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Are You Indian Enough to Be Exempt from Obamacare?
Ilya Shapiro You can’t make this up: Obamacare exempts certain American Indians from the “choice” Americans will face as of January of buying health insurance or paying Chief Justice Roberts’s special tax. But apparently this is a far...Show More Summary
Joan Castro on Engaging Youth To Create Change in the Philippines
“Exposing young people to information about PHE [population, health, and environment] and food security dynamics can be a powerful tool to steer their interests and commitment to care for the environment and become sexually responsible individuals,” says PATH Foundation Philippines, Inc. Show More Summary
Environmental Security: Approaches and Issues (Book Preview)
A little over a decade ago when I first became interested in the subject of environmental security, it took me ages to understand what I have since been eager to stress: environmental security is not a concept but rather a debate. As an undergraduate at the University of Portsmouth, there were very few textbooks on [...]
Facing the Future: Empowering Youth to Protect Their Health and Environment in Ghana and the Philippines
In the Philippines, there are health and development programs that specifically target children, senior citizens, and adults, said Joan Castro, but adolescents are underserved. Nineteen percent of the population is between the ages of 15 and 19, but “they can’t even go to health centers to get the family planning commodities [they desire],” she said. [Video [...]
Surprises Ahead? Population-Environment Dynamics and Tipping Points
‘Toward Resilience’ is a series on the meaning of global resilience and vulnerability today. Today, the Sahara Desert is a vast, nearly lifeless expanse of sand and rock. But ancient cave paintings tell of a time when it was fertile grassland and bands of human hunters chased aurochs and antelope. The shift from grassland to [...]
Spring Thaw: What Role Did Climate Change and Natural Resource Scarcity Play in the Arab Spring?
Several high-profile reports in the last few months have suggested that climate change and natural resource scarcity contributed to the events that have rocked the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) since December 2010. Thomas Friedman is apparently working on a Showtime documentary about the topic. But what exactly was the role of environmental factors in [...]
Sunday Morning Quotation – Market Failure
A simple but important statement about market failure from Art Carden: “market failure” is where the conversation begins, not where it ends.
The forthcoming clustering of human capital
A radical change is taking place in the German job market: Today’s immigrants to Germany are better trained and have a higher level of education than native Germans, according to a study carried out by labor market researcher Herbert Brücker on behalf of the Bertelsmann Stiftung, a private think tank based in Gütersloh. Today, 43 [...]
Oops, and double oops…
Au pair programs are in danger of ending, a possible victim of legislation now moving through Congress… At issue is a provision of the bill that would bar any labor contractor from charging a fee to foreign workers being brought into the country. Supporters say the measure is aimed at preventing the exploitation of foreign [...]
Assorted links
1. Economic Rewards to Motivate Blood Donations, important summary of the evidence in Science. 2. Words that cannot be spoken: raw milk. 3. Econometrics by simulation blog. 4. EU to ban olive oil in dishes? Way to upset the Greeks even more. 5. How does copyright law work in space?
Social injustice and harms
Over at BHL, my friend Andrew Cohen has responded to my post earlier this week making a skeptical case against the normative credentials of the idea of “social justice.” Andrew thinks that part anyway of the problem with my skeptical argument is that is framed in terms of rights. He believes that “harms” are “more […]
Washington Booms during Slowest Recovery
David Boaz Continuing our ongoing series on the wealth of Washington, we bring you the lead story in Friday’s “Mansion” section of the Wall Street Journal: The Journal reports : As other American cities have been buffeted by an uneven...Show More Summary
Assorted links
1. “Wanting to be liked.” 2. Trifecta (good photos too). 3. Hobson, underconsumption, globalization, and the great stagnation, by Robert Skidelsky; uneven but interesting. I’ve been waiting for this tradition to be rediscovered, I suppose Hilferding is next. 4. WSJ reviews the excellent Arnold Kling. 5. I am more pro-immigration than he is, but Ross [...]
Prisoner unemployment is rising in California
Prison labor, once best known for making license plates, has grown to 57 factories doing such work as modular building construction, toner cartridge recycling, shoemaking and juice packaging, according to its latest annual report. Convicts supply closed-captioning for television and transcribe movies into Braille… Yet even with workers paid 35 to 95 cents an hour, [...]
How To Develop Theory? Hang Out in the Backyard??
A very cool story here about an unheralded lecturer in math who in isolation from the big names in his field (and who even had to work at a Subway at one point) comes up with a huge advance in solving a famous and very vexing problem in numbers theory. How did he come up with the solution to the challenge that had really worn on […]
Painted into a corner?
According to the BoJ [Bank of Japan], a 100 basis-point increase in interest rates across all maturities would lead to mark-to-market losses equivalent to a fifth of tier one capital for regional banks, and 10 per cent for the major banks. At the same time, rising interest rates could undermine the government’s attempts to improve [...]
Pakistan: Will the Third Time as Prime Minister be the Charm for Nawaz Sharif?
Doug Bandow Pakistan always has been a good example of being careful for what one wishes when it comes to democracy in Third World nations. The Pakistani people theoretically rule the unstable nuclear state. Whether that actually isShow More Summary
Cultural Sensitivity or Surrender?
Doug Bandow One of the most important lessons one learns from traveling abroad is to be culturally sensitive. A self-professed sophisticate like myself would never want to be considered to be the prototypical “Ugly American.” Yet asShow More Summary
Support for School Choice Tax Credits Grows Once Implemented
Jason Bedrick The unanimous decision of the Iowa legislature to expand the state’s scholarship tax credit (STC) program yesterday once again demonstrates that school choice programs grow even more popular once implemented. Iowa’s STC...Show More Summary
Target the IRS—and the Abusive Administrative State
Doug Bandow The IRS scandal has appropriately tarred the Obama administration. But IRS abuse is not new: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, John Kennedy, and Richard Nixon all shamelessly used the tax authorities against their political enemies. Thus, the problem is nonpartisan. Show More Summary
