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Category: Economics

  • Was Colonialism a Positive Force?

    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,…

  • How to Enrich or Impoverish a Nation

    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…

  • Americans’ Pre-existing Condition of Childishness

    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…

  • Communism Now Big in Japan; Still Little in Virtue

    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…

  • Diploma Disaster?

    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…

  • Former Electric-car Engineer: Electric Cars Pollute More Than Gas

    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…

  • Rise in Female Breadwinners Means America is a Loser

    By Selwyn Duke When women start doing what men have traditionally done, yours is a civilization of the setting sun.  This is brought to mind when pondering a recent Pew Research Center study showing that women are now the primary or sole breadwinners in 40 percent of American households.  You may have heard the story…

  • Media Put Socialist Spin on Words of Pope Francis

    By Selwyn Duke There’s an old patriotic joke about how the Soviet media spun a two-auto race in which an American car bested a Russian one. Went the reportage: “Russian car finishes second in race. American car comes in next to last.” But this joke has nothing on the modern Western media’s practices, which were…

  • If I Were a Governor….

    By Selwyn Duke If I were a governor, the first thing I’d do is scrutinize the school curriculum in my state. For the teachings in the schools today will be the ideology of tomorrow, to paraphrase Abraham Lincoln. I’d review as much of the material as I could myself, and if the volume was too…