Is it right for beautiful models or brilliant, athletic young men to sell their eggs or semen to the highest bidder? That is yet another question that economists really can’t answer any better than the average person. But the recent…
It’s time to stop confusing investors with meaningless market numbers
Stock indexes such as the Dow Jones industrial averages and Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index were invented to give the public understandable information about the general movement of equities prices. But with time, inflation and the proliferation of exchanges…
To improve health care, remove tax-exempt status for benefits
Health care financing is the policy issue that just won’t go away. Democratic presidential candidate Bill Bradley is making it a centerpiece of his campaign, and Congress just passed compromise “Patients Bill of Rights” legislation specifying what patients can and…
Despite comments now, Greenspan contributed to Social Security woes
When Alan Greenspan was in Minneapolis recently, he weighed in on the current debate about Social Security. It was unfortunate, he said, that so many of the reform proposals were nothing more than accounting gimmicks that did nothing to ensure…