Congress is considering legislation requiring corporate shareholder straw votes on CEO pay. Is this good for shareholders? What about society as a whole? Some see such votes as an untoward interference in private business. Shareholders are the ones hurt if…
Both private sector, government “create wealth”
Can governments “create wealth” by using resources to produce goods or services of greater value to society than the resources used? Or does government merely take from some and give to others without any net increase in people’s well-being? That…
The “not so great” often make history
Boris Yeltsin was not a great man. But he did influence history. Two decades ago cracks were beginning to show in the Soviet system. It was not foreordained, however, that it would spin apart at the time and in the…
We can’t ignore taxes…or dirty bathrooms
There is something bad about every tax. The problem, to use a catch phrase among my friends, is that “somebody has to clean the darned bathroom.” (That is an inside joke. Friends once attended college with a gregarious pre-seminary major.…