Almost Classical

Putin, at 85 percent approval (or higher, depending on source), is the most popular leader in Europe among his voters. Though we know he controls the media and crushes opposition, he really doesn't care what the West does or doesn't do. He's even used the sanctions as proof that the West is out to destroy Russia. It wouldn't matter who sat in the Oval Office. Putin's Russia is, as he says, "Trying to right a horrible wrong." Pride and honor are at stake, not international norms. And, in the end, Russian oil and gas are needed by many nations in the region -- at least for now -- and that gives Russia leverage. The sad reality... there is not much Pres. Obama or anyone can do to change Putin's worldview. Sanctions, harsh words, none of those things will matter to Moscow. And China will be more than happy to support Putin's Russia. When we try to understand the world through "American" or "Western" eyes, we miss that other ec...

The rich are not "smarter" as the following headline suggests — but they do attend elite universities and major in the more demanding academic fields. When this article appeared in May, I was winding down my first year at an elite institution, in its business school. If many of my students are destined for wealth, is it because they are smarter, more gifted, harder working, born to the right families? What is it that takes someone from the middle-class (or nothing) to extreme wealth? The rich are different—they're smarter, study says http://m.cnbc.com/us_news/101679720 —By CNBC's Robert Frank. CNBC.com | May 16, 2014 | 11:12 AM EDT Economist Paul Krugman recently wrote that the multibillion-dollar salaries of top hedge fund managers proved that education plays little role in the growing wealth gap. The rich get rich, he said, because of the "runaway financial system" and investors making money from money. "Modern inequality isn't about gra...

This is why I haven't been blogging a lot this summer. I've been working on several new plays…  A NEW DEATH A World Premiere By C.S. Wyatt Directed By Kaitlin Kerr Assistant Directed By Sarah McPartland Presented by Throughline Theatre Company   July 18 - July 26 The Grey Box Theatre 3595 Butler St, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15201 TICKETS: http://www.throughlinetheatre.org/tickets-and-pricing/   Featuring: Andy Coleman  Chelsea Faber Hazel Carr Leroy Eric Leslie  Tonya Lynn  Sarah McPartland Jared King Rombold  John Henry Steelman

Richard Florida and his team are at it again, pointing to correlations and assuming causations.  High-School Dropouts and College Grads Are Moving to Very Different Places Cities like Washington and San Francisco are gaining the highly skilled but losing their less-educated workforce. While I suppose I could live anywhere, my career somewhat demands that I be near either cities or at least college towns. It isn't that I love or even like cities — I don't — but I like being employed. I don't like the noise, light, or other pollution of cities. Employment: it beats the alternative. Don't imagine cities are "attractive" to every migrating household. No, they simply are where we must go, and we must demand higher and higher salaries to afford those very cities, pushing the inequality gap wider and wider.  Want to live near the great university where I work? Expect to spend $700K or more on a little, old, problems-included, house. Invest another $100K...

We will always have articles accusing "libertarianism" of being everything from "fascist" (huh?) to "right-wring" to "juvenile." Those advocating for classical liberalism will be linked to racists, plutocrats, crony capitalists, and other perversions of limited government and negative rights. (I still hate the "negative" rights label, inherently a rhetorical device that insults various philosophical and political schools of thought.) When I read "Somalia is a libertarian paradise," I know the comment poster is either ignorant or intentionally lying. The basics of classical liberalism include: Rule of law, with an egalitarian legal system; Enforced contracts, protecting parties in transactions; Property rights beginning with the individual's ownership of self; Limited, effective, and reliable government. Now, for the sad reality that libertarians in the United States need to address: there are horrible people who...

Over on Politico, the divisions we know exist are examined yet again, this time in a new Pew poll. Pew poll: Polarization highest in recent history Two decades ago, “a lot of Democrats and Republicans said they didn’t really like what the other party was doing, but they didn’t downright worry about them and see them as a threat in the way that we’re seeing from a lot of people today,” said Michael Dimock, Pew’s vice president for research. On Facebook, my political friends are increasingly intolerant of other views. It is best to be neutral and ignore the political, or you risk having to choose sides when neither "side" is of much interest. The hatred, the name calling, the complete intolerance for "them" and a conviction that "they" are destroying this country is… destroying this country. As a classical liberal, I'm the definition of a radical moderate. Leave me alone, and I'll support your right to be left alone. Let me be a heath-consciou...

I tell my students, learn to tell a story about economics, not merely to report statistics. This is why: Taking On Adam Smith (and Karl Marx) - NYTimes.com : Academic economics is so focused on getting the econometrics and the statistical interpolation technique correct, he said, “you don’t really think, you don’t dare to ask the big questions.” American economists too often narrow the questions they examine to those they can answer, “but sometimes the questions are not that interesting,” he said. “Trying to write a real book that could speak to everyone meant I could not choose my questions. I had to take the important issues in a frontal manner — I could not escape.”  He hated the insularity of the economics department. So he decided to write large, a book he considers as much history as economics, and one that is constructed to lead the general reader by the hand. He is also not afraid of literature, finding inspiration in the descriptions of society in the realist novels ...