issue even in 2010! As a matter of fact, did you know that there’s an Equity Pay Day this year?

But it’s not just special interest groups who express the concern for women’s apparent lack of parity in their paychecks. President Obama signed legislation early in his presidency to ensure equal pay for women.

So is the President himself admitting that a woman can do the exact same work, for the exact same amount of time, with the exact same qualifications and experience as her male counterpart and get a smaller paycheck? Is that happening in the United States right now?

Click through to read the article and see what the research shows.

Thomas Sowell’s take on the pay gap

I actually have a book on my shelf by Thomas Sowell that tackles this very issue, among others, called “Economic Facts and Fallacies”. Here’s a short 3 minute video about the book.

There’s also a nice 4-clip discussion of the book between Dennis Prager and Thomas Sowell, (from Prager’s radio show). I’m listening to it now, and Sowell also preferred Fred Thompson in the 2008 Republican primary, just like me! This is a really, really good interview.

My thoughts

When I survey the best of my Christian male friends, we all agree that work really gets in the way of the things we would like to be doing. Some of us would like to be working more on our marriages and relationships, or playing with children, or writing, or teaching classes in the church, or organizing debate and lecture events, or lifting weights and playing sports… but one thing we agree on is that there is too much emphasis for men on the workplace as the theater of for our achievements. It’s just stupid.

I myself would love to work fewer hours if I could have more time for other things. Why work so hard just to pay more in taxes? I think men get trapped into marriage and children and then they are stuck working too hard to pay 40% in taxes for government bureacrats to marriage. High taxes are a real disincentive for men contemplating marriage. If women were smart, they would vote to shrink government, welfare and social programs. Then men would really be interested in marriage, because they could work less and still have time for other interesting things.

Videos

Videos from apologist William Lane Craig and economist Thomas Sowell

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William Lane Craig

Bill Craig
William Lane Craig

First, one from William Lane Craig, called “In Intellectual Neutral”. (H/T Apologetics 315)

It’s 40 minutes long.

This lecture is Dr. Craig’s appeal to the church to use their minds as a way to serve Christ. This is a very passionate and accessible lecture designed to motivate people to take the life of the mind more seriously. His focus is on getting Christians to focus on learning arguments and evidence, so that when they discuss these topics they can appeal to logic and objective reality (science and history) to confirm their views. He is concerned that unless we get good at this, that people will not regard Christianity as a “live option” when choosing their worldview.

I’ve heard this lecture delivered in person at Wheaton College one year when he spoke in the chapel to all the students. It was very moving. But this version is twice as good. This time he’s really letting loose.

Thomas Sowell

Thomas Sowell

This one features my favorite living economist, Thomas Sowell. (H/T ECM)

It’s 40 minutes long.

Thomas Sowell’s new book is about intellectuals, those who deal primary with words and ideas, not arguments and evidence. These intellectuals have the goal of reforming society based on the ideas that they learn in classrooms. (Sowell is not talking about engineers, medical doctors, accountants, etc. – people who actually have hands-on knowledge in advanced areas)

Sowell is concerned with people who are specialized in one narrow area such as linguistics, and then make pronouncements on public policy or economics without knowing anything about those areas. He argues that intellectuals have a low opinion of people who don’t go to the best schools, but instead focus on practical things. This conviction that other people are stupid makes them want to seize control and force their vision onto the world. The vision of the intellectuals includes metaphysical and moral beliefs.

In addition to what Sowell says in the video, I would expect that these intellectuals also disdain the morality and theology of Christians, whom they see as non-intellectuals, because they never hear reasons why people believe in Christianity and Christian morality in their Ivy-league classrooms. This absence of a defense is what causes them to be so aggressive about trying to marginalize what they view as unfounded beliefs and antiquated moral rules. Maybe they would not be so aggressively secular and collectivist if we were all as prepared to give a defense as William Lane Craig is?

More economists

If you like what you see in these videos, you might want to consider reading one of my favorite papers by economist Robert Nozick entitled “Why do Intellectuals Oppose Capitalism?” He uses a similar definition of intellectuals as being “wordsmiths”, rather than engineers, entrepreneurs, and doctors. My other favorite living economists are Walter Williams (#2) and Jennifer Roback Morse (#3).