Top Reads of the Week
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Flippy the Burger Flipping Robot Mocks the Wage Naivete of Left and Right John Tamny, RealClearMarkets
Back when Ronald Reagan was president, he pointed to many pages worth of “Help Wanted” ads in the Washington Post as one of many pieces of evidence that his economic policies were working. His enemies on the left predictably responded that Reaganomics was merely producing jobs of the “burger flipper” variety. The market that was the voting booth revealed Reagan’s critics as hopelessly deluded: with elections always and everywhere about the economy, he won re-election in 1984 in landslide fashion, 49 states to 1.
The Right Must Stop Apologizing for Free Markets John Tamny, RealClearMarkets
Massive amounts of gold were discovered in California in January of 1848. Word of the find quickly spread such that 300,000 people from the U.S. and around the world traveled to what became the 31st U.S. state in search of fortune, and maybe fame.
The Silence About Trump's Mugging of Broadcom Is Deafening John Tamny, RealClearMarkets
A strange thing happened during World War I. As the western world set about trying to commit suicide in its pursuit of a needless war, U.S. exports to Scandinavian countries surged.
The Bear Stearns Bailout Didn't Avert the Financial Crisis, It Caused the Crisis Peter Wallison, AEI
Almost exactly ten years ago, the federal government rescued Bear Stearns, a large Wall Street investment bank that was sinking under the weight of its subprime mortgage holdings. A recent article in the Wall Street Journal suggested that the Bear rescue turned out to be only a temporary measure and did not prevent the financial crisis that occurred six months later. But rather than an unsuccessful effort to avert a crisis, the Bear Stearns bailout was actually a principal cause of the disastrous panic that hit the markets six months later.
If You Need An 'Inclusion Rider' To Make It In Hollywood, You Won't John Tamny, RealClearMarkets
While Good Will Hunting was released to critical acclaim and big box office in 1997, its eventual success was far from a foregone conclusion. As Peter Biskind recalled in his 2004 history of independent filmmaking, Down and Dirty Pictures, the script written by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon spent quite a lot of time in what movie insiders term “development hell.” The script kept being picked up by a studio, only for the same studio to sit on it.
The Economic Optimists Are Striking Back Robert Samuelson, Washington Post
A few years ago — probably four or five — I had an unexpected and terrifying thought: We could have World War III. Until then, I had blissfully believed, along with (I suspect) billions of others, that a nuclear holocaust — the shape of World War III — had been rendered obsolete by MAD ("mutually assured destruction") and political and military safeguards to prevent accidental attacks.
Tax Reform Has Eliminated the Need for Credit Union Favoritism Scott Hodge, Tax Foundation
If Ronald Reagan was right that the “nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this earth” is a government program, then the second closest thing to eternal life must be a federal tax subsidy.
Aggregated Links
Let Our Airlines Compete: Maybe More Dogs Will Reach Their Destinations Glenn Reynolds, USA Today
So United Airlines has apologized for killing a passenger’s dog. Reportedly, a flight attendant ordered the owner to place her black French bulldog in the overhead compartment, where it died, apparently of suffocation. (And almost immediately thereafter, it came out that United had also flown another passenger’s dog to Japan by mistake.)
“She’s a Criminal Who Should Be in Prison”: V.C.s Trash Elizabeth Holmes, Theranos, and Its Shareholders Maya Kosoff The Hive
For a few cushy years, Theranos C.E.O. Elizabeth Holmes held a singular position in the Silicon Valley firmament. The world’s youngest self-made female billionaire, Holmes was lauded by the media as the second coming of Steve Jobs—an impression she cultivated by mimicking the Apple co-founder’s sartorial flair. That all came crashing down when Wall Street Journal reporter John Carreyrou quietly began to investigate the company, eventually revealing that Theranos had failed to get its own blood-testing device off the ground, and instead relied on standard industry equipment to analyze samples. After a series of damning headlines, federal investigations, and failed pivots, the Securities and Exchange Commission brought down the hammer this week, accusing the former wunderkind founder of “massive fraud” for raising more than $700 million from investors in a years-long scheme “in which they exaggerated or made false statements about the company’s technology, business, and financial performance.” (“The Company is pleased to be bringing this matter to a close and looks forward to advancing its technology,” Theranos said in a statement to the Hive on Wednesday, adding that both Holmes and the company complied with the S.E.C.’s investigation.)
Trump’s Presidency May Decide the Fate of Socialism in America Greg Jones, The American Spectator
Last week, the Washington Post ran an opinion piece by Elizabeth Bruenig entitled “It’s time to give socialism a try.” While such an outlandish idea isn’t necessarily out of place on the Opinion page of the Post (or even in the thick of its news for that matter), Bruenig’s casual suggestion that we simply upend the very foundation of America is indicative of socialism’s increasing normalization among millennials and disenchanted baby boomers.
In Praise of Globalists Bret Stephens, New York Times
I grew up in Mexico City and remember vividly the things that impressed me most as a child whenever I visited the United States. Water you could drink straight from the tap. Cops who didn’t demand bribes. Competitive elections.
