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From antiquity to the Middle Ages, public health meant two things: sanitation (mainly clean water supply and sewage disposal) and protection against epidemics. On sanitation, think about the elaborate aqueduct systems built by Roman engineers. Epidemics meant transmissions of communicable diseases. Attacking lifestyles deemed threatening was a preferred activity of public authorities, but public health …
New York seems to have more than its fair share of knuckleheads. Paul Krugman and Tom Friedman are both stalwart columnists in The New York Times. And there’s staff writer James Surowiecki at The New Yorker. More about that in a minute… First, investors are taking it easy… distracted by barbeques, family reunions, and the …
Government can control many things, but it can’t control our minds and, therefore, our economic decisions. This has been a major source of frustration for the last two presidents. In 2001, President Bush demanded that Americans immediately go out and spend, racking up more debt in the hopes of inspiring economic recovery. President Obama has …
In 1985, Irwin Schiff wrote in what has become a classic book, How an Economy Grows and Why It Doesn’t, a pictorial introduction to basic economics. Now his sons are taking up where he left off.
Edward Snowden is in big trouble for revealing that our government is doing to its own citizens what the U.S. once accused Russia of doing to its citizens. In what is really a bizarre turn of events, Russia has become a safe haven for an American whistle-blower.
A recent study on Canadian health care has been released late last year. In it, the authors examine the deleterious effects of socialized medicine on patient wait times and the delivery of care.
Japan’s “universal” health care system, like all such systems the world over, is in trouble, with costs rising and the population aging. Nearly 25% of Japanese are over the age of 60, a proportion expected to increase to 40% over the next 50 years. Since the old generally require more — and more expensive — …
I’ve just completed a heavy schedule of talks at the Agora Financial Investment Symposium in Vancouver. All my talks centered on information economics, Web startups, and the productivity of the Internet and its meaning. As usual, I learned as much from the attendees as (I hope) they learned from my talks. The research I did …
In recent months, the price of gold has tumbled. Along the way, lower gold prices have undermined the share price of many mining plays. The yellow metal is selling for its approximate cost of production at many of the world’s largest mines. Yet for all the gloom and doom within the gold investment space, there …
The stock market hovers around all-time highs, and right on cue, individual investors are starting to get back into stocks. They are tired of earning nothing in money market funds or bank CDs. Ben Bernanke’s zero rate siren song has enticed reticent investors ashore all in the name of stimulating the economy and putting people …