Tag: Free markets
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Americans for Prosperity — Kansas to hold second Defending the American Dream Summit
Event to kick off 2009 Kansas Legislative Session TOPEKA — The free-market grassroots group Americans for Prosperity-Kansas will hold its second statewide Defending the American Dream Summit in Wichita Saturday, January 10, 2009, just two days prior to the start of the 2009 Kansas Legislature. ?This event will serve as a kick-off for the new…
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Markets are the best regulators
Since the start of the current financial crises, we’re told that markets are at fault. The most common diagnosis is that there’s not enough regulation in place, and only a move away from reliance on markets and toward more laws and regulations will save the economy.
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In public schools, incentives matter
Last week (Wichita Public School District’s Path: Not Fruitful) I wrote about an article by Malcolm Gladwell. This article describes a method for evaluating and paying teachers. It’s not based on what public schools do now, which is to reward teachers solely on the basis of longevity and education credentials earned. That’s because we’ve found…
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I, Pencil turns 50!
The Foundation for Economic Education has a new version of I, Pencil to celebrate its 50th anniversary. Click here to view the announcement and read this short book.
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Do We Have Too Little Regulation?
One of the things we’re being told by the mainstream media is that deregulation is the cause of our current economic crisis. If only Bush hadn’t torn up so many regulations, we wouldn’t be in this trouble. Only adding more regulation will save the economy. Free markets — as if our economy is based on…
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Wichita TIF districts mean central government planning
As the City of Wichita moves towards more government subsidy and planning instead of entrepreneurship, we should make sure we know what we’re relying on.
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Walter Block on Economics in One Lesson
Walter Block talks about Economics in One Lesson, perhaps the most approachable book about economics. And, it’s a free-market, liberty-friendly, Austrian approach. What could be better?
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The danger of auto industry nationalization
In consideration for a bailout, Congress and the incoming Obama administration insist that the auto industry present a plan for survival of their companies. That sounds reasonable — until you consider that the auto companies must already be operating on a plan, and that plan isn’t working. How can they be expected to come up…
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Bryan Derreberry and the Chamber’s goals for Wichita
When the head of a chamber of commerce speaks or writes, it pays to listen or read carefully. While chambers are nominally pro-business, that’s a long way from saying they’re pro-liberty. Instead, they increasingly exist to serve a narrow interest. Using words and language like “pride,” “community,” “investment,” and “economic development” — all words that…
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Wichita Chamber of Commerce values
Here’s a message that Bryan Derreberry, president of the Wichita Metro Chamber of Commerce, sent to Chamber members. Note that this message doesn’t mention the role its political action committee played in the third Sedgwick County Commission district. In that race, the PAC spent some $19,000 of its $48,000 in an effort to elect Goddard…
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No Kansas subsidy to Northern Flyer
When it comes to government money, there’s no shortage of people who have ideas on how to spend it. One group that has grand ideas of how government should spend your money is the Northern Flyer Alliance. This group promotes passenger train service in our area. Currently they’re promoting extension of rail service from Oklahoma…
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Pragmatism must recognize reality
Any editorial that starts with “Karl Marx was right about at least one thing …” deserves close examination, especially when it appears in Kansas’ largest newspaper and is written by that newspaper’s former editor. The thrust of Davis Merritt’s article is that the theory of free markets hasn’t worked: “We’re painfully experiencing right now the…