Milton Friedman's Centenary | RealClearPolitics
EXCERPT:
"No one converted Milton Friedman, either in economics or in his views on social policy. His own research, analysis and experience converted him. As a professor, he did not attempt to convert students to his political views. I made no secret of the fact that I was a Marxist when I was a student in Professor Friedman's course, but he made no effort to change my views. He once said that anybody who was easily converted was not worth converting."
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
The Man Who Saved Capitalism - WSJ.com
Stephen Moore: The Man Who Saved Capitalism - WSJ.com
EXCERPT:
"Milton Friedman, who would have turned 100 [today, July 31st], helped to make free markets popular again in the 20th century. His ideas are even more important today"
Saturday, July 21, 2012
JCPenney’s To Eliminate Check-Out Clerks « CBS Pittsburgh
JCPenney’s To Eliminate Check-Out Clerks « CBS Pittsburgh
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) — It’s been a hundred years since James Cash Penney opened his first store in Wyoming. Now, the retail chain – with more than a thousand outlets – is struggling to turn a profit even though lots of people love the store.
“I love Penney’s. I’ve always liked Penney’s,” says Mary Jane Hallisey of Hopewell. “Oh, I like it a lot. They have a lot of good stuff in there. I go all the time,” adds Olivia Kuhn of Brighton Heights.
But the store is getting a makeover – specialized boutiques within the store like a denim bar – and more.
The CEO of JCPenney is the former retail chief of Apple, and he wants to shake things up to restore the company to profitability. But one of his ideas – replacing clerks with a self-check-out system – well, that doesn’t go over too well with some customers.
“I think it’s a bad idea all way around if you ask me,” says Jack Soffel of Robinson. Soffel shops at Penney’s and worries that the change will result in poor customer service. “I don’t want to walk into a place that’s so austere that it’s nothing but mechanics and automation,” he adds. “I like to talk to people, they help me, they ask me, they take me to find things.”
Penney’s CEO Ron Johnson says the store will switch the traditional bar codes on price tags to RFID’s – or radio frequency identification chips – and use self-service checkout machines found in many grocery stores.
“That’s taking away jobs from people,” notes Kuhn. “People need to work and make money. Plus, if I’m coming to the store, I want to have someone there to help me.”
Now, JCPenney will not be eliminating store clerks all together. Each of the proposed boutiques within the store will have its staff. But beginning in 2014, at check-out you’ll be on your own.
In an email, a Penny’s spokesman would not say how many jobs would be lost, saying instead this new check-out would actually free employees to help customers in other ways.
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) — It’s been a hundred years since James Cash Penney opened his first store in Wyoming. Now, the retail chain – with more than a thousand outlets – is struggling to turn a profit even though lots of people love the store.
“I love Penney’s. I’ve always liked Penney’s,” says Mary Jane Hallisey of Hopewell. “Oh, I like it a lot. They have a lot of good stuff in there. I go all the time,” adds Olivia Kuhn of Brighton Heights.
But the store is getting a makeover – specialized boutiques within the store like a denim bar – and more.
The CEO of JCPenney is the former retail chief of Apple, and he wants to shake things up to restore the company to profitability. But one of his ideas – replacing clerks with a self-check-out system – well, that doesn’t go over too well with some customers.
“I think it’s a bad idea all way around if you ask me,” says Jack Soffel of Robinson. Soffel shops at Penney’s and worries that the change will result in poor customer service. “I don’t want to walk into a place that’s so austere that it’s nothing but mechanics and automation,” he adds. “I like to talk to people, they help me, they ask me, they take me to find things.”
Penney’s CEO Ron Johnson says the store will switch the traditional bar codes on price tags to RFID’s – or radio frequency identification chips – and use self-service checkout machines found in many grocery stores.
“That’s taking away jobs from people,” notes Kuhn. “People need to work and make money. Plus, if I’m coming to the store, I want to have someone there to help me.”
Now, JCPenney will not be eliminating store clerks all together. Each of the proposed boutiques within the store will have its staff. But beginning in 2014, at check-out you’ll be on your own.
In an email, a Penny’s spokesman would not say how many jobs would be lost, saying instead this new check-out would actually free employees to help customers in other ways.
Thursday, July 19, 2012
You Didn't Sweat, He Did - WSJ.com
You Didn't Sweat, He Did - WSJ.com
Obama may be God's gift to comedy, but Romney is right that the philosophical stakes here are serious. The president's remark was a direct attack on the principle of individual responsibility, the foundation of American freedom. If "you didn't build that," then you have no moral claim to it, and those with political power are morally justified in taking it away and using it to buy more political power. "I think that when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody," Obama said in another candid moment, in 2008.
This isn't even Obama's only such revelatory comment of the past week. Politico.com reports that the president, in an interview with WTOL-TV of Toledo, Ohio, let the mask slip again when asked about the ObamaCare mandate tax. "It's less a tax or a penalty than it is a principle--which is you can't be a freeloader on other folks when it comes to your health care, if you can afford it," he said.
Of course this is a dodge. The administration claimed that the mandate was not a tax for political purposes but was a tax for legal purposes. Chief Justice John Roberts tied himself in knots to accept the argument Obama is now running away from. Between them, the solicitor general and the chief justice look as if they were too clever by 1.
What's objectionable about Obama's comment, however, is not "tax" or "penalty" or even "principle." It's the way he uses the word "freeloader."
Normally we think of a freeloader as somebody who sponges off others, which in the context of public policy means the government. A freeloader is an able-bodied welfare recipient, or someone who fakes a disability to collect Supplemental Security income, or who waits until his unemployment runs out before looking for a job.
Associated Press
Now, think about how the ObamaCare mandate tax is structured. As Roberts noted in his opinion for the court in NFIB v. Sebelius, "It does not apply to individuals who do not pay federal income taxes because their household income is less than the filing threshold in the Internal Revenue Code. For taxpayers who do owe the payment, its amount is determined by such familiar factors as taxable income, number of dependents, and joint filing status."
The only people who pay the ObamaCare mandate tax are people who make a living. Actual freeloaders are exempt. What Obama calls a freeloader is someone who makes his own money and pays his taxes but does not spend his money in the government-approved way.
The Obama campaign hotly disputes Romney's contention that the president meant what he said. A "fact check" from the Obama-Biden "Truth Team" (formerly Attack Watch) claims that Romney "is taking President Obama's words out of context" to produce "a complete distortion." Here is the full context, as presented by the Truth Team:
That's bunk, and not only because "business" is more proximate to the pronoun "that" and therefore its more likely antecedent. The Truth Team's interpretation is ungrammatical. "Roads and bridges" is plural; "that" is singular. If the Team is right about Obama's meaning, he should have said, "You didn't build those."
Barack Obama is supposed to be the World's Greatest Orator, the smartest man in the world. Yet his campaign asks us to believe he is not even competent to construct a sentence.
By JAMES TARANTO
"If you've got a business, you didn't build that." If the World's Greatest Orator turns out to be a one-term president, it is likely to go down as the most memorable utterance of his career. Mitt Romney certainly hopes that happens. HotAir.com's Ed Morrissey has highlights of Mitt Romney's response, in a speech yesterday at Irwin, Pa.:The idea to say that Steve Jobs didn't build Apple, that Henry Ford didn't build Ford Motor, that Papa John didn't build Papa John Pizza, that Ray Kroc didn't build McDonald's, that Bill Gates didn't build Microsoft, you go on the list, that Joe and his colleagues didn't build this enterprise, to say something like that is not just foolishness, it is insulting to every entrepreneur, every innovator in America, and it's wrong.
And by the way, the president's logic doesn't just extend to the entrepreneurs that start a barber shop or a taxi operation or an oil field service business like this and a gas service business like this, it also extends to everybody in America that wants to lift themself [sic] up a little further, that goes back to school to get a degree and see if they can get a little better job, to somebody who wants to get some new skills and get a little higher income, to somebody who have, may have dropped out that decides to get back in school and go for it. . . . The president would say, well you didn't do that. You couldn't have gotten to school without the roads that government built for you. You couldn't have gone to school without teachers. So you didn't, you are not responsible for that success. President Obama attacks success and therefore under President Obama we have less success and I will change that.
I've got to be honest, I don't think anyone could have said what he said who had actually started a business or been in a business. And my own view is that what the President said was both startling and revealing. I find it extraordinary that a philosophy of that nature would be spoken by a president of the United States. It goes to something that I have spoken about from the beginning of the campaign. That this election is, to a great degree, about the soul of America. Do we believe in an America that is great because of government or do we believe in an America that is great because of free people allowed to pursue their dreams and build our future?There's a website called didntbuildthat.com with a variety of hilarious treatments of the Obama philosophy. Of course, whoever's running the site didn't build that. As he acknowledges, Al Gore did. And hey, remember Julia, Barack Obama's composite girlfriend? At 42, she starts a Web business. Under President Obama, she didn't build that.
Obama may be God's gift to comedy, but Romney is right that the philosophical stakes here are serious. The president's remark was a direct attack on the principle of individual responsibility, the foundation of American freedom. If "you didn't build that," then you have no moral claim to it, and those with political power are morally justified in taking it away and using it to buy more political power. "I think that when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody," Obama said in another candid moment, in 2008.
This isn't even Obama's only such revelatory comment of the past week. Politico.com reports that the president, in an interview with WTOL-TV of Toledo, Ohio, let the mask slip again when asked about the ObamaCare mandate tax. "It's less a tax or a penalty than it is a principle--which is you can't be a freeloader on other folks when it comes to your health care, if you can afford it," he said.
Of course this is a dodge. The administration claimed that the mandate was not a tax for political purposes but was a tax for legal purposes. Chief Justice John Roberts tied himself in knots to accept the argument Obama is now running away from. Between them, the solicitor general and the chief justice look as if they were too clever by 1.
What's objectionable about Obama's comment, however, is not "tax" or "penalty" or even "principle." It's the way he uses the word "freeloader."
Normally we think of a freeloader as somebody who sponges off others, which in the context of public policy means the government. A freeloader is an able-bodied welfare recipient, or someone who fakes a disability to collect Supplemental Security income, or who waits until his unemployment runs out before looking for a job.
The sweat of his brow made America great.
The only people who pay the ObamaCare mandate tax are people who make a living. Actual freeloaders are exempt. What Obama calls a freeloader is someone who makes his own money and pays his taxes but does not spend his money in the government-approved way.
The Obama campaign hotly disputes Romney's contention that the president meant what he said. A "fact check" from the Obama-Biden "Truth Team" (formerly Attack Watch) claims that Romney "is taking President Obama's words out of context" to produce "a complete distortion." Here is the full context, as presented by the Truth Team:
If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you've got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn't get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet. The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together.The Team then explains: "The President's full remarks show that the 'that' in 'you didn't build that' clearly refers to roads and bridges--public infrastructure we count on the government to build and maintain."
That's bunk, and not only because "business" is more proximate to the pronoun "that" and therefore its more likely antecedent. The Truth Team's interpretation is ungrammatical. "Roads and bridges" is plural; "that" is singular. If the Team is right about Obama's meaning, he should have said, "You didn't build those."
Barack Obama is supposed to be the World's Greatest Orator, the smartest man in the world. Yet his campaign asks us to believe he is not even competent to construct a sentence.
Sunday, July 15, 2012
Thursday, July 5, 2012
Obama: Health care law 'is here to stay' - POLITICO.com
Obama: Health care law 'is here to stay' - POLITICO.com
EXCERPTS:
"I'm running because I believe that in American no one should go bankrupt because they get sick," Obama said. To “try and move forward and make sure that every American has affordable health insurance and that the insurance companies are treating them fairly. That’s what we fought for, that’s what we're going to keep. We are moving forward.”
"We will not go back to the days when insurance companies pray on the sick," Obama said
QUESTIONS:
1.
EXCERPTS:
"I'm running because I believe that in American no one should go bankrupt because they get sick," Obama said. To “try and move forward and make sure that every American has affordable health insurance and that the insurance companies are treating them fairly. That’s what we fought for, that’s what we're going to keep. We are moving forward.”
"We will not go back to the days when insurance companies pray on the sick," Obama said
QUESTIONS:
1.
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