Tag Archives: politics

Via Diane Ravitch’s`blog comes this bit of news…the real world is business is a meme underlying our conversations in politics. Well, this is good news! Ohio Governor John Kasich’s proposal that teachers should be required to “job shadow” a business to learn about “the real world” has been shot down (thanks to Ohio Algebra Teacher for sharing!). Democrats’ counterproposal that Kasich be required to spend 40 hours annually job shadowing people who work in...

Jeff Sessions said “I really am amazed that a judge sitting on an island in the Pacific can issue an order that stops the President of the United States from what appears to be clearly his statutory and constitutional power,” There has been considerable discussion of the phrase “and island in the Pacific”. With that phrase, Sessions made it clear that he considers Hawaii to be a second class state — not a real American state like Alabama. I have no doubt...

It was actually quite amusing to see an article in my provincial newspaper a while back where two sides were arguing about a reduction in the work week, and you could play bingo with the excuses the anti-side used. There wasn’t an original idea in the whole article, as the pro-side was almost apologizing and got one paragraph of the six on offer. – “Salty,” comment at AngryBear. See also “Boundless Thirst for Surplus Labor”...

A post from 2006 on immigration by Kash Mansori seems timely… The Simpsons on Immigration Kash | March 28, 2006 1:31 pm Simpsons aficionados among you already know that the Simpsons addressed the issue of immigration back in 1996, in the episode “Much Apu About Nothing”. Here’s a summary of the beginning of the episode, thanks to Wikipedia (Btw, I never would have guessed that Wikipedia contains entries on individual Simpsons episodes…) On an ordinary day, a...

September 22, 1956 November 7, 1960 QUESTION. This is from Mr. White, Warren, Mich. What is your stand on the 32-hour workweek? Vice President NIXON: Well, the 32-hour workweek just isn’t a possibility at the present time. I made a speech back in the 1956 campaign when I indicated that as we went into the period of automation, that it was inevitable that the workweek was going to be reduced, that we could look forward to the time in America when we might...

Various people have argued that Republicans decided to repeal and (very partially) replace Obamacare before moving on to tax reform, because Obamacare repeal (aka the American Health Care Act aka AHCA) would make it easier to permanently cut tax rates. To me this makes less than zero sense. The argument is that, since AHCA includes tax cuts, tax reform would start from a lower base, so it would be easier to write a tax reform bill which doesn’t add to the...

by Barkley Rosser {originally published at Econospeak) Which Is More Important, China Or Syria? For the world as a whole and the US in particular, when it is put like that it is pretty obvious: China.  It has the world’s largest population, largest economy in PPP terms, a rising military, expanding interests around the world, including making territorial demands on several neighbors, not to mention being a nuclear superpower as well as cyberpower, and more. ...

The Sandwichman commented the other day on The Economist article, “Britain’s Green Party proposes a three-day weekend.” Regrettably, though, I didn’t pay much attention to their “rebuttal” to the alleged assumption of a fixed amount of work: In fact, if people worked fewer hours, demand would drop, and so fewer working hours would be on offer. I have seen stupid explanations before of why there is not a fixed amount of work. Layard, Nickell and Jackman...

by Sandwichman Thank God it’s Boilerplate!: It’s Thursday and The Economist is lumping its labour The Economist and Jonathan Portes are at it again. “Lump of labor! Lump of labor!” The occasion? A proposal for a four-day workweek announced by the U.K. Green Party at their convention this week in Liverpool.   The Economist pretended to find “two problems” with the Greens’ proposal: The Greens’ proposals encounter two problems. First, the theory. They argue...

In case you did not see this, it is my Senator’s opening comments at the Gorsuch hearings.  He sums up just what a 5/4 split court has been doing.[embedded content] This is his discussion on Cspan about his book: Captured: The Corporate Infiltration of American Democracy