Cyanide poisoning E. European rivers,” proclaimed the headline on a recent news story in this newspaper. Datelined Belgrade, Yugoslavia, the story told of cyanide spill at a Romanian gold mine. The poison flowed into a tributary of the Danube and…
Category: Other
Instead of handing out rebate, why not cut back state sales tax?
It’s budget surplus time again in Minnesota. Once more the pressing political question of the day is how best to get rid of excess money. All three parties, Reform, Democratic and Republican, favor some sort of rebate program to return…
Productivity: Often ignored, always important
Just what does productivity have to do with the price of a mocha latte or a basket of onion rings at the neighborhood diner?” The answer is: “almost everything.” Productivity is the ugly duckling of popular economics. It doesn’t get…
Looking at societal changes helps cut through rhetoric on income disparities
Why do some people enjoy much higher incomes than others? That is one of the first questions to arise when people look at income distribution statistics, such as those for the United States, that show some households earning 10 or…
Hatch making same mistake as Latin America
I was listening to the news recently when I was struck by a connection between two seemingly unrelated stories. The first one was international: Ecuador’s President Jamil Mahuad was forced from office as a result of a prolonged economic crisis.…
In discussing income inequality, understand the nature of the data
Is there anything wrong with the richest 5 percent of families earning six times as much as the poorest 20 percent? What if the disparity were only half that? If there is something wrong with unequal incomes, should the government…
Environmental improvements require complex give-and-take
Environmental consciousness is one of the great developments of the last decades of the 1900s. Before the 1960s, pollution was like that famous quip about the weather: Everybody complained, but nobody did anything about it. That began to change slowly…
Cost of living adjustments are based on false assumptions
Inflation is at one of the lowest levels seen in the last half-century. The federal budget is closer to being balanced than in most of the preceding 30 years. Now is a good time for Congress to take back its…
Skepticism aside, idea of new economic era is a pleasing one
A new economy in the new millennium? A new year, a new decade, a new century, a new millennium—take your pick—started yesterday. Just what will this new period hold for the economy of the United States and the world? I’m…
Taxation of milk raises vexing questions about role of government in a democracy
Should dairy farmers get a higher price for their milk? Here in the Midwest, where a lot of people have ties to farms, many would answer yes. Should government force consumers to pay more for milk so that farmers can…