Category: Economics

  • By Selwyn Duke A certain business won’t be opening its doors in Portland, Oregon — it seems it would attract the “wrong kind” of people. No, it’s not a strip club or porn shop, or even a pawn shop. It’s Trader Joe’s, the unique grocery chain famous for offering health foods and exotic fare at…

  • By Selwyn Duke When pondering our obsession with immigration, I’m reminded of how people in the ridiculous dystopian film Idiocracy were watering their crops with an energy drink called Brawndo. And even though the crops weren’t growing, the suggestion to try water instead was met with the following conditioned response in the drink’s defense: “It’s…

  • By Selwyn Duke They used to hang horse thieves — now they elect them mayor. As many know, New York City’s new commandant, Bill de Blasio, has sworn that one of his first acts upon taking office will be to ban Central Park’s iconic horse-drawn carriages. He claims that forcing horses to work in Manhattan…

  • By Selwyn Duke While the United States put a man on the moon in 1969, it took a bit longer to get there with our spending. But we finally made it with our profligate ways, as 3.9 trillion (our estimated 2013 budget) one-dollar bills stacked up would reach all the way to the moon —…

  • By Selwyn Duke It’s hard to forget meeting a man who hated Mahatma Gandhi. I once did, though. No, he wasn’t some erstwhile viceroy lamenting lost glory days, but an Indian born and raised in the land of sati and saris. The reason for his ire? He said that when Gandhi drove the British out,…

  • By Selwyn Duke What has lifted more people out of poverty, charity or economic freedom? It’s not even close. Charity is wonderful, and I’ll be the first to say we have an obligation to share our gifts, be they material, intellectual or talent oriented. Yet whether our redistributionist endeavor is charity — and charity is…

  • By Selwyn Duke “Because!” This was a common childhood justification. A kid wouldn’t be able to provide a good reason for his little agenda, but, well, children want what they want. So he just might say, “Because!”     One sign of having truly reached emotional adulthood is the ability to accept life’s harsh realities, yet…

  • By Selwyn Duke Will the grinding poverty and initiative killing of collectivism soon wear the label “Made in Japan”? Such a prospect is likely a ways off, but it could become a reality if Yoshiko Kira has her way. Kira is one of a slew of Japanese Communist Party (JCP) candidates who won office in…

  • By Selwyn Duke When Joshua Baron works delivering food for a local delicatessen, the customers wouldn’t guess that the man handing them their delectable fare is a law-school graduate. But neither the New York City resident’s undergraduate degree in International Affairs nor his law degree has translated into a career. And while he hasn’t yet…

  • By Selwyn Duke Is the only “green” aspect of electric cars the money some companies make off them? If former plug-in advocate and General Motors engineer Ozzie Zehner (shown) is correct, this is exactly the case. Author of the book Green Illusions, Zehner once built his own hybrid car that could run on electricity or natural…